“Perhaps they don’t find me the confiding sort.”
She brushed this away with a wave of her hand. “Don’t be silly. All you have to do is stand there to inspire trust, unlike the rest of us. But I must keep to one thing at a time. Our servants first.”
“Yes, sorry about that,” he said. “I didn’t mean to lose the butler.”
She turned away from the drawings to give him her full attention.
“Edwards,” she said. “I meant to ask you—but the sight of the castle knocked everything else from my mind. Then I saw the servants, all looking so—so-”
“Suicidal,” he said. “One can’t blame them. They’ve had to camp out in the great hall, exactly as their predecessors would have done centuries ago. I’m amazed they haven’t all bolted.”
Her blue eyes lit with interest. “You think Edwards bolted?”
“So it would ap—”
A roar and a horrific crash cut him off.
The door to the kitchen passage flew open, and the kitchen staff irrupted into the great hall.
The roaring—human—continued, in spurts.
Olivia looked at the kitchen help cowering under the minstrel gallery, then at the door to the kitchen passage, then at Lisle.
“Must be Aillier,” he said, naming the London cook she’d sent to feed them. “He’s been a little sullen lately.”
“A little sullen?” she said.
“We’ve been living on cold meat and cheese,” Lisle said. “He won’t bake. He says the oven is an abomination. I wanted to pitch him out of the window, but he probably wouldn’t fit—and if he did, we’d be short a cook as well as a butler.”
Olivia’s chin went up. “I may help you pitch him out of the window,” she said, in the same coolly indignant tones Lady Hargate would have used. “Not bake bread, indeed. No wonder the staff are so dispirited.”
Head high, eyes blazing, she swept toward the kitchen.
Nichols, who’d been talking to one of the frightened kitchen servants, hurried into her path, to block the door. “I beg your pardon for standing in the way, Miss Carsington, but it isn’t safe. I’m told he’s threatening with the cleaver. I recommend you allow me to disarm him first.”
Olivia eyed Nichols up and down. He could probably don armor and still not weigh ten stone.
“He’s tougher than he looks,” Lisle said, reading her thoughts exactly. “And stronger,” he added in an undertone. “With remarkable stamina—or such at least is his reputation among the womenfolk of Egypt.”
His voice was too low and his mouth was too close to her ear. His breath was warm, tickling her ear and a sensitive place behind it.
She didn’t have time for this.
Men.
“Thank you, Nichols,” she said, “but we cannot allow you to precede us.” She turned to Lisle and added, in a voice as low as his had been, “We can’t let it seem that we’re intimidated by a temperamental French cook. The villagers will hear about it and laugh themselves sick.”
“Sorry, Nichols,” Lisle said more audibly. “We can’t let you have all the fun. Miss Carsington and I will sort this out.”
Olivia waved her hand imperiously.
Nichols stepped out of the way.
More roaring came from behind the door.
Olivia glared at Nichols. He opened the door.
She stormed into the dragon’s lair.
Olivia tried to get ahead of him in the short passage, but Lisle grasped her waist, picked her up, and put her down behind him. The last bit—setting her down again—wasn’t nearly as easy as it ought to be. She was lighter than she looked; the mountainous clothing deceived the eye. It rustled too alluringly, too like the sound of bedclothes being tossed about. It brought back to the front of his mind the slenderness and delicacy of her feet, the grace of her fingers, the silken feel of her skin under his hands.
All the dreams and fantasies he’d so rigorously suppressed rose up like ghosts. He beat them down again.
“You can do the talking,” he said. “But I’m going first in case of deadly missiles.”
“Don’t be absurd,” she said. “You think I can’t handle menials?” She elbowed him sharply in the ribs and pushed past him into the kitchen proper. Cursing under his breath, Lisle followed close on her heels.
Over her shoulder he saw a red-faced Aillier brandishing a cleaver. Since he was nearly six feet tall and three feet wide and surrounded by extremely sharp blades, it required no prescience to understand why the kitchen staff had fled when he exploded.
Lisle had heard the tirade on the way in. Conducted in three languages, it boiled down to:
“This kitchen, to call it primitive is a gross flattery! It is like a cave, for animals. No one can expect me to cook in such a place!”
When Olivia sailed in, the cook paused, mouth open, the hand holding the weapon in midair.
“Don’t let me interrupt,” she said. “You were saying?”
Aillier quickly recovered from his surprise. “It is not to be borne, mademoiselle!” he cried. “This is a place of brutes. The peasants, they are savages of the most ignorant. How am I to tell them what is needed? They speak no English or French. No form of German or Italian. Their language, it is for animals, all grunts and ugly gargling of the mouth.”
“He’s a fine one to talk,” Lisle whispered.
“I see,” Olivia said. “The peasants are inferior. What else?”
Aillier waved his cleaver, first at the oven, then at the gigantic fireplace—which dwarfed even him—the stone basin and sink, the pans and cooking utensils heaped on the ancient trestle table.
“To expect me—Aillier—to cook in such a place is torture!” he roared, though with a degree more uncertainty than a moment ago. “It is inhuman to subject an artist to this—this cave. I will not endure it.”
