Page 43 of Rogue Lyon

He laughed and sat back, picking up his glass. “You would have been great friends, should you have lived three hundred years ago in the Low Countries.”

Meredith laughed too and then smoothed the napkin on her lap. “Yet still you don’t answer me. What is it you really want from life?” She bit on her bottom lip to stop herself from adding ‘if it’s not a wife and children.’

“What more could I want?” He sipped from his flute of champagne. “Tonight, I am in Paris with a beautiful, intelligent woman and tomorrow I will, hopefully, find the art pieces I have set my sights upon to take back to London.”

“And that is enough?”

His smile dropped and he leaned forward. “Why shouldn’t it be?”

She sucked in a breath. “What about heirs to your fortune?”

“‘Heirs.’” His eyebrows rose. “I suppose there is always time for that.”

“Yes, you are still a young man.”

“I am thirty-one.”

“And I twenty-eight,” she offered, knowing she was particularly old for an unmarried woman.

“My younger wife.” He grinned cheekily and nodded at her fake wedding ring. “How lucky I am.”

A tremble went through her at his words. If only they were true. “Jules…” She tipped her head. “I adore your company. We laugh a lot together, but…”

“‘But’?”

It was her turn to lean toward him and she held his gaze. “If it is not too forward of me, I do see sadness in your eyes when you are sitting quiet and you believe no one to be observing you. What is it you miss? Who is it you miss?”

As if to stop her seeing any sadness, he closed his eyes, his long lashes creating small shadows on his skin. “I have no sadness.” His jaw tightened.

Meredith lowered her shoulders. She knew what she’d seen. The dark depth of his eyes took on a cloudy hue, and his eyelids grew heavy, when he was deep in thought and believed himself to be unwatched. Several times on the journey to Paris, she’d spotted it, when they’d been traveling in the carriage for hour upon hour.

“What you see is…” He swallowed tightly, his Adam’s apple bobbing down to his cravat. “Loneliness, perhaps.”

Meredith forced herself to nod slowly, hoping he’d go on.

“With my father gone and much missed,” he said, “and no real roots to the Habsburgs, I find the house silent and vacuous at times. Too big for just myself and staff, apart from Cook, have always felt in the way rather than company. Perhaps if I’d had siblings…” He trailed off with a shrug.

“That is an understandable emotion.”

“Which is why I throw myself into my work.”

“Work, yes of course, but also late nights at the Lyon’s Den.”

“And yes, late nights at the Lyon’s Den.” He chuckled. “There is always company to be had there. Interesting company to while away the time and share a glass of something with.”

“So it is companionship you wish for?”

“I suppose it is.” He leaned back as the waiter set down a sumptuous-smelling lobster and vivid green asparagus spread on a fine China plate. “When it boils down to it, I enjoy the company of other gentlemen.”

Meredith said her thanks to the waiter as her food arrived. Then, when he’d left, she picked up her utensils and asked, “Don’t I count as company?”

“Very much so.” He nodded earnestly. “And I don’t even know why you should ask. Didn’t I practically beg you to accompany me to Paris?”

She smiled and cut the tip off an asparagus. “I suppose you were rather persuasive.”

“I know what I want…” His eyes narrowed as his gaze fixed upon her. “And I want you.”

A flush of heat rushed up her chest and to her cheeks. Then when she looked into his eyes and saw the same desire that had been there back at his house, in his bedchamber, a glut of lust poured into her veins, tightening her nipples and making her cunny flutter in anticipation of where the night might lead.