Once a Wallflower, At Last His Love (Scandalous Seasons #6)(33)

“Hardly. There was Lord Denley’s office and Hyde Park.”

Color suffused her cream white cheeks, somehow charming when he’d never before been charmed by blushing debutantes. “Hush.” She slapped a finger to her lips. Then, this stranger to Society did not strike him as a blushing debutante. Quite the opposite. “It would be…it would be…” With every repeated word, the pink in her cheeks deepened, disproving his earlier assumption. Oddly he was only the more endeared by her innocence.

He arched an eyebrow. “It would be?” he prodded, having entirely too much fun at her expense.

“Oh, hush,” she chided, a slight grin ruining the effect of her previous outrage. “Ruinous. It would be ruinous if we are discovered using ones Christian names and speaking on such intimate matters.”

Rather, a cheeky, bold miss. And he found he quite preferred her this way. There was a sincerity to Hermione; an emotion devoid in every other young lady to come before her. “You still haven’t answered my question.” He paused, unaccustomed to having his wishes or questions gainsaid. “What do you desire?” he asked, suddenly unnerved by the desire to know everything and anything about her.

She clasped her hands behind her and rocked forward on her heels and then back. “I desire stability, Your Grace,” she said with a candidness that made him frown.

And for the first time, he took in the worn fabric of the crimson curtains. The faded reddish-pink fabric of the mahogany upholstered sofa. Something pulled at his belly when faced with the realization of Hermione’s circumstances. He returned his gaze to her. The hard set to her mouth indicating she’d detected his scrutiny…and didn’t appreciate his involuntary sense of pity. She straightened her back.

Sebastian closed the slight space between them, admiring her more for the proud set to her shoulders. “There is something to be said for stability,” he said, solemnly. However, a woman of Hermione’s conviction and strength, deserved more than an emotionless existence.

She studied her hands a moment. “Yes. Yes there is,” she said softly. “That is what I desire, Sebastian.”

The husky quality of her tone wrapped about his name, and a hungering to know all of her burned strong. He brushed his knuckles over her jaw, forcing her to meet his gaze. She stiffened. “A stable match, an emotionless one, would also be a lonely one.”

Her lips formed a small moue of surprise. “You believe in love,” the whispered words so very faint.

Her revelation, no one would dare believe, splayed him open, left him exposed to her contemplative eyes. “I do not,” he said belatedly, the protestation halfhearted to his own ears. And to give himself something to do, he yanked out his watch fob and consulted the timepiece given him by his father. Three words etched into the gold gave him pause.

Responsibility. Commitment. Honor.

To the ducal line. It had always been about the ducal line for the previous Duke of Mallen.

He snapped the case closed and tucked it into his pocket. His late father’s warnings and urgings had no place here. Not in this matter. He’d controlled Emmaline’s fate. He’d not control Sebastian’s from the grave.

Hermione walked a small circle about him. “Hmm.”

He stiffened. No lady of his acquaintance had ever looked at him in such a thoughtful manner; with that remote, analytical, not at all desirous study. And bloody hell, it shouldn’t bother him—yet, he’d stood before her blathering romantic sentiments and words of love and she should not be so composed.

She continued to scrutinize him the way a scholar might examine a new exhibit at the Royal Museum. “Hmm,” she murmured again and tapped her lower lip contemplatively.

And because she seemed so wholly unaffected by his nearness and because of the earlier amusement she’d found at his expense, Sebastian lowered his head and kissed her.

She stiffened and for an infinitesimal moment he thought she might pull away. Hermione, however, the young lady who’d darted about unchaperoned through the rainy grounds of Hyde Park, had ceased to surprise him. She tipped her head back to better receive his kiss.

Sebastian tugged her close, drawing her against him, wanting to lose himself in the feel of her. He folded a hand around her neck and angled her head, availing himself to those damned, tempting lips, and what had begun as a desire to kiss the blasted insolence from her blossomed into something more—a conflagration of desire. He slanted his mouth over hers again and again until he felt the tension drain from her body. She went soft in his arms and he gentled his embrace.

Hermione moaned and he slipped his tongue inside her mouth, exploring her further. She tasted of chocolate and honey, and he groaned wanting to lose himself in the sweet taste of her. Her tongue met his tentatively at first and then she emboldened, her hands climbed around his neck. She fisted his hair and anchored herself against his chest. Sebastian worked his hands over her body; down the span of her back, to the gentle swell of her hips.

“Sebastian.”

He swallowed the whispered entreaty that was his name, devouring it, relishing the breathy, three-syllable utterance that bespoke Hermione’s desire. He thrilled in the power of his touch over this woman and cupped her breast. Small but perfect for the palm of his hand.

Her head fell back on a whimper. He moved his lips down the satiny softness of her cheek. Ever lower, caressing the faint cleft just beneath her lower lip. Then he continued his search, desperate to know more of her. Aching to know all of her. He placed his lips to her neck, where her pulse beat wildly in tune to the pounding of his own heart.