Page 37 of Lord Carlisle's Enticing Lure
Her lips parted, her blue eyes limpid with tears.
He inhaled, fighting for sanity. “I must stop kissing you.”
“Then I will kissyou.” She laughed and blessed his mouth with that sweet caress of hers.
He was lost to her, in her. Such bliss he’d never known.
Only when she fell back to the bed, once more exhausted with their mutual climax, did he shake himself to leave. He gathered his determination just as he gathered his clothes from the floor and took them into her sitting room to don.
Before him stood her easel with a panoramic sketch of the Brighton waterfront. The candles that had burned as they made love had guttered. The light in the room was dim. But dawn broke. He could see her work. A glimpse told him she was talented. Another told himshe worked at perfect depiction of the elevation of buildings to seashore.
The longer he stared at it, the more he frowned.
He’d visited this seacoast town so often for business and pleasure since childhood that he immediately recognized the scope, from the eastern fringes to the newer developments to the west.
His darling lady was talented. An expert landscaper, she had the skills of an expert draftsman.
He was buttoning his waistcoat as he felt her arms go around his chest. He turned to embrace her tightly to him. She’d wore a diaphanous wrap that felt like cream beneath his fingertips.
Drowsy, she lifted her face to his. “This was no escapade.”
He put his lips to hers in a gentle kiss. “Not for me either. Let me go, my darling. I will return. I promise. Noon.”
“Noon.” She looped her arm through his and led him to her door.
Chapter Thirteen
“You slept late,”Clive’s sister commented as she poured him a second cup of coffee from her breakfast service in her rooms.
“I did. Thank you.” He strolled with his cup and saucer to the window. He knew what Terese was about to say.
“Is this”—she waved a hand—“wise?”
“Infatuation is never wise.” He dared not call it love. Not aloud. Perhaps soon he could shout it to anyone, because the feeling pulsed like a potent promise in every fiber of his being.
“I do agree with that,” she said. “Many noticed that you and Giselle departed early.”
He took a drink and shook his head. His sister was not angry, nor did she really care what society thought or rumored. But she was careful of his emotions, proud of his status and his work, honest to a fault when it came to discussing their challenges with others.
“There was nothing for it, Terese. I wanted her. She cares for me.”
“Well then, I think we must make her more welcome. Shall we have her to luncheon?”
“I have invited her to a picnic and to sail kites at noon. I hope Langley will come.”
“I’m sure he will.”
He faced his perceptive sister. “I do adore you,Terese. You are my bulwark and my confidante. How you help with Bella. Here. In London. Now with this…this.” He stared into his coffee. “I feel oddly light, as if I am fifteen.”
She shivered in her chair. “A bit of a tingle to be in love and fifteen, yes?”
Clive knew once she had been in love recklessly. When she was seventeen, she announced to their father that she would wed the new young gardener on their country estate. Their sire had ended that with the announcement that she would wed a man he chose. Terese packed a bag and ran south to her swain. She did not get far, only to Maidstone, before their father’s men hauled her back to London. She was married the next month to a man twice her age. But the two of them had found love, even if it was short lived. The loneliness of widowhood did not sit well with her. However, she’d never lost her good humor or her hope for a better future. If she had hoped for a better mate, she’d found none for years. When she helped Clive get through his own loveless marriage and its disappointments, she had helped to save his sanity and right his thinking.
He had no compunction about asking the next thing of her. “Advise me on this, please, Terese.”
“Oh, darling brother of mine, I am no authority on such matters. I find love before me once again and marvel at the apparition. I can impart nothing but how blissful it is to find it.”
Clive stilled at the thought he might be truly in love. “Terese, I am thirty-four. I am too old to fall for a lady so quickly.”Aren’t I?
