but said nothing and took her hand in his. They walked back through the quiet streets, the brim of her bonnet brushing his shoulder. Neither of them spoke. It did not feel necessary. When they reached the gate at the corner of the gardens, Margery opened her reticule. Her fingers shook a little as she took out the key and turned it in the lock. The gate swung open on well-oiled hinges and they stepped inside.
“Lady Grant gave me a key when she realized that I like to take the air here of an evening,” Margery said. “The gardens are private to the residents.”
On this evening it was like a secret garden, belonging to them alone. The gravel of the paths crunched softly under their feet as they made their way beneath the spreading boughs of poplar and oak. Margery ran down the path to the place where a pool was sheltered by the overhanging branches of a willow. She trailed her fingers in the cool water and watched the ripples shatter the reflection of the stars. Somewhere, distantly, in one of the grand town houses that bordered the square, an orchestra was playing a slow, dreamy waltz. It reminded Margery of the previous night, when she had danced with Henry on the terrace.
With a sigh, she straightened and turned back to look for Henry. He was standing still and straight in the shadows of a plane tree. His silhouette was dark, his shoulders broad and strong. The moonlight glinted on his glossy black hair. Margery went up to him and put her hands against his chest.
“Thank you,” she said simply.
He smiled. “My pleasure, Miss Mallon.”
Spontaneously, Margery stood on tiptoe to kiss him on the cheek, as she would have kissed one of her brothers if they had given her a present. Henry’s cheek was smooth beneath her lips—evidently he had shaved before coming to meet her—and warm. Margery was suddenly vividly aware of the scent of his cologne mingled with the smell of crisp linen and sweet scented grass. The combination went straight to her head and she felt a soaring dizziness that was far more dangerous than the light-headedness induced by the ale.
She drew back, made clumsy by shock and awareness, and in the same moment Henry turned his head and her lips brushed the corner of his mouth. Margery felt him go very still. The moment turned from something sweet to something profoundly awkward. Heat suffused her. She felt inept and mortified. She was ready to curl up with embarrassment.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean… It was a mistake—”
“Does this feel like a mistake?” Henry said. His arms went around her, pulling her against him, and then he was kissing her properly. Margery’s head spun, and the ground shifted beneath her sensible half boots and she realized that the kiss in the brothel had been nothing at all compared to this.
Henry’s lips moved over hers, his tongue touching hers, tasting her, searching, exploring. It was astonishing. It was bewitching. Little ripples of pleasure shimmered through her, down to her toes. She was shocked and intrigued all at once. It lit her blood with fire, making her shiver with heat and cold simultaneously as though she suffered a fever.
She had wanted this. She realized now how very much she had wanted Henry to kiss her. She had wanted it all evening and now it was happening. Her whole body tingled with surprised delight and a sudden fierce triumph.
With one hand Henry pulled the ribbons on her bonnet and cast it aside on the grass, and then his arm was across her back and his fingers were tangled in her hair, sending the neat pins flying, tilting her face up so that he could kiss her more deeply and more urgently still. Margery felt sweet lassitude seep through her body, weakening her knees, filling her with the most agreeable sensation of pleasure that she had ever known. She wanted more of it; suddenly she felt starved and greedy for it, her senses waking into life.
She drew closer to Henry, sliding her arms about his neck and opening her lips beneath his, kissing him back. He tasted of brandy and fresh air and something she had never known before, something that was elemental and special only to him. Her breasts were pressed against his chest as he held her close. There was a lovely, painful ache in the pit of her stomach. She had never known anything to compare with this combination of driving need and wanton weakness.
Henry’s mouth left hers, but only to press kisses against the tender line of her neck and to linger in the hollow at the base of her throat. She trembled now, alive to his touch, as he slid the striped spencer from her shoulders and dropped it to join the discarded bonnet on the grass. His hand cupped the curve of her breast through her gown, his thumb insistent as it rubbed over her nipple. The friction of rough cotton against her skin was exquisite and Margery stopped thinking abruptly, her mind swamped instead by pure, hot desire. She gave a keening little cry and Henry’s lips returned to hers in a ruthless kiss that swallowed her cry and drew her tighter still into a spiral of need.
If she had thought his touch through the material of her gown incendiary, it was nothing to the experience when he slid his hand inside her bodice and she felt his palm, warm and firm, against the side of her breast. The heat and the longing exploded inside her.
It felt as though the very stars were spinning in their courses. She had long ago forgotten to think. She was consumed by sensation only, her whole body clenched in such desperate wanting that she thought she would scream with it.
Her back was against one of the trees now. She could feel the bark snagging against the thin cotton of her gown. She tilted her head back to allow Henry greater access to the bare skin of her throat and shoulders, delighting in the nip of his teeth and the caress of his tongue. There was no shame or hesitation in her. This was a part of her nature that she had not suspected for a moment, but now it drove her.
When Henry tugged down the neck of her gown and she felt his mouth at her breast, she was shot through with such intense pleasure that she would have crumpled to the ground had he not held her pinned against the tree.
A moment later she realized that he was lifting her. The bark scored her bare back but the roughness of it was no more than additional and delightful stimulation against her nakedness. His hands were beneath her thighs, somehow her legs were wrapped about his waist, and her palms were flat against the solid hardness of the tree trunk. She could feel the kiss of the night air against her breasts.
She was filled with a ravenous greed to take Henry completely. She did not want to give herself to him. That felt too passive for the need within her, which was hungry and concentrated. She wanted to take. She was learning so much about herself and so fast. Her mind could not grapple with it, but her body knew what it wanted. It knew it with a knowledge that was deep and primitive. Henry’s mouth was at her breast again, his tongue licked, his teeth tugged on her nipple and she arched back against the hard trunk of the tree, bending like a strung bow.
“Henry, please.” Her words came out a whisper.
Taken by such pleasure she had meant to urge him on to more, but her words had the opposite effect.
She felt the loss of his touch first as he let her slide gently to the ground. She stumbled, disoriented and confused, and he steadied her. She could see his face in the moonlight now, see the vivid shock in it before a frightening blankness replaced it.
“I’m sorry,” he said. He was breathing hard and his tone was rough. There was a note of furious anger in it but Margery instinctively knew it was at himself, not her. “I’m very sorry. That should never have happened.”
The pleasure vanished. Margery felt cold all of a sudden, shivering in the summer breeze, shamefully exposed in the silver moonlight. She pulled up her bodice, tidying it with fingers that shook.
It felt as though her mind was trembling, too, at the enormity of what she had almost
