The Amorous Education of Celia Seaton by Miranda Neville Page B

a way out of the dark. It’s happened several times this morning, but if I try to find the opening in the curtain, it closes tight.”
    “What an interesting way of describing it.”
    “It’s happening now, looking down into this vale. Do you see that cottage there, or perhaps it’s a barn? I think I’ve seen it before. And the road beyond it. I know where it leads.”
    “Where?”
    “That’s just it. I know and I don’t know.”
    Celia had a sick feeling in her stomach. They must be close to his home, perhaps on his land already. The end of their idyll was imminent. Idyll was an odd term for two days spent under such uncomfortable conditions, but it was the right one. In all her life she couldn’t recall a happier time and she yearned to prolong it, if only for an hour or two.
    “Let us sit for a while,” she said. “If your body relaxes, your mind will be diverted and perhaps your memory will open.” And hoped for the opposite result.

Chapter 12
     
Since to err is human, it’s safer to avoid the occasion of sin.
     
    T he presence of stone walls between fields, absence of gorse, and evidence of numerous sheep, told him the land was more intensively used for husbandry than the moors they’d crossed. Perhaps they were on land belonging to a prosperous estate. Terence noted with interest that he was able to interpret the signs. His brain quickened, asking whether he might be acquainted with the owners. He beat back the questions. Such calculations, he’d discovered, thickened the fog of his memory. Celia was right. Relax.
    She seated herself beside him on a patch of grass, hugging her knees. A tilt of her head gave him a view of her wide, smiling mouth. She’d learned a lot about kissing in the past day. He looked forward to giving her another lesson. Not the best way to relax his body perhaps, but it would certainly divert his mind. The significance of animal husbandry receded by the second.
    “Would you kiss me good morning?” he asked.
    Her lips compressed to an O . The glimpse of hot pink within sent a message to his southern regions that was the opposite of relaxing. But he was confident of his power of self-control. Had she not survived the previous night with her virginity intact?
    “I thought I already did,” she said, low and soft like a stroke of velvet.
    “A mere peck. I want another. This time make it last.”
    He loved the way she rose to the challenge. Shifting to kneel between his legs she surveyed him gravely, cocking her head to one side. She trailed her fingers down his forehead, then just the forefinger along the length of his nose. He raised his own hand to join hers and felt the slight bump in the bridge. He had an aquiline nose. How odd that he had no more notion of what he looked like than a blind man did. He didn’t know if he was handsome, though from Celia’s description and her expression now she didn’t find him repulsive. Glowing gray eyes followed her hand’s examination of his face with absolute concentration: the ridges of his cheekbones; the brackets on either side of his own smiling mouth; a fingertip tracing the length of his lips, one after another, making them glow. His breathing accelerated.
    Palms cupped his lower face, massaging his jaw.
    “Bristly,” she murmured.
    “I beg your pardon.”
    “I like it. It makes you seem . . . wicked.”
    And though that was exactly what he feared he was, he reveled in it. What man wouldn’t wish to seem wicked when being kissed by a pretty girl? Who, incidentally, hadn’t yet done the deed.
    “Kiss me,” he growled and her pupils expanded, darkening her eyes. Her mouth swooped in, then stopped. Pulled back.
    “Make me,” she whispered.
    He placed his right hand at the angle of her neck and shoulder, extending his thumb to caress the bump of her collarbone. Her skin was warm and smooth and slightly moist in the humid air. She edged a little closer on her knees and one part of his brain noted the blanket skirt came