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“At what time do you leave in the morning?” she asked from her place at Manuela’s feet.
The light in Manuela’s eyes dimmed at the question, but when she finally answered her voice was strong and clear. “The train leaves at ten,” she said, and leaned down to cup the back of Cora’s head. A gentle but urgent touch.
Cora closed her eyes, hiding from seeing in Manuela’s the same despair she was feeling. Instead she blindly wrapped her arms around her thighs, squeezing with all her might. She pressed her nose to her lover’s heat. Inhaled her, touched that sacred place and drank from it. Let herself be consecrated by this woman’s flesh and poured everything she had into making love to Manuela Caceres Galvan.
A cry and whispered yes tumbled down to Cora’s ears as she licked and touched. She dipped her fingers into that fire, she’d always crave. She made love to Manuela like the fires of hell awaited in the wings. She heard a breathy gasp as fingers dug into the back of her head. She kissed the wet folds, the juncture of her thighs, every bit of skin that was bare to her before lifting to her feet, willing herself not to think of the morning.
“Was that to your satisfaction, princesa?” She leaned in for a kiss, Manuela’s taste still on her tongue. Cora palmed that lush derriere and even over the layers of fabric she felt her warmth. One that Cora would never stop wanting. This woman, her smell, the unguarded way she gave herself to Cora were indelibly printed in her very essence now, and that would have to be enough.
When they sat down in the plush velvet chairs and leaned in to watch Esclarmonde and Roland’s treacherous road to love, Cora could almost convince herself her heart wasn’t being torn into a million pieces.
Twenty
She was going backto Paris, Manuela decided, as she sat in Luz Alana and Evan’s drawing room after a day that could only be described as harrowing. She and Aurora had arrived several days earlier, and in that time, Evan and his half-brother—who had turned out to be none other than Aurora’s detested dance partner from the Mexican soiree—had exposed the Duke of Annan as a thief and a liar. Then they’d woken up to the news that the warehouses where Evan kept his whisky were on fire. While he was tending to that, Luz Alana got herself held up at gunpoint, all before dinnertime.
In short, Manuela would’ve been quite done with Scotland even if she wasn’t missing Cora every second of the day. That last night together had been as agonizing as it was glorious. They’d made love until they’d fallen asleep exhausted in each other’s arms, and when the morning came they’d parted with bruising kisses and choked goodbyes. Cora had been stoic, attempting to reassure her. She’d gone on about the funds for the sale, and it was all Manuela had been able to do not to fall to her knees and confess that she’d fallen in love. That she couldn’t bear the idea of returning to Venezuela now. That she was certain Cora cared for her too.
But she hadn’t: the fear of Cora’s rejection had kept her silent. At the opera there had been moments when she’d almost thought her lover was holding something back. But if there were any confessions of true love hidden somewhere inside the duchess, she’d kept those to herself.
Manuela had arrived at the house at Place des Vosges almost at daybreak with Cora’s scent on her hands, her mouth, her tongue, and boarded the train in a fog. She’d been so morose even Aurora—for once—bit her tongue.
“I thought you were the boisterous friend,” Apollo Cesar Sinclair Robles, the new Earl of Darnick, commented, pulling Manuela out of her sulking.
“Don’tyouhave your own house?” Aurora had always been direct, but with Evan’s brother she was shockingly rude. The most confusing part was that he seemed delighted by her vitriol.
“You’ve got cream on your lips, Doctora.” He leaned back and brushed his thumb over his own mouth, looking at Aurora’s. He was clearly trying to provoke another tongue-lashing from her. He was bafflingly fond of seeing her friend lose her temper. “You do enjoy your sweets. What is that one called again?”
“You know very well it’s a cranachan.”
The two of them launched into another row. Manuela sighed and turned to Luz Alana and Evan in the hopes of distracting herself from the incessant barrage of thoughts plaguing her mind. But the newlyweds only had eyes for each other and were engaged in an exchange of such heated glances it was a miracle their clothes were not incinerating, which frankly did not help her own mood in the least.
She knew returning to Paris so soon was impulsive. That her friends would worry she was acting rashly again. And maybe she was, but she missed Cora and wanted to see her. After what they’d all lived through over the past few days, seeing how close Luz Alana and Evan had come to losing each other out of sheer stubbornness, she couldn’t stop thinking about Cora. About the way they’d left things. It couldn’t be the end, or at least she could not allow it to end without telling her how she truly felt. Telling her their time together had changed her irrevocably, that she’d reclaimed parts of herself she’d thought were lost forever. It was more than just what she felt for Cora: for the first time, Manuela had found people living a life that seemed worthy of risking her safety.
The Manuela who arrived in Paris was too scared of the unknown to ever take a leap like that, but now, she’d seen there were possibilities for someone like her. A woman, a lesbian, an artist. She only had to be brave.
There would be complications. She knew that. There were her parents, and there was Felix, but she had her art. Her skills which she now trusted could be a means to support herself. She had a group of friends who would help her make her way. She even had that tiny ember of ambition to create something lasting through the collective. Something that would help women like her find their own independence.
The Manuela who had accepted Felix’s offer of marriage believed that was her only path, but this past month had shown her that women could forge their own.
“What is the latest train to London?” she heard herself ask. The other three turned to her at once.
“There is a midnight train to Charing Cross,” Evan told her, with a confused look on his face.
She looked at the clock and saw that it was nine o’clock, stood and for once refused to question her impulses.
“Is there something wrong, Leona?” Luz Alana asked, her face concerned. Manuela knew they would likely disapprove of this, once again accuse her of being rash, but the truth was she didn’t care. Manuela looked between Aurora and Luz Alana. Her best friends, the two people in the world who knew her best. The two people in the world who wanted to see her happy and hoped they could once again be there for her, unconditionally.
“I’m going back to Paris,” she announced, surprised by the steel in her voice. She was certain now that it was the right decision. Even if Cora was truly done with her, she had to at least tell her the truth. That she’d been the water Manuela’s courage needed to flourish.
“To Paris?” Aurora asked, surprisingly calm.
“Yes.” She sent an apologetic look to Luz Alana, who was now sitting straight up, eyes alert. “I know we promised we’d stay a week, Luz, but I have to return.” She wrung her hands in front of herself, not from embarrassment but because it was taking an extraordinary effort to not bolt out of the room to start tossing her things into a trunk. “I feel as though there is unfinished business with me and Cora, and if there is a chance to spend the rest of the time I have before going back to Venezuela with her, I don’t want to waste it.”
“But I thought your deal was done?” To her amazement there wasn’t a trace of exasperation in Aurora’s question, only sympathy.
“It is,” Manuela said awkwardly. “I just need to tell her how I feel, even it’s too late... I’m sorry, Luz.”
Her friend waved her away, standing up from her place on Evan’s lap. “I can’t advise you not to take a chance when you were the one to remind me again and again I had a right to find my own happiness when I refused to accept my true feelings for Evan.” At the mention of his name, Luz Alana’s husband reached for her hand. They looked at each other with such tenderness that something inside Manuela screamed. It wasn’t jealousy so much as longing, of yearning to have that, and she knew exactly the person she wanted it with.
