Swift action was required. So Richard acted. Swiftly.

Grabbing Amy’s arm, Richard pulled her with him behind the curtains of the window seat.

Chapter Sixteen

Whump! Amy fell back with a thud against the Purple Gentian’s chest.

Swallowing an automatic exclamation of surprise, she struggled to catch her breath and her balance. She had lost her footing entirely when the Purple Gentian hauled her behind the curtain, and was sprawled across his lap in a very unsettling way. Under her cheek, she could hear his heart beating in rapid staccato through the thin linen of his shirt. That made two of them—her own pulse was racing, whether from sudden movement, fear of discovery, or in imitation of the pulse beating in the masculine chest beneath her, Amy wasn’t sure.

The linen of his shirt pressed warmly against her cheek, lightly scented with the clean, spicy tang of orange peel. Amy pushed against an uncomfortably hard cushion to lever herself up off the Purple Gentian. The cushion shifted beneath her hand in a most uncushionlike fashion, displaying an impressive array of muscles. Oh good heavens, had she just grabbed the Purple Gentian’s thigh? Amy snatched her hand away with a speed that would have done Miss Gwen proud.

Losing her balance, Amy tumbled back against the Gentian. “Oof,” grunted the Purple Gentian.

“Sorry, sorry, sorry,” Amy mouthed, which was pointless, since she was facing away from the Gentian, but made her feel better anyway.

One would think he might lend her a hand, instead of lying there, impersonating a cushion. Oh, wait—his hand was pinned under her elbow.

Amy twisted her body to free the Gentian’s hand, winding up with her nose wedged into a citrus-scented sleeve.

From the courtyard, the sound of the men’s voices had become louder, despite the extra barrier of the heavy fabric of the curtain. Not just one voice, but several. Grabbing the end of the window seat for balance, Amy wiggled off the Gentian’s lap. The Gentian emitted a sort of muffled groan. Amy winced, mouthing another unseen apology. She really did have to stop injuring the man if she hoped to convince him to accept her into the League. Squirming around to face the draperies, she tucked her knees up underneath her so that her legs wouldn’t dangle off the edge of the window seat and possibly disturb the fall of the fabric.

Outside, someone dropped something—was that wood splintering?—and a rough voice cursed loudly. It sounded, Amy thought, straining to hear, like that man who had been quarreling with Lord Richard’s coachman in the courtyard several days ago. Good heavens, was he robbing the house?

Or could this be something to do with the plans of the Purple Gentian? Amy cast a quick, sideways glance at the man on the window seat beside her. His face revealed nothing. Which, Amy thought with a certain amount of aggravation, might have been due to the fact that, between the mask and the hood of his cloak, there was very little of his face revealed to begin with. Amy chafed at the futility of trying to read emotion from the set of someone’s nose.

If the Purple Gentian was to meet Edouard, why was he hiding behind the curtains with her? Why hadn’t the Gentian just shoved her behind the curtains, and gone on to his rendezvous with Edouard on his own? Maybe, mused Amy, because he had the good sense to realize that she wasn’t likely to stay where he’d left her.

Amy turned her attention once more to the activity in the courtyard. How frustrating not to be able to see anything! Closing her eyes—not that it made much of a difference, since all she had been able to see with them open was the dusky fall of the curtain in front of her—Amy tried to concentrate her senses on the noises coming from the garden. Fragmented voices shifted and blended into each other. Against the blur of voices, another thud resounded through the night.

A new voice broke in. “Careful with that, you fools!”

Amy’s eyes flew open. “It’s Edouard,” she whispered to the Purple Gentian.

“Shhh . . .” The Purple Gentian pressed a gloved finger to her lips.

He meant only to silence her. But once his finger touched Amy’s lips, Richard found he couldn’t move away. Her lower lip was full and soft under his finger, and even through the leather of his glove, he could feel the gentle exhalations of her breath through her slightly parted lips. Those pink, soft, perfect lips.

Amy’s eyes flew to the Purple Gentian’s face. Her breath stilled as she realized that through the slits of his mask, his gaze was riveted on her mouth. For a moment, time seemed to trail off into inconsequentiality. Amy’s world narrowed to encompass only the Gentian’s intent eyes, and the pressure of his finger against her lips.

Unheeding, unthinking, Richard brushed his finger back and forth along the ripe contours of her lower lip, tactilely memorizing each crease, each fold, lingering over the adorable indentation at the center. When Amy made no move to protest, he traced his way along the lush curves of her mouth to her upper lip.

