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Not this sweetness.
She couldn’t move. She stood enchanted, dissolving, while kisses fell like slow summer rain on her face. She remained so, putting up no fight at all, while he trailed kisses down her neck and along her shoulders and while everything melted, and she didn’t know whether she was standing or falling.
She stood, lost, while he took his hands from the wall to cup her face then move downward slowly over her shoulders, over her breasts, while she had to teach herself another way to breathe, above or below or through the great onrush of feelings.
Longing and pleasure tangled together and somewhere among them, below them, and driving them, seethed a craving beyond anything she had words for.
His voice, husky and deep, was at her ear. “Tell me to stop.”
“I won’t,” she said.
“Don’t leave it to me,” he said. Between words he was kissing her neck.
“I will,” she said. If he wanted to stop, let him. He knew what he was doing. She was a novice, and weak in the morals department besides. Let him make up his mind.
“Leonie.”
The sound of her name, the way he said it, tied knots in her heart. It wasn’t fair that he could do this to her. What did he want? Why wouldn’t he take what was so obviously his for the taking?
She reached up and grasped a fistful of neckcloth. “Go,” she said. “Who prevents you? Why do you keep coming back? Do I beg you? Do I hold you here?”
“You don’t make me stop,” he said.
He left it to her—the one who’d fallen in love and whose heart he was going to break, the one who knew nothing of lovemaking after all, only the mechanics—and that knowledge was useless.
“Very well,” she said. “Stop playing with me.” She let go of his neckcloth, summoned what stray bits of willpower she could find, and pushed him away, as hard as she could. Then she stalked away and started up the stairs, pushing her tumbled hair out of her face.
He was a man. He was supposed to want One Thing.
How difficult was this supposed to be?
Marcelline should have—
“Aren’t you going to bolt the door?” came his voice from behind her.
“When I’m sure you’re gone,” she said.
“It isn’t safe.”
She kept walking.
Not safe. What was the matter with him?
As she left the landing, she heard the bolt slide home, with force.
Her heart thudded.
She walked faster, up the remaining stairs and into the consulting room. She repositioned a mannequin and straightened the pattern books. It didn’t matter if he came back and left again. She’d survived devastation in Paris and a catastrophe in London. She’d survived her sisters’ marrying aristocrats. At some point he’d make up his mind. And she’d survive that, whatever happened.
Meanwhile, she’d go through the entire establishment, if necessary, putting everything into perfect order until she was in perfect order.
She heard his footsteps in the passage and sensed his pausing on the threshold. She didn’t turn around.
“You know I can’t leave when there’s no one to bar the door after me,” he said.
“That’s a good excuse,” she said.
“Come here,” he said.
Her blood boiled. For a moment, the world turned red. She wanted a weapon. A rusty ax would do admirably.
She turned. “ ‘Come here’?” she said. “ ‘Come here’? What is wrong with you?”
“I tried to go,” he said. “But I can’t leave you like this.” He gestured vaguely about him.
“You can’t leave me in my own house?”
“I don’t want to . . . I didn’t realize . . .” He trailed off, his brow knitting. “You’re angry, and it isn’t safe—”
“You don’t know anything about me,” she said.
“If you’re trying to tell me you can take care of yourself, I know that isn’t true,” he said. “You should have slapped me or kicked me or stabbed me with a hatpin. You didn’t do anything!”
She hadn’t thought it possible to get any hotter without erupting into flames, but she felt her cheeks take fire, and the fire spread everywhere: embarrassment and frustration and an immense, chaotic rage.
“I didn’t want to stop you!” she burst out. “And how dare you blame me when you know exactly what you’re doing when it comes to women. Do not pretend you haven’t been working on seducing me since the minute we met. You and your ridiculous wager. It doesn’t matter to you whether you win or lose our bet, because you mean to win the thing you really wanted. When it comes to seduction, you surpass any other man I’ve ever met—and possibly ever will meet, though I reserve judgment. Well, you’ve succeeded. And you’re surprised? Indignant? You object?”
“That isn’t what I meant.”
“Do you know what you meant?” she said. “Because I suspect not. I think you’re like other men, especially aristocratic men, who grow bored more quickly than most. You want what you can’t have, then when you get it, you lose interest. Very well. You’ve lost interest.”
“I have not. That isn’t—”
“Funny thing,” she said. “I have. I’m bored now. I want you out of my house. I wish I could tell you to get out of my life, but that would be impractical, and I’m nothing if not practical and hardheaded and orderly. You’ve made anarchy of my work, my responsibilities, my life—you and your fool of a cousin, who can’t remember impregnating a young woman, though he notices every wilting daisy and every sparrow that may or may not be suffering from a fatal c-catarrh.” To her horror, she burst into tears.
He started toward her. She picked up the nearest object—a pincushion—and threw it at him.
“Leonie.”
She hurried toward the door, trying to stifle the sobs that wanted to tear her chest apart.
He caught her before she reached the door and swept her off her feet and into his arms.
“No!” She struck his chest and kicked wildly. “Put me down! Go away! I’m done with you!”
He carried her to the chaise longue, as though she were one of her ladies, about to faint from an excess of sensibility or delicacy, when it was the opposite, and she wanted to do something violent. He didn’t lay her down but sat holding her in his lap while she fought him and the grief that threatened to suffocate her.
“I hate you,” she choked out. “I hate you and your idiot cousin. You’ve ruined everyth-thing!”
Her head sank onto his shoulder and she gave up and wept. She was miserable—embarrassed, disheartened, angry. She had reason to weep. The life she’d so laboriously constructed was falling apart. She’d fallen in love with a Roman god, and everyone knew where that sort of thing led.
Lisburne couldn’t leave her here, alone, crying.
He couldn’t leave her in any event, could he?
Now she was in his lap and she was warm and weeping and disheveled, her hair coming undone, literally, the false braids slipping from their moorings. And so, to give himself something to do while he tried to decide what to do, he set about disassembling her coiffure.
He unpinned flowers and carefully detached a false braid wound with ribbons. He unpinned the Apollo knots at the top of her head, and gently loosened her hair, there and at the sides. The clusters of curls at her ears softened and loosened as well, tumbling to her shoulders.
While he worked, she quieted. By the time he’d removed the last pins, she’d lifted her head from his shoulder to sit, her eyes closed, her head turned away from him.
He looked at her smooth neck and he knew he wouldn’t be leaving anytime soon.
You’ve succeeded, she’d said, and he hadn’t known how to explain, because he wasn’t at all sure what had made him behave as he’d done. If he hadn’t taken her in his arms, he might have made sense of it. But he’d
lost control and kissed her and held her close. Then, every time he tried to leave, it was far too difficult, and it seemed as though leaving made no sense whatsoever.
He couldn’t possibly think now. All the turbulence—the passion and anger and whatnot—seemed to be with them still, throbbing under the surface, and the turmoil kept his mind from clearing.
