“I don’t see—”
She felt rather than saw him move, but it was so quick and smooth that he took her off guard. At one moment she was leaning forward toward the door’s window. In the next, his hands were under her arms, and he was lifting her, as easily as if she’d been a hatbox, out of her seat and onto his lap.
For an instant, she was too startled to react. It was only the briefest of moments, scarcely the blink of an eye. But when she started to push away from him, he caught one hand in the hair at the back of her head and brought her face close to his.
“Speaking of business, which you do incessantly, we have some of our own,” he said, his voice low and dangerous. “That isn’t finished, madame. It hasn’t even begun.”
“Don’t be stupid,” she said. Her voice was shaky. Her heart pumped wildly, as though she dangled from a ledge over an abyss.
She told herself he was only a man, and she understood men through and through. But her reasoning self hadn’t a prayer of being listened to.
He was strong and solid and warm. His size excited her. His beauty excited her. His power and arrogance excited her. That was the danger. She was weak in this way, her will and mind easily beaten down by the wantonness in her blood.
She felt the heat of his muscled thighs through the layers of her dress and petticoats, and the heat sped through her, upward and downward, stirring cravings she was hopeless at stifling. “I don’t want you,” she lied. “I want your duch—”
His mouth cut her off.
It was warm and firm and determined. Centuries earlier, his ancestors had taken what they wanted: lands, riches, women. Called it “mine,” and it was.
His mouth took hers in the same way, a siege of a kiss, single-minded, insistent, potent.
His mouth was a hedonist’s dream, luscious carnal sin. The feel of it, the unyielding pressure—a saint might have withstood it, but she hadn’t a saintly bone in her body. She gave way instantly. Her mouth parted to take him in, to find the taste of him on her tongue and to relish it, as she hadn’t let herself do the last time. He tasted of a thousand sins, and those sins were like honey to her.
Her hands, still braced on his chest to push away from him, now slid up, over the hard angles of the emerald and the crisp linen of his neckcloth and up. She pushed off his hat and let her fingers tangle in the thick curls, as they’d itched to do from the moment he’d bent over her hand in the Italian Opera House.
It was as stormy a kiss as the last time, but different. He was angry with her; she was angry with him. But far more than anger was at work between them. This time she wasn’t in control. She was drowning in feeling, in the taste of him, and the scent of his skin and the feel of his hard body under hers, and his hand so tight in her hair, possessive.
A lifetime had passed since a man had held her like this.
She knew—a part of her mind knew—she needed to break away from him. But first . . . oh, a little more. She rubbed her body against his, reveling in the heat and hardness of his, and feeling a jolt of triumph because his arousal was obvious even through the layers of her dress and petticoats. As that hard part pressed against her hip, heat and pleasure coursed through her, like a madness.
He made a sound deep in his throat, and broke the kiss. She should have pulled away then, but she wasn’t yet ready to stop. Then his mouth slid to her throat, trailing down and over her collarbone and up to her shoulder. She let out a little moan of pleasure and her head fell back, and she gave herself up to sensation: his big hands sliding over her, stirring up wants she’d shut away for years . . . his mouth on her, making a trail of kisses like little fires. They burned her skin and set fire to her inside, too, deep inside.
She wasn’t the only one inflamed. She heard his breathing grow harsher, and when his hand closed over her breast, she gasped and he growled again, deep in his throat. The low sounds they made mingled in the darkness, and she thought of panthers coupling in the shadows. She could have laughed, because the image fit so well.
He was a predator. So was she.
His mouth found hers once more, and he was moving his hands over her, taking possession. She was claiming him as well, running her hands over his muscled arms and taut torso. She thrilled as his body tensed under her touch. Every sign of his slipping control elated her, even while hers slipped, too.
She changed position and moved her hand down, to the front of his trousers, and spread her hand wide there, feeling the throb and heat of his phallus—and a great ducal one it was—and that wicked thought made her head swim—and, ye gods, how she wanted him! Her drunken mind filled with images: naked, sweating bodies . . . herself impaled and shrieking with pleasure.
Without breaking the kiss but deepening it instead, her tongue thrusting against his, she lifted herself up and turned to straddle him. In the closed space of the carriage, her skirt’s and petticoats’ rustling sounded like thunder.
He moved his hands over her shoulders, tugging down the dress. She heard—or felt—the silk rip. She didn’t care. He dragged the dress down, and pushed down the top of her corset. She felt the air on her exposed breasts before he broke the kiss to bring his mouth there. His tongue grazed her nipple and she groaned, and when he suckled, she gasped, and threw her head back, and laughed, and caught her hands in his hair and kissed the top of his head, again and again. But the tug on her breast tugged deep inside as well, low in her belly, making her impatient, squirming.
She let go of him to grasp her skirts and petticoats. She pulled them up, and his big hand slid over her thigh—
Light exploded, filling the carriage’s interior. It lasted only an instant, but it was an instant’s too-bright daylight, and it shocked and woke her from the mad dream she’d fallen into, even before the deafening crack shook the carriage.
