“I didn’t know,” he said. His voice was hoarse.
She could barely find hers. When she spoke it sounded like a drunkard’s. “Didn’t know what?”
“This is your first time, isn’t it?” It was an accusation.
“I’ve been busy,” she said.
One long, pulsing moment. Then he let out a thick laugh and shook his head, and bent and kissed her.
“It’s pointless to stop now,” she said when he raised his head.
“I’m not stopping,” he said. “It’s too damned late for that.”
He settled back onto his haunches, and hooked her legs over his arms. She felt the place where he was wedged give way a degree, and the squeezed feeling eased. He moved inside her, and her muscles relaxed a little more. And soon the moment of disturbance passed. The feelings flooded back, and the heat and pleasure and excitement of having him inside her, of being joined, smothered qualms and fears.
He went on moving inside her, slowly, and her body gave way, accommodating him. The heat built, and she was vibrating again, the way she’d done before, only this was more feverish and powerful. He thrust into her again and again, and her body answered his rhythm. It was like dancing in a storm, like riding ocean waves. She forgot discomfort, forgot everything but him and this rapturous joining.
Once again, the feelings pulsed inside and seemed to carry her upward, as though some god carried her to Olympus. On and on, the mortal world hot and pulsing, and feelings, the great storm cloud of feelings, swirling about her and inside her. At last she reached her destination, a long, soaring moment of pure joy, and then release. Then he sank onto her and kissed her, and she drifted down to the world again, her hands tangled in his hair.
Chapter Eleven
There is a most scandalous story about a certain English Mr. H. at Paris, and two orphan children of a German baron by an English wife: we shall wait to hear if it has reached our correspondent’s circle.
—Lady’s Magazine & Museum, March 1835
The chaise longue was narrow, not meant for two people. But when Lisburne moved to take his weight off Leonie, she turned in his arms and tangled her legs with his and fit herself against him as easily as though they’d practiced for years. Then they had room enough, all the room they needed, which was to say none at all between them, though he was no longer inside her.
He was cooling and calming, and a part of him was sliding into sleep, one hand resting so comfortably on her hip. Yet a fragment of his being clung to wakefulness. That was the part where his conscience was working itself into a frenzy—now, when it was too late, after it had lain about in a stupor during all the time when it might have made itself useful.
He said, “Are you all right?”
She had her face nestled against his shoulder, and the words came out slightly muffled. “Now I know why Venus wore that look. She was thinking, ‘What just happened? Am I all right? How can he sleep at a time like this?’ ”
It wasn’t remotely like any answer Lisburne had expected. Tears, shame, fear, guilt—weren’t those the usual reactions?
He should have known better. This was Leonie, who’d stood motionless for at least a quarter hour in front of his painting. She’d done it because, he now understood, she had been trying to organize and arrange it in her mental ledger.
“He sleeps,” he said, pushing aside his qualms for the moment, “because he feels as though he’s performed all the labors of Hercules in the space of a few minutes. In the most enjoyable way possible. But still . . .”
“It takes a lot out of a man,” she said. “I understand that now.”
Now she understood. Thanks to him. Other men, he knew, delighted in virgins and paid high prices for them. Those men were not Simon Blair, the fourth Marquess of Lisburne. His father had told him that a true gentleman had intimate relations with only one virgin, and that was his bride, on the wedding night.
Lisburne had only himself to blame for what had happened. Leonie was a novice. No matter how sophisticated she seemed, she was inexperienced. Lisburne, who had abundant experience, was the one responsible. He ought to have known better. He ought to have seen. But he’d been willfully blind.
Now, when it was too late, he remembered the clues: the tentative way she’d first kissed him, the sense he’d had of her learning as she went along. Gad, hadn’t she told him?
I may be inexperienced but I learn very quickly, and whatever I learn to do, I am determined to do extremely well.
Inexperienced. He’d made the word mean what he wanted it to mean. He’d barely acknowledged the possibility she was an innocent. He’d dismissed it as highly improbable. She was one and twenty. She was a milliner who’d lived in Paris. She was sophisticated, and it was a deeper sophistication than the mere Town bronze debutantes acquired after a Season or two.
Yes, that made virginity unlikely. It didn’t make it impossible.
His intellect, in whose logic he took so much pride, must have logically allowed for the possibility. But he’d let desire and vanity overwhelm his judgment. He’d refused to see the clues.
“You’ve labored mightily, yet you’re not going to sleep,” she said.
“I’m thinking,” he said.
He felt her tense.
“That you made a mistake?” she said.
“That I did something I know is wrong,” he said.
“Oh, your conscience,” she said.
“My dear—”
“I don’t have one,” she said. “I only understand them theoretically. I don’t have morals, either. I’m not a lady.”
“It doesn’t matter. This was your first time.”
“My first time would have happened a long time ago, if I’d had more time—or made more time—for men,” she said. “If it hadn’t been you, it would have been somebody else, eventually. I wanted it to be you. I knew you’d make it pleasurable, and you did. It was . . . very nice. I can almost forgive you for ruining my life.”
