A Kiss to Remember Page 8

  "Despite your condition," she said, "there are still certain niceties that should be honored."

  His smile faded. "Is that why you kept yourself from my bedside all day? To honor the niceties?"

  "You'd suffered a terrible ordeal. I assumed that you needed your rest."

  "Just how much rest can a body stand? According to you, I've already been drifting in and out of consciousness for…" He stretched his arm along the length of the mantel and drummed his fingertips on its polished surface. "Exactly how long was it?"

  Even as he stood there, looking perfectly at ease with his tousled hair and bare feet, he was watching her face intently. Searching for the truth? she wondered. Or for any hint of deceit?

  She forced herself to meet his eyes. "Two of your commanding officers delivered you to our doorstep nearly a week ago. Given the nature of your injury, they weren't sure you'd ever regain full consciousness."

  "Now that I have, I suppose I'll be expected back at my post."

  "Oh, no," she said hastily. "Since Napoleon has abdicated and Louis is back on the French throne, they assured me that they would have no further need of you."

  "Well, at least I'm not to be hanged as a deserter." He frowned. "What of my family? Have they been informed of my return?"

  Laura gave all of her attention to arranging the skirt of her nightdress into tidy pleats. "I'm afraid you've never spoken of your family to me. I gathered that you'd been estranged from them for quite some time before we met. You seemed more than content to make your own way in the world."

  A shadow that had nothing to do with the moonlight passed over his face, ever so briefly. "How very odd," he murmured.

  "What is it?" Laura asked, fearing that she'd inadvertently said something to jog his memory.

  A melancholy smile quirked one corner of his mouth. "That's the first thing you've said that's made perfect sense to me."

  "Not having parents is something we have in common, you see. My mother and father perished in a fire when I was thirteen. Which is precisely why dear cousin Ebenezer thought we'd get along so well. He's the one who introduced us when you came home with him on a Christmas furlough two years ago. Dear, dear Ebenezer Flockhart… my second cousin thrice removed," she added, wincing when she realized how awkward it sounded.

  "Remind me to thank him the next time I see him."

  "I'm afraid that won't be possible. Why, he… he…"

  "Was killed in the war?" her fiancé ventured.

  Laura had been tempted to give dear fictional Ebenezer a noble death in the service of his country and king, but the tattered shreds of her conscience prevailed. "He sailed to America. It was always a dream of his and now that the war there is over as well, he was finally free to make it come true."

  "Perhaps we can visit him someday. Since he's the one who introduced us, I'm sure he would like nothing more than to see the shining faces of our children."

  "Children?" Laura echoed, not quite able to keep the squeak out of her voice. "Just how many children will there be?"

  He shrugged. "I couldn't say. I suppose a half dozen should suffice." He ducked his head and gave her a bashful glance that was completely at odds with the wicked glint in his eye. "To begin with."

  Laura's own head was beginning to reel. In just two days, she'd gone from stealing a chaste kiss from a stranger to bearing him half a dozen babes.

  To begin with.

  He laughed aloud, startling her. "There's no need to go so pale, my dear. I'm only teasing you. Or did you neglect to inform me that I don't have a sense of humor?"

  "I knew you were teasing," she assured him with a nervous hiccup of laughter. "You always told me that you wanted only two children—a boy and a girl."

  "How very tidy of me." He slid into the window seat next to her, flexing his long legs. Laura scooted as far away from him as the cozy half-circle of cushions would allow. He captured her icy hands in his warm ones before she could tumble onto the floor. "I'm a bit puzzled by your demeanor, my dear. You tell me we've been apart for a very long time, yet you seem less than eager to become… reacquainted."

  "You'll have to forgive my shyness, sir. We've been engaged for nearly two years, but due to your military career, your visits here were quite infrequent. Much of our courtship was conducted through correspondence."

  He drew her closer, genuine excitement replacing the mocking light in his eyes. "Do you have my letters? They might prod my memory or at least give me some insight into what manner of man I am."