She pushed his hand away, pushed down her skirt, and pulled up her bodice. She climbed down from his lap.
“Damnation,” he said thickly. “Just when it was getting interesting.”
Another blinding flash of light. A pause. More thunder.
She returned to her seat and tried to put her dress to rights. “It wasn’t supposed to get interesting, devil take me. I knew I oughtn’t to get into a vehicle with you, not when we were so wrought up. Stop the carriage. You must let me out.”
Lightning crackled again. And again. Thunder boomed, and it sounded like a war.
“You’re not going out in that,” he said.
“I most certainly am,” she said. She got up to wrestle with the window. She had to get it down to reach the door handle outside. Before she could do so, the carriage lurched to a stop, and she stumbled. He caught her, but she dug her nails into his hands.
He didn’t let go. “It was only a kiss,” he said.
“It was more than only,” she said. “If not for the lightning, we should have done exactly what I told you I absolutely will not, must not, cannot do.”
“That isn’t what you told me.”
“Were you even listening?”
“You didn’t say you would not must not cannot do it,” he said. “Not precisely. What you said, in so many words, was that your prospective London patrons mustn’t get wind of it.”
She wrenched away from him, and the carriage lurched into motion at the same time. This time she fell onto him. She wanted to stay, oh, how she wanted to stay. She wanted to climb onto his lap and wallow in his warmth and his strength and his touch. She made herself scramble away, pushing away his hands, and she flung herself onto her seat. It was the work of a few seconds, but it felt like a lifetime’s labor to her.
Resisting temptation was horrible.
“You split your hairs exceedingly fine,” she said breathlessly.
“And you thought I wasn’t listening,” he said.
“You chose to hear what a man would choose to hear,” she said.
“I’m a
man,” he said.
That ought not to strike her as the understatement of the decade, but it did.
A man, only a man, she told herself—but look at what he’d done, what she’d done.
Nothing ought to have happened as it had: the incendiary kiss, the speed with which reason and self-control had disintegrated—even for her, that was extreme. She had underestimated him or overestimated herself, and now she wanted to kill somebody because she couldn’t think of a way to have him without ruining everything.
If she hadn’t done that already.
Think. Think. Think.
The carriage stopped and she wanted to scream. Would this journey never end?
The door opened. An umbrella appeared, attached to the gloved hand of a drenched footman.
Clevedon started up from his seat.
“Don’t,” she said.
“I’m not accustomed to tossing women from the carriage and allowing them to make their own way to their doors.”
“I don’t doubt there’s a good deal you’re not accustomed to,” she said.
But he was already moving down the steps, and arguing with him wouldn’t make the footman any drier.
Ignoring the hand Clevedon offered, she stepped down quickly from the carriage and ran through the rain for the haven of the hotel’s portico. He ran after her. His legs were longer. He caught up in no time, and threw a sheltering arm about her for the last few feet.
“We need to talk,” he said.
“Not now,” she said. “Your footmen will catch their death.”
He glanced back, and there was enough light at the hotel entrance for her to make out the puzzled look on his handsome face.
“You can’t leave them standing in a downpour while we argue,” she said.
No doubt he did it all the time. To him, servants were merely animated furniture.
“I wasn’t intending to argue,” he said, “but I forgot. Talking with you is most usually an argument.”
“We can talk on Sunday,” she said.
“Later today,” he said.
“I’m engaged with Sylvie,” she said.
“Break the engagement.”
“I’m not free until Sunday,” she said. “You may take me riding in the Bois de Boulogne when it isn’t teeming with aristocrats showing off their finery. After Longchamp, the place will be relatively quiet.”
“I was thinking of a place not so public,” he said.
“I wasn’t,” she said. “But let’s not debate now. Send me a message on Saturday, and I’ll meet you on Sunday, wherever you choose, as long as it isn’t too disreputable. There are places even a lowly dressmaker shuns.”
“Wherever I choose,” he repeated.
“To talk,” she said.
“Yes, of course,” he said. “We have business to discuss.”
She was well aware that the business he wanted to discuss was not her shop and Lady Clara’s patronage thereof. She’d been a fool to imagine she could manage this man. She should have realized that a duke is used to getting his own way, to a degree common folk could scarcely imagine. She should have realized that getting his way all his life would affect his brain and make him not altogether like other men.
In short, she would have done better to keep out of his way and send Sophy after his bride-to-be.
But she hadn’t realized, and now she had to salvage the situation as best she could. She knew only one way to do that.
“I know your footmen are mere mechanical devices to you,” she said. “But I can only think that one or both of them is sure to take a chill, and develop a putrid sore throat or affection of the lungs. So bourgeois of me, I know, but I can’t help it.”
Again he glanced back. One footman stood at a discreet distance, holding the umbrella, awaiting his grace’s pleasure. The other stood on his perch at the back of the carriage. They’d both donned cloaks, which by now must be soaked through, in spite of their umbrellas.
“Until Sunday, then,” she said.
His gaze came back to her, unreadable. “Sunday it is.”
She smiled and said good night, and made herself stroll calmly through the door the hotel porter held open for her.
