She hadn’t avoided her studio—and the evidence of her denial—at all.
~ ~ ~
The dream hadn’t come to her in years.
It was the night of Olivia and Mariana’s debut ball. Olivia had never seen her parents’ ballroom illuminated so magnificently: light casting halos about the hundreds of guests, the servants, too; champagne bubbles effervescing their way up crystal flutes in a glittery little dance; and the chandeliers were too brilliant for words. They sparkled. They glimmered. They twinkled. They received the light and threw it out in a million little ways.
At the head of the grand staircase, she gazed across the crowded ballroom, excitable nerves clanging about her body. This great multitude of people was here for her. She brushed her fingertips across the diamond brooch pinned just below her shoulder. Hundreds of sapphires of varying sizes and shapes set in platinum formed a perfect closed rosebud, one petal peeking open, on the edge of coming into full bloom. Mother and Father had given Mariana a nearly identical brooch, hers in rubies and gold.
Mother’s steadying hand squeezed her shoulder. “Are you ready, dearest?”
She nodded. She was too full of light and life to speak, to do anything other than glow and smile.
The orchestra struck up yet another waltz. She and Mariana had requested no music other than waltzes be played tonight, and their parents had indulged the slightly scandalous request. The night was perfect. Almost. But for one person she’d prayed would be here . . .
Mariana, cheeks flushed with high color, rushed up the staircase toward her. “Olivia!” she breathed out, each syllable a short burst. “He’s here!”
A rush of anticipation clamored through her veins, heating her up, body and mind. He was the boy, the young man, they’d spotted on Rotten Row, not once, but three separate times this week. Little conversations here and there revealed him to be the Duke of Arundel’s youngest son, up from Cambridge.
The mere sight of him had made her heart miss every other beat. What would it be like to be near him? Were his dark brown eyes as deep and soulful up close as they were from afar? She wanted to be close to him and far, far away from him all at once.
Her gaze roved across the tops of heads until she, too, spotted him, laughing and joking with a group of his friends gathered round in a jocular circle. She’d never seen him without a smile in his eyes or a laugh ready on his lips. It was possible that she had enough light inside her to illuminate this entire room, all of London.
She stepped forward in his direction and a staying hand clamped onto her shoulder. A vaguely familiar voice whispered in her ear. “You need not be in such a rush.”
But when she turned toward the voice, she saw no one there. Without another second’s hesitation, she took Mariana’s arm in her own, and the two of them flitted across the ballroom floor.
~ ~ ~
It was here, at this point in the dream, that an older Olivia began watching her younger self from across the room. Young Olivia looked straight through her. She always did, never seeing her older self.
Of course, her younger self never saw or heard anything that deviated from her own wishes and desires. Such a willful girl. A girl who had never known any troubles, therefore couldn’t anticipate any.
As Young Olivia and Mariana floated toward Percy’s group, she tried calling out again, “Dance with a few others first. You never know . . .” she trailed off.
It was no use. Olivia watched Young Olivia dare to introduce herself to Lord Percival Bretagne under the censorious gaze of the ton. A willful, spirited, even foolhardy, girl. The ton’s critical eye soon turned adoring as they watched Young Olivia and Percy fall instantly and madly in love. A genuine love match, a testament to true love within their ranks . . . the kind of love that had eluded so many. Within the hour, they would be the Sweethearts of the Season.
A wave of melancholy stole through her. She would like to wake up now. This dream always ended the same.
In the next instant, her body shifted in sleep, and a riot of conflicting sensation—hot, cold, parched, wet—swept over her. It was the thrill of anticipation, and it drew in toward one specific point in her body: the apex of her thighs. Her legs kicked the sheets off her body, too hot, too sensate. This was new to the dream.
Then she felt it. A presence, sensuous and demanding, hovering behind her. She didn’t need to see him. She knew him. She should feel shame, but she didn’t. Brazen, unabashed pleasure at the perversity of experiencing him in front of the entire ton spread through her. Not that they saw her. They only had eyes for Young Olivia, their darling.
A gorgeous, capable hand snaked around her waist and pulled her backward, leaving her no choice but to melt into his hard, unforgiving length. His breath traced a warm trail across the back of her neck, his mouth teasing but never touching, releasing goose bumps down the length of her spine. She was one exhalation away from madness, desiring only that his lips touch her skin.
