Page 38 of Lord Ashley's Beautiful Alibi
She gasped. “What fun. I wish I’d had the same.”
“But you have lived here. With your aunt. You have learned so much that others could not duplicate.”
She set her teeth and frowned into the cloak of night. “It is worth…many things. But I think at this moment what I have learned does not match your fabulous, enriching list of a life well lived.”
“What you do, Augustine, to find your friend, shows you have learned one thing well.”
She turned to him, a serene acceptance in her gaze. “Tolerance for those who hurt others?”
He inched closer, cupping her throat. “Love of your friend. The need to find her.”
Her lashes fluttered. “She has been my boon companion for so many years. We have learned how to survive this life together. Even when she married, and she said at first that she did it for security, she shared with me her thoughts and fears. In my life here, no friend compares to her, and I fear that Vaillancourt has hurt her.” She sniffed, and suddenly could not hold back her tears.
Then she came into his arms. The feel of her, the wealth of her love and her fear for her friend seeping into his body, was more than he had ever thought he might know of her. That she trusted him for that overjoyed him.
He drew her solidly against him. Stroking her back, he curved his other arm up so that he could cup her nape. She was the most lithesome woman he had ever held. He had known it on the Malmaison road that morning. Tonight he embraced a greater truth about who and what she was—a person with heartaches and triumphs. A young lady who wished for companionship and affection. One who gave it as well. But more than that, she was soon to be his unwitting aide. His companion to find her friend. And his lover, by pretense only.
But with the knowledge that that was all she could ever be—for her sake and for his—he clasped her close and whispered words of comfort. She would be his darling friend, a compatriot in the search for the woman they both must find or save or mourn.
When she raised her tear-stained face to him, he had to brush away her sorrows. He had to smile and say she was the finest friend to do what she embarked upon now to find her. He had to raise her chin and say, “Augustine, you will not cry again for the loss of your friend. We will find her.”
She clutched his frock coat. “I have been so lost. I could not find more ways to look for her. You are my champion to do this for me, and I will never be able to repay you.”
“Friends do not give recompense for the help they give each other.”
“We are friends?” she asked with hope in her lovely, sad eyes.
“We are.”
She sniffed and gave him the ghost of a smile. “Like no others.”
He nodded and brought her closer. “Like no others.”
“And friends,” she said with wide eyes, “kiss each other.”
“They do.” He settled her firmly into the curves and hollows of his body. If he struck a match, he would have gone up in flame.
“Despite,” she whispered as she frowned, “any charade.”
For all that she was and all that was yet unknown to him about her, he had to search and he had to proceed with their plan. They had to move toward their pretense here and now. “They kiss to seal their belief in each other.”
She rose on her toes. “I want that from you.”
“Do you, darling?” He could not help the endearment that slipped out. She was his sweet conspirator, soon to be more. “Come kiss me, then. We’ll work for the best of each other.”
Her gaze was on his lips.
He closed his eyes. If she did not kiss him soon, he would dissolve. Her lips were all he had ever wanted, the part of her that drove him to tormented memories at night.
He felt her thighs and belly and breasts slide along his body. She was supple, her thighs strong, her loins elegant, her breasts lush. And then the part of her that had lived in his reverie for two long years brushed his.
He was gone to some bliss he’d only sampled on the Malmaison road. He opened his mouth, and she came with a moist and tender press to his flesh. She jerked away. He stilled, paralyzed by what he’d had of her, what more he needed of her.
If it was a second he waited or an eternity, he could not say. But she moved upon him, her hands to his shoulders, her lips slanting on his. Shy as she was, untutored, unpracticed at this art, she put her mouth to his open one with an urgency that took his breath and gave him blithe and rapturous reward. She sank her fingertips into the hair at his nape and moved her lips upon him in a demand he gladly rewarded.
He lifted her up against him, the fullness of her all his.
She broke away. Her eyes wide and startled in the moonlight, she searched for answers, he supposed, to her enchantment. Letting her decide again how far they would go with this kiss, he set her to the stone railing of the veranda.
