Wicked

“Nonsense,” Lilly declared, and fearing where this conversation might lead, turned her shoulder to him to peer at the passing landscape.

The terrain altered, seeming to tilt as the carriage began the steep climb up Jackson Street. Lilly leaned forward, compensating for the incline rather than relaxing back into the upholstery. Now that she’d removed the extravagant chapeau, she could feel stray locks of her hair floating around her face and trailing down over the high collar of her jacket. The ruff of bangs over her brow was untidy as well, and she hadn’t the time nor the place to repair the damage. It was normal to have dust clinging to the hem of her skirt, but not to have it spotting the rest of her suit. She was less than perfect in appearance, which her mother and sister had often insisted was not the way to attract an interested man.

Deegan was anything but an interested man where courtship was involved. He was no doubt a connoisseur of the female form. Had he admired the beauties of the age, courting some and scandalously making love to others? She couldn’t hold a candle to women of that caliber even if some people did consider her pretty.

“Perhaps I could make a suggestion?” he offered.

A more experienced woman probably would have fathomed his intent immediately, but she was not an experienced woman. Lilly turned innocently toward him, a question in her eyes. “Please do,” she requested.

“A kiss,” Deegan said.

Lilly looked at him blankly, sure she hadn’t heard correctly. “A…pardon me, but did you say a—”

“Kiss,” he repeated.

Her gaze dropped to her hands once more. How proper they looked in the well-fitted leather gloves. And how improper was the chill of maidenly excitement that swept through her. Rather than look at him, she studied a stain on her gloves, one collected no doubt during her sojourn behind the crates in the alley.

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