How could he be so close, yet so far out of reach? Frustration, demand, need, all kicked inside her, clamoring for release. Would he never give her what she needed?
At last, his lips found the nape of her neck, and his hands tightened at her waist before roving up to her breasts, cupping them, his fingertips taking her nipples between them, squeezing them through the fabric of her dress. Her head arched back in mindless abandon.
Through a haze, filtered by lust and hunger, she watched her younger self accept Percy’s arm as he led her to the dance floor.
Then, his mouth found her ear, and she was lost, utterly lost. That boy across the room had never made her feel like this. But, then, he and Young Olivia had never known the other capable of this level of sensuality.
The expanse between them and herself and him stretched beyond the span of a ballroom to a distance of a hundred miles. Suddenly, Percy and Young Olivia were dressed for their wedding day. She wanted to cry out, to warn her younger self that the extraordinary, unique feeling would begin dissolving, moment by moment, day by day . . .
Then he pulled at the fabric of her skirts, pulled her attention toward him, toward matters more urgent, and began lifting the fabric, fold over fold, until her ankles . . . her calves . . . her thighs . . . her mons pubis were exposed. He operated not by sight, but by an expertise driven by instinct and demand, his gorgeous, capable fingers trailing across her hips, branding her with their touch, locating a bud, taut, wet, wanton, orgastic—
A loud moan erupted from her throat, and her eyes flew open . . .
To find herself alone in her bedroom, bed sheets twisted around her ankles, morning dress tangled above her waist, hand clenched between her thighs.
She flung her arms above her head and released a moan borne of dissatisfaction and denial. She’d made a mess of her sheets. A perfect, little mess . . .
Of a sudden, clarity shined its light on her.
Her feelings for Lord St. Alban had naught to do with love or matrimony. They didn’t interfere with her goals or intentions. This was desire, pure, simple, raw . . . implacable.
She swung her legs off the bed and hopped to her feet on a wave of relief and determination. She must take a risk. It might be her only chance to rid her system of him.
Denial wasn’t working. The time had come for her to try the opposite approach.
Before this day was done, she would make another perfect, little mess.
Chapter 14
Jake sank his battered and bruised body into the steaming salt bath and exhaled a moan equal parts exhaustion and deep satisfaction. How was it possible that he’d gone this long in London before discovering Gentleman Jackson’s boxing saloon?
There was something undeniable and purifying about stepping foot in the ring, looking another man in the eye, and tacitly agreeing to do one’s worst to each other. It bonded men together in brothe
rhood at an elemental level.
And it was precisely the release he needed after last night. He’d sent his excuses to the Duke this morning and succumbed to the mindless brutality of the ring. Anything to clear his head of her, and it had worked. For a time. Until he’d set foot outside the ring again.
He inhaled a deep draught of warm, humid air. There she’d stood in her studio, chest rising and falling in short bursts of air, eyes wide and inquiring. He’d only a few seconds before her questions went from general to specific. A second after that, she’d require serious answers. Answers he hadn’t been prepared to give.
With a single second to decide his course, he’d taken a step, then another, a way to silence her solidifying with each inch forward. A simple kiss would do the trick.
He groaned and sank deeper into the water, even as a charge, one specific to her, spread from his gut to his loins. His cock grew thick, and he reached down to give it a testing stroke. There had been nothing simple about that kiss. His eyes drifted shut, the sight of her, the feel of her, and he tightened his grip, his body seeking another kind of release.
The low murmur of voices in the corridor caught his attention. He froze and listened, his fingers loosening their grip. Frustration ripped through him. Would he never be allowed release?
The voices resonated no louder than a soft drone, yet he discerned an insistence in the tenor of it, Payne’s deep, mournful intonation at odds with one distinctly female. A dogged quality imbued the interaction, replacing frustration with curiosity. The door to his private sitting room turned on its hinges and opened without a knock. What was happening?
He braced his hands on either side of the sunken bathtub and stepped out of its sultry embrace to investigate the situation. His fingers found a towel and wrapped the soft cloth around his hips, droplets of water streaming down his exposed chest and his partially aroused cock.