Slowly and deliberately, Olivia looked about her.
The kitchen occupied the first floor of the castle’s north wing. Even allowing for the thickness of the walls and the size of the fireplace, a generous space remained. One of the three large windows had been converted to an oven. Still, even on rainy days, it was a brighter kitchen than many Lisle had seen. In some great English houses, the kitchens were deep underground.
“I think it’s rather impressive, myself,” Lisle muttered.
No one heeded him.
“This is not torture,” she told Aillier. “Torture must wait until the dungeon is properly fitted out. What we have here are challenging conditions. A great chef can cook anywhere. Remember the challenge Prince Talleyrand set the great chef Carême? A year of meals, never repeating a dish, using only ingredients in season, from the estate. But if you cannot rise to this challenge, it cannot be helped. It’s no use wishing you had skills of a higher order or possessed confidence in those you have. If you are inadequate to the task—”
“Inadequate!”
“Kindly remember that the fellow has a whacking great cleaver in his hand, with a deuced sharp edge,” Lisle murmured.
“If you’ve decided to give up, Monsieur Aillier,” she went on, “then stop fussing about it, and do so. One of the village women can see to our meals until I can send for a proper cook from London. A Roman this time. I’m told they’re dauntless in the face of adversity.”
Having delivered her broadside, she turned and sailed out, cool as you please.
Lisle didn’t move. For a moment he could only stand, staring. He saw Aillier watch her go, his mouth hanging open, his face an ugly shade of maroon.
Lisle braced himself. But the chef slowly lowered the hand with the cleaver in it.
Lisle backed out into the passage. No flying blades, but the silence in the kitchen was ominous.
Then he heard Aillier’s voice, grumbling about accursed Romans
and their inedible sauces. Then came the sound of pans being banged about.
Lisle got halfway to the door where she waited. Then the scene rushed into his mind, as vivid as an illumination: Aillier brandishing the great cleaver—and Olivia, a fraction of his size, in her gigantic sleeves and vast skirts, her curls pinned into silly corkscrews. Olivia, her chin in the air, coolly whittling the immense cook down to size. The look on Aillier’s face. The look on hers.
Ye gods. Ye gods. Olivia.
Olivia stopped short when she heard the sound—someone being strangled, she thought at first. Aillier. Had he sprung into the passage? Attacked Lisle? Heart surging into a gallop, she whipped around.
What she saw in the gloomy space was Lisle, leaning against a wall, bent over, clutching his stomach. . .
Laughing.
She marched back to him. “Not here, you idiot,” she said in a low voice. “He’ll hear!”
Aillier was still talking to himself, banging pans, but they were only a few feet away from the kitchen.
Lisle looked at her, his lips pressed together, but a whoop escaped.
She grabbed his arm and pulled him toward the door. He started to go with her, but after a few steps, he fell against the wall again, his hand over his mouth.
“Lisle,” she said.
“You,” he said. That was as far as he got before he went into another paroxysm.
“Lisle,” she said.
“So funny. You. Him.”
“You’re going to do yourself an injury.”
“You,” he said. “Only you.” He went off again.
She could only stand looking at him and wondering at him. When she’d come, he’d been so weary and stoical and now. . .
He took out his handkerchief and wiped his eyes. “Sorry,” he said.
“You’re overtired,” she said.
“Yes,” he said. “Probably.”
He came away from the wall. Then he convulsed again, laughing and laughing. She stood mesmerized, smiling helplessly while inside she seemed to be turning over and over like the golden dust motes that had danced about him. She was falling into something, falling over and over, because he laughed, and the sound was mischief and joy, and it was impossible to keep that sound out of her heart.
Then he stopped, and again wiped his eyes, and said, “Sorry. Don’t know what . . . Really, Olivia, you are beyond anything.”
He took her hand, to lead her to the door, she thought.
And then she was against the wall, in the corner by the door, and his hands were cupping her face, and she tasted the laughter when his mouth covered hers.
Chapter 11
She was wonderful. He’d only meant to tell her so.
Lisle thought that was what he’d done, was doing.
But his hands came up, and then he was cupping her beautiful face and wanting to say, “I’d forgotten. I’d forgotten this part of you.”
He’d forgotten what a miracle of a girl she’d been, ready to try anything, face anything. The beautiful woman had got in the way, and he couldn’t see Olivia properly.
But she was the girl as well as the woman, a miracle as well as beautiful. He was looking down into her great blue eyes, whose color he couldn’t see in the shadowy passage and didn’t need to see, since it was engraved deep in his memory, the fierce blue that had so startled him on the day he’d met her.
And there was her mouth, full and soft and slightly parted in surprise, only inches from his. He couldn’t say anything at all. And then he was kissing her
He felt her stiffen. Her hands came up to his chest.
Push me away, yes, that’s best. But no, don’t, not yet.
The softness of her mouth and the scent of her skin and the nearness and the warmth: He wasn’t ready to give it all up. Not yet.
