This Perfect Kiss Read online

  “I am relieved that you are too ornery to allow a small bout with pneumonia to crush your spirit, Grandmamma. Good evening to you as well.”

  She snorted as he sat on the edge of the mattress. “Good evening, indeed! You insult me coming to this room looking like a stable lackey. Can you not even dress properly anymore?”

  Wearing a white lawn shirt and black buckskin breeches beneath an informal jacket, Camden might have been dressed unfashionably, but she could not accuse him of having forsaken a bath and a shave before requesting an audience with her. “I am not completely remiss.” He opened his arms for her observation. “I bathed in your favorite soap. I smell like a spring garden. Just for you.”

  Her blue-veined hands shook slightly as she patted Camden on the forearm. “That is something, at least. I could use a dose of spring. Did you bring back my great-granddaughter?”

  “She is in the nursery with Mrs. Gables. You can see her tomorrow after breakfast.”

  “I wish to see her now. I have waited too long. I could be dead tomorrow and you will have my disappointment on your conscience.”

  He held back a grin. “Nevertheless, you will see her tomorrow. She has had an exhausting week and needs her rest as much as you do.”

  “Pah! You have been listening to that young whippersnapper physician Lady Harriet had the audacity to hoist upon me.”

  “No doubt you have been belligerent and quarrelsome, with little regard for what advice has been offered you to aid in your recovery. I have been warned not to tax you.”

  “To be honest, Camden, I did not think you would come.”

  “To be honest, it had crossed my mind that this entire ordeal was a manipulative ruse to get me here.”

  She sniffed. “Indeed. If I had known a bout of pneumonia had the power to bring you back, I would have taken to my bed sooner. You have injured me greatly with your suspicions. Why would you think I would lie to you? Such nonsense.”

  “Because I brought along a visitor who arrived shortly before I left the London docks. She carried with her a letter of employment written by Saundra after she died. Or at the very least ’twas posted after her death. It bore the Carrick seal.”

  “I sent no letter to anyone. Who am I supposed to have hired and for what?”

  “Christel Douglas returned to accept a position in this household as governess to Anna.”

  His grandmother’s hand fluttered over her heart in what appeared to be a real expression of horror. “Oh, my. She has returned? And Harriet does not know, or she would have told me. Someone should prepare her for the shock.”

  Suddenly doubting the truth of his assertions, Camden stared without expression into eyes the same color as his own. He disliked uncertainty, especially since he had been so sure his grandmother’s machinations had brought back Harriet’s granddaughter. After all, his grandmother and Lady Harriet were closer than most sisters with a history between the two that predated even his father’s birth.

  “Maybe Lady Harriet needed to see her and you necessitated the events along,” he suggested.

  “Why would you suspect me of such a thing?” She settled back in the pillows. “That girl’s mother ruined Harriet’s family.”

  Camden silently swore. “Christel is hardly responsible for the sins of her parents.” Any more than Anna is responsible for the sins of hers.

  His grandmother observed him shrewdly. “Christel is it now? She has just returned, and you are already on a first-name basis. And you are defending her? Bother. I have not lived my life under a rock, Camden. That girl ruined herself gallivanting about the countryside barefoot and unchaperoned. Anyone who saw Miss Douglas could see that her face lit up whenever you were near. You were the reason Lady Etherton made Harriet send her away.”

  Sometimes his grandmother would say something that made a reply impossible. He was not pleased. “What are you talking about?”

  His grandmother shut her eyes as if she suffered a headache. “Saundra’s mother found out that Miss Douglas attended the masquerade. I do not know how. The particulars hardly matter. The family had already endured enough scandal with Harriet’s eldest son, the girl’s father. Lady Etherton wanted nothing to come between you and Saundra. But I could have told her you were head over heels for Saundra and that you would not have signed the contracts had you not wanted the marriage.”

