“Really?”
Lord George was staring at her intently, with far more concentration than he had paid her before. “You do not think human warmth, human companionship, are necessary?”
“Of course they are,” she said hurriedly. “But – ”
“You do not believe that without them, we are lost?” He had stood up now, and Florence tilted her head to keep eye contact with him. “You do not know that without that connection, we become almost less human?”
Florence’s stomach shifted again, but it was not in discomfort. “No – no, that is not what I am saying, I just – ”
“Sometimes,” and Lord George spoke in a low voice now, so low she had to tilt her head upwards towards him to hear every word. “Sometimes in the depths of loneliness, when it feels as though one is an island than no others can reach, the simplest thing can make the biggest difference.”
And now he was kneeling before her, and Florence gasped aloud as he took one of her hands in his own, and it was warm, and rough, and it sent a spark of something she could not describe through her arm and her stomach was warm but it was not quite her stomach and her eyes could not look away from his own.
“Sometimes,” Lord George said with a handsome smile, “just the smallest touch is enough to feel more. To feel connection. To feel love.”
Florence’s breathing was shallow, and her hand was on fire and her head felt thick and she knew she did not want Lord George to let go of her hand. It was intoxicating. It was ridiculous. It was beyond anything she had experienced.
Lord George’s smile softened, and in a swift motion he broke the connection, removing his hand and turning away from her. “That is what I would describe as a necessity.”
5
A loud scream pierced the night, and both Florence and Lord George jumped.
“What was that?” Florence whispered, her fingers unconsciously twisting in her lap. They had spent almost an hour in silence, but now the mob seemed to be moving closer once more.
To think, she had come to this grey and dreary country to get away from such things.
“. . . safe here.” Lord George had spoken quietly. “As long as we do not make our presence known, there is every chance we will survive the night.”
“Su-survive the night?” Florence rose from her chair, unable to remain still for a moment longer. “Dio, I cannot believe this: I came to this dockyard for one simple purpose, and now I am trapped in this godforsaken room with a – ”
“I hope I am not about to be offended,” Lord George spoke lazily, lounging now on the bed once more.
She tried to keep her wandering eyes away from him, for each and every time they rested on him, her heart seemed to twist uncomfortably.
“When do you think we will be able to leave?”
A dry laugh echoed from behind her as she peered through the cracked window. “What am I, some sort of mystic? I know naught of these types of things, Miss Capria, this is not the sort of company I generally keep!”
Florence bit her lip. She would surely miss another opportunity to get to Italy, and then it would be another day here, in London. In England. In the location of her failure.
“Why are you so frantic to return to Italy, anyway?”
She turned around, skirts swishing, to see Lord George was staring at her with a piercing look.
“You murmured something – something I did not entirely catch, but it seemed pertinent, when the fight broke out.” His dark eyes were boring into her, and Florence found, somehow, she did not mind the intrusion.
There was nowhere else to sit, so Florence returned to the solitary chair beside the bed, careful not to trip over the long legs sprawled across the floor.
“Well,” she said quietly, trying not to look at him, “I left Italy two years ago. Now I would like to go back.”
If she had thought he would be happy with that, she was wrong.
“Come now,” said George, smiling up at her, and trying to ignore the pull of his loins that were growing ever stronger now he saw the curve of her collarbone, the sparkle in her eye. “There must be a more interesting story than that.”
He watched as she caught her breath, saw the struggle across her brow, and marvelled at the delicate beauty of a woman who did not know her own power. Why, if she but leaned over a foot, they could –
“My mother, as you know, is a . . . cortigiana.” Her voice seemed to flutter rather than speak, it was so soft. George shifted across a few inches on the bed. “When I turned twenty-one, I decided I no longer want to be a part of such a household. Mafia, you understand. Being your own mistress, as a woman, is not highly regarded in Italy. In some areas, it is a little more dangerous.”
Florence – Miss Capria, he must consider her Miss Capria – smiled fleetingly. “I do love my mother, signore, you must not think that I do not. But I wanted to see more of the world than the streets of our city, and she had no wish to come with me. I had seen enough violence, enough fighting, to last a lifetime. You cannot imagine what it is like to live in a town controlled by the Mafia. I wanted to leave.”
George tried not to frown. A mother who would just let her daughter wander the world? “She did not attempt to stop you?”
A bitter laugh, a shake of the head, the glint of the firelight in her eye. “No. No, I think my mother had been waiting a few years for the conversation we had that night, and it came as no surprise to her that I was ready to be beyond her keeping.”
“Mothers and daughters,” said George quietly. “Fathers and sons. It often happens that way.”
A spark of understanding passed between them, and George felt a heady tug below his navel.
“I went to France, at first,” Florence had continued, pulling her pelisse from her shoulders and laying it carefully on the back of the chair. “I spent six months there, working as a lady’s maid. I was a little coarse for the French – ”
“Aren’t we all?”
