A Lady by Midnight (Spindle Cove #3)(32)

She took a few steps closer. With every labored breath he drew, he now got a dizzying lungful of her lemon-clover scent. It calmed him in some ways and inflamed him in others.

“It wasn’t my idea,” she murmured at the floorboards. “I can see you were frightened. I’m so sorry.”

“Not frightened,” he replied curtly.

Just ready to fight. And she needed to stop looking so pained, or he’d be seriously tempted to put his fist through the wall.

Fosbury, the tavern keeper and confectioner, came out from the kitchen wearing an embroidered apron and bearing a large tray. “Come along, Corporal Thorne. Even you have to celebrate sometime. Look, I made you a cake.”

Thorne looked at the cake.

It was baked in the shape of a melon, iced with green. There were letters swimming on it—they spelled out congratulatory wishes, he supposed—but he was too angry and exhausted to push them together into words. Heaped atop all his other frustrations, that last insult to his pride was enough to turn his vision red.

“There’s a fly on it,” he said.

Fosbury bristled. “No, there’s not.”

“There is. Look close. In the center.”

The tavern keeper bent his head and peered closely at the center of the cake.

Thorne grabbed him by the hair and pushed downward, mashing his face straight into the icing. The man came up blinking and sputtering through a mask of green, sugary scum.

“Do you see it now?” Thorne asked.

A thick glob of piped icing fell from Fosbury’s brow. It landed with an audible plop. The entire room had gone silent.

They were all staring at him, aghast. What’s the matter with you? their horrified looks said. We’re your neighbors and friends. Don’t you know how to enjoy a party?

No. He didn’t.

No one had given him a party before. Never in his life. And the way everyone was staring at him, it was clear that no one would ever dare to give him one again.

Then it started. Just a light ripple of musical sound, coming from Miss Taylor’s direction. It grew louder, gained strength, until it was a full-force cascade.

She was laughing. Laughing at him, laughing at the stupid cake, laughing at Fosbury’s green-covered face. Her peals of melodious, good-natured laughter rang from the exposed ceiling timbers and shivered through his ribs.

Before Thorne’s heart could remember its rhythm, everyone else was laughing, too. Even Fosbury. The mood went from black to some iridescent color only found in rainbows and seashells. The party was a party again.

Damn. If only he had it in him to love, to give her what she needed—he would claim her for his own and keep her so very close. To tease him, to kiss him back from the shadows, to laugh merrily when he terrorized his friends. To make him feel almost human, every once in while.

If only.

“For goodness’ sake,” she said, still laughing behind her cupped hand. “Someone fetch the poor man a cloth.”

A giggling serving girl handed a rag over the counter, and Miss Taylor took the cake from Fosbury’s hands so he could wipe his face clean.

She stuck her finger in the mussed icing, then held Thorne’s gaze while she sucked it clean. “Delicious.” She held the cake out. “Care to try?”

God above. No man could resist that. He had to take at least this much.

He reached—not for the cake, but for her wrist. While she stared at him, wide-eyed, he dipped her finger in the icing and brought it to his own mouth.

He sucked the creamy, sugary confection from her finger, and then he sucked the sweeter treat that was her bare fingertip, working his tongue up, down, and around it. The same way he would savor her nipple, or that hidden nub between her legs.

She gave a little gasp, and he fancied he heard pleasure in it. If she were his, he’d have her making that sound every night.

He released her hand and pronounced, “Delicious indeed.”

A raucous whoop went up from the assembled crowd.

She gave him a chastening look. Her cheeks were as red as his coat.

He shrugged, unapologetic. “It’s our engagement party. Just giving them what they came to see.”

Sometime later, Kate was seated at a corner table with Thorne and the Gramercys. Slices of half-eaten cake sat before each place.

She was having a difficult time attending conversation—not only because the tavern had only grown louder after two rounds of drinks, but because her thoughts were entirely absorbed by a tongue.

His tongue.

She’d gained a great deal of familiarity with that tongue today. It was nimble, impertinent, and had a way of ending in places she wasn’t expecting. It also gave her an inordinate amount of pleasure, when he wasn’t employing it to send her harsh words.

But right now, perhaps his tongue was fatigued from the day’s exertions, because he wasn’t using it. At all. He’d been sitting at this table for a half hour, at least, and hadn’t spoken a word.

“Why don’t you tell us how you and Corporal Thorne met,” Aunt Marmoset said.

Kate sent a nervous glance in Thorne’s direction. “Oh, no. It’s a boring story.”

Harry lifted her wine. “It can’t be a more boring topic than estate management and agriculture, and that’s all we ever hear from Evan.”

Beneath the table, Kate twisted her fingers in her lap. There was no way she could spin a plausible tale of courtship. She didn’t want to lie to the Gramercys at all, and Thorne’s taciturn presence across the table would only undermine any tales of romance she might concoct.