Page 32 of A Lady's Wicked Revenge
He could not bring himself to look in Diana’s direction. Filled with a sudden urge to flee as far as he could, Colin stood without a word and made to leave the garden—even as he took this first step, he sensed he might never return, at least in Diana’s company.
But it was not so. Before he could take a second step, he was stopped in place by the feeling of a small, soft hand resting insistently on his forearm. Colin wheeled about, irate, but felt his anger dissipate like a half-forgotten dream when he saw the look of genuine remorse in Diana’s eyes.
“I’m … I’m sorry, Colin,” she said softly. Her eyes dipped low, and for an instant, he feared she would burst into tears. But with what he now knew to be characteristic strength, Diana sniffed the tears away and met his gaze directly. “I know it isn’t your fault. None of this is, and it isn’t right for me to lash out at you just because I’m angry with—”
Diana broke off, losing ground to the incipient deluge. After a moment, she looked up at him again, and tears flowed freely down her reddened cheeks. “I hope you can forgive me.”
Colin felt a rush of instinct within himself, every fibre of his primordial animal brain urging him to hold and comfort this vulnerable figure. Some small, craven part of him won out over this impulse, however, and instead he wordlessly sat down by Diana again. She took this gesture as he had intended and rested her head against his shoulder with a tiny sigh of relief. Without understanding how it happened, Colin noticed that his arm had found its way around Diana’s shoulder, and as soon as he saw this, he pulled her closer to him in a tight one-armed embrace. She repeated the quiet, pleasurable sound she had just uttered and rubbed her golden locks gently against his shoulder.
The two sat there for what seemed like a very long time. The retinue of small white clouds made their procession across the sky, the brilliant orange blooms twirled and danced their voluptuous steps in the wind, the glorious yellow sun continued its ceaseless march across the sky and shifted the black constellations of the elm’s leaves across the cobblestones. Time passed in the garden, as ever it did in the crueller world beyond its flowers and stones.
Though not a word was spoken, Colin felt regret pour from Diana’s body, and as he continued to squeeze her feminine frame against himself with one arm, he tried to crush out any feelings of sadness that might be left in the woman. Once again, he felt memories of his fervent nightly imaginings well up inside him, made all the more intense by the feeling of her body against his. This time Colin did not shy away from this desire but let it linger in his awareness, turned it over in his consciousness—he did not stifle this spark in the darkness but instead reverently watched the art of its burning.
His fingers moved for greater purchase on Diana’s narrow, feminine shoulder, and he relished the subtle loosening of her muscles, the quiet change in her breathing, that accompanied this touch. It struck him that nothing in his life had ever felt as important as this glorious, quiet moment. The soft stirring of Diana against their seat drove Colin’s imagination into a frenzy, and he could not deny the hardness he felt bloom in his breeches.
Now more insistently, he brought his hand lower beneath her sheer gown, past her collarbone, and towards the supple mounds of femininity that had so occupied his attention for these long days and eternal nights. He relished the almost imperceptible lust that played just beneath the surface of her gorgeous blue eyes. Diana bit her lip softly, and Colin felt himself nearly lose his mind entirely to the desire that would not be stifled within him.
“You know, my friend Leah Reid was suggesting the most untoward things at the party yesterday evening,” said Diana in a playful tone of voice, as their desirous touching slowed into a slow languor. Her eyes were still fixed on one of the dozens of butterflies paying their graceful homage to the lilies.
“It sounds as though she and Adam Radcliffe have more in common than either of them would like to admit, then,” Colin said with a smirk.
“Wouldn’t that be something to see? Mister and Missus Adam Radcliffe—I don’t know which of them I should feel sorry for!” Diana laughed. Then her demeanour grew distant once again. “Leah was pointing out that you have been showing me to quite a lot of secluded, out-of-the-way parts of the Leeson house over the last several weeks.”
Colin felt his muscles turn to iron at the words, the hairs on the back of his neck standing at attention. Quick as a shot, he was filled with a thousand competing desires: to deny the implication, to laugh at Diana for suggesting something so ridiculous, to rise and speak no more as he left their isolated little paradise forever.
More than anything, he was filled with the perverse thought that he might agree with what she had said, that he might hold her closer still and press his mouth against her soft, full lips …but he put this aside with great zeal.Man is not ruled by his base impulses,he thought, swallowing.That’s what Sir James has always told me. Do not make a fool of yourself, Colin. Keep yourself under control.
If Diana detected the conflict within him, she gave no sign of it. Instead, she merely laughed lightly and shook her head, her red-blonde curls shaking merrily with the gesture. “I was all ready to argue the point when you and Mister Radcliffe came in. And seeing where you’ve shown me this morning, I cannot say I feel quite as sure in my position.”
Colin licked his lips, forcing a derisive laugh from them. “It’s almost as though I have been trying to get you somewhere out of sight of the rest of the household.”What are you even saying, you dunce?
Diana shifted slightly in her position, and Colin felt the unmistakable weight and softness of one of her breasts against his chest. His posture grew still more rigid; it had already been taking all his self-control to keep that spark in himself from igniting, something that now seemed almost inevitable.
“It would be most scandalous if our circumstances were not what they are. Have you ever thought of that?” Diana looked up to him, and her pale blue eyes were dancing with a million golden motes of desire. In all his travels and all his years, Colin was sure he had never seen anything so beautiful.
Breath came into his chest in short, ragged gulps. Somewhere between the buzzing in his head and the smoke that had begun to issue forth from that solitary little spark, he stammered, “Have I thought about what it might be if you and I … if we were not … if we …?”
“Yes,” Diana breathed. Her eyes closed.
And then his lips came crashing into hers.
Idiot!he barked at himself.What are you doing, you utter fool? Allowing your passions to carry away what little sense you have … disgusting, and an abuse of Diana’s trust to let yourself be so swept away.This voice was not unfamiliar to Colin; he had heard it in his mind for all his life, and it always sounded like James Leeson.You’re a gentleman, not an animal. Remove yourself from that young lady before you do something you will both regret!
Yet even as these recriminations leapt into Colin’s mind, he found himself rendered insensate—or perhaps the opposite, he thought in wonder, as though possessed by all the emotions the human soul can experience at the same time—as he found Diana not leaping away from him in horror but returning his kiss with fiery passion.
He could feel her fingers clench by her side, feel the thunder of his own heartbeat resonate in the soft, pillowy pinkness of her lips. As their warm skin maintained this contact for longer, and her mouth pressed harder against his, her breath coming hot and hard against his face, all his confusion, all his feelings of wrongness evaporated like nightmares before the morning sun.
It was a sensation completely unlike anything Colin had experienced before; though he was not entirely unschooled in the ways of love, the touch of a woman had never kindled more than a lustful spark in his breast. Now it was no mere spark he felt, but a roaring blaze that warmed him inside and out, burning away every care and memory that usually occupied his mind.
He closed his eyes, letting himself be carried away by the wordless bliss of the world of two they had forged with their touch.
Chapter 15
A Thousand Singular Moments
Though it lasted but a few moments, what transpired in the garden that morning was a wholly unique, once-in-a-lifetime experience. She ran over the memory a thousand times in her mind, her inner parts becoming hot and slick with the thought, but Diana honestly had a difficult time recalling anything that happened afterward.
It was clear she and Colin must have left that garden at some point, obviously, and she likely went through the motions of the day—reading the novel she had taken from the little Leeson library, sharing a meal with Priscilla and Sir James, possibly even passing another dull afternoon in the company of Gerard Dunn. But any detail of these events was utterly absent from her mind.