Clevedon strode briskly back to the coach, under the umbrella Joseph held.
He had to get her out of his mind. He had to regain his sanity.
He made himself speak. “Filthy night,” he said.
“Yes, your grace.”
“Paris isn’t pretty in the rain,” Clevedon said.
“No, your grace. The gutters are disgraceful.”
“What took us so long?”
“An accident, your grace,” Joseph said. “A pair of vehicles collided. It didn’t look serious to me, but the drivers were shouting at each other, then others got into it, and there was a bit of a riot. But when the lightning struck, they all scattered. Otherwise we might be boxed in there yet.”
The way Noirot had fussed about his poor, drenched footmen, Clevedon had expected to find them slumped on the ground, clutching their chests.
But when he’d looked back, Thomas was talking animatedly over the top of the carriage to Hayes, the coachman. And here was Joseph, full of youthful energy, though it must be close to two o’clock in the morning.
All three servants would have vastly enjoyed watching the Parisians pummel one another. They would have laughed uproariously when the lightning sent the combatants scurrying.
Hayes was a tough old bird who cared only how circumstances affected his horses, and he’d kept them calm. The footmen were young, and youth cared nothing for a bit of damp.
All of Clevedon’s servants were well paid and well dressed and well fed. They were doctored when they were ill and pensioned generously when they retired.
That wasn’t the case in every household, he knew, and a shopkeeper would have no way of knowing how well or ill his servants were treated. Being in the service line herself, Noirot was liable to attacks of sympathy.
Even so . . .
He climbed into the carriage. The door closed after him.
He didn’t trust her.
He didn’t trust her as far as he could throw her.
She cheated at cards—he was sure of it—or if she didn’t cheat, she shaved honesty mighty close.
She said she did not seduce her patron’s menfolk, but she’d—
“By God,” he muttered. “By God.” Her scent lingered in the carriage, and he could almost taste her still. He could almost feel her skin under his fingertips.
Only a kiss.
He’d gone from desire to madness in a single pulse beat.
He was still . . . not right.
And no wonder.
They would have to finish it. Then he could put her out of his mind and complete in peace his remaining weeks of freedom.
Chasing a provoking woman about Paris was not part of his plans, and certainly not in his style. He was accustomed to games with women, yes. He liked play as well as foreplay. But it was an altogether different matter, dancing to the tune of an impudent dressmaker who would not stop talking about her curst business—even if she made him want to laugh at the exact instant he wanted to choke her—and even if she kissed like Satan’s own mistress, trained specially by Mephistopheles, who’d helped design her body . . . her perfect breasts . . . the smooth arc of her neck . . . the exquisite curve of her ears . . .
Her wicked tongue.
Her lying tongue.
What engagement had she with Sylvie Fontenay that would occupy all of Friday and Saturday?
Meanwhile, at the Hotel Fontaine
“Pack?” Jeffreys repeated. Expecting Marcelline to come back late, she’d napped. She was brightly alert at the moment.
So was Marcelline. She was alert with panic. “We need to leave as early as possible
tomorrow. Today, I mean,” she said.
It was only two o’clock in the morning on Friday. If they could get seats on a steam packet to London on Saturday, they could be home as early as Sunday. The guests at the ball would not be writing their letters until later today, which meant they mightn’t be posted until Saturday. And the London post was closed on Sundays.
With any luck, she and Jeffreys would be in London before any letters arrived from Paris. That would give Sophy time to devise a way to capitalize on any rumors about Mrs. Noirot and the Duke of Clevedon.
“We haven’t a minute to lose,” she said. “By Tuesday or Wednesday, the rumors will be flying. We have to manage them.”
Jeffreys didn’t say, “What rumors?” She was not naïve and she was not stupid. She knew Marcelline had attended the ball with the Duke of Clevedon. She’d noticed the torn dress. She’d even raised an eyebrow. But it was an interested eyebrow, not a shocked or censorious one. Jeffreys was no innocent lamb. She’d had dealings with the upper orders, especially its male contingent. That was how she’d ended up as “an unfortunate female.”
No one had to tell her how the dress had come to be damaged. Her concern was whether the damage was reparable.
“It’s all a matter of interpretation,” Marcelline said. “We simply reinterpret. Something like—let me see—‘Duke of C captivated by Mrs. Noirot’s gown of poussière silk displayed to magnificent advantage in the course of a waltz,’ ” Marcelline said, thinking aloud. “No, it wants more detail. ‘Gown of poussière silk, dotted with crimson papillon bows, a black lace pelerine completing the ensemble . . . met with the approval of one of the highest ranking members of the peerage.’ Yes, that could do it.”
“I can mend it easily,” said Jeffreys. “Everyone will want to see it.”
“They will see it, if we manage this properly,” Marcelline said. “But that means taking charge of the tale before anyone else gets it. Sophy can give her contact at Foxe’s Morning Spectacle an exclusive, early report. She’ll tell him the Duke of Clevedon took me to the party as one of his jokes. Or to win a wager.”
“Wouldn’t a joke be better?” said Jeffreys. “To some people, a wager might sound disreputable.”