The Garden Intrigue by Lauren Willig

Author:Lauren Willig [Willig, Lauren]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Penguin Group, Inc.
Published: 2012-02-15T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 18

Close your lips; don’t speak me fair;

Those wordy vows are but pure air.

My port is yours, my friendship free,

In simple camaraderie.

—Emma Delagardie and Augustus Whittlesby,

Americanus: A Masque in Three Parts

She smelled like violets and musk, innocence and experience, all rolled into one.

Augustus nuzzled the side of Emma’s face with his nose, breathing in the scent of her, so familiar and yet strangely heady at such close quarters, like perfume in its purest and distilled form, or spirits drunk straight.

She blinked at him, like one half asleep, eyes blurred and unfocused. She looked adorable that way, hair tousled, cheeks flushed. He had seen her flustered before, flustered, tousled, blustering, but never like this, soft around the corners.

“I don’t think—” she said hoarsely.

Augustus put a finger to her lips. “Yes, you do,” he said fondly. “All the time.”

Gently, he brushed his finger across her lips. For a moment, he thought she might argue, her lips parted as though to speak, but only air came out. Her eyelids flickered closed, lilac paint making purple shadows.

“Emma,” Augustus said, tasting the name on his tongue, invocation and question all in one. This was Emma and it wasn’t, commonplace and strange all at the same time, like a familiar landscape viewed from a new angle. What was the line? Suffer a sea change to something rich and strange.

Rich and strange, indeed. Her lips were soft and slightly parted beneath his finger, her breath a benediction on his skin. So many discussions they had had, so many conversations, so many arguments, and he had never imagined her lips would feel like this, like crinkled satin, smooth and soft to touch.

How had he known her without knowing this?

In fact, all of her was soft, from the whispery fabric of her dress to the bare skin of her arm beneath the small, puffed sleeve of her dress. The costly muslin of her dress felt coarse next to the silk of her skin, coarse and crude, the clumsy work of man a poor second to the wonders of nature. He skimmed his hand lightly up her arm, feeling the goose pimples rise beneath his fingers. He had dismissed her as skinny once, but there was flesh on her bones, soft, feminine flesh that quivered with the passage of his touch.

He ran his knuckles along the border of her bodice, once so seemingly low, now far too high.

“Emma,” he said again, and leaned in to kiss her.

“Don’t.” Emma jerked sharply sideways. Augustus’s lips grazed hair. “Augustus—don’t.”

Augustus spat out a blond hair that had attached itself to his tongue. “Emma?”

Using both hands, she held his head away from her. Her small hands had surprising strength in them. “No. Please.”

Augustus pulled back. “Of course. Whatever you say.” Seeing her look at him that way made him feel like the meanest sort of cad. Worse than a cad. Someone like Marston. “I didn’t mean—”

“I know you didn’t.” Clumsily, she scrambled off his lap, her elbow digging hard into his chest as she pushed away.

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