Page 47 of Tremaine's True Love
Wwas for Welsh rarebit.
Nita undid the last of his buttons and pushed the heavy garment from his shoulders. She hung it on a hook and found her own cloak whisked from her shoulders.
“I tell you things I ought to keep to myself,” he said, another shortcoming apparently. “I abet your insubordination of the earl’s very reasonable dictates. I consult you on matters a gently bred lady ought not to hear of.”
Mr. St. Michael’s tone was gruff and Scottish—gruffness was very much in his nature—and yet Nita suspected he was more bewildered than annoyed. She was bewildered too, also damned if she’d fail to seize an opportunity, no matter how unlikely.
“The earl knows better than to aspire to dictates around his family,” Nita said, remaining right where she was, before a man soon to depart for damned Germany.
“You’re also magnificent.” Mr. St. Michael remained right wherehewas, in a gloomy back hallway surrounded by cloaks and boots and two hanging hams.
The last of Nita’s common sense evaporated at that accusation. Tremaine St. Michael was magnificent, in his willingness to confront Edward, his dislike for Dr. Horton, hisWis for Welsh rarebit. Nita wrapped her arms around him and kissed him full on the mouth.
He remained unmoving, as if his brain hadn’t quite heard what his lips were telling him, and then his arms settled around her, and his entire posture shifted. He enveloped Nita in warmth and strength, in maleness, and in his embrace. A hint of cinnamon biscuit flavored his kiss, and a hint of tenderness.
He cherished, he tasted, he invited.
While Nita accepted. No winter apparel came between them, no misconceptions, no immediately impending departures. He knew Nita for who and what she was—of age and all that—and he was honest about himself.
Shrewd, capable, literate—and endlessly kind.
The kindness attracted Nita as broad shoulders, poetry, wealth, and even bold, tender kisses could not. Tremaine St. Michael understood her. Nita felt that understanding in his palm cradling the back of her head and his fingers tracing the angle of her jaw.
She wanted to know more than his kisses though, wanted to know the planes and geometry of his muscled chest, the turn of his flanks, the exact texture of—
His tongue traced her lips as delicately as a warm breeze, then again. Nita returned the overture, and the kiss went skittering off into an entire assembly of dances and flirtations Nita had hadno ideacould transpire between a man and a woman.
When Mr. St. Michael lifted his mouth from hers, Nita’s back was to the wall, amid her sisters’ everyday cloaks, while one of the hams swung gently, as if somebody had bumped it with a shoulder.
“You started it,” he said, kissing her brow. “I’ll not apologize.”
“You ended it.” Nita kissed his chin, which was like kissing a bristly rock. “Apologize for that.”
He laughed, a hitch of his chest, while Nita tried to draw a steady breath and ended up smiling like Susannah in the presence of an original Shakespeare folio.
“You lack charm and have all the wrong accents,” Nita said, sneaking another kiss, this one to his cool cheek, “except for rendering Mr. Burns. You do his verse exceedingly well. For that and many other reasons, I’m tempted too, Mr. St. Michael.”
Nita bolted out of his embrace, into the light and warmth of the kitchen, straight up the servants’ stairs. She kept on going until she fell, laughing—laughing!—onto her bed.
* * *
“Digby should see Dr. Horton,” Elsie said when the boy had been excused from the breakfast table to learn his day’s portion of frosty Latin.
No other creature on the face of the earth goaded Edward as Elsie did. What could Penny have seen in her? Elsie was pretty, if a man could abide red hair, Edward conceded that much. But then, what did hair color matter in the dark?
“Pass the teapot,” Edward said, taking another bite of eggs that the kitchen could never seem to serve hot. Elsie passed him the teapot along with a fulminating look.
“A head cold can turn into lung fever, Edward, and that child is your sole heir. I’d think his health would matter to you.”
“I will overlook that remark because you are a concerned mother and your nerves are delicate. Finish your meal, Elsie.”
Her next nasty look went to the plate still sitting before Digby’s place, upon which the boy had left not a crumb of toast nor a morsel of eggs.
“I am a concerned mother. You should be a concerned uncle.”
Elsie could not help herself. Edward had come to this conclusion in the early months of her tenure at Stonebridge. Some women had no means of calling attention to themselves except by being contentious.
Morning sunlight illuminated Elsie’s pale cheek and the bruise fading around her eye. That bruise shamed them both, though she might have used a bit more powder to cover it up.
