He turned his chin into her hand, eyes closing.
A sort of nervous energy suffused her body. There was uncertainty but also awareness: that he was attractive; that he was here, so close. That his eyes earlier hadn’t been impersonal. That hers weren’t either.
“It will be easier after we start,” he murmured, and then his mouth lowered, slowly enough she could have dodged it had she wanted to. Gently, a bare acquainting of lips at first, but an unmistakable warmth unfurled low in her belly. It gave her a kind of courage that she could do this. She deepened the kiss, and he responded immediately, still demanding nothing she wasn’t willing to give.
It was a relief in its way that it was not difficult to touch and to be touched, to be kissed by someone other than Jamie. Moreover, the stirrings of desire were real. It would be easier to do whatever she must in public; neither Nathaniel nor his touch repulsed her.
He knew his way about kissing. She stopped analyzing and justfelt.The tightness in her chest loosened into a warmth that spiraled outward. Tentatively she touched her tongue tip to his lower lip. He inhaled sharply and opened his mouth more fully on hers, his arms coming around her. He tilted his head, and shetwined her arms about his neck. Slight space remained between them, but she was very aware of how near every part of her was that did not yet touch him.
If it wasonlyfor practice, he’d have stopped, or she would have. Instead, she leaned into him, seeking deeper kisses.
His hand moved to her waist and splayed on her hip, his warm fingers firm through the thin layers of silk but still gentle enough that she might break away at once if she wished. “Shall I stop?” he murmured against her mouth.
“Not yet,” she whispered. She slid a hand up his arm, measuring through his shirt his forearm’s strength, the tautness of his biceps. His hands spanned her waist and down the curve of her hips. She let her hands roam farther to his shoulders and back, nothing but hard muscle beneath his leanness. His body had not gone the way of softness when his time on the Peninsula was done.
He made a small sound when their tongues touched, his thumb brushing the hollow at the base of her throat. She shivered again.
“Enough?” he murmured.
Nowas what she wanted to say, but she nodded instead. “Yes, I believe so.” Her heart still threatened to beat its way from her chest.
He stepped back. “Then I will finish dressing, and we may be on our way.”
Muted golden light from the clearing sky set the stone façades of the famed Palais-Royal aglow, and the few tenacious leaves clinging to chestnut trees around the perimeter were living flames. Fashionably dressed men and women filled thechairs and tables at the garden’s edge despite the nip in the air. Still more strolled beneath the soaring arcades.
A male patron seated at a table outside Café de Foy hailed Nathaniel in French, half rising to his feet with a broad smile. The fading light gilded his golden-blond head much as it did the chestnut leaves.
Isobel studied him curiously as Nathaniel pulled out a chair for her. Younger than herself or perhaps close to her own age but not above mid-twenties. Shorter than Nathaniel but taller than herself. He was dressed in elegant but casual attire as a student from a good family might be. She doubted he was that, or certainly not only that.
“Mon ami, you must introduce me to your friend. It is presumptuous for a gentleman to first present himself.” His face, mobile and interested, turned towards her. It was entirely likely he already knew precisely who she was, but one could not be sure, viewing his expression.
Nathaniel made the introductions in French: Mlle Isobel Blanchet, M. Étienne Baudelaire.
“Are you an artist, M.Baudelaire?” she asked. A notebook, open to a half-completed picture of the windswept gardens, lay beside a set of pastels. His cuffs were color-stained.
“But yes. I am a humble observer of my fellow man. I attempt to capture on paper that which my eyes perceive.”
“May I?” She tilted the picture. “You are talented, Monsieur.”
“You are too kind, Mademoiselle. Are you yourself an artist?”
She laughed. “Not in the smallest way. I have always wished I could draw, but I must content myself with admiring the works of others.”
“Perhaps you are being modest.”
“I assure you I am not. Although I am accounted a pleasing singer, so perhaps artistry has not entirely passed me by.”
“Then we are well matched, for I cannot sing at all. This does not stop me, you comprehend, when I have had too much wine.”
Nathaniel, close beside her with his arm along the chair’s back, made a strangled noise.
“Beaumont has some small cause to know this,” M.Baudelaire told her with a self-deprecating moue. He shrugged one shoulder, grinning.
This was a man rarely serious, she gauged, or he took great pains to appear so. He and Nathaniel stood in stark relief to one another: one golden-haired and mischievous; the other dark-haired and quietly intense.
M.Baudelaire turned back to her. “If you are here to sample the patisserie, then I must recommend to you especially the apple tart. It is quite divine. But I believe we do also have business to discuss. You have come to my country in search of your sister,oui?”
She wore the miniature of Lucy around her neck; she withdrew the chain and passed it over. M.Baudelaire studied it, his momentary stillness reinforcing her suspicion that his carefree demeanor was largely an act.
