I’ve been crazy about you since I was nine. ‘I hate to disappoint you, but I’m pretty much an open book.’ Her throat was dry and the words stuck.
Jonathon laughed. ‘You’re a terrible liar, Claire. Don’t ever try out for espionage work.’ He waggled his dark eyebrows in dramatic humour. ‘Everyone has secrets.’
‘Even you?’ She couldn’t resist. It was so much fun to play with him like this. He was alarmingly easy to be with. But she’d known that, she’d always known that. It had been a large part of his appeal from the start. More than being good-looking, Jonathon was good company, a rather subtle trait others took for granted.
He put a hand over his heart in mock shock. ‘Moi? Why, Miss Welton, what a leading question! Are you implying my reputation as a gentleman isn’t pristine?’
She shot him a coy look, daring a bit of flirtation. ‘Well, is it? Pristine?’ She had a sudden urge to know his secrets, to know a piece of him that no one else knew. She’d had a taste of that unknown and she was hungry for another.
There’d been years when he’d been gone, war years. A thought occurred. ‘What do you know of espionage, Mr Lashley?’ she joked.
‘If I knew anything at all I certainly couldn’t tell you. It would defeat the purpose.’ His tone was light, but some of the twinkle had gone out of his eye. Perhaps she’d dared too much. She hadn’t thought.
‘I forget sometimes that you’ve been to war,’ Claire offered, hoping he’d hear the apology in her words. She’d been miserable when he’d gone away. ‘It is difficult to picture you as a soldier.’ That smile, the tailored clothes, the immaculate toilette, all bespoke the well-kept heir, not the soldier.
‘Good.’ His grin was back in full force. ‘Then I have succeeded.’ He bent to pluck a rose from a bush. ‘War is not something anyone should be constantly reminded of. Will you permit me?’ He tucked the blossom in her hair, his fingers brushing the top of her ear. The delicate contact made her shiver. What a dichotomy he was: the warrior, the gentleman, one with perfect manners, the other for whom manners would be a negligible thing. One was safe. The other was dangerous, a man who had seen and done worldly things, who could do those worldly things to her. Another shiver took her. If only the gentleman in him would allow it.
‘Now you know one of my secrets, Claire. You must let me guess one of yours.’ Jonathon tapped a finger against his chin and studied her.
‘But I don’t have any,’ she protested, suddenly flustered. Would he guess? How mortifying would that be? She would have to deny it. He had not moved away after tucking the flower behind her ear. He stood close, his dark head cocked. She scarcely dared to breathe.
‘I know,’ he said after a while. ‘Have you ever been kissed, Claire?’
That was even more embarrassing. Maybe he should have asked if he was her secret crush instead. ‘I cannot possibly answer that. A lady never tells.’ Claire took refuge in the high moral ground.
‘Correction.’ Jonathon leaned an arm against a low-hanging branch, his posture lazy and close. ‘A lady never tells just anyone. A lady might endeavour to tell a friend.’
Back to that, were they? It seemed this conversation had started out with such a discussion before it had meandered in this very dangerous direction. How had they gone from French lessons, to a game of twenty private questions? ‘I had a marriage proposal once.’ There was no good answer. If she said no, he would think her prudish, a dried-up stick. If she said yes, he might think she was loose.
He wagged a scolding finger. ‘Tut-tut, Claire. That’s not what I’m asking. Have. You. Ever. Been. Kissed?’ There were dangerous glints of mischief in his blue eyes now.
She wanted to take a step back, but there was nowhere to go. She dropped her eyes. If she said no, would he kiss her now to remedy it? She hoped not. She didn’t want a charity kiss any more than she’d wanted a charity waltz. And yet, she did want him to kiss her. Just not like that.
‘Ah,’ Jonathon said softly. ‘I have my answer. Never fear, Claire. It will happen when it should.’ He dropped his voice low. ‘Now, we know each other’s secrets. We are really truly friends.’
She should let it be. But the statement provoked Claire. Couldn’t he see how impossible it truly was? ‘Men and women being friends? Is such a thing realisic, Mr Lashley?’ She moved the discussion back to the intellectual high ground where she was more comfortable. This was a debate she could win, although at the moment she wasn’t sure why it was so important to win it.
They began walking again and she was glad to give her body something to do besides look at him, besides imagining a kiss that couldn’t happen. ‘Society doesn’t think so. It has numerous rules in place to keep men and women apart aside from the purpose of marriage.’ She made her case. ‘For instance, does Miss Northam know you visit me daily for French lessons?’ There. That would be a bucket of cold water on a conversation that had gone astray. She already knew the answer. Cecilia had no idea how Jonathon spent his mornings. Most didn’t. It was a source of embarrassment for him. To have those lessons from her, a wallflower out for three years and a noted bluestocking, would further that humiliation no matter how neat the bloodlines of her birth. ‘How would Miss Northam feel if she did know?’ Another rhetorical question. She already knew the answer. ‘Miss Northam would see me as competition.’
‘But that’s ludicrous!’ Jonathon began his rebuttal and she tried not to be hurt by the truth. It was ludicrous. The old doubts surfaced. How could she possibly compete with Cecilia Northam? Why would a man like Jonathon, who had everything, have an illicit interest in someone like her when he had Cecilia draped on his arm.
And yet, it was what she’d hoped for, wasn’t it? Had waited years for: a moment when Jonathon would see her for herself and love her for it.
‘I think we should prove them wrong,’ Jonathon said. ‘We should declare ourselves friends and we can start by dispensing with the “Mr Lashley” bit. Let us be Jonathon and Claire,’ he declared with an elaborate expansiveness that made her smile as he stuck out his hand.
She took Jonathon’s hand and shook it, meeting his warm eyes. Oh, foolish, foolish hope. She was too late. Cecilia had all but claimed him. She was setting herself up for failure and heartbreak and she couldn’t seem to stop herself from doing it. Just for a moment, she let herself believe in the impossible: He’d missed her. He had noticed she’d left the ball and then he’d left early, too. He found her intriguing. Those were words she could live on for the rest of her life.
* * *
What the hell was he doing, asking for friendship from the likes of Claire Welton when he knew better the impossibility of such a thing? Jonathon was still asking himself the question as he walked down Bond Street that afternoon.
It wasn’t just the social impossibility of such a friendship. Claire had made good points there and he felt compelled to agree with her. Men simply weren’t friends with young, unmarried women of good breeding, especially when the man in question was committed to another.
Well, that was arguable. He wasn’t technically committed to Cecilia. Even as his mind made the debate he felt guilty. He was playing with semantics now. But who could blame him? Claire had caught him entirely unprepared: the feel of her in his arms as they danced, the look in those sherry eyes, all of that intelligence, all of that innocence turned on him. It had been a heady combination on the dance floor. Hell, after a week of lessons, it was becoming a heady sensation wherever she was: the garden, the ballroom, the library. He wouldn’t for a moment suggest Claire Welton was naïve. Naiveté implied the person in question was unworldly and she was far too intelligent to ever be that. She was merely untried, her desires and dreams untested beyond the confines of her quiet life.
And she was ready to test them. The answer came to him so suddenly he nearly tripped over a crack in the pavement. The new clothes, the desire to actively pursue her erstwhile suitor. It was all