  Camden rose and walked to the window. She held out her hand to him. “Camden, I want this to be your home again. The land needs tending. Leighton does his best by me and I could not do without him, but Blackthorn Castle belongs to you. If it means you will stay, I will give my blessing for you to wed your mistress for all I care.”

  The idea that the family’s stoic matriarch would accept his mistress as a properly bred Carrick wife was laughable. “You are baiting me, Grandmamma,” he said softly, catching sight of movement in the shadows on the terrace below, and something inside him loosened. “Do not. I will wed again. But on my own terms and without interference from you this time.”

  When Camden had left Blackthorn Castle a year ago, he had thought he’d never return. Now, while a part of him considered the need to deal with his brother, to see to the estate business and welfare of its inhabitants, another bit of unfinished business suddenly appeared in the courtyard. Her profile easily recognizable against the backdrop of a full moon, Christel turned away from the stone wall overlooking the cove and worked her way back to the terrace. Rather furiously, if the stiffness of her gait was any proof to her mood.

  Watching her walk up the yard, he smiled to himself. He had set men at all points of the estate to see that she did not disappear in the night—as she had done all those years ago when all that he had found of her after the masquerade had been a golden slipper left behind on the beach. He had looked a week for her before the trail had taken him to Rosecliffe and to Saundra.

  He could still remember the first time he had met Saundra. She had been wearing a bright yellow muslin sprigged with cherries and a bonnet tied with red ribbons in a pretty bow at her chin, and looking lovely and serene as a portrait, sitting in a spot of dappled sunshine.

  She had been nineteen, beautiful and gay, and so sure of her ability to charm that he had suspected at the time that it was taken for granted by her family that all men who met her fell in love with her. And he had.

  And Christel Douglas had watched him court Saundra, never saying a single word.

  Now, as the wind sweeping off the bay pulled at her cloak and tossed her hair around her face, he found she stirred his dormant senses in a way he had not expected.

  He’d never thought Christel as beautiful as Saundra, yet the memory of her, like her laughter, was a portrait of color as bright as a Caribbean sunrise imprinted in his thoughts. For all her youthful annoyances, simplicity and imperfections, Christel Douglas was unforgettable, and it was as if she had just stepped through a window from his past to pick up exactly at the point where they had left off. Someone was responsible for bringing Christel home, and he wanted to know who and why.

  Behind him, his grandmother heaved an audible sigh. “I have no wont to rehash the past when I want only to heal our family, Camden,” he heard her say. “Blackthorn Castle belongs to you. Just tell me you will stay through Christmastide this year.”

  Letting the curtain drop, he turned back into the room. “I will stay into the new year, Grandmamma.” He kissed her on the cheek. “And Grandmamma . . .” if I ever learn that you lied to me about that letter, I will never forgive you.

  But he did not utter the words. If she said she did not write the letter, then he needed to believe her.

  Instead of giving voice to his thoughts, he said, “I expect you will be well rested when Anna visits you tomorrow. She has missed you.”

  Christel was waiting forever for Lord Carrick to finally appear at the end of the corridor just off the gallery. He turned the corner and stopped. She barely noted his hesitation, if that was indeed what she glimpsed.

  She pulled he
r cloak tight. “Why am I a prisoner?” she demanded.

  His path brought her in front of him. Everything about him was sinfully dark from his neatly combed hair tied back at his nape to his clothing—everything except his eyes, which were like moonlight against a velvet sky.

  “I thought you would have had better sense than to try and leave this estate at night. The landscape has changed since you were here last. The cliffs and beach are dangerous at night. Are you hungry? Come.”

  “Do you feed all your captives before imprisoning them?”

  “Only the ones I find roaming my corridors at night.”

  He walked past her, leaving her no choice but to follow him down the stairs or stand there staring like a befuddled schoolgirl. “Are British nobles always so accessible to the common masses, my lord?”

