Page 29 of The Scholar's Key
“I like that idea!” She beamed, but then her smile fell quickly. “That is — if you want to see me again. You must think me a wanton. I assure you, Noah, that I do not actually have any real experience in the art of seduction, truly. I—”
As she spoke, she stepped away from the door and began walking toward him again. He stood, placing his hand over hers where it now rested on her chair.
“Percy. I understand. You do not need to feel any shame over that. I—I enjoyed it.”
“You did?” Her eyes widened. “Not that I didn’t. For I did. It’s just, I don’t know what came over me. One moment we were acting – practicing – and the next…”
She had been overwhelmed by the roles they were playing. Right. It was not that she had any interest in him, any desire to kiss him. She had been caught up in the moment. She did not feel as he did, and he’d best remember that before he got too far ahead of himself.
“You played your part well,” he said, trying to soften the terseness in his voice with a small smile, but he was worried it appeared more like a grimace. “I never would have believed that you were not a woman who was interested in… more.”
“Right,” she said with a quick nod. “Well. This was an… elucidating afternoon.”
Elucidating?
“I best be going, however,” she continued. “Mary will have so many questions. Although she would never voice them aloud. Of course.”
She lifted a hand to her mouth again, almost as though she was trying to force herself to stop talking.
“Good afternoon, Noah.”
And with that, she fled in a flurry of pink skirts and cherry blossoms.
Leaving him overwhelmed with arousal and interest in her wake.
CHAPTER11
Percy was mortified. She had kissed – kissed! – Noah Rowley.
That was not just a kiss but a full-on attack. What must he think of her? He had said that he was fine with it, but there they had been, practicing his upcoming encounter with Mrs. MacNall, and she couldn’t have said what came over her. As they had spoken, she had drawn closer toward him until suddenly the tension that had been pulling them together snapped and she’d placed her lips on his.
It was her first real kiss, besides the odd quick kiss that she had stolen in her first season.
If someone had asked her a month ago if she could ever imagine herself kissing Noah Rowley, she likely would have laughed. He was quiet and bookish, the last man she ever would have thought would come forward and show any interest in her.
But when they began their practice – for she could hardly pretend she was teaching him as the man clearly knew what he was doing, even more than she did – he had turned into another person entirely, and shown her what could be possible.
That was the problem with Percy. She made the possible reality. She had always enjoyed pretending to be someone else. As a child, she had set up shows with her dolls and entertained her governess and her brother by acting out scenes she had created herself.
She had mostly rid herself of those notions as she had grown up, aware that there was no outlet for her interest, but this time with Noah had allowed her to pretend to be someone else again.
What she couldn’t decide was whether the kiss had been through the guise of the role she was playing, or through her own emotion.
It was rather disconcerting.
She had just entered the home they were renting, Mary close behind her. She hadn’t asked Percy anything, thank goodness, and Percy had been trying to ignore the curious glances that her maid sent her way.
Emotions were swirling within the pit of her stomach, and she was having a hard time coming to terms with just exactly what they were.
It was expected, yes, after such out-of-character actions, but there was something more there. Something akin to… annoyance. Or anger.
But why?
“Persephone?”
She looked up to find her mother standing in the arch leading to the drawing room.
“Yes?”