He kissed her shoulder again. “I thought it was more than very nice.”
“I have no basis for comparison,” she said.
“I don’t, either.”
Her head came up and she drew back to give him a hard stare.
“You’re my first maiden,” he said, and in spite of his unhappiness with himself, he couldn’t help enjoying the view of lush curves and the creamy skin that made a perfect frame for her hair. Titian would have swooned. Botticelli, too.
“Are you roasting me?” she said. “Not even when you were a boy?”
Except within the close bounds of his family, he disliked talking about his father. Even now, the sense of loss made it difficult to speak. Time had lessened the sorrow. It hadn’t erased it. No one but close family members understood how it was.
Yet he came up onto one elbow, like some ancient Roman settling to dinner conversation, and explained. The rules. What a gentleman did and didn’t do. The whys and wherefores. She listened, her blue eyes sharply focused, completely attentive. She was thinking it over and organizing it into neat files and marking it down in the columns of her private account book, he knew.
He felt more naked.
When he’d finished, she brought her hand to his cheek. He turned his head to kiss the palm of her hand.
She swallowed and said, “Not the clearest judgment either of us has ever exercised,” she said. “But to be fair, Lord Lisburne—”
“Simon,” he said. “I think when two people are naked, sharing a narrow piece of furniture, a degree of informality is permissible.”
She shook her head. “I’m not ready for informality. I’m not sure I’ll ever be ready. I think you should call me Miss Noirot when we’re naked. Especially when we’re naked. At a time like this, when . . .” She trailed off, her gaze turning inward, her eyes widening. “Oh, Gemini, what have I done?”
She was off the ch
aise longue in an instant, and hurrying away while he was still trying to find his balance and sit up. She scurried across the room, one of her stockings sliding down her leg. “What time is it? What have I done?”
“Leonie.”
She scrambled among the discarded clothing on the floor and various other surfaces where odds and ends of their attire had landed. She found her lacy handkerchief and hastily cleaned herself with it. She snatched up her chemise and pulled it on. “How could I be so stupid?”
“Leonie, there’s no need to—”
“You’d better go.” She disappeared behind a curtain—a dressing room, it seemed to be.
“I most certainly won’t,” he said. “I expected tears. And hysteria. But I expected that sooner. You said—”
He broke off as she burst through the curtain, now wearing a nearly transparent, completely obscene dressing gown over a chemise made of mist. “Of course I’m hysterical!” she said. “Tonight, of all nights, I forgot about Tom!”
She ran out of the room.
It took Lisburne a moment to find his shirt and throw it on. He was confused and alarmed, but preserved sufficient presence of mind to avoid shocking any innocent maidservants lurking about the place.
The thought of servants gave him pause. Gossip . . . yet more scandal spreading about Leonie and about her shop . . .
And if she bore a child . . .
A child, a child. Leonie carrying his child.
No, no, he wouldn’t think of that now. He’d enough to deal with at the present moment. One problem at a time, and right now, her panic was paramount.
Since she hadn’t closed the door behind her, he caught the muted sound of stockinged feet on the stairs. He hurried out of the room, looked down the stairwell then up. He caught a glimpse of the filmy dressing gown.
When he reached the passage on the second floor, he saw light spilling from the doorway of the sitting room. He found her there, placing foolscap and an inkstand on the table where they’d supped.
“I cannot believe that Tom—whoever he is—will expire of grief if you fail to write a love letter this night,” he said.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” she said. “Who has time for love letters? It’s business, my lord—”
“Simon.”
“It’s business, mon cher monsieur.”
“Very well, I’ll accept my dear sir,” he said, “because you say it precisely like a Parisian.”
“I grew up mainly in Paris,” she said. “Being the youngest, I spent the greatest percentage of my life there. Please don’t make me think about anything else. This is hard enough as it is. Maybe you ought to go home. Or . . .” She sank into a chair and stared at the sheet of paper. “Or maybe you would fill a large glass of brandy for me. I hate this!”
He moved to the table and looked down at the empty page.
She looked up at him. “Have you any notion how difficult it is for a girl to think when a nearly naked man looms over her?”
It was hard to think while looming over a nearly naked woman who smelled and tasted and felt delicious. What he wanted to do was sweep the paper and inkstand and everything else from the table and lift her onto it, and teach her some new things.
He said, “What do you need to think about at this time of night? Midnight came and went ages ago.”
“I know! And he must have it before five o’clock, if I hope to have any chance of its being inserted.”
“Madame, what, pray, are you talking about?”
She looked up at him. “Tom Foxe. The Spectacle. If I don’t send in my report about Vauxhall, the world will read only what the other correspondents have contributed, and they’re sure to make the shop and the Milliners’ Society look like swindlers and degenerates. But I don’t have the knack. Sophy has the knack. But she’s—she isn’t here!”
He drew a chair close to hers and sat down. He took the pen from her and replaced it on the inkstand. He took both her hands in his. “Here’s what we’re going to do,” he said. “You’re going to take a moment to calm yourself. Then you’ll explain your problem to me in your usual orderly fashion. Then I’ll bring you drink or try to help or do whatever seems the most useful thing to do.”
