Read Online Lady Whistledown Strikes Back by Julia Quinn - Free Book Online Page A

against her cheek as she pondered her questions. “Is she compassionate?” she asked.
    “I would hope so.”
    “Kind to animals and small children?”
    “Kind to me,” he said, smiling lazily. “Isn’t that all that matters?”
    She shot him a peevish expression and he chuckled,
leaning a bit more heavily against the balustrade. A strange, sensual
lethargy was stealing over him, and he was losing himself in the
moment. They might have been guests at a grand London ball, but at that
moment, nothing existed but Tillie and her teasing words.
    “You may find,” Tillie said, glancing down her nose
at him in a most superior fashion, “that if she is intelligent— and I
do believe you stated that as a requirement?”
    He nodded, graciously granting her the point.
    “—that her kindness depends upon your own. Do unto others, and all that.”
    “You may be assured,” he murmured, “that I will be very kind to my wife.”
    “You will?” she whispered. And he realized that she
was near. He didn’t know how it had happened, if it had been him or
her, but the distance between them had been halved. She was standing
close, too close. He could see every freckle on her nose, catch every
glint of the flickering torchlights in her hair.
    The fiery tresses had been pulled back into an
elegant chignon, but a few strands had pulled free of the coiffure and
were curling around her face.
    Her hair was curly, he realized. He’d not known
that. It seemed inconceivable that he wouldn’t have known something so
basic, but he’d never seen her thus. Her hair was always pulled back to
perfection, every strand in its place.
    Until now. And he couldn’t help but feel fanciful and think that somehow this was for him. “What does she look like?”
    “Who?” he asked distractedly, wondering what would
happen if he tugged on one of those curls. It looked like a corkscrew,
springy and soft.
    “Your wife,” she replied, amusement making her voice like music.
    “I’m not sure,” he said. “I haven’t met her yet.”
    “You haven’t?”
    He shook his head. He was nearly beyond words.
    “But what do you wish for?” Her voice was soft now,
and she touched his sleeve with her index finger, ran it along the
fabric of his coat from his elbow to his wrist. “Surely you carry some
image in your mind.”
    “Tillie,” he said hoarsely, looking about to see if
anyone had seen. He had felt her touch through the fabric of his coat.
There was no one left on the patio, but that did not mean that they
would remain without interruption.
    “Dark hair?” she murmured. “Light?”
    ‘Tillie …”
    “Red?”
    And then he could take it no longer. He was a hero
of the war, had fought and slain countless French soldiers, risked his
life more than once to pull an injured compatriot from the line of
fire, and yet he was not proof against this slip of a girl, with her
melodious voice and flirtatious words. He had been pushed to his limit
and had found no ramparts or walls, no last-ditch defense against his
own desire.
    He pulled her to him and then in a circle around him, moving until they were obscured by a pillar.
    “You shouldn’t push me, Tillie.”
    “I can’t help it,” she said.
    Neither could he. His lips found hers, and he kissed her.
    He kissed her even though it would never be enough. He kissed her even though he could never have more.
    And he kissed her to spoil her for all other men,
to leave his mark so that when her father finally married her off to
someone else, she’d have the memory of this, and it would haunt her to
her dying day.
    It was cruel and it was selfish, but he couldn’t help himself. Somewhere, deep within him, he knew that she was his, and it was a knife in his gut to know that his primitive awareness amounted to nothing in the world of the ton.
    She sighed against his mouth, a soft mewling sound that moved through him like flame.
    “Tillie, Tillie,” he murmured, sliding his
hands to the curve of her