Caroline expected Jude to move forward and join her, but he remained seated behind her, out of sight yet an ever-present being at her back.
“Did I tell you how very lovely you look tonight?” His voice stirred the tendrils of hair looped over her neck.
“Thank you.” She smoothed the skirt again, loving the feel of her silk gloves over the velvet opera dress. The skirt was constructed of tiers of color, starting with a light blue on her bodice and the top tier and descending in color increments to a midnight blue at the hem. Caroline had been in doubt about wearing something so unusual, but she’d recognized the genius when she donned the gown. It was glorious.
Daisy had curled her hair into ringlets and placed a single red rose above her ear. The duchess had insisted on loaning her an intricate sapphire necklace set in gold and sprinkled with diamonds and matching earrings. The buzz that had followed Caroline as she walked with the duchess confirmed it—worn with a ruffled mantle of the same light blue as the bodice, this costume would set the trend for months to come. “The gown is beautiful.”
“I would say it was the wearer who makes the gown beautiful.”
She took a deep breath of air heated by Jude’s passion. Or was it her passion? She didn’t know. She didn’t dare guess.
His arm reached around her. His hand took hers, and he held it. Just held it. She stared blindly at the stage where the soprano held forth and let the warmth of his clasp seep into her soul. Why did she care? If he’d intimately stroked her, she would have responded. Of course she would, because she couldn’t not. But when he held her hand, just held it, she felt…safe. Protected. Cherished.
And no amount of common sense could convince her otherwise. Why did he affect her like this? She refused to look deeply into the reasons. Whatever they were, she didn’t want to know.
As they watched the first act, her fingers tingled where he touched her—and the fingers on her other hand tingled, too. It was as if a single touch from him ignited her whole body.
On the stage, the baritone sang of love unfulfilled. The soprano flirted and danced. The music soared and reached, while Caroline’s heart soared with it.
It had been so long since she’d felt like this, she couldn’t diagnose her own mood. Finally, she realized—she was happy.
It wouldn’t last. Experience had taught her that. But for this moment, she basked in perfect happiness.
“I think only of last night.” Jude’s lips touched her ear, moved with delicate precision as he quietly spoke. “I can’t forget it for a moment. I want to have you touch me again.” He freed his hand from hers. “No, more than that—I want to touch you.”
The sound of his voice made her eyes close. She tilted her head down, enamored of his scent, his sound, his words. “We can’t. What I did—”
“We did.”
“What we did was a momentary wildness.”
“You…you are wildness itself.” His voice was buttery soft, gentle…inciting. “You’re brave and courageous. You dare to bind a man and take what you want of him. Only you could do that, Caroline. Only you.”
She thrilled at the sound of her name on his lips. She thrilled at his praise. She knew he was back there, out of her sight, lurking in the darkness, and the heat of his body transferred to hers. She needed air; she breathed deeply and took in more of his scent, his heat. He was infecting her with desire.
His lips slid to the tender place behind her ear, a whispery caress, a hint of a shiver.
Her breath caught, held, the shard of memory sharp and piercing. Of holding him within her, of pain and ecstasy.
His hand slid up her arm, massaged her shoulder, then slid down to cup her breast. He hadn’t touched her last night. She hadn’t loosened his hands to allow it. Now she realized her mistake. Her breast swelled, aching with a passion she remembered only too well. His fingers brushed softly across her nipple; it beaded.
Yet this was different. He touched her. Her toes curled inside her soft slippers. The blood rushed in her veins. The dark surrounding them loosened all inhibitions. She was wild, carnal, an element of nature, alone with the man who brought her to life.
On the stage, men and women sang.
In the other boxes and on the floor, people watched.
Behind her, the duchess slept.
No one knew what Jude was doing to her, and Caroline loved the secrecy of it. The illicit thrill of knowing they should not touch here at the opera. They shouldn’t touch at all, ever, anywhere, and they defied convention and propriety and everything she had worshipped and obeyed.