Amy curled the fingers of her left hand around the edge of the window seat, trying to still the trembling the Gentian’s caress evoked. Little shivers of feeling made their way from her lips down her arms; a quick memory of the tremors Lord Richard had caused on the boat flashed through her mind, but the Gentian’s hand moving from her lips to her hair blotted out any thought of anyone else, or anything else. His fingers slid up through her curls, gently curving her face towards his as they knelt, facing each other, on the wide velvet window seat.

Shutting her eyes, Amy reveled in pure feeling. The feeling of his fingers twining through the strands of her hair, the feeling of his other hand stroking warm and firm down her back, the feeling of his breath caressing her lips as he moved closer and closer, until his lips were on hers and Amy couldn’t concentrate at all; she couldn’t even think about feeling, because the feelings were too acute for thought.

The Purple Gentian’s arms tightened around her, pulling her intimately against him, her chest pressing against his. With her dress trapped by her knees, Amy’s bodice lurched perilously as the Gentian drew her forward. The linen of his shirt brushed against the exposed flesh of her breasts as his lips brushed gently back and forth along hers. Wanting, needing more, Amy leaned into the kiss, moving her hands from their tentative perch by her sides up along the Gentian’s forearms. How wonderful to feel him shiver as she trailed her fingers from his wrist to his elbow, to feel the muscles tense beneath her hands as she slid from elbow to shoulder to—

Amy’s hands clutched at the Gentian’s shoulders as he teasingly touched his tongue to hers.

Neither of them noticed as the sounds in the courtyard faded voice by voice, footstep by footstep to nothingness. Neither of them noticed as a door on the other side of the courtyard clicked shut.

Neither of them noticed as a dark-clad figure on the other side of the windowpane rolled his eyes and melted back into the shrubbery.

Fearing for his sanity or Amy’s virtue—since one or the other of them was going to have to go if matters continued as they were—Richard broke the kiss, wrenching his lips from Amy’s. Their lips parted with an audible pop that made him wince and made her giggle at the absurdity of the sound and the sheer joy of the moment.

Richard, rather doubting that he could survive a repetition of the kiss without the instant application of large blocks of ice, evaded harm’s way by firmly tucking Amy’s head under his chin.

“You were wrong,” he murmured ruefully, resting his cheek on top of Amy’s head. “You weren’t safe with me.”

“I feel like Psyche kissing Cupid in the dark,” Amy said dreamily.

Richard drew Amy’s arms around his back under his cloak. “Feel. No wings.”

Amy could hear the smile in the Gentian’s voice. “Does that mean if I unmask you, you won’t fly away?”

Richard tightened his grip on Amy’s arms. “Don’t even consider it.”

“You could give me three trials, like Psyche.”

“With what as the prize at the end? Me, or membership in the League?”

Amy managed the difficult feat of looking at him askance with her nose only inches from his. “It would be much easier for me to answer that question if I knew who you were.”

“What’s in a name? A Gentian by any other name would—”

“Be an entirely different flower,” interjected Amy, swatting him on the arm. “I refuse to be fobbed off with poor imitations of Shakespeare.”

“If you don’t like Romeo and Juliet, how about a sonnet?” Richard suggested. “ ‘Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day? Thou art—’ ”

“Not that easily deterred.”

Amy extricated herself from Richard’s arms—and his cloak, which had tangled around her knees—and hopped off the window seat.

“Damnation,” muttered Richard.

“I’ll ignore that,” offered Amy generously. “And we can go straight to the crucial question of how I’m going to help you restore the monarchy.”

“When did that topic go from never to how?” Richard inquired indignantly, pushing back the velvet drapes. “I never even said if!”

“But you thought it, didn’t you?” argued Amy, with incontrovertible logic. “I’m just making things easier by verbalizing it for you.”

“Easier for whom?” Richard grumbled.

“Now when I search the—”

“How do you know I’m even planning to restore the monarchy?” Richard interrupted desperately. He had to say something before Amy assigned herself some sort of ridiculous and dangerous task, on the argument that he would get around to appointing her eventually, so she might as well save everyone trouble by doing it for him. “That’s not on my agenda for this month at all! In fact, the only thing on my mind right now is preventing the invasion of England. Not restoring the monarchy. So there’s no point in your wasting your time. Amy—”