Read Bared to the Viscount (The Rites of May Book 1) for Free Online Page B

necessary.”
    “Of course it’s necessary.” His face looked so distressed. His eyes despondent. “I…compromised your virtue.”
    “You did no such thing.” She flung off his hands and jumped to her feet. “If anyone compromised anything, I compromised you. You climbed that hill to look for a site for a well, as a charitable act. I’m the one who begged and pleaded with you to….” Her cheeks flamed, and struggled for a decent way to put it. “To kiss me.”
    He was still, stubbornly, kneeling. “It doesn’t matter. I’m enough of a man of the world to know how to resist temptation. It was my responsibility to stop things from going where they went. You were an innocent, you couldn’t know how—how things can become….so heated.”
    Her cheeks flushed.
    He broke off, his own cheeks going ruddy, and shifted his weight as though the very core of his body ached. “In any case, you only asked me for a kiss. I’m the one who…took it so much further. I did things with you only a husband should do.”
    A ripple of heat went through her, despite her embarrassment. If that was his view of what husbands should do with their wives, marriage to him would be a living pleasure. She squelched that selfish thought. “Get up, John. Don’t be on the floor. I can’t bear it.”
    Just at the moment, she needed to move away from him. If she didn’t, the impulses battling inside her might split her straight down the middle.
    She went to cupboard for saucers and cups, searching for the rare ones that had no cracks or chips. Tea might restore the man—might restore them both— to sanity. “Your offer is beyond decent, Lord Parkhurst,” she said, reminding him of who he was, and therefore how foolish he was being. “But you’re a peer of the realm! You need a wife appropriate to your station.”
    “You’re a gentlewoman.”
    “ Impoverished gentlewoman. With a few minor lords in the family tree, mostly distant branches. London Society would not find my pedigree impressive.”
    “Your mother had a baronet for an uncle.”
    “Yes, on her father’s side. But on her mother’s, a bricklayer and a man with a Cheapside oyster shop.”
    He shook his head impatiently. “You’re a virtuous woman. That’s all that matters.”
    “But this is unnecessary . There will be no consequences to what we did. No one saw us. And it’s not like you could have gotten me with child.”
    He gave a choked little laugh. “Always so practical, Mary.”
    “Yes, practical.” Though her hands felt unsteady, they held the kettle firm as she lifted it from the hob and took it to the sink to pour hot water into her coarse earthenware teapot.
    Tempting as his offer might be, he was speaking nonsense. Great heavens—what would all her neighbors think if Viscount Parkhurst suddenly married the vicar’s spinster sister? Everyone was expecting him to marry a Lawton girl. Any man in his right mind would prefer a Lawton girl. He could only end up with plain little Mary Wilkins if—if something untoward happened when they were alone together, something that forced his hand as a gentleman. Something quite outrageous.
    Which is essentially what happened, of course, but in not quite as lurid a way as the townspeople would assume.
    Or maybe what happened was more lurid than what the townspeople would think. It was certainly more lurid than what anyone thought prim and proper Mary Wilkins capable of. Herself included, at least up until this morning. Oh, she remembered the feel of his hands on her inner thighs, of his lips against her cleft, and his tongue pushing inside her. So much more sensual than anything she could have imagined beforehand.
    She fumbled with the lock to her battered old tea-chest, and her fingers shook so much, half the precious leaves she spooned out scattered over the sink. “Can you imagine the scandal of what you’re suggesting?” she said, keeping her eyes averted from him. “It would be an outrage for you to spurn