She didn’t push. The stiffness melted away and she became soft and yielding, melting into him while her hands crept up to his shoulders. She kissed him back, so quick and sudden and fierce. And there it was, the taste he’d tried to forget. It was like biting into a ripe cherry. It made a man forget all other tastes in that first ambrosial moment. It must have been a cherry that Eve gave Adam. What other fruit tastes quite so sinful?
He forgot other things, too: resolutions and conscience and wisdom. Strip them away and what was left?
He’d missed her.
Now she was in his arms, the girl he’d missed so much, and the woman, too, the human chameleon he’d known for so long. So fearless and confident a moment ago, so warm and yielding now. He surrendered, too, to cherry-sweet sin, and the scent of her skin and the faint traces of a flowery fragrance in her hair, her clothes. The scent slithered into his mind like opium smoke.
Something else lingered there as well. A shadow. A warning voice: Enough. Stop. Remember.
Not yet.
Her fingers slid up into his hair, and the touch, so caressing, reached deep. It found the empty place in his heart, the one he’d so carefully covered up, where he hid impossible wishes and longings. He ached, he hardly knew what for, but it wasn’t mere animal need, the simple, obvious thing. That he’d recognize. This was unfamiliar.
He needed something more; that was all he understood.
He slid his hands down to her shoulders and arms. He pulled her hard against him, and still searching for the elusive more, deepened the kiss.
She gave way as desert sands give way, sliding away while they drew one deeper. She dared now as she’d always done, answering his urgent searching with her own.
She didn’t know, either, what it was she looked for. He could sense it, that this world was strange to her, too. Here they were novices, though neither of them was innocent.
All the while, the careful walls they’d built to protect their friendship softened into sand and slid away.
He dragged his hands down to cup her bottom and crush her against his groin. She rubbed against him, unbearable provocation. He moved his hands restlessly over her breasts, but there was clothing in the way, too much of it. Infuriating.
He caught a fistful of skirt and dragged it up, but there was more—miles of skirts and petticoats. He kept pulling, drawing up more and more, while the fabric rustled so loudly, like a protest.
But she didn’t protest. She silently urged, inviting and daring him, her body moving against him, her mouth clinging to his. Their tongues’ toying and teasing had become a thrusting and parrying, a mimicry of coupling.
He made his way at last through the mountains of skirts, and his fingers grazed the edge of her stocking. Then his fingertips touched skin, velvety, feminine skin. He slid his fingers upward, toward the soft place between her legs. She gasped, and he gave a start, like a schoolboy caught at a prank.
Then her hand slid over the front of his trousers.
He inhaled sharply. At the same moment, he became aware of a crash. Metal on metal. Not far away. Near.
The kitchen. Aillier, banging pots.
If the pot had hit Lisle on the head, that would have been more effective, but it was enough to bring him back to the world, to where they were and what he was about. His wits—a part of them—returned. He broke the kiss, raised his head, and drew away a fraction.
She looked up at him, her head back, her eyes wide and dark, her hand still over the bulge in his trouser front.
She snatched her hand away.
He looked down regretfully, stupidly, at where her hand had been. He let go of her dress. It rustled its way down along her hips and legs.
“Lisle,” she said.
“That wasn’t what I meant to do,” he said. His voice was thick and dull. Dunce. “I meant . . .” He had to think.
Maybe he ought to bang his head against the wall.
“What you did in there,” he began. “You were brillia
nt. But . . . ye gods.”
She stepped back a pace. Her clothes were all every which way. Delicious. Terrible. What he’d done.
“It was a momentary exuberance,” she said. “We were carried away. We were excited because we could have been killed.”
“The ‘I don’t know what came over me’ excuse,” he said thickly. “That’s a good one. That’ll do.”
He looked so devastated.
Olivia understood why. He wasn’t like her. He had principles. He brimmed with duty and honor and loyalty—all the right things her stepfather had taught him.
Oh, she knew.
As to her—she didn’t need principles to be badly shaken. She’d come this close to losing her maidenhead. To him.
“It was my fault,” she said. “You know I’ve always lacked moral fiber. It’s the curse of the Dreadful DeLuceys. We’re all like that, except for my mother. But she’s an aberration.”
“We have to get out of here,” he said. “Now.”
“We can’t,” she said. “The servants will take one look at us and know we had a Clandestine Encounter.”
“They won’t know any such thing,” he said. “They’ll think we had a skirmish with the cook.”
She looked down at her dress. The bodice was twisted about. “This doesn’t look like a skirmish,” she said. She pulled it back into place and smoothed her skirts. Her hair was coming down, but it was no use asking Lisle to fix it.
“Go,” he said.
She moved past him and through the passage. He didn’t hurry ahead to open the door for her. She supposed he was waiting for his erection to subside. He had been prodigiously aroused—and she hadn’t needed to put her hand there to know how aroused, because it had been completely obvious, but. . .
She lacked moral fiber. Temptation came along and beckoned and she went, without a second thought.
He was far too exciting for an unprincipled woman to resist. He excited her even more when he was in a good mood than when, as at Stamford, he was in a bad one. This time her knees had completely melted away. If he had let go of her, she would have dissolved into a puddle of unresolved lust in the passage.