  Laura had not anticipated this request. "I'm afraid I don't have them. They've been disposed of."

  He freed her hands, plainly taken aback by her words. "Well, at least no one can accuse you of trite sentimentality."

  "Oh, no, you misunderstand me!" She put her hand on his arm without realizing it. "I cherished each and every word you wrote. I slept with the letters beneath my pillow… which is how Cookie came to boil them in lye on laundry day. I'm dreadfully sorry."

  "So am I." Sinking back on the cushions, he raked a hand through his hair, frustration spilling over into his voice. "How is it that I can remember every dusty corner of this house, but not a moment of the time I spent here?"

  "I don't know," Laura replied, more puzzled than he was.

  "It maddens me that I can't recall anything about you. Or us." He leaned forward again, peering into her face. "Have we kissed?"

  She might have thought he was teasing her again if not for the challenge in his gaze. She averted her face, thinking it terribly ironic that she could lie to him without flinching, but blush while telling the truth. "Once."

  He captured her chin and gently tilted her face toward his. "That's most odd. I would have sworn I wasn't the sort of man who would be content with only one kiss from lips as sweet as yours." A wicked shiver of anticipation ran through her as his thumb played tenderly over those lips. "There's no need to be frightened, Laura. Weren't you the one who assured me that I would never compromise my fiancée's virtue? I can promise you that it's not unheard-of for even the most respectful of bridegrooms to steal a kiss or two from his bride before the wedding."

  A scudding cloud veiled the moon. All the artifice between them melted away, leaving them two strangers in the dark. Laura was keenly aware of the clean, soapy smell of his freshly shaven jaw, the warm whisper of his breath against her mouth in that fragment of time before he touched his lips to hers.

  Laura had kissed, but she had never been kissed. The difference was subtle, yet profound. At first he seemed content to simply brush his mouth back and forth across hers in a tingling caress, as if to savor the satiny plumpness of her lips. Before she even realized it, they had bloomed beneath the tantalizing pressure, parting just enough to invite him inside. He didn't require much coaxing.

  Laura gasped as the warm, rough sweetness of his tongue invaded her mouth. He cupped the back of her head in his hand, slanting his mouth over hers to deepen the kiss.

  She had been wrong. He was teasing her. Not with witty retorts or gentle mockery but with an unspoken promise of forbidden delights. As shocking as that intimacy was, she could not stop her own tongue from responding in kind, from dancing out to lick at his with a shy boldness that astonished her. He nibbled and tasted and stroked, lingering over each new sensation as if he had the rest of the night to devote to pleasuring her mouth.

  In the wood, her kiss had awakened him from a brief sleep. Here in this darkened drawing room, he was awakening her from a lifetime of slumber, sending blood thrumming from her heart to the most secret recesses of her body, where it settled into a steady, insistent beat.

  Just when she thought she might faint from the dizzying wonder of it all, his mouth left her lips. She quickly discovered that it was no less persuasive on the curve of her jaw, the hollow of her throat, the lamb-soft skin just beneath her ear.

  "Call me darling," he whispered, catching her earlobe between his teeth.

  "Hmmmm?" She gasped as his tongue flicked out to ravish the shel
l of her ear.

  "Call me darling. You haven't called me darling all day. I've missed it."

  Her head fell back as his mouth caressed its way back to her greedy lips. She twined her fingers in his hair, searching for something to cling to in a world that was shifting dangerously beneath her feet.

  "Oh… darling," she sighed.

  Her capitulation earned her another kiss, this one even sweeter and deeper than the last.

  But he was not to be so easily satisfied. "Call me by my name," he urged.

  Laura suffered an instant of paralyzing blankness. She was so addled she wasn't sure she could remember her own name, much less the one she had given him. "Um… uh… Nicholas."

  "Again," he murmured against her lips.