“Jude…” His name exited her lips on the merest exhale, an injunction, a plea.
“Yes, my darling girl.”
She felt his smile against her cheek. He turned her head to his and kissed her. A single, close-lipped press of the lips. Yet she had sampled his flavor of passion before, and now she recognized his declaration of intent. She relished it. Blindly, she lifted her hand and laid it against his jaw.
Lifting his mouth, he whispered, “I’ve dreamed about you. About doing to you what you did to me.”
His voice rasped along her nerves, deep and restive, compelling memory when she would prefer to be guiltless, without a past, without reliving the sensation of his skin against hers. Opening her eyes, she saw half of his face, dimly lit by the stage lights. The other half was in darkness, inscrutable, unknowable. His eyes glinted like dark jewels, all his purpose bent on her.
She had a sense about Jude…he seemed more alone than any man she’d ever met. She thought he was a man who carried a burden.
That was ridiculous, for he dressed like, acted like, a fool. Her imaginings were just that, imaginings.
His arm hugged her waist, then grasped her skirt and bunched it in his fist. He lifted and bunched, lifted and bunched.
“No,” she whispered, but she didn’t stop him.
“No one can see. It’s dark. We’re behind the rail. Mum is asleep,” he whispered urgently. “No one knows what we’re doing here.”
But she shouldn’t let him. This was disgraceful behavior at the opera. Disgraceful behavior anywhere. They could be caught. They could be humiliated. Yet she grew damp at the mere idea that he would touch her here in the magnificence of the Royal Italian Opera House while the sound of violins swelled around them and magnificent voices exalted love.
He pulled her skirt up to her waist. Her petticoats rustled. His palm stroked her knee above her garter, and the thin material of her drawers allowed her to feel each tender touch as if it were on her skin. His hand ascended her thigh. He opened the slit in her drawers, and when his fingertips brushed the curled hair over her most feminine parts, he goaded her toward anguish and pleasure.
She reached for his wrist, wrapped her fingers around it, tugged him away.
And he placed her hand on the arm of her chair. Again his voice brushed her ear. “No, Caroline. It’s your turn to hold fast and suffer while I take my pleasure of you.”
“Why should I do that?” she whispered, her voice tentative.
“Because that’s fair.”
“Fair? I don’t care about fair. I like being in charge.” She spoke with betraying honesty.
“You’ll like this, too.” Lifting the curls of her hair, he kissed the nape of her neck. He had made her a promise.
As he urged her thighs apart, she stared straight forward, her unseeing gaze fixed on the gilt and paint above the stage. His thumb slid into her folds and he opened her to his touch. Her lunge of desire took her by surprise. His fingers danced across her, gentle as a mist, yet she soared as high as the soprano’s notes. She gripped the chair. She bit her lower lip hard enough to bring tears to her eyes, yet she dared not make a sound. If she did, someone might hear, and although they sang onstage, she felt certain that everyone would recognize the cry of a woman whose body ripened with yearning.
His fingertips taunted her. He fondled her, skimming her womanly nub in slow circles, then moving down and sliding around the en
trance to her body. Her desire increased. The moisture increased. She wanted him to put his finger inside her. She wanted…she wanted him inside her. She was insensible with need, desperate for satisfaction. In the cradle of darkness, her hips swayed, moved in a seated dance that beckoned with primitive grace. She was woman. He was man. The trappings of civilization around them meant nothing compared to the demands of her body.
As if the whole opera house moved toward the same climax, the music rose to a crescendo. The singers gathered on the stage and warbled their approval—and abruptly, they were through.
The music stopped. The curtain fell.
Conversations broke out everywhere. The attendants moved rapidly through the crowd to light the lights.
Jude lowered her skirt. He kissed her cheek, a tender nuzzle that seemed to make promises—but he said nothing.
From the back of the box, Nicolette’s voice asked, “Is it finally over?”
“It’s the interlude. We have the third act to go.” His voice sounded reasonable, not gripped by unfulfilled desire.
