Page 67 of A Spot of Tea and Sorcery: Vol. 6

“Your proposal did have another advantage over Ward’s,” she said after a little while.

“Oh, yes? Do elaborate.”

“I turned his down.” She lifted her head slowly, turning to look him in the eye. “But yours . . .”

His breath caught. “Say yes, Luna,” he said, catching hold of her hand and squeezing it. “Say it, my dear. Let me hear those words on your lips.”

“You’re such a sop.” She giggled, leaning forward and brushing her nose against his. “Yes, Nigel,” she murmured. “Yes, I’ll marry you.”

Then she was kissing him again. And again and again. And the kisses transformed from gentle to ardent, and from ardent to fiery. He pressed her back down onto the bed, his weight on top of hers but carefully balanced so as not to squish her. She sank into the feather mattress even as he sank into her kisses, his lips plying, his breath hot, his tongue pillaging greedily. When he pulled away, leaving her gasping, it was only to let his mouth rediscover all the delightfully sensitive places on her jaw and neck which he seemed instinctively to know would make her shiver, would make her fingers grasp at his shoulders, twisting up fistfuls of his shirt. His own fingers smoothed up and down her bare arm, ran down to her waist, glided across the silky fabric on her stomach, but never strayed into ungentlemanly territory. Drat him.

But though his hands remained restrained, his mouth explored more deliciously, forging a tantalizing path down her throat, down her breastbone, across every inch of exposed skin. He licked and nibbled, and she clutched at his hair and wished and wondered and whimpered. His touch glided back up her arm to the sleeve of her nightie, which had pulled down on its own, without any help from her, honest to gods! He toyed with the strap, but this time didn’t tug it back into place.Instead, he let his fingers trace along the delicate fabric to the lowered neckline of her gown, straying ever so dangerously across the upper swell of her heaving breasts.

And Luna thought,For a man so remarkably dense about women, he certainly knows a thing or two. About kissing. About petting. Presumably about other things as well . . .

He drew back rather abruptly, panting hard. “I have to stop now, my dear.”

“You don’t,” she replied at once, the words gasping through her own quickened breaths. Her chest rose and fell swiftly, warm in all the places he’d touched, warmer still in all the places he hadn’t. She slid her knee up, pressing her thigh against his side, little caring where her nightgown hem had fallen. “I mean it, Nigel,” she said. “You don’t have to stop.”

He closed his eyes, bowed his head. Planted one last, lingering kiss above her heart. Then, with a little shake, he lifted his face once more. “But I will, nonetheless. You’ll be my wife soon. I want . . . I want to do right by you. In every particular.”

Luna bit her lip, her brow wrinkling. She ran her fingers through his floppy hair, pushing it back from his forehead. “I don’t know how we’re going to manage it,” she said sadly.

“Manage what?”

“Getting married. We’re likely to be on the lam for quite a while. We can’t stay here, you know. We can’t endanger the aunties.”

Nigel nodded, his expression earnest. She noted with some irritation that he had surreptitiously repositioned her nightie strap. But when he cupped her cheek and stroked her so sweetly with his thumb, she forgave him.

“Do you remember what you said to me last Sunday?” he asked.

“When?”

“Under the table. At the wedding banquet.”

“Oh. Yes? What did I say?”

“You said the only wedding you ever envisioned for yourself would take place in your aunties’ tea garden. With the old vicar of Greater Snoring officiating and just a few close friends gathered round.”

Luna blushed, lowering her lashes. “That, um, yes. That does sound about right, actually.”

“So . . . what do you think?”

She knew what he was asking. She knew what he was hoping. She looked up into his eyes, holding his gaze long and hard.

And suddenly, despite everything—despite her fear, despite her anxiety, despite the looming shadow of her fate—she could not stop herself any longer. Her face broke into a beaming smile.

Nigel blinked, a little uncertain as he took in the image of himself as displayed in the musty old wardrobe glass. While he’d never had any clear sort of picture about his future nuptials, he’d certainly never envisioned himself getting married in such garb.

“It was my father’s, you know,” Auntie Arabella had said earlier that morning, when she’d pulled the musty old suit from the cedar trunk and shook out the mothballs. “Arbuthnot Cecile Talbot was his name, a well-respected hedge wizard in these parts.” She’d held the suit up to her nose, gave it a sniff, and pulled a face. “I’ll just give it a quick soak in a taeral brew, just to freshen it up a bit. Then a quick spell to dry it out, and it’ll be perfect!”

Perfectmight not be Nigel’s adjective of choice. The suit was probably the height of fashion sometime during the reign of a monarch nobody currently alive could clearly remember. The frock coat was made of ink-black broadcloth and reached nearly to his knees, its wide lapels and dramatically-fitted waist lending him the air of a prosperous undertaker. It came with a cream-colored waistcoat embroidered with tiny gold dragons, whichappeared to be yawning. Or perhaps sneezing. It was difficult to tell. The linen shirt was a catastrophe of ruffles. Ruffles erupted from the collar. Ruffles cascaded down the front. Ruffles protruded from the cuffs in such abundance, Nigel suspected they constituted their own ecosystem.

A high cravat completed the ensemble, threatening to strangle Nigel whenever he turned his head too quickly. But, as his options for wedding attire currently includedthisor Yorik Balthazar’s celestial dressing gown, he figured ruffle-smothered undertaker was probably the lesser of two evils.

At least he would match Luna, who was even now being primped and prepared by Auntie Aurora to wear Extremely Great Aunt Amelia’s wedding gown. What it looked like, Nigel had no idea, as he’d been banished from that half of the cottage with cries of, “It’s bad luck for the groom to see the bride on the wedding day!”

Which, to be honest, was already a bit too late. Last night, after he and Luna had ventured downstairs to inform Auntie Arabella of their intention to wed the following morning—and after the vicar’s not-too-tipsy son was sent off to bear a message to his father to hurry up to Tealeaf Cottage with his prayerbook by 10 o’clock sharp—the two of them had retired to her room and spent the night wrapped very chastely in each other’s arms. There had been a few more kisses, of course, but nothing more.