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He trailed off, and she was amazed to see color climb his neck to his jaw and as far as his cheekbones. “Devil take him! That cousin of mine is contagious. What am I saying?”
“Poetry,” she said. “Of a sort. Of the wooing sort.”
As though he hadn’t already wooed her and won with practically no effort at all. She’d been infatuated from the moment she’d looked away from the painting and up at him at the British Institution. From infatuation to falling in love . . . how absurdly easy it was, even for a sensible girl who kept her feet on the ground.
Or perhaps it was easy for her because she wasn’t used to it.
Or maybe it was the sandwiches.
“I feared so,” he said. “Is it working?”
“Not at all,” she said. She turned her back to him and took up a bill and stared at it though the words and numbers might as well have been written in Greek or Arabic or Chinese.
She heard him cross the room. She didn’t look up. She didn’t need to. She could feel him behind her. The air became fraught—with the scent of a man and the tension between them or whatever it was he did to make the air seem to vibrate like harp strings.
“What have you got there?” he said softly. “A mercer’s bill?”
She made herself focus. “I shall have to speak to him. The quantities are odd, and I’m sure he’s raised his prices since last week. Nine shillings sixpence for lutestring?”
“How much lutestring?” his voice deepened another degree.
She could feel his breath at the back of her neck. It was all she could do not to shiver. She swallowed. “Fifty-six yards. This must be Sophy’s doing. She ever did—”
“Fifty-six yards of lutestring at nine and six per yard,” he said, much in the same tone he used when she was in his arms.
“Yes,” she said.
“What else?”
“What does it matter?”
“Read it to me,” he said.
She could feel his voice in the pit of her stomach. He wasn’t touching her, yet it seemed as though his hands were everywhere. His mouth, too.
“Ninety-eight ells of armoisin,” she said. “At eleven shillings ninepence per ell.”
“Per ell,” he said.
“Yes.”
“Go on.”
“Sixteen yards of fine velvet at fifteen shillings threepence per yard.”
“Mmm.” His cheek brushed hers. “Don’t stop.”
“One hundred twelve yards—”
“One hundred twelve. So much.” He kissed a sensitive place behind her ear.
She trembled.
“Don’t stop,” he said.
“One hundred twelve yards of black princetta at twelve shillings ninepence per yard.”
She went on, reading the bill, while he went on kissing her, murmuring in her ear, encouraging her. “More numbers,” he whispered. “More numbers.”
He kissed the side of her neck while he moved his hands to the front of her dress and cupped her breasts. She went on reading, though her knees were dissolving.
Three hundred fifty-six yards of green Persian, twenty-seven yards of mode, and on and on, though she could barely see straight, because of his hands, his hands, everywhere.
“Leonie, Leonie,” he murmured. “When you talk in numbers, you drive me mad.”
He slid his hands lower, and fabric rustled as he drew up her skirts, and her eyes were crossing as she tried to read. She ought to stop him but she didn’t want to. It was too wicked, and she wanted to find out where it would lead. She wasn’t sure she could stop, even if she had to, because she was melting in his hands and under the spell of his voice. She felt him lift her skirt and petticoat. Then he had his hands on her thighs, sliding over her drawers.
“Silk,” he said. “Silk drawers, you naughty girl.”
“White sarcenet, three shillings ninepence.”
He was kissing the back of her neck. She heard sounds. She knew what they were. Buttons being undone, the whisper of wool against muslin.
He slid his hand between her legs and she moaned. “Keep counting,” he said.
“Satin, nine shillings sixpence per yard. Genoa velvet, twenty-seven shillings sixpence per yard. Oh.”
He’d slid his fingers into the opening of her drawers. He was stroking her and she was shaking. Warmth flooded through her as though she swam in a pool, and hot mineral waters swirled about her.
“Mon Dieu!” A low, involuntary cry as pleasure raced through her and shot her straight up, into that place, that bursting joy.
He pushed inside her then and she braced herself on the desk. His cheek was against hers.
“Naughty, naughty girl.” His voice was rough, his breath warm against her neck. “I missed you. Wicked thoughts while I lay in my bed, wishing I were in your bed, in your arms. I thought of so many interesting things we could do, so much I wanted to teach you, and all I might learn about you, all the secrets of your skin and your mouth and . . .” He withdrew a degree and pushed in again. “And here. Inside you. I wanted to be inside you.”
And she wanted him there, inside her, though it was dangerous—perhaps because it was dangerous. She was who s
he was, and all the numbers in the world, lined up exactly in the proper columns and tallied correctly, couldn’t change that. She was the sensible one, yet she was a Noirot and a DeLucey, and they’d been sinners for centuries.
He took her here, at her desk, and she took him, too, shamelessly, gladly, almost laughing as the heat and urgency built and built. She laughed even when she groaned. She laughed at their half-stifled cries of pleasure. She laughed at the foolish whispered words between them and at the naughtiness of it all.
It was a great joke, and a great joy, and she was happy, and happier still, and happier again, until there was no farther to go, and everything became absolutely perfect for one, glorious moment.
She savored that moment for the time it lasted, and remembered it when it was over. And she knew she’d remember it forever, long after he was gone and he’d forgotten her.
Later
What Lisburne had meant . . .
. . . when he still had a functioning mind . . .
. . . was to woo her—or seduce her—and by degrees lead her to bed or at least to the chaise longue upstairs.
But there she’d been, at her desk, frowning over a bill and reciting quantities and prices in her brisk, businesslike voice. And his mind went dark, abandoning thinking to the other, very small brain, much lower down.
Then, after the sort of lovemaking more usually associated with courtesans and knowing country wenches—most certainly not recently initiated young women—she laughed.
There he was, still bent over her backside like a dog, trying to catch his breath and recover his reason, and she planted her elbows on the desk and her face in her hands and laughed.
And the sound caught at his heart and what was left of his brain and he laughed, too.
She turned and came up from the desk and took his face in her hands and kissed him. He felt the kiss to his toes and to the ends of his fingers and the roots and tips of his hair, as though he’d been struck by lightning.
Then she broke the kiss and said, “Come upstairs.”
Later