“ – but I was not happy. I had heard such stories,” and now a smile appeared, and George started at its loveliness. The tired lines, the despondent air: both had completely disappeared, and the Florence Capria now looking at him would not have been out of place at a debutante ball. “Stories of London, of the Regent’s London, of writers and poets and gentlemen and dances – oh, you could not imagine my hopes!”
“I think you will find I can,” said George, heavily. “Remember, I was born here. I was raised on the same stories you were fed on, and I can tell you from my own experience: it is all true.”
Florence smiled sadly, almost with a pitying look. “Perhaps for you, my lord. For the rest of us, it is nothing but hard work, struggle, and despondency. I had been here a twelvemonth when I realised that, despite my mother’s harsh words, she had spoken the truth. I was not happy in France, and I was not happy in London.”
George stared at her, compassion filling him. “You are a woman who has travelled the world in search of happiness; that is more than many of us do. You are braver than most.”
“Braver, perhaps. And stupido.” Florence rolled her eyes. “The idea that I will be returning home fills me with joy, but the fact is that I will never be able to admit to my mother, the great cortigiana of my town, that she was right.”
He frowned. “Why not?”
“She died,” replied Florence lightly. “Almost a year ago, but the letter only now reached me, it had been waiting for me in Paris, but I did not return. So now I return to the Italy of my family to rebuild my life, without family whatsoever. Though I suppose it removes the burden of admitting I was wrong.”
“No child likes to admit that to a parent,” agreed George. His feet were mere inches from hers. If he just stretched out . . .
“And no parent will ever admit it to their child,” she said quietly. “It is one of the things I will always attempt to do, if I am ever blessed with children.”
George’s imagination was suddenly overcrowded with images of small, dark haired children; children
with his eyes, nattering away in Italian. What was he thinking – was he mad? How was this woman, a woman he had met but two hours ago, having such power over him?
“I am sorry you did not find what you wanted here,” he found himself saying.
Florence looked up at him, her eyebrows puckered together slightly as though attempting to understand him. “Thank you,” she said finally. “I am not alone, I think, in finding my life to be unlike the one I had wanted.”
He shrugged nonchalantly – or as nonchalantly as he was able. “You are perceptive, Miss Capria.”
“Call me Florence.”
Three words; three short words that seemed to echo in the tiny room for seconds afterwards. George found his mouth had dropped open slightly, and a warm blush and, he was astonished to see, a smile were creeping over her face.
“I beg your pardon?” He said, his voice unusually deep.
She laughed, and it was a genuine laugh now, perhaps the first one he had heard uttered from her lips, and it stirred his loins painfully once more. “It seems ridiculous that I am permitted to call you ‘Lord George’, and you must call me ‘Miss Capria’. My name is Florence: I think it is bellissima, and so I see no reason why you should not use it.”
George swallowed. You are out of your depth here, he told himself. There is something happening; something you do not understand, something beyond your ken.
But he could not look away from her, and he found himself hoping that whatever it was, it did not stop.
“Florence, then. You are perceptive in seeing that my life is, perhaps, not what I had hoped for.” George struggled to keep his mind away from Honoria, and found suddenly that it was no longer a struggle. The pain that had seared his heart was dull. “But then, it is not unusual for people of my rank to go through life just making the motions.”
“Making the motions?”
George smiled, and Florence answered his smile. “Pretending.”
“Ah.” She nodded. “That is not a thing the Italians, we do well.”
A moment passed between them: a moment of knowing, of knowledge, of understanding. George’s breath caught in his throat as he connected with the most beautiful woman, and he could acknowledge it now, he had ever met. He wanted her. He could no longer deny it, and if she had been willing he would have dragged her off that chair and pulled her down with him into that bed, small as it was, and –
“So who was this woman?”
Her words cut across his thoughts like a knife, and it seared his heart. “Woman?”
She looked at him with wide eyes. “Do not attempt to hide it from me, George. It is quite obvious you were hurt before. Tell me about her.”
Though his thoughts had often wandered to Honoria, it felt slightly unnatural to consider her when such a woman as Florence was before him. “Honoria? Why, she was a girl I knew from childhood. A woman I thought I loved, until she decided that she did not consider me in such a regard.”
The words held little pain as he said them aloud, like drawing poison from a wound. He shivered slightly. “I heard she married and was widowed, but that was the last I heard of her. I think, deep in my heart, I had hoped . . .”
It felt almost childish now he thought about it.
“That she would return to you?” Florence’s words were gentle, and George smiled.
“It was a foolish thought, and it did not happen. And perhaps that was right. I am certainly not the man that loved her five years ago.”
She was staring at him as though she was seeing him again for the first time. “And yet, you suffered.”
George nodded simply. “And yet I am not alone in that, and I am sure I will suffer again – and experience great joy. Losing one’s first love is almost a prerequisite of life, is it not?”
Florence laughed, and his body stiffened at the sound. “I would say so. The poets would have us believe such a notion.”
“And yet my life would be a perfect example of how this can extend even beyond the usual pain.” George had no idea why he said that; it just seemed to pour out of him, coming from a place in his soul that he rarely travelled in.
