will be very cross with you,’ she murmured back.
‘I can take it,’ he said. ‘I’m only here for one reason and it’s nothing to do with Sybil.’
The quiver she remembered from before rippled through her body again and Lily had to sit before she fell.
She knew the protocol for elegant dinner parties well enough to know that for one course she was expected to talk to Jamie and for the next, she was to turn politely and talk with the man on her other side. But Jamie was having none of it.
‘Let’s not bother with that,’ he pleaded with her when they’d finished the lukewarm minestrone soup served up by one of Philip’s grandmother’s old retainers, Mr Timms, a frail white-haired man with shaky hands. Lily hated watching him serve them. He’s too old, she wanted to shout.
During the first course, they’d talked about the past three months of war and the chances of it being over soon. Now, her tongue and her heart loosened thanks to a glass of wine and a pre-dinner cocktail, Lily wanted to ask Jamie why he hadn’t written to her. But something held her back.
Instead, they talked about their childhoods and, for once, Lily wasn’t economical with the truth. The other guests faded away as they talked and talked. She told him quietly about Tamarin and Rathnaree.
‘You’re an admirable woman, Lily Kennedy,’ he said gravely at the end.
‘Why does admirable not sound like a compliment?’ Lily demanded.
In response, Jamie took her hand under the table and stared into her eyes.
‘All right, you’re a beautiful woman and I haven’t been able to think of anything else since I met you,’ he said so softly that nobody else could hear.
Lily’s heart skipped a beat.
There was an almighty clatter of dishes from outside the dining room. Lily leapt to her feet. It had to be poor Mr Timms. Nobody else moved a muscle. The wine had been flowing freely, the gramophone was playing loudly in the background and the rest of the party were enjoying this respite from war far too much to care what calamity had befallen the hired help.
Outside the dining room, she found Mr Timms nursing a sore knee and the whole of the lemon syllabub lying in creamy globules on the parquet.
‘Mr Timms, let me see that knee,’ she said in her professional voice.
‘Sit here,’ said Jamie. He’d followed her out and now led the elderly man to a chair in the hallway.
While she checked Mr Timms’ knee, Jamie managed to scoop most of the syllabub from the floor.
‘I should strap it up, and then you’ll need to rest that leg,’ Lily explained.
‘I could lie down in the butler’s pantry. There’s an old pull-out bed from when the butler before last was here. He had a bad back and needed to be able to lie down,’ Mr Timms said, and then collected himself. ‘But what about the next course?’
‘They can do quite well without another course,’ Lily said briskly.
Jamie took coffee upstairs to the laughing, chattering horde in the dining room and told them they’d have to sing for their syllabub.
‘The plan is to go to The 400 in a few minutes,’ he said, coming back downstairs to the kitchen where Lily was washing her hands in the old Belfast sink.
‘Did our hostess even ask after that poor man?’ Lily demanded. Mr Timms was now installed down the corridor in the butler’s pantry.
Jamie took her hand lightly as if to lead her back upstairs: ‘I’m afraid dear Sybil isn’t too worried about the welfare of others.’
‘Don’t I know it,’ Lily replied grimly.
Suddenly, they were inches away from each other, holding hands. Jamie shut the kitchen door, leaned against it and reached out for her. Lily pressed herself against him and reached up with both hands to touch his face, while he wrapped his long arms around her body, tightening her to him.
Without a word, their bodies melded against one another, Lily felt her breasts hard against his uniform buttons and she wanted nothing more than to strip her clothes off and lie naked against him. His hair was silky and spikily short. Her fingers gloried in it, twisting, touching, then sliding down the strong column of his neck to find his uniform buttons.
He found the tender skin behind her ear and nuzzled there, making her moan with pure pleasure, and then his strong fingers were cupping the curve of her breasts, finding the buttons on the collar of her dress, sliding in urgently to find naked skin. They moved slightly and Jamie’s hand reached beneath the satin of her brassiere to touch the hard peak of her nipple, on fire from his caresses. She gasped and leaned into his touch.
No man had ever touched her so intimately.
He opened her dress fully at the front, unbuttoning so that he could see one heavy breast and take the rose peak into his mouth.
‘Oh, Jamie,’ she groaned and let herself fall against him.
Suddenly, he’d pulled her over to the kitchen table, a huge wooden thing with a scrubbed surface. He sat her on it and moved between her legs, so that he was imprisoned between her thighs. She could feel the scratchy wool of his trousers against the soft flesh above her stockings. His body was urging hers closer, so that her legs were almost wrapped around him.
Jamie was strong, vibrant and fiercely male: she could feel him hard against her, his body responding to hers in a primeval way. And she wanted him.
‘You are so beautiful,’ he moaned, finding her mouth again and kissing her.
‘Do you want me to stop?’ He was serious.
‘No, no,’ she said. ‘I don’t. I never want this to stop.’
For a brief second, they stared at each other, the spell momentarily broken.
‘I don’t want it to be like this,’ he said gently, ‘on the kitchen table in someone else’s house. But oh, I want you, Lily.’
‘Where then?’ she asked, her fingers instinctively caressing him, letting her hair brush against his face as her mouth traced the hard edge of his jaw. He moaned softly.
‘I don’t know. I won’t be able to stop,’ he said, ‘if you don’t stop what you’re doing right now.’
‘We don’t need to stop,’ she said, unable to believe herself. She, the girl who’d never been with any man, never let any man do more than kiss her, was writhing against this man, panting for him.
‘We do.’ He pulled her closer and held her, enfolding her, as if, by stopping her moving, he’d stop his body’s animal response to her. ‘Not here. Trust me.’
‘I do,’ she said, and she did. ‘I’ve never done this before.’ It was important he knew that because the war had loosened many people’s morals, not to mention their knicker elastic.
‘I
