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But he was different, Sophy told herself. His card-playing face could be as good as hers. One had to study him closely to catch the way his dark eyes glittered when he was noticing her in a more intent way than usual . . . and there was a certain slant of his mouth or tilt of his head . . .
She shivered, recalling when last he’d regarded her that way, only a few hours ago, an instant before he’d kissed her.
She was in a very bad way.
If she hadn’t had to rescue Lady Clara, with almost no time at all to do it, Sophy could have easily made a great fool of herself over him. She could have wept into her pillow at night. She could have written sickening poetry about Lovers Torn Apart by Fate. She could have quoted whole scenes from Romeo and Juliet, and sobbed because those young lovers hadn’t had it so bad, compared to her.
But she hadn’t time to act like a sentimental moron.
She was obliged to play Cleopatra to Adderley’s Mark Antony—and really, she’d never thought Mark Antony worthy of the Queen of Egypt. A bit dim, she’d always thought.
She was contemplating the role of wicked seductress and thinking it mainly took patience, when the footman standing outside the door of her suite informed her, as he opened the door, that Lord Longmore awaited her in the drawing room.
Her heart sped up.
She’d thought she’d have time to rest and compose herself before Longmore arrived. Being calm with him wasn’t as simple as it ought to be. Too often she felt he was looking straight into her brain and seeing what he ought not to see. It was like being undressed, with the difference being that she didn’t mind his seeing her body unclothed. She minded very much his seeing inside her head.
Keeping her guard up was not going to be easy, after a draining evening with Lord Adderley.
His mind was slow. She’d had to slog through their conversation while keeping him, not at arm’s length, but not too close, either. She’d had to work carefully, to bring his mind to the right position. It was like dancing with a man with two left feet. He’d tried to be subtle, and it had been difficult to pretend she didn’t understand what he was trying to ascertain.
It was hard work, and it sapped one’s energy—and the project had taken longer than she’d planned.
Still, she’d had success, and that was what she set at the front of her mind. And that was what animated her when she sailed into her drawing room, the picture of confidence.
A maid hurried out, but Sophy ignored her. Longmore stood by the window, a glass in his hand. His dark hair was rumpled and so was his neckcloth. She couldn’t tell whether he’d been in a fight or had slept in his clothes. He looked thoroughly disreputable, and his dark eyes held a dangerous gleam.
She waved the girl away. “Go to bed,” she said. “I’ll ring if I need you.”
When the door had closed behind the maid, Sophy stripped off her gloves. “I hope they’ve looked after you well,” she said. She noted a decanter, three-quarters empty, on one of the room’s elegant tables.
“They fed me and they kept my glass filled,” he said. “Where the devil have you been?”
She dropped the gloves on the nearest chair, unfastened her mantelet, and carelessly flung it on top of them. Dressmakers neatly folded garments and put everything in its proper place. Great ladies left that job to servants.
“How much have you had to drink?” she said. “Have you forgotten that I was dining with Lord Adderley?”
“For five hours?”
“Certainly not. It can’t be—what time is it?”
He slanted her a look, took out his pocket watch, and flicked it open with a sharp click. He said, in a too-quiet voice, “It’s half past midnight.”
“That’s not five hours,” she said.
“What the devil have you been doing for all this time?”
“Keeping him occupied.”
“Two hours, you said.”
“I said I could give you at least two,” she said.
“That isn’t what you said.”
“What difference does it make?” she said. “Or are you vexed because you had to cut short your search, thinking you had only two hours?”
“Never mind my search.”
“Never mind? That was the whole point of this exercise.”
“Apparently not,” he said. “Apparently, you found a good deal to occupy you.”
“Well, I did, rather,” she said.
“I’m eager to know what that was,” he said.
She was not about to describe to him the various maneuvers and counter-maneuvers she’d had to use. She had no intention of instructing any man—and most assuredly not this one—in the arts she used to manipulate males.
“You ought to know what it wasn’t,” she said. “I can’t believe you stand there glowering at me as though I’m a wayward sister. How many times do I have to tell you? I’m not Lady Clara, who doesn’t know better than to let herself be led out onto dark terraces by bankrupt lords. I’m not Lady Anybody. I’m not naïve.”
“All the same—”
“Nothing was supposed to happen,” she said. “I know better than to let anything happen. Nothing happened.” She wanted to shake him. How could he think she was so stupid? How could he believe she was so undiscriminating? “Considering the foul mood you seem to be in, I can only conclude that nothing happened on your mission, either. Or did you find something worse than one could imagine? Grisly remains in the cellar or—”
“Dust clumps under the bed,” he said. “And what may or not have been a dead rodent. I didn’t touch it. I’m judging only by smell. It might have been your would-be beau’s stockings.”
“You searched under the bed?” she said. “Why didn’t you make Fenwick do that? He’s smaller and less likely to bump his head . . .” She trailed off, as the image rose in her mind of Longmore squeezing his big body under a bed. “Oh, no! Did you bump your head?” She moved toward him. “Let me see. You should have told the servants to get ice. I’ll send for ice.”
He took a step back. “I did not bump my head,” he said. “I know to keep my head down. I’ve been under beds before, though not in recent memory. I remained there utterly still and quiet while a pair of servants made good use of the master’s absence by fornicating against his wardrobe. In which Fenwick had secreted himself.” He turned away, walked to the decanter, and refilled his glass.
She watched him while her imagination painted the scene he’d described. She knew about these things. She’d seen pictures. But she’d looked at them coolly, feeling mainly curiosity.
She tried to make her mind detached, but it made its own exhibition, of lurid pictures of him, naked, pushing into her and making her feel things she’d never felt before, such wild emotions, so pleasurable as to hurt, almost.
She went hot everywhere, remembering. She wanted to run across the room and open a window and lean out of it.
But no, that wasn’t quite true.
She wanted to run to him and make him do it again, make him touch her and kiss her and love her and possess her and wipe out the memory of Adderley’s insinuating voice and double entendres, and his face and body too close to hers.
She made herself look sympathetic but amused. “But you weren’t detected,” she said.
“I could have started singing God Save the King, and I doubt they’d have noticed,” he said. “Luckily the position isn’t easy to maintain. They weren’t long about it. They had a good laugh after, and went out—maybe to repeat the performance in the next room. I didn’t stay to find out. I unearthed Fenwick and we made ourselves scarce.” He drank.
She said nothing, only watched his hands, and the motion of his shoulders and the way the light played on the bones of his face.
“I had to climb down the drainpipe,” he said, into the silence. “After which Fenwick administered a critique of my mode of descent.”
She found her tongue. “I do think he—”
“It was a complete waste of time!” He slammed the glass down
on the tray, making the decanter bounce. “Adderley has nothing in his house that we don’t already know about. It was exactly as I told you it would be. The sorts of things you hoped to find are the things imaginary people find in stories. In make-believe. This isn’t bloody make-believe!”
Chapter Fifteen
Whenas in silks my Julia goes
Then, then (methinks) how sweetly flows
That liquefaction of her clothes.
Next, when I cast mine eyes and see
That brave vibration each way free;
O how that glittering taketh me!
—Robert Herrick, On Julia’s Clothes, 1648
Her head went back as though he’d struck her. Then Longmore wanted to hit something, preferably himself.