  "Nicholas… Nicholas… Nicholas…" It became a breathless chant between each kiss. If this didn't qualify as a moment of great passion, Laura wasn't sure what would. "Oh, Nicky…"

  That throaty purr of surrender was nearly Nicholas's undoing. If Laura wasn't already a liar, he was about to make one of her. About to prove that he was precisely the sort of man who would compromise his fiancée's virtue. The sort of man who would drag her into his lap and soothe away her maidenly protests with deep, drugging kisses and murmured promises he had no intention of keeping.

  Except this time he would be bound to keep those promises for a lifetime.

  That realization made Nicholas do the impossible. He stopped kissing her.

  Somehow she had ended up in his arms with his hand splayed over her ribs, his thumb poised only inches from the tantalizing swell of her breast. Her heart hammered against those ribs in a thundering echo of his own. When she realized he was no longer kissing her, her lashes slowly fluttered upward.

  Her eyes were misty, her baby pink lips still plump and glistening from his kisses. She had tasted of passion and innocence, an intoxicating brew he would swear he'd never sampled before.

  "Did that happen the first time we kissed?"

  The accusing note in his voice seemed to snap her out of her daze. She stiffened in his embrace. "I should say not, sir. You were the very model of restraint."

  "Then perhaps I've lost my scruples as well as my memory." He smoothed her tousled hair away from her cheek, surprised to note that his hands were shaking. "Why don't you take yourself off to bed before you lose something even more valuable?"

  His words might have been a plea, but she wisely decided to take them as a warning. She extracted herself from his embrace with all the dignity she could muster. "Very well, sir. I bid you a good night."

  She maintained that dignity until she was out of his sight. Then she went pounding up the stairs as if the devil himself were fast on her heels.

  Nicholas ran a hand over his jaw. Perhaps he was.

  He had intended to woo his betrothed with chaste kisses and pretty words, not ravish her within moaning distance of her family. That thought summoned up a powerful image of Laura reclining on the cushions of the window seat, the skirts of her nightdress ruched up to her waist while he muffled her sobs of pleasure with his kisses.

  "Bloody hell," he swore, coming to his feet.

  There could be no denying that his response to the innocent brush of her lips had been fierce, primal, possessive. According to her, they had been separated for almost a year. Had it been that long or longer since he'd kissed a woman? A peculiar thought struck him. Here he was, obsessing about her fidelity, when he had no way of knowing if he'd been faithful to her during the time they'd been apart. Perhaps he, like so many other soldiers before him, had sought the baser comforts in the arms of some lusty camp follower while dreaming of the woman he was to wed.

  He shook his head, still marveling at the passion that had flared between them. The kiss they had shared had proved Laura true in yet another thing—she belonged to him. Of that, there could no longer be any doubt.

  He was on the verge of seeking the cold, lonely comfort of his bed when he remembered the charred remnants of the paper he had caught Laura burning. He knelt down, sifting through the ash.

  His fingers stumbled over a lump of melted wax—still warm and as soft and malleable to his touch as Laura had been. He slowly straightened, flattening the wax between forefinger and thumb. He might not recall anything about his life before yesterday morning, but he did remember that village butchers rarely, if ever, sealed their bills with expensive wax.

  * * *

  Chapter 8

  « ^ »

  I pray for you every night

  without fail …

  When Nicholas awoke the next morning, the ringing in his skull had returned with a vengeance. Groaning, he dragged the pillow over his head, muffling the sound to a bearable drone.

  That was when it occurred to him that the ringing wasn't coming from inside his head but from outside the window. Rescuing his trousers from the foot of the bed, he slipped them on, then stumbled to the window.

  Shoving it open, he leaned out over the gabled roof, drawing a breath of cool, crisp air into his lungs. The night had left a veil of dew on the grass that shimmered beneath the caress of the morning sun. And still the bells rang on, echoing over the rolling hills and meadows in a chiming carillon, both wistful and lovely. It was the sort of song that might force a man to swallow past a curious catch in his throat, the sort of song that might call a man home.