Caroline was gripped. Caroline had been teased to the edge of climax…and abandoned. Abandoned, her body tense, swollen, ready. She remained in her seat, her gaze watching the box opposite as if interested by the footman who lit the lamp and the people who stretched and spoke.
Silently she cursed the opera with its dreadful timing and the lights and the noise. She disliked the audience and everyone in it. She hated the whole lot, because she needed release. Never had she been so aware of being a woman, of her body’s urgent requirements. She needed to be alone with Jude, and she needed it now.
“We’ll have visitors.” Nicolette’s chair scraped back, and her voice moved close. “My friends will be here, as well as Caroline’s, and we’ll have the people who want to view the woman who routed Lady Freshfield. In addition, we’ll have the young ladies you’re attracting, Jude.”
Caroline didn’t want to stand, but Jude put his hand under her elbow and urged her to her feet.
Of course she had to behave normally. She could scarcely howl her frustration to the crowd. But her legs wobbled and her smile stretched her lips in a parody of sweetness. She felt uncoordinated, her movements as jerky as a marionette’s.
Something of her distress must have shown in her face, for Nicolette frowned. She took Caroline’s hand. “Dear girl, are you all right? You’re trembling!”
Caroline could scarcely tell her the truth. It would be too humiliating. It would result in her dismissal. And it wouldn’t help. Nothing could help. “It’s the music,” she said. “It moves me.”
Jude slid a sideways look at her, a smiling glance that mocked her story.
And in shock, she realized—he had done this on purpose. For some nefarious reason of his own, he had teased her, brought her almost to climax—then left her unfulfilled.
Chapter 22
Jude saw the moment Caroline realized what he’d done.
Her eyes widened, her nostrils pinched. She fought with disbelief—so he smiled at her, sending her a message she couldn’t misconstrue.
He had played her like the finest violin, taunted her with thwarted desire, and he relished her frustration. Let her know what it was to be at the mercy of a ruthless lover.
Yet he’d created one insoluble problem…he was as frustrated as she was. The footmen were even then lighting the lamps on their sconces. Guests would soon be wending their way to visit the duchess, her stepson, and the infamous Miss Ritter. If anyone glanced at his trousers, they’d see the evidence of his desire.
This would not do. This wouldn’t do at all.
Turning away, he stood at the rail and looked down at the floor as if the antics there fascinated him.
Mum joined him. “What do you see?”
It was what he didn’t want her to see that mattered, so he shrugged and muttered, “Just watching.”
“You’re so evasive,” she said in exasperation. “You were always a private young man, very contained, not given to confidences or to wild acts of exuberance, and since you’ve come back from the Continent, you’ve been the exact opposite. I don’t understand you and your clothes and your silly mannerisms. I swear that you show every emotion—and I wouldn’t give you a ha’pence for any of them. I can’t believe that you’ve changed so much.”
And he couldn’t believe she had chosen now to express her complaints. He didn’t need word of Mum’s doubts to come to the ears of Bouchard and de Guignard. That would be disaster indeed.
Even worse, Caroline walked up on the other side of Mum, and he did not want her to question his behavior. Not when she knew him better than any other person in this world. Not when he felt as if she’d been so close to him that she lived in his skin.
“I haven’t changed,” he assured Mum with equal parts bravado and deceit. “France opened my mind to a new life of fashion and pleasure. I always wanted to give myself over to those things, but until France I didn’t know how.”
“Is he really so different, Your Grace?” Caroline asked with taut civility. “To me he seems to be so perfectly without thought.”
“Actually, I’m not without thought at all.” He bowed mockingly at Caroline. “I am quite deliberate in my…pleasures.”
Caroline tossed her head in disdain, and with her chin tilted at that angle and her mouth curled with scorn, she looked untouchable, distant…a challenge.
The memory of the night before, the sight and the feel of her today, drove him to a madness of need. Jude had always thought of himself as sensible, but a suspicion niggled at him; this recklessness, the madness of desire seemed to arise from some hitherto hidden part of himself. It was as if Caroline mined the depths of his soul and brought forth a new metal, unknown, shiny…and unpredictable.