She was looking at him curiously now. “Usual pain?”
He smiled bitterly. “Titles are not everything, Florence. My mother died suddenly in a fire, and of my three brothers, only one still speaks to me. A rupture between siblings is a terrible thing, and when you are the innocent party let to suffer the punishment, you start to feel more alone than one could possibly imagine.”
“I . . . I am so sorry.” And she meant it, too; he could see in Florence’s eyes that she felt his pain, understood it somehow. “You do not think it is possible, nel futuro, to reconcile with your brothers?”
George considered for a moment. “Tom and Harry are, perhaps, a little older now. They could be a little wiser. They may understand now that no one was to blame for the fire, that it was a terrible accident.”
She shifted a little where she sat, and surveyed him thoughtfully. After a full minute, Florence said, “I think they are suffering just as much as you are. Lonely people are often close to other lonely people, that is what I find. You may discover they are just as ready to be a family again.”
Delving into his heart’s secrets was not something George had expected to do that evening, and it was all the more disconcerting when he was affixed with those large eyes, that voice that seemed to melt his voice whenever he came to speak.
“One day,” he managed. “Perhaps.” If only he could keep his thoughts on more socially acceptable topics: all he could wonder at now was just what that delicate gown was hiding, and how much resistance it would put up if he attempted to rip it from her shoulders.
Florence smiled wistfully. “Well, I am glad you have survived such a trying time. As for me, the only family that I have ever known was in Italy, and as I am here, I do not think that I will embark on a ship this night,” Florence said, and George’s wild imaginations were brought to a hasty conclusion. “I am completely lost, anyway, and I do not think I would be able to find my way back in the dark. I will have to wait for morning.”
George coughed, trying to remove the thought of Florence arched underneath him in pleasure. “We cannot be that lost; we did not run for long, and I will, of course, accompany you back to the docks when it is safe to do so.”
A giggle escaped her, and George unconsciously returned the smile. “What is so amusing?”
Florence smiled joyfully. “You must admit, it is rather ridiculous. I am lost with a Lord!”
His deep laugh joined hers. “It is an unusual circumstance, I will admit – but if I was going to be punched, chased by an angry mob, and barricaded inside a small and dingy room, I would not want to do it with anyone else.”
His words surprised him: they had risen, unbidden, and escaped him before he was able to put any censoring thought into them. Completely truthful, they made Florence laugh all the more, her shoulders shaking and her bosom rising in a way that made his stomach lurch again.
“That is remarkably comforting,” she said quietly, still smiling. “You are very unlike most men, Lord George.”
“George, please.”
“George, then.” Florence smiled at him. Her blue gown, torn along the skirts and ripped by one shoulder, revealed soft skin glistening in the firelight.
George swallowed. This was not the time to lose his head; Florence had made her opinion perfectly clear.
“It is so strange,” said Florence, musingly. “It is almost like we have known each other for quite some time, do not you think? We have discussed topics I never seem to get to with my own acquaintances.”
George nodded. “How many friends actually speak like this; for hours at a time? No, it is usually five minutes before a card game, or ten minutes between a dance.”
Was her breathing faster, or was it just his wild imagination, trying to take him back to that heady moment.
“I feel as though I have known you for years, George,” she said, her to
ngue tripping over his name. “As though we have shared stories for decades, as though you know all of my most intimate secrets.”
“I suppose that, to some extent, you do,” he admitted. “No one else knows why I came to the dockyards tonight, and I doubt whether many of your acquaintances here know any details about your mother.”
She shivered, and George’s heart beat faster. Everything about her was attracting him to her, and she did not even know it. It was to be sweet torture then, staying in this cage of a room with her for hours on end, unable to touch, unable to taste –
“Thank you,” said Florence as she shivered once more. “I like you, my lord, though you may find it strange to hear that. You are a good man.”
Her eyes flickered down to him as she leaned forwards slightly on the chair. “And a handsome man, I will admit. Though of course, you already know that.”
If she had not spoken this way, George surely would not have acted. If those words had not left her lips, those pink and welcoming lips, then surely he would have been able to restrain himself.
But she did speak, and those words of honesty, tinged with desire, were enough to drive him over a cliff face he had known he was dancing too close to the edge.
Gathering up his discarded greatcoat in one hand, George moved forward onto his knees before her.
“You are cold,” he said in a low voice, brimming with passion. “Here.”
In a swift movement, he swung the greatcoat around her shoulders, and then clasped her hands in his own.
“Thank you,” she whispered, her eyes staring deeply into his own.
George hesitated for a moment. Once he stepped over this line, he would know; he would feel her reaction, she would not need to spell it out in words. Either he was welcome, or . . .
“No,” she said quietly.
6
He drew back instantly. “My apologies, Floren – Miss Capria, I did not mean to offend you.”
It was difficult to look at her, difficult to concentrate on anything with her so beautiful and his body so ready to possess her, but George forced himself to look up. To his relief, she did not look angry, or fearful.