  He didn’t answer. Nor did he betray any inkling of his mood. She followed him down another corridor into the dining room, stopping when her gaze fell on a tray laden with warm bread, cheese, and a glass of chilled milk. She could not contain a gasp of delight.

  She picked up the glass as if it had been the food of the gods. “You have no idea how long since I have had a glass of chilled milk.” The milk slid down her throat and left a mustache when she was finished. Peering up at him, she licked the white stuff off her mouth. “How did you know?”

  “That you were hungry or that you like cold cow’s milk?”

  She picked up the bread and slipped it in her mouth. The slice melted on her tongue. She had been so nervous all day that she had not realized she was starved. “Both,” she said over a mouthful, plucking a slice of peach from the plate and savoring it as well.

  She took notice of the wavering shadows in the room. The empty chairs at attention around the long cherrywood table. Looking around at the oil paintings, the unlit crystal chandelier tinkling in the draft, she couldn’t help but be impressed by the wealth displayed or how alone they were at this end of the house.

  He leaned a hip against the table, watching her eat and survey her surroundings. Light from the candelabra washed over his face. “I knew that you had not eaten supper because I asked Smolich when I left Grandmother’s chambers and sent him to the kitchen. As for the rest, if I remember your words correctly, you like the sunset over the sea after a storm and the way the air smells in spring. A glass of cold milk with warm bread. Roses and summertime. The smell of watercolors on canvas. And if you ever owned a horse, you would name him after the constellation Orion. You also like dressing up and attending masquerades and kissing strangers in dark, ivy-laden corners.”

  She swallowed the mouthful of bread. “You were not a stranger. I had been following you about like a puppy dog from the first moment I saw you riding your horse on the beach that summer. You were just too blind to notice.”

  The sudden mercenary flicker in his quicksilver eyes quelled her heart and sharpened her awareness of him. “Is that right?”

  She picked at the bread. “Is my dog being cared for?”

  “Stabled and fed.”

  She wrapped the warm bread in her napkin, aware of the lengthening silence. “Did you find out who sent the letter? Was it your grandmother?”

  “She denied it. I am apt to believe her.”

  Christel paused her hands. “Why? Did she say anything else?”

  He cocked a brow. “Anything else?”

  “What I mean . . . did your grandmother mention Lady Harriet?”

  “She thought I should warn your grandmother you were back.”

  Christel was not fooled. “And you are being generous to one of us, my lord. The dowager is not fond of me.” She spread her hand over the napkin. “How does your grandmother fare? Mrs. Gables said that her ladyship was recovering from pneumonia.”

  “The physician thinks she will outlive us all.”

  Christel studied the crease around his lips. “You do not share his optimism? Are you concerned?”

  The question appeared to give him pause, but she suspected not for the reasons it should. “Does no one ever ask how you feel about a matter, my lord?”

  “No one but you knows me well enough to presume my feelings should be their concern.”

  She laughed, a full-throated sound, which she caught abruptly by sucking hard on her lower lip when she realized he seemed surprised by her reaction. Still, she could not contain her amusement at his expense. “I had forgotten how you British toffs cherish protocol. Stiff upper lip and all in front of the serfs.” She leaned nearer. “Your upper lip was not always so stiff, my lord. I remember that it used to bend upward, ever so nicely into a smile.”

  Realizing at once the slip, she froze. Good heavens! Was she flirting with the man?

  From the lazy-lidded look in his eyes, he was not entirely annoyed. He continued to behave every bit the gentleman, but there was an intensity about him now that belied his refinement and only seemed to make the candlelight more intimate.

  Then the corners of his mouth curved. “You like my smile.”

  She glimpsed his interest, a mutual awareness that sent a rush of heat through her veins. “ ’Tis pleasing when anyone smiles,” she said on a more sober note.

  “Indeed.”

  She smiled benignly. “I know what you are trying to do, my lord. I am not the naïve girl I used to be. She is all grown up now.”