Leonie looked at their joined hands and told herself this was most unwise. She couldn’t confide in him merely because they’d had an extremely intimate interlude. She didn’t want to see him as someone she could turn to when she was in difficulties, because once he was gone, she would miss him all the more. Only look at the wreck she was without her sisters!
But she was in a great difficulty, and sometimes simply explaining a problem helped one discern the solution.
And he was practically naked. And the way the light fell on him made him look like a golden god, and he was holding her hands and it was very hard to be wise.
She explained that Maison Noirot was one of the Spectacle’s several Anonymous Correspondents. “Mainly we report what our customers wear to such and such an occasion. Tom combines that with whatever his gossip sources tell him happened at the event, to make as lively a story as possible. But Sophy had her own gossip sources, and she’d combine the stories and the clothes descriptions so beautifully to draw attention to our shop.”
Leonie paused. The world must never discover that Sophy visited these fashionable social gatherings in disguise, in order to spy on the beau monde and report what everybody did and said. She passed on to Tom Foxe exclusive gossip in exchange for prime real estate in his immensely popular scandal sheet. “Sophy would find a way to turn tonight’s fiasco to our advantage, or to make people think twice.”
“The way Gladys did?” Lisburne said.
She looked up. She could see everything through his shirt. It didn’t matter that she’d seen paintings, engravings, and sculptures of naked men. None of those images had made her blush from the top of her head all the way down to her toes.
“Gladys?” she said, and tried to remember who that was.
“The way she deflected her listeners from Swanton without obviously doing so,” he said. “She talked of Vauxhall attracting odd sorts, then obliged her listeners to turn their minds to pinning down the Ariel’s identity. Once she had their attention on his story, she went on to tell it. An interesting way of defending Swanton without seeming to be defending him. Instead of saying, ‘I don’t believe it’ or ‘It can’t be true’ as some of the besotted girls would do, she used a diversionary tactic.”
In spite of an extreme level of anxiety, Leonie smiled. She’d briefly referred to military strategy and the general’s daughter had taken hold of the idea brilliantly. Her ladyship had realized she didn’t need a complete metamorphosis. She’d discerned the way to make the most of her “good parts,” and to turn the less appealing aspects of her personality into assets. She was no longer at the mercy of the Lady Aldas of the world.
“I should describe Lady Gladys’s dress,” she said. “I should give it the most words, because it was splendid and because lately everybody’s curious about what she’s wearing.”
“We could say she was ‘overheard to mention’ the strange sorts who appear at Vauxhall,” Lisburne said. “Then we could say we’re awaiting further information from correspondents. That way, the scene everyone witnessed would appear to be a mystery needing solving, instead of a foregone conclusion.”
This sounded like something Sophy would do, though she tended to enhance the drama. Leonie nodded slowly. “That’s . . . very good.”
He released her hands.
She took up the pen. She stared at the paper.
He said, “Perhaps I could write it under your supervision. You provide the clothing details, and I tell the story. Or shall I dictate my part and you do the writing?”
She looked up at him. “I notice that you’ve offered two choices, both of which mean you’re involved.”
“The soon
er we get this done,” he said, his voice deepening and darkening, “the sooner we can attend to less mentally strenuous matters.”
She put down the pen. “I’ll get the brandy,” she said.
With Lisburne assisting, the task took a fraction of the time it would have done otherwise, with results superior to anything Leonie could have produced on her own. This she easily admitted. She was good with numbers, not the written word.
In about half an hour he’d dictated a clever, rather amusing piece, which included three gossip items Leonie hadn’t heard. He even polished her descriptions of the Maison Noirot dresses. He had a way with adjectives she hadn’t. But best of all was the part about Lady Gladys. Considering how much he seemed to dislike the lady, he described her ensemble as well as her comments with generosity and gentleness. He was almost lyrical.
But then, he was trying to save Lord Swanton, and Leonie understood how Lisburne felt. She would gladly sacrifice personal feelings to rescue her sisters or niece.
The brandy they consumed during the writing assignment made personal sacrifices less painful. Too, it forced Leonie to slow her pace as she hurried down the stairs with the precious news item.
She wasn’t drunk, exactly. It would take more than a few glasses of wine and a glass of brandy. Still, the world had grown softer around the edges, and her balance wasn’t perfect. Warm though it was, the night air that rushed in when she opened the rear door sent her reeling backward a pace. She quickly recovered, placed the message in the box where Tom’s messenger would pick it up, and stepped back into the house.
She had closed and barred the door and was turning toward the stairs when she saw Lisburne’s hat. It lay on the floor near the table he’d aimed it at. She picked it up, and brushed it with her hand. She started to set it down on the table. She changed her mind and put it on her head.
She became aware of movement on the floor above. She remembered then that he didn’t live here, and would be going home. Of course he would be getting dressed. She debated whether to return the hat to the table. But it was too large for her, and that made her smile, and it smelled like Lisburne, and she wasn’t quite ready to let go of him or anything to do with him.