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‘No, thank you,’ she said quickly, deciding it was best to leave and take her naughty thoughts with her. She put a hand over her mouth as if stifling a yawn. ‘I’m going to bed.’
‘It is still early,’ he said. ‘And still I wish to talk to you. I will join you in the petit salon, and we will have a digestif together.’
As she hesitated, he added softly, ‘S’il te plaît, Virginie,’ and she found herself making her way reluctantly out of the kitchen and across the hall.
The fire in the salon had been rekindled at some point, and the room felt deliciously cosy. Ginny fed it with more logs before seating herself stiffly in the corner of the sofa.
When he came in, he was carrying a bottle of brandy and two glasses into which he poured generous measures before seating himself beside her.
‘A la tienne,’ he said, lifting his own glass in a toast. ‘Eh bien, what else did Monique say to make you so thoughtful?’
Ginny stared straight ahead at the leaping flames. ‘Something I already knew,’ she returned, choosing her words with care. ‘That I don’t belong here and should go home.’
There was a taut silence, then he said quietly, ‘How obliging of her to interest herself in your welfare on so short an acquaintance.’
‘Perhaps she was also speaking for Monsieur Bertrand,’ she said quickly. ‘He clearly doesn’t welcome my presence.’
Andre shrugged. ‘He found it a surprise, peut-être.’
Ginny swallowed some brandy, enjoying against her will the smooth mellow flavour. ‘All the same, I want to bring this supposed visit to an end.’
‘Not,’ he said, ‘until the situation between us has been resolved. As you agreed.’
‘That was before I knew how impossible it would be. Whatever you may think, I don’t like deceiving people, and I can’t treat it as lightly as you seem to.’
‘You are mistaken,’ he said quietly. ‘I regard it as seriously as you could wish.’
‘In that case,’ she said, ‘please let me go home.’
‘Home?’ The query was almost contemptuous. ‘To what? No vague replies. Where and how will you live?’
His words struck an unhappy chord with her own fears, pushing her into dangerous waters.
‘You mean now that Andrew, my meal ticket, won’t be there?’ she challenged.
The dark eyes narrowed. ‘Is that how you saw him?’
Think what you like...
The words hovered, but remained unspoken. She would not—could not betray Andrew’s memory.
She bent her head. ‘No, of course not.’ She drew a shivering breath. ‘I—I loved him, and I thought he cared for me.’ She added wildly, ‘For all of us.’
Her voice cracked suddenly as a wave of the sorrow circumstances had so far forced her to suppress finally broke over her. Overwhelmed her.
She found herself blinded, drowning in scalding tears, her throat aching and her body torn by the hot and heavy sobs she was unable to control as she mourned for Andrew.
She was dimly aware of Andre taking the glass from her hand. Felt herself enfolded, lifted across his body, her face pressed into the strong angle between his neck and shoulder and his lips against her hair as he held her.
She was aware of the crisp collar of his shirt against her cheek. The warmth of him, coupled with the evocative scent of his skin. The infinite comfort of his hand moving slowly and gently against her spine.
He said softly, ‘You must not cry any more. My father was a man with disappointments in his life, but please believe that you were not one of them.’
But her tears were not so easily dammed, and she clung to him, pushing into him in a kind of desperation, as if she needed to be absorbed, utterly consumed. A mute offering of her entire self.
She heard him murmur something roughly. Then his hand was under her chin, tilting up her soaked, ruined face, and his lips found hers, parting them for the heated, irresistible invasion of his tongue.
The kiss was endless. Driven. Her hands moved on him, tracing the familiarity of bone and muscle through the linen fabric of his shirt, and stroking the strong column of his neck before twining in his dark hair.
As the demand of his mouth deepened, he pushed her top down from her shoulder together with the strap of her bra, his fingers seeking one rose-tipped breast, freeing it from its lacy cup and caressing it with delicate sensuality.
She was lost, the raw emotion of grief exploding into another very different sensation, her body arching in its own demand that was also a surrender, as she remembered the searing, exquisite pleasure of being naked in his arms. And as the desire to have him once again sheathed inside her exerted its own almost brutal pressure, impossible to be ignored or denied.
