Grace Under Fire. Jackie Barbosa

Dimpled Cheek pulled a mock frown. “Oh, very well, if we must.” He straightened to his full height—several inches over her awkward five feet and ten inches—stretched one finely-muscled leg in front of the other, and executed a courtly bow. “If it please your lady, I am Mr. Atticus Stilwell, and this,” he continued, standing and gesturing in Sir Blue Eyes’ direction, “is Viscount Colin Fitzgerald.”

      Momentarily dumbfounded by this abrupt shift in the tension pervading the small room, Grace could only nod and marvel that, somehow, she had correctly intuited which of them held the title and which did not.

      “Colin wishes to ask for your hand in marriage.”

      “What?” Her gaze snapped abruptly from Mr. Stilwell to Lord Fitzgerald, and she swayed dizzily when the gentleman nodded his dark head in confirmation. She was so taken aback by this turn of events, she blurted out the first words that came to her mind. “So, I am not about to be ravished, then?”

      Mr. Stilwell laughed, a hearty, rolling sound like water at full boil. “Now, now, I never said that.” Grasping her upper arm, he guided her onto the settee, sitting so close beside her that the warmth of his body radiated through the layers of her dress and petticoat right to her skin.

      Lord Fitzgerald crossed the floor in two long strides and seated himself on the other side of her. He, too, was hot as a loaf of bread fresh from the oven. “Atticus is right,” he murmured, placing his hand on her thigh. “If you wish to be ravished, we can certainly oblige you.”

      Lightning arced beneath her skin where he touched her leg. She entirely forgot that the front of her dress was soaked and cold. Who could take a chill when she was suffused with heat from within and without?

      “I—I don’t…” Grace started to say she didn’t want to be ravished, but thought better of it. First, it was a lie. But second, she had several rather more important issues to address. “I don’t understand all this.” She looked at the viscount, trying to ignore the way her skin flared to life at the intensity of his gaze. “Why would you want to marry me? We have never even met. And why ask me here, like this? Why not a proper courtship, a proper proposal delivered to my fa—”

      Lord Fitzgerald laid his fingers across her lips. “So full of questions, my lady. But fair ones.” Dragging those fingers down, he halted at her chin. “So, first, you want to know why you?”

      He paused, which suggested he expected an answer, but Grace was too breathless to speak, so she only nodded.

      “Ah, well, that one is easy to answer.” He turned her face first one direction, then the other, studying each of her profiles like an artist trying to find his model’s best angle. “Just as I thought. Flawless of face. And of form.” His hand dropped abruptly from her face to cup the curve of her breast, and she sucked in her breath on a whoosh as her flesh seemed to leap and swell beneath his touch. “It is true, we have never been formally introduced, but we have been…considering you for some time.”

      Grace tried to concentrate on his words, to understand why he kept saying “we” instead of “I.” But his fingers found her nipple beneath the damp fabric of her bodice, and sparks of pleasure crackled beneath her skin, winding their way down to the throbbing place at the apex of her thighs. She shifted in her seat, trying to assuage the ache there, wanting to press her hand tight between her legs but not daring.

      “You are a beautiful, desirable woman, Lady Grace, but more, you are strong. And you will need to be strong if you are to be my wife.”

      Even as exultation filled her at being found beautiful, she heard the warning implicit in the viscount’s words. She closed her eyes, trying to block out the magic of his questing hands. The one at her breast, the one coasting its way up her thigh, closer and closer to the center of her need.

      “Why will I need to be strong, my lord?” The question came out as a breathy whisper.

      A hand cupped her other breast. A third hand, one that sent another burst of white-hot longing straight to her woman’s flesh.

      “Because Colin and I share everything. Including women,” Mr. Stilwell whispered at her ear. “And all of Society knows it.”