Page 61 of One Perfect Dance
“I expect you have a great deal to do for your ball,” Ash said. “You mustn’t feel you have to sit with me, Ginny. I will be fine.” Or polite, at least, which would have to do, since his heart sank at the idea of her leaving when he had her to himself for the first time today.
She made an impatient gesture. “That’s not what I meant. I cleared my afternoon so I could sit with you, but I thought we would be alone.”
Ash suddenly felt much better. He reached for one of the hands she had rested lightly on the bed in front of her and lifted it to his mouth for a kiss. “You planned for us to be alone?” The question came out in a gravelly purr.
She nodded, veiling her eyes with her lashes.
He kissed her hand again. “You have me at your mercy, then, Mrs. Paddimore. At least until Rex finishes talking to Mrs. Wakefield. Whatever will you do with me?”
She looked up, a glint of mischief in her eyes. “Not just until then, Mr. Ashby. Later, as well. I have no engagements this evening, and Geoffrey needs an early night.” Her voice, just above a whisper, vibrated through his torso.
Apparently, the pain in his leg and hip was not great enough to completely douse his physical reaction. Not to this one woman. He fancied he could be dead and in his coffin and he would still find her arousing.
“Kiss me, Ginny,” he begged.
She stood and leaned over him, then hesitated. “I don’t want to hurt you.”
“I’m injured at the other end, my darling. This end cannot wait for your mouth.” He tugged on her hand, so she fell across the bed. She had to wriggle a bit to line up her mouth with his, and then the world went away, the pain receded. Nothing mattered but their kiss.
Reclined on pillows and trapped by his leg, he could not move her to his shaping, but he didn’t need to, for she shifted as his hands loosened her ties, as his lips explored down her neck and across her décolletage. He didn’t try to free her breasts, lest they were interrupted, but he slid his fingers inside and she moaned and arched her approval.
“Tonight, I would like to see these,” he murmured against her lips. “I could do much more to please you if I could reach them with my mouth, as well as my fingers.”
Could he take a more fervent moan as approval of his intentions? He hoped so. He reached up to stroke his tongue into her mouth. She opened wider and sank lower.
It took him a moment to realize that the banging sound was not his heart, but someone knocking. He withdrew his tongue. “Ginny, the door.”
For a moment, to his delight, his words did not sink in, and she kept trying to renew their kiss. Then she sprang away, wriggling off the bed and grabbing her shawl from her chair to settle around her shoulders.
“Come in,” she called, her voice a squeak. She repeated the words in a more normal voice, and Rex entered the room. “Mrs. Wakefield is ready for you, Mrs. Paddimore.”
“Thank you.” She was blushing, and her hair was half out of her pins.
She reddened still more when Ash held out a handful of them that he had collected from the blankets. “I will just go and tidy up,” she said.
“I’ll say good afternoon, then,” Rex told her. “Mrs. Wakefield says she will compare notes with Mr. Wakefield, and one of them will report to us in the morning, so I am going home. I’m escorting Rithya to a musicale this evening.”
Which left Ash on his own again, this time with pleasant thoughts to keep him company until Mrs. Wakefield came with her questions.
After she had talked him through the falling stone block, the shooting, the assault on Regina that he’d interrupted in this very house, and last night’s chase and rescue, she asked if he had noticed anything else that might be useful.
“The two men from the Indies, or perhaps there were four. I am sure I’ve seen them elsewhere. But it is hard to be sure. London has so many people of all types. I could be mistaken.”
“Give me particular instances, Mr. Ashby. What were they doing? What were you doing?”
He did his best, and she was satisfied at last. She rang the bell. Regina came to show the lady out, as cool and as tidy as she had been before he had kissed her. As always, she looked lovely. He preferred her rumpled from his arms, and with luck, that was how she would be this evening.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Geoffrey was stillsuffering the aftermath of the opium he had been given. He begged off dinner and went straight to bed. Given his usual appetite, Regina would have been worried had not Cook told her he had gone to the kitchen after being interviewed by Mrs. Wakefield, and had spent a couple of hours there, eating meat pies, sampling Cook’s baking, and dicing with one of the footmen.
Regina ordered her dinner to be served with Elijah’s, in his bed chamber.
She had been wondering all day whether to give him his birthday present. She knew it was scandalous to exchange presents with a man who was not a relative, but she and Elijah were far past that, surely? And even that high stickler, her mother, had not blinked at Elijah giving her the lovely little china Cellidron.
There were further considerations. On the one hand, it might remind him of his injury. On the other, she hoped he would take it as it was meant—as a promise for the future. He had not asked her to marry him. He had mentioned proposing as a future thing, but surely the time had come? She hoped his kisses spoke for him, but what did she know about a man’s kisses?
He had clearly done this before. Many times, and, given how he traveled around, with many different women. His kisses to them had not meant permanence.