“Jude is pretending to be someone else,” Mum declared.
He took a sharp breath of dismay.
“Who is he pretending to be?” Caroline’s voice was as warm as the North Sea in February.
“His brother.” Mum placed her hand on his arm. “But he isn’t Michael, and I feel as if I’ve lost both of my older sons. I want my Jude back.”
“Oh, Mum…” Jude recognized a plea when he heard one. He needed to become himself again for, as he was, he was hurting his father, his stepmother, his younger brother…and Caroline. Once again it was borne in on Jude that he had to get this Moricadian business finished as soon as possible and at last go on to live his life as he wished to live.
In a tone that urged confession, Mum said, “If you have something to tell me, Jude, I wish you’d just…” She trailed off. She stiffened.
He looked where she looked. He saw what she saw. He wanted to groan. Walking down the stairs off the stage was Miss Gloriana Dollydear, and Garrick Throckmorton stood offering her his hand to help her down.
Throckmorton couldn’t have been more ill suited to the role of bon vivant. Jude grinned to see him look so uncomfortable and impatient.
Luckily, Throckmorton had such a reputation as a humorless stick that Mum didn’t notice his lack of enthusiasm, and she hissed, “That jackass. His wife is increasing, and he’s here romancing a lightskirt!”
“Now, Mum, we don’t know that for sure.” Jude could think of no one with whom he wanted to talk less about mistresses than his stepmother—unless it was Caroline. Caroline, whose eyes glittered with the brittle fury of a woman tormented and forsaken.
“He’s kissing her wrist.” Mum’s petite figure radiated fiery indignation. “What would you call it?”
“Admiration for her singing?” Jude suggested.
“Feeble!” Mum said. “Jude Edward George Durant, you’re not making an excuse for Mr. Throckmorton’s activities, are you?”
Jude surrendered to the inevitable. “No. No, of course not. It’s disgusting. The old lecher should be shot.”
“Lord Huntington finds that it’s not wise for him to make excuses for bad behavior.” Caroline’s voice was pure vitriol. “He’s so splendid at wic
kedness himself.”
“Comte de Guignard is in the box across the way, Miss Ritter, and he has bowed to you.” Jude felt no compunction about changing the subject, and even less about what he’d done to Caroline in the dark.
She solemnly curtsied to de Guignard.
In the light of a thousand golden flames, Caroline’s skin glowed like muted sunlight. Oddly, the blue-green of her eyes caught a gold tint, also, and shone so brightly Jude understood why men had attempted to kill themselves for love of her. He hoped de Guignard was ready to cast himself off a cliff for her.
Guilt niggled at Jude. He’d promised himself that she wouldn’t be exposed to danger, and now he encouraged her kindness, knowing Comte de Guignard would construe it as interest—and knowing, also, that Bouchard watched his compatriot with a narrowed gaze. Jude saw his impatience with de Guignard’s unrequited love, for Bouchard’s intent never wavered. He had no weakness except for his impatience. He felt no kindness except for himself. He needed de Guignard for his entry into society, nothing more, and Jude sensed in him a keenness to finish the job for which they’d come, and an anticipation about its execution.
Bouchard loved to kill.
“Look, Caroline, there, down on the level below. Young Turgoose is trying to get your attention,” Mum said.
“Yes, by making an idiot of himself.” Jude grinned unrepentantly at his friend as Goose waved and pantomimed adoration for Caroline.
With a smile and a wave, Caroline curtsied to Turgoose. “It’s good to know that no one is using me to attract dear Goose to our company.”
Did she know…? Did she suspect…? As Jude stared at her, trying to comprehend her mind, he saw her rather than heard her draw a breath. A startled, terrified breath.
A glance showed him her nightmare. Freshie loitered in the box down and across from them. He stared directly at Caroline. He didn’t smile; he projected menace, so much menace that he made the air toxic and the temperature plunge.