  If he had one.

  Nicholas gently, but firmly, drew the window shut, but not even latching it and drawing the curtains could completely mute those compelling strains.

  When the door behind him creaked open, he swung around, thankful he had donned his trousers. "Doesn't anyone in this infernal household ever knock?"

  Although her arms were piled with garments, Laura still managed to offer him a mocking curtsy and a cheery smile. "And a pleasant morn to you, too, sir."

  His fiancée looked most fetching in a white muslin gown dotted with blue floral sprigs. A matching blue sash gathered the fabric beneath her high, round breasts. The scalloped hemline revealed trim ankles swathed in white stockings and a pair of silk pumps. She even wore a straw bonnet trimmed with a rosette of ribbons and secured beneath her chin by a jaunty bow. All she lacked was a lamb on a ribbon and she might have posed for a portrait of a shepherd maiden painted by one of the masters.

  Nicholas scowled. After last night, he had no intention of letting her make a lamb of him. Especially a sacrificial one.

  She set the pile of garments on the dressing table stool. "I've brought you some church clothes. Cookie found these in the attic. They may be a bit out of fashion, but I doubt that anyone in Arden will notice."

  He folded his arms over his chest, deepening his suspicious glower. "Why would I have need of church clothes? We're not to be married this morning, are we?"

  She laughed. "I should say not."

  "Then why are we going to church?"

  "Because it's Sunday morning."

  He continued to glare at her blankly.

  "And we always attend church on Sunday morning."

  "We do?"

  "Well, I do, anyway, and from what I gathered from your letters, you try never to miss a service." Her eyes shone with admiration. "You're extremely devout."

  Nicholas scratched at his whisker-stubbled throat. "Well, I'll be damned. Who would have thought the Almighty and I were even on speaking terms?" He gave her a defiant look. "You might as well know that I have no intention of begging His pardon for kissing you last night. I'm not the least bit sorry."

  Although color rose to her cheeks, she met his gaze boldly. "Perhaps it's not forgiveness we should pray for but restraint."

  "And perhaps you're being overcautious. A kiss can be an innocent enough expression of affection, can it not?"

  Laura might be unversed in the arts of love, but she wasn't so unversed as to believe there was anything innocent about the kisses they had shared. "It can be, I suppose," she reluctantly agreed.

  "And weren't you the one who assured me that I was the ve
ry model of restraint the first time we kissed?"

  She had been afraid those words would come back to haunt her. She was already regretting her decision to lie to him no more than was necessary. "There's something about that kiss I neglected to tell you."

  He waited in expectant silence.

  She took a deep breath. "You were unconscious at the time."

  His eyebrows shot up.

  "It was just after you were returned to us, and I suppose I was trying to convince myself that you weren't hurt but only sleeping. You looked so tragic and vulnerable lying there—like a prince in some fairy tale who had suffered a cruel curse. I know it was only a childish fancy, but I honestly believed that if I kissed you, I might be able to stir you from your slumber."

  "Why, Miss Fairleigh, I'm shocked! I can't believe such a model of decorum as yourself would take advantage of a man's helpless state to force your attentions upon him."

  Without thinking, she crossed to him and placed one hand on his arm. "Oh, please don't think ill of me! I'd never done such a wicked thing before. I can't imagine what came over me. Why, I…"

  Her protests died as she realized he was laughing out loud, the dimple in his cheek making him look more George's age than his own.

  Stiffening, she stepped away from him. "You needn't make sport of me, sir. It was only a brief lapse in judgment and moral character. I can assure you that it won't happen again."

  His laughter died to a warm chuckle. "More's the pity."

  She sniffed primly. "Given the lack of gravity with which you view our betrothal, I can see that it will have to be my responsibility to make sure our lips don't meet again until we stand before the altar of St. Michael's to take our vows. Until that day, I shall simply have to ensure that we are never alone."

  "We're alone now," he pointed out, a smile still playing around his lips.