  She turned to leave. He blocked her as he pushed away from the table. Her eyes chased up to his. Her breasts brushed his arm and, without his sweater, she felt the hard muscles beneath his sleeve.

  “A pity,” he said. “I liked her the way she was. She was not so suspicious of the world.”

  “She could say the same of you.”

  He laughed and everything about him changed. He became familiar to her again as the sound softened the sharp edges of his voice. “I have always been suspicious of the world. ’Tis my nature to question. It was yours to see goodness in everything around you, even when it was difficult to see.” Cupping her chin with his palm, he tilted her face into the light. “You may think that girl is dead, but she is not.”

  She jerked her face away from the gentleness of his touch. Hunger and doubt warred with resentment. He seemed to recognize something inside her that she had purposefully destroyed because it had made her weak and vulnerable.

  He removed the napkin from her hand. “Have you been kissed so very little, Christel?”

  “Have you not been kissed enough?”

  His lips quirked upward in what might have been seen as amusement in a less guarded man. “Hmm.”

  Her eyes dropped from his, her uncertain gaze lowering without will to his lips. Then his finger beneath her chin tilted her face and, as if in slow motion, his lips covered hers. The breath froze her lungs.

  He loved her mouth with exquisite tenderness even as he touched no other part of her. She raised her hands to ward him away, her conscience crying foul, but instead her palm pressed against the rapid beat of his heart.

  She had not allowed herself to touch him since her return. She now knew why. Merely touching him felt as sensual an act as she had ever performed with a man.

  The pads of his thumbs pressed gently against the corners of her lips. “Christel . . .”

  He had pulled away slightly, but not so far that she couldn’t taste him on her lips or breathe the air that he pulled into his lungs. Their breath mingled in a kiss that gave as much as it explored. He had made no other sound but her name. Brushing her hair from her face, he brought both hands to her cheeks.

  Then he was deepening the kiss. She was cold, then hot and shaky. She was dead. Then she was alive and breathing for them both.

  His heat bonded to the length of her body. Too long denied affection, she slipped her arms around his neck and leaned into his body. Her bosom crushed against his chest. And just that fast something elemental exploded between them. A moan formed in the back of her throat, a sound he swallowed. And she opened her mouth to kiss him back as deeply and as hard as she could, slightly desperate, but no
longer innocent or untried, no longer caring if this might be a foolish mistake.

  His tongue made a sweep of her mouth, dipping along the sensitive underside of her lips. Inside her, a new and silent storm raged past barriers and shattered memories.

  Standing so close to him, she found she no longer cared one way or the other what had gone before. What she did care about suddenly seemed infinitely more gratifying.

  Too soon, his lips retreated, and his hungry gaze passed over her mouth in a way that made her feel ravished and naked. The predator inside him clearly recognized her desire for what it was, and she knew he was not opposed to taking advantage of it.

  “Bloody hell.” He buried his face in her hair.

  She rose on the balls of her feet to kiss him again, to bring his mouth back down on hers and taste him. But he resisted. Still in a daze, she opened her eyes to find his gaze on her face.

  His breath came rapidly. He braced both hands against the chair behind her. “What do you want, Christel?”

  She swallowed the ball of fear that suddenly clogged her throat.

  Losing Daniel had taken so much of her heart.

  Now she and Lord Carrick were both free, and suddenly she did not feel the slightest guilt that she had kissed him, suddently felt that not only would she let him touch her but she would welcome the contact. Nay, drown in it.

  But what kind of person was she to want to forget Daniel? To wipe the last few years from her life as if they had never existed? “I want to go back to a simpler time.”

  When my emotions were pure, even if my thoughts were not.

  He moved his lips to the shell of her ear. “If you are seeking oblivion, Christel, you will not find it from me. This will not be impersonal. It will be my eyes you are looking into when you come.”

  The crass words shocked her. And still she did not care. “Maybe ’tis you who is seeking oblivion.”