Read Never Too Late for Free Online

skirt.
    “I’m sure I don’t understand your meaning, Lord Devin. You must make some impression on everyone who encounters you. Peers of the realm tend to do that, as if bred into the role.”
    He couldn’t stand this strange interplay any longer. He needed to get this distraction, this nuisance, this whatever it was out of his system as directly as possible. So he did the most logical thing: he closed the distance between them and touched his lips to hers.
    It was swift, a mere brush of their lips, but the electric tingle from that light touch ran through him. How he’d gone from a simple printing demonstration to this far-from-simple complication, he couldn’t puzzle out. Her eyes widened too, as if she felt a similar shock. He stood there for a moment, looking at her intently.
    In that moment, she had enough time to recall the first time she’d kissed a man. Mr. Ranseed was the butcher’s son, an excellent match, both sets of parents agreed. The third time he’d come to visit her at home, somehow they’d been left unchaperoned. They were taking a walk in the countryside, talking about some innocuous topic or other, like the weather or, no, they’d been talking about feed, about what grasses are most conducive to good beef, and suddenly he’d butted her up against a tree and begun kissing her. That was all, just his mouth against hers, but it was clammy and horribly intrusive. Startled, she just stood there, letting him probe with his tongue and wondering what all the fuss was about. He seemed agitated and eager, but whatever he was doing with his mouth felt awkward and unnatural. She decided three things immediately: 1. I do not enjoy kissing Mr. Ranseed. 2. I am not inclined to allow him such familiarity again. 3. I will not marry him after all.
    Of course, looking back, it didn’t much matter whether she’d enjoyed what he was doing. She was a headstrong, arrogant, and naïve maiden; she came to understand later that she would have gone through with all of it. She would have allowed him such familiarity, and much more. She just wouldn’t have enjoyed it. She would have married him, without question and without hesitation, because that was what their families had agreed upon. That was what her parents required from a dutiful and honorable daughter. That arrangement best suited both fathers in building solid mercantile alliances.
    She wouldn’t have had the selfishness or strength to break the commitment.
    But one month after their encounter, the weaselly Mr. Ranseed did just that. He ran off and eloped with a hat shop girl. His parents were mortified and apologized abjectly to Honoria’s family. They offered to make amends with gifts of beef and venison, but the damage ran much deeper than commerce. It wasn’t emotional or economic. No one else in town would have her, but she and her father could never figure out why.
    In the span of a moment, before Lord Devin’s lips touched hers again, she had enough time to recall all of this and to compare it with the present moment. If that wet, awkward fumbling by the butcher’s son could be called a kiss, then this—what was happening now— could not in any way be defined as something so ordinary as a kiss. This was a conflagration, an electric explosion—when all he’d done was brush his lips against hers. After the initial shock, his mouth returned to hers, his tongue teasing the edges of her lips to coax them apart. And, with conscious decision, she responded. She slipped her hands around his neck and nestled them in his hair. Her lips moved freely with his. Her breath mingled with his, hot and urgent. This didn’t feel like an intrusion at all. It was exploration, it was play, it was heaven.
    It was wrong. Very, very wrong.
    She broke away, shaken. Dallying with a young viscount—what could she be thinking? Rumors circulated about the pliability of widows. She couldn’t allow herself to become that story.
    “Oh, my.” She quickly backed away until