The remnants of fear bitter as bile on her tongue, Serena heard Giles and Paul leave through the back of the church. She remained hidden where she was, grateful for Giles’s quick thinking, although she couldn’t imagine anyone crediting that he’d become a specialist in church architecture. Now she’d sampled his searing kisses, the idea seemed almost blasphemous.
Only as her heart slowed and her terror of discovery receded did she have a chance to wonder at her reaction to Paul’s arrival—and to Giles’s kiss.
How interesting that not even a girl in love with another man could resist a rake’s wiles. Clearly Giles had learned a lot from the worldly London ladies. The first kiss had been pleasant, but once he’d enlisted her participation, the results had been extraordinary, an emotional flight way beyond the mere physical. And the physical had surpassed anything she’d ever known.
If she felt like that with a man she barely liked, imagine how she’d feel when Paul kissed her.
Except her first reaction when Paul interrupted the shameful experiment—they were in a church, for heaven’s sake—had been annoyance. She’d wanted him to go away, so she could go back to kissing Giles.
That didn’t seem right. Just as the way the sinful heat lingered in her blood didn’t seem right either.
Giles Farraday must be an extremely skilled kisser.
A wanton question arose, before she remembered that it was Paul she wanted. What else might Giles teach her?
* * *
Torver House was crammed to the rafters with Christmas cheer—and Giles had slunk away like a guilty man to sit beside the library fire, desperate to escape the jollity. Everyone but him was in a party mood. There were games in the drawing room, and dancing in the great hall. With the family reunited to celebrate the season, dinner had been uproarious.
From the first, Giles had enjoyed staying with the Talbots. They welcomed him with a generosity that he’d always known was exceptional.
But envy tinged his gratitude. Because however kind this noisy, loving, exuberant clan was, however willingly they included him in their festivities, he remained an outsider.
An outsider yearning after the lovely daughter of the house like grim Hades yearned after bright Persephone. Darkness hungering for irresistible light.
If Serena and Paul reached an understanding this Christmas—and why the hell shouldn’t they?—Giles would have to stop visiting Torver. Not only would he lose the girl he loved, he’d lose the closest thing he had to a family.
The future looked mighty bleak.
He was hunkered down in here because he couldn’t endure seeing Paul and Serena dancing together, beautiful and golden, and from an easier, warmer world than the one Giles Farraday inhabited. If he felt that way now, how the devil would he survive knowing that every night, those two golden beings lay in one another’s arms?
With a closed fist, he thumped the arm of his leather chair. And wished to God that he was thumping his best friend.
Love was purgatory. He wished it to the devil.
After this afternoon’s antics in St. Lawrence’s, his misery bit sharper than ever. He’d felt so clever coaxing his luscious darling into kissing him, but now he paid for his sins. Because his dreams at last moved into the realm of reality, the pain of knowing Serena would never be his was sharper than ever. Tonight he knew what it was to hold her and drink in her scent and hear her sighs of pleasure.
All evening, he’d burned to touch her again. While she skipped about in Paul’s arms as if she hadn’t a care in the world. Clearly she spared no thought for dark, brooding, lonely Giles Farraday.
With a muffled groan, he raised his brandy glass to his lips, appreciating the liquor’s burn down his throat. He was sick to the stomach of his festering self-pity.
When the library door eased open, Giles glanced up from the old “Blackwood’s Magazine” that he made a show of reading. If Paul intruded upon his sulks, he might just punch that handsome nose.
But it wasn’t his best friend who edged into the room. Instead, it was the lovely girl who had fueled years of dreams and who kept Giles returning to Torver House, no matter how wretched it made him.
The stark truth was that however wretched he felt with Serena, he felt more wretched away from her.
“Giles?” With a furtive air, she shut the door behind her. The huge library suddenly seemed as small as a shoebox. Just what was she up to?
“I thought you were busy dancing.” As he set his brandy aside, he cursed the remark’s snide note. But he felt like a dog chained and left to starve.
“I was.” With tendrils of hair escaping the loose knot and a flush of exertion in her cheeks, Serena looked utterly beguiling. Dances at a Torver Christmas included vigorous country reels and jigs, as well as measures fashionable in high society. “Why didn’t you stay? I wanted to dance with you.”
“Trying to make Paul jealous?” In a spurious attempt at insouciance, he stood up and leaned one elbow on the mantelpiece. “Good move. Machiavellian. At this rate, you won’t need too many more lessons before you’ve mastered the game of flirtation.”
When her gray eyes darkened with hurt, he wanted to kick himself. It wasn’t her fault that she preferred another man. During those rare moments when he rose above his jealousy, he could even admit Paul had every chance of making her happy.
“You’re being horrid. Why?”