Reckless Angel by Jane Feather Page A

fingers. “Why are you afeard?”
    â€œI am not,” she denied, but her eyes belied the denial.
    â€œWhat do you know of this business?” he asked, still playing with her hair. “Has your stepmother spoken to you?”
    She blushed, shaking her head. “She has never said anything to me, and Will was always so uncomfortable if I tried to ask him…and there wasn’t anyone else to ask.”
    Daniel smiled to himself at the thought of poor Will trying to deal with Henrietta’s eager questions. He was fairly certain she would have shown none of her present hesitancy when it came to discussing such matters with her hapless young friend.
    Catching her chin, he tilted her face, saying teasingly, “It is not like you to be out of countenance, Harry. Why do you not ask me your questions?”
    Her lower lip disappeared between her teeth in the manner she had of denoting perplexity. “I don’t know how to say it. Perhaps you could just show me what happens.”
    Daniel scratched his head in frowning silence for a minute while she continued to regard him anxiously. Then he nodded. “Very well, perhaps that is the best way.” Taking the sheet, he drew it slowly away from her. The big brown eyes remained riveted to his face as he began to unlace her smock before pushing it gently off her shoulders.
    He inhaled sharply at the two angry red weals across her shoulders where Sir Gerald’s whip had cut. “Why did you not move when he struck you?”
    â€œBecause he was going to beat Will,” Henrietta replied, adding reassuringly in case he should feel the need to stop this initiation, “it is only a little sore now.”
    Daniel’s lips twitched, but he nodded gravely before sliding the smock to her waist. She was still looking into his face as he cupped the small, perfect breasts in the palms of his hands.
    â€œAre…are they pleasing?” she whispered in a voice that did not sound like her own.
    â€œOh, yes.” Smiling, he bent his head to graze her nipples with his lips. Henrietta gasped at the strange sensation as the crowns of her breasts hardened, tingled, setting up a chain of reaction elsewhere in her body that was as disturbing as it was delicious. He moved his hands to span the narrow, girlish waist, his lips trailing upward to press into the hollow of her throat, to stroke the line of her jaw before finding her mouth.
    Her head fell back, her lips parted as his tongue pushed gently within, and at last her eyes closed. She was too busy trying to separate and define the myriad sensations engulfing her to respond to the kiss, and Daniel drew back to look down at her rapt face, eyes tightly closed, mouth still opened slightly as if she simply waited for his return. He touched the tip of her nose with his finger and she opened her eyes.
    â€œThat was not at all like kissing Will.”
    â€œAm I to take that as a compliment, elf?” The black eyes sparkled with enjoyment rather than passion, butthen passion had not been on his agenda. He had had passion with Nan and did not expect to find it again, particularly not with this odd, indomitable creature, who was sometimes an exasperating little girl, sometimes a reckless and courageous hoyden, sometimes a thoughtful young woman, but always refreshingly honest in her reactions, straightforward in her attitudes to life and events around her.
    â€œWas that not a good thing to say?” She looked discomfited. “I liked kissing Will, but of course I will not be doing so again. And I liked kissing you very much.”
    â€œWell, I am glad you will not be doing so again, and I am complimented,” he said solemnly. “But it is not customary to talk of one man to another when it comes to lovemaking.”
    â€œThen I will not do so again. But I did not know. It never arose with Will because I had never kissed anyone else.”
    Matters seemed to be drifting off course a