A Kiss to Spark a Scandal - Chapter 4

She might not have slapped him for kissing her, but after stomping off with murder in her eyes yesterday afternoon, Dot had avoided him ever since. No mean feat when they were two of just twenty people all staying under one roof in the middle of nowhere, and the brief kiss had been so spectacular he hadn’t been able to forget it for a moment since.

Who knew a simple kiss could knock him sideways? But like a thunderbolt, hers had. Freddie had lost all sense of time and place, all of his wits and, this bit really worried him, he suspected he might well have lost some of his heart too as it wasn’t behaving as it should. It felt odd in his chest. Bigger yet lighter. And every time his mind wandered to her, which it did with alarming frequency, it beat faster with nervous anticipation and joyous excitement. As if it suddenly had some purpose now that it had found somebody it could beat for.

That was a new, worrying development, made all the more worrying by the depressing fact that hers did not appear to be similarly afflicted.

Blinking stunned shock had been her first reaction when she had torn her lips from his, closely followed by abject horror before she had fled. At the time, he had put that down to her innate sense of duty to comply with her stuffy family’s wishes and extreme guilt for being almost engaged to Peter since birth.

He had continued to think that when she had taken dinner in her room last night after pleading a headache, then successfully ignored him in the breakfast room this morning while safely sandwiched between her parents. Now, as everyone else was currently involved in a dreary archery contest on the lawn while a veritable feast was being served up on tables nearby, she was wandering towards the woods on one of her almost-fiancé’s arms while his other swung a picnic basket. Laughing at his jokes and smiling up at him as if she suddenly adored him.

That was yet another worry to add to his many woes, because while, for him, that fateful kiss apparently held the power to drastically alter the current path of his life if he was contemplating relinquishing his bachelor ways, for her it seemed to have reaffirmed her path. Especially as she was skipping up it with Peter!

Freddie had no clue how to feel about any of that beyond confused, jealous and aggrieved. Yesterday her lips had given him a very mixed message indeed. One minute they had been kissing him back with passionate gusto, then they had thinned as they lectured him on propriety and common decency.

Powerless to do anything about it beyond bristle, Freddie nudged George as he tested his bow. ‘Are you happy for your sister to go wandering in the woods with a man unchaperoned?’

His friend chuckled.

Chuckled! Had it been one of his sisters, Freddie would have been after them like a shot to ensure there was no funny business.

‘They are getting married, Freddie.’

‘I’ve seen no ring on her finger!’ A truth which shouldn’t have slipped out. ‘Or did I miss the announcement in The Times?’

‘It is an imminent fait accompli.’ George lined up an arrow and stared down it to test its straightness. ‘Besides, the picnic was our mother’s idea, so if she doesn’t have a problem with it when she is a complete stickler for propriety, it has nothing to do with me.’

‘But what if Peter ravishes her? What if, you know…’ He nudged George again. ‘What if one thing leads to another?’ He would have happily ruined them both in those bluebells given half a chance.

‘Then I dare say any consequences will be explained away by the honeymoon. They are going to Dorset apparently.’ As if Freddie cared about that! ‘His parents have a house by the sea which I apparently visited twice as a child. Not that I remember. Anyway, they are going to spend the entire summer…’

Freddie stopped listening to concentrate on the happy couple who were now mere yards from the seclusion of the trees and the seductive clearing filled with bluebells where he had kissed her. Furious, he selected his own arrow, and as he arranged it in his bow, he seriously contemplated firing it in Peter’s direction. An arrowhead in the backside would dampen his rival’s ardour…

‘Luncheon is served.’ Lady Bulphan began to herd them all towards the tables like sheep.

‘Thank the lord, I’m starving!’ In a gross dereliction in his duty as Dot’s brother, George discarded his bow and bounded after the others at the exact same moment as she disappeared into the trees.

Alone, Freddie stared at the horizon for all of twenty seconds before he decided to go after her.

‘Isn’t this lovely.’ Dorothea smiled, her toes cringing inside her slippers because Peter had chosen this precise spot for their parentally enforced picnic. The spot where she had kissed Freddie and would likely still be kissing Freddie if that lone scrap of common sense hadn’t battled its way into the forefront of her addled mind and reminded her that she was taken. And clearly it had been addled to have lost herself so completely in a kiss with a man like him!

But, heaven help her, it had been quite a kiss. Certainly enough of one to ensure the imprint of it on her wayward body was still present a whole day later. She had been in a peculiarly wanton state ever since, and no amount of guilt or determination to get over it were helping one bit.

Peter smiled in response, but tightly. He did that a lot around her of late. ‘Yes, it is lovely. Perfect in fact…’ He patted down his waistcoat, his movements jerky and a little panicked as he searched inside his coat. ‘So… I suppose we should get the formalities over with at last.’

Formalities? Oh dear.

Dorothea managed to paste on a smile before he produced a ring box and thrust it towards her. ‘It’s a family piece. Very old. Toby thinks it’s hideous, but it’s a Crawley tradition, so…’

She opened the box, the tiny hinge squealing ominously, and stared at the ring inside. Toby was right. She hated it on first sight. It was big, the twisted gold band thick and ungainly, the slightly yellow diamond held between six spiky claws, enormous and impractical. The sort of ring which would catch on everything and ruin clothing. ‘It’s lovely.’

Peter removed it from the box and wedged it on her finger. It felt tight and uncomfortable—like an ill-fitting shoe. An irony that wasn’t lost on her. ‘Anyway…’ There was that tight smile again. ‘I thought we could announce our engagement tonight. Seeing as both of our families are here. Two birds with one stone and all that…’ His voice trailed off as he awaited her response to the most lacklustre and unromantic proposal possible.

She nodded, dying a little inside like one of those two birds hit by a flying stone. ‘Yes…tonight makes perfect sense.’

‘Splendid.’ Awkwardly, Peter rifled in the basket for an apple and polished it on his thigh to fill the void of silence.

Surely it shouldn’t be like this? So impersonal and indifferent. Not at all like the kiss she had shared with Freddie on this exact spot. That hot, molten, searing first kiss had been a promise of more to come. Would Peter’s? Would her body ever yearn for her future husband in the way it yearned for her brother’s scandalous friend?

‘Shouldn’t we celebrate our engagement with a kiss?’ Her bold question shocked her new fiancé, who looked ready to bolt for the hills at the suggestion.

‘If you like.’

Such enthusiasm was underwhelming, but Dorothea had to know for sure, so she leant closer and pressed her lips to his. Exactly as she feared, she felt nothing.