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That chaste, inexperienced, insufficient touch threw him in heaven and hell all at once. On the corner of his mouth, it had been guileless to the point of an erotic promise he had never tasted before or since. Neither on his lips nor his cheek, it had lain right in between, sin, bliss, pureness and rapture wrapped in one fiery moment. He had thought he would not escape from it unscathed. And he did not. To this day, he swore he felt her heat, her perfume, her softness every time the memory assailed him—which it did with alarming frequency.
Each time he neared her, he desired to repeat it. Properly, for once, with all the primal carnality she hinted at in that hallway. And more. But he strangled these fantasies with incisive determination when they surfaced. He owned no wish to succumb to a weakness which would cause him to lose control over everything he held dear.
It had been exactly like that with Coraline. The daughter of a cotton mill owner, they met when he turned twenty-four and she three years younger. Even without a drop of noble blood, she had been the perfect English rose with her wheat hair, sky-blue eyes and rosy cheeks. He fell for her on the spot and courted her as a reputable gentleman, packed with honourable intentions. Until the day he decided to ask her father for her hand. And while waiting in the parlour, he overheard her say to her mother she could barely wait to be a countess. The world around him crumbled to ruins. Claiming pressing business abroad, he left and never went back.
He kept this story in a privileged spot in his memory as a lesson learned. So, eight years ago, when Otilia approached him with more feminine ensnaring, he had no doubt she meant the same as Coraline. And dismissed it as such.
CHAPTER THREE
Edmund sat in the carriage opposite to Otilia as she looked at the passing streets outside on the way to the theatre. They had arrived in London several days earlier and taken residence at Thornton House in Mayfair. Soon after he received his inheritance, he had lived here and made sure to refurbish it to its earlier grandeur. When Otilia entered the house, she seemed to admire the improvements, but made no comments.
And that was all.
Since they left Leicester, she shut him out. It was not like she was giving him the silent treatment in a sort of petty vengeance for his forcing her to come. No, nothing as simple as that. She retreated inside herself, excluding him with complete indifference. For him, it felt like treading on marshlands. Uncertain, hazy. He had not the slightest idea of how to deal with this self-sufficient Otilia. She had transformed into a woman who knew what she wanted and where she wanted to go. Never had he met such a woman before, and her attitude confounded him. Intrigued him. Stirred him.
He had called the best modiste to renew her wardrobe and did not heed the expenses for it. Part of what he ordered came, and she received it with the enthusiasm of someone receiving firewood. The finest, most refined and elegant dresses did not extricate a single sound of delight from her. It was not ingratitude, not something so base. It was simple detachment.
This confused him. In his mind, she would cheer with the new pretty clothing he afforded her, like any woman aspiring to climb higher than she should. But no. As soon as her maid, whom he had assigned to her, took it upstairs, she returned to the library where she had been reading.
And that was it.
By the by, reading had been in her schedule a lot of late. If it were not for breakfast and dinner, he would think her absent from the townhouse for all he saw of her.
He knew she did not expect him to coax her into marriage. He had himself been surprised when the idea popped in his head. For him, it would be the perfect solution. He intended to supply the opportunity for her to make a match. Naturally, no nobleman with a lineage to speak of would offer for her, but a baronet or a widower were possibilities. Every woman wanted to marry. He had never encountered one who did not. He thought she would be happy. She displayed none of the signs she was, however.
Tonight, she had clothed in a diaphanous, high-waist, water-green gown that cupped her full breasts with a tenderness worth admiring. She paid no attention to it.
And that was all.
She just sat in her corner looking through the window with that faraway expression of hers. Silent, absent. Stunning.
“What is it?” The question rumbled at her delicate profile and echoed in the space between them.
A blank face snapped to him as she blinked her long lashes, shadowing her beguiling eyes. “I told you I did not want to come to London.” Her stare flew out of the window again, and he wished he was made of glass. So much for trying to draw her attention. “I came only because you did not allow me to stay at the manor.”
And why he did not was still a mystery to him. If she wished to throw away the opportunity he presented to her, it would be her loss. Would it not? He could forget all about her and be informed when she undertook her so dreamed-of employment.
But that would not be all.
Not for him. For some reason, he had been compelled to make her accompany him to town. If only to make sure he married her off and be done with it.
“Since you are, make the most of it.” Which lady did not crave the glittering entertainments London provided? She was still a young woman who would surely be attracted to those diversions, the theatre, the shops, the parks, the social life, to see and be seen. Those things which women were so fond of.
Otilia cast a glance at him. “Yes, my lord.” And she returned back to the damned window.
If she called him ‘my lord’ one more time, he would explode. She would not utter his name even under torture. It was as if she had ceased to regard him as a person entirely. As if he became merely someone whom she must address with no personal engagement. Impersonal, distant, like a dignitary from a remote country. Another ruse to keep him out.
It got to him.
It got to him like hell.
Irritation over it had been mounting with swift insistence. For now, he would let it be until she became more accepting of her present whereabouts at least.
The carriage lurched to a stop. To the opera, then.
A
Remoteness had nothing to do with Otilia’s state of mind at that moment. Her thoughts had been whirling with the memories of her other seasons in London and disgusted at the pros
