Page 29 of The Marquess' Wicked Wager
“But you have never come close? You have never met a woman to capture your attention long enough to dream of marriage?”
Albert’s body rocked with laughter. The boat and water calmed as he did. “Dream of marriage,” he echoed. “From all I’ve seen of it, marriage is no dream.” He cleared his throat. “But to answer your question, no. I have not.” He peered up at her before letting his hand drift lazily in the water. “What of you?”
“Oh, there was a boy, some years ago.”
“Miss Worthington,” Albert said in feigned surprise. “How very scandalous...I always knew you were an adventuress at heart.”
Edna scoffed, her face stretching for her smile. If he thought her a minx, she might has well play along. She leaned down and flicked some water at him from the lake. Albert jolted back, his shirt dappled in spots, and he laughed,loudly, but it was boyish too. A little twinkling. A little like a summer’s day.
Contented with her work, Edna settled back into her spot, fixing her bonnet. “I’ll have you know that nothing happened that was not expressly chaperoned. He was the friend of one of my cousins. We were both tremendously young, and he was the first boy to ever show an interest. I thought I was set for life.” Edna stared across the Serpentine, a little lost in her thoughts.
Albert turned on his side and called her back to attention—as he was wont to do. “What happened to him?”
“We simply forgot about one another after a summer. And that was that.”
“You never even kissed the lad?”
Edna shook her head. “I’m not likeyou. I cannot allow myself the same adventure. We barely said two words to each other.”
“And no one came after? Not before your debut?”
“No,” she confirmed and leveled him a look that she hoped would let him know to drop the rotten matter before it got either of them into trouble. But Albert, by all accounts, was very good at getting into trouble.
He looked away and then back at her as though he had realized some unutterable truth. “You mean to say, when I kissed you, the first night we met…” he hesitated, “it was the first time you had been kissed in your entire life?”
Edna grew hot. Unbearably hot. She pressed a finger to her bottom lip as though it might freeze time. It did not. She didn’t want to think about what that might mean for him, but she had to ask. Because it made her feel practicallywild. “What if it was? How does that make you feel?”
Albert sat up and leaned in close. “As though I am the most abhorrent rake that ever was or ever will be. I apologize if it was not all you dreamed for yourself. I swear, I shall never rob you of another thing without you asking first,” he murmured.
“Thank you,” she replied, but something else gestated in her mind. “Last night, it almost seemed as though…” She pushed the thought aside.
“As though I was primed to kiss you again?”
Edna nodded. “It must have been my imagination. Part of our show,” she continued, but she was only being coy, and she knew it. Part of her wanted to push him to see whether she could bring him to that precipice again.
But his expression shifted as soon as he had said it. Edna’s twisted too. He was so close to her now, and they were so secluded on the lake. Violet and his uncle, and all the rest of them were but small dots on the lake bank, no more distinguishable than daisies in the distance.
She bit her lip so hard it began to tingle. Edna could not seem to tear her eyes from his, and his gaze set her on fire. She couldn’t even begin to name the feelings that roared through her, but they were stronger than anything she had ever felt. And sheloathedit. It was not part of their plan. “Not that it matters. Our jig will soon be up as they say. We haven’t time to waste debating our mistakes.”
“Funny,” Albert said, but each syllable stretched on for an eternity, “because, right now, here with you, mistake or not… it feels a little like forever.”
Then there was time infinite and no space. He closed the gap between them, seizing her face in his hands with purpose and need. His lips crashed against hers hard at first before softening with his breath. Edna felt every nerve in her body prickle for his kiss, but it ran away with the water as she allowed herself to settle into it.
His hands weren’t just on her cheeks, then. They were in her hair, and then down her back. The fabric of her dress was so light that she felt like aMerveilleusesbeneath his gaze. And she had never been more thankful for a blanket because he pulled away and looked her over as if he needed her consent. She gave it to him by way of another, tentative kiss, not knowing quite how to make him burn as he so expertly did her.
But whatever she had pulled seemed to work. He grabbed her close to him as though he feared she might slip away and lowered her down against the bottom of the boat. A small pool of water had made its home there, and it seeped through the very back of her gown, but she didn’t care. She couldn’t care for anything beyond the heat of his kiss, and the burning beneath her belly.
She wondered, for a moment, whether she was sick. Thishadto be some sort of fever for how shivery she was. And the prickling between her legs...she could not name it. She only knew it felt like something half-divine and half-devilish—like Albert himself.
He wrapped his arms around her and breathed against her mouth, “Edna,” and her name rang out like a poem as it blossomed into sound.
He trapped her lower lip in his own and ran his tongue along its edge. The movement was so sweet, so surprising, so artful, that Edna let out a soft little whimper. She felt something press against her leg, then, and looked down. But as her gaze was cast between them, Albert tore himself back. And as he did, the paddle boat rocked. And it rockedhard.
Before she could even make sense of things, there was a loud, vicious splash in the water. Albert had gone overboard.
“Oh, God! Oh, goodGod!”she cried and attempted to stop the boat from rocking. When it stilled enough for her to move without suffering the same fate, she peered over its edge. There was nothing beneath the water for a moment besides the whisper of a ripple where he had fallen.
“Albert! Can you hear me?” she asked, but still, the waters kept their tongue. She got to her feet with half a mind to dive in after him, not that she was a particularly good swimmer. Most likely they would both end up dead.