A surprised, “Oh!” echoed in the other room, and a lengthy silence followed, which in reality could have lasted no longer than a few seconds.
Yet that single syllable was enough to set his bare skin alive. He knew that voice. Even by a single syllable. His ears strained for more, for certainty.
“These are the viscount’s rooms?” Her voice, while definitely hers, sounded different, like there was a catch in it.
“My lady, this is most irregular. If you would please—”
“I please to wait here for his lordship.”
Without delay, he padded across the wet bathroom over tatami mats and came to a stop at the sliding rice paper door separating his bedroom from his private sitting room. He placed ambivalent hands on the door handles and hesitated a brief moment. A moment of self-preservation, perhaps. After all, she was here, in his private rooms. No good could come of it.
His jaw clenched in decision. He was master of these rooms.
The door slid open on silent tracks. Framed by the rectangular doorway stood Payne facing down Lady Olivia, her determination apparent in the set of her shoulders and the rigidity of her usually lissome body. She exuded no whiff of the pugnacious, only the quiet assurance that she would have her way.
“Payne,” Jake said, eliciting startled glances from the adversaries. “That will be all.”
“My lord, I tried—” Payne began in a rush.
Jake caught Lady Olivia’s eyes, flickers of doubt chipping away at the assuredness he’d heard in her tone seconds ago. “And shut the door behind you.”
“Yes, my lord.”
Jake raised his brow and questioned Lady Olivia with his gaze. Her jaw clamped shut, and her lips drew into a straight line, as if every muscle in her face was bent on keeping words locked away. As if the flow of them would cost her dearly. After last night, he wasn’t certain what he’d expected of her, but it wasn’t this, to find her barging into his private rooms.
Of course, he’d entered her private rooms uninvited. Perhaps he should have expected a counterpunch of this sort.
“May I inquire why you’re here?” he asked at last, convinced they would be engaged in this staring contest all day if he didn’t broach the topic.
He reached down to secure the knot at his waist, and her gaze followed the motion. A second later, she appeared to catch herself, wide, blue eyes startling up to meet his again.
“I, uh—” she began. He watched her struggle to keep her gaze steady on his, resisting the pull to steal glimpses of his bare torso. “I have something I want to say to you.”
Her words emerged choppy, the phrasing disjointed. As if her mind was wandering off in a thousand directions. She wasn’t acting like herself, her cool composure appearing to fail her. He rather liked this Lady Olivia.
“Olivia,” he began, seizing this unsteady moment to take a risk and make a gain, “have I leave to call you Olivia?”
Her eyebrows knitted together in question, even as she nodded her assent to the familiarity.
“In my experience of you,” he continued, a rush of satisfaction fueling his response, “those words could lead us anywhere.”
~ ~ ~
Olivia swiveled around and pretended to take a look at the room about her.
Somehow the moment had gotten away from her, and the logic and bravado that had propelled her forward had already begun to fail her. How could she possibly say what she’d come here to say with him standing in her line of sight wearing . . . almost nothing?
Too distracting were the corded muscles of his arms and stomach, rippling beneath surprisingly tanned skin. Too distracting was the fine dusting of golden hair scattered across his chest that narrowed to a thin line below his navel as it trailed ever lower to its inevitable destination beneath his towel.
A woman couldn’t think with that much flesh on display.
And it wasn’t about the quantity, either. This was flesh of the finest quality, even if it was littered with a scattering of newly emergent bruises. What did this man do with his time?
Back firmly to him, she focused on what had first caught her attention when she’d entered this room: the room itself. She’d never beheld one like it.
Despite the rather large amount of wood, a brightness pervaded the atmosphere. A simple, caramel-colored grid of maple outlined the ceiling and walls, which were, in turn, filled in with blank rice paper. Centered in the room stood a sunken mahogany table and four legless chairs.
The room came together in way that suggested open air. One could breathe in this room, so sparse and distinct were its furnishings. With each breath a measure of strain dissipated.
It was all so utterly, simply, starkly beautiful. And all so utterly, simply, starkly foreign.
Up until this instant, she hadn’t considered how very different Lord St. Alban was from Society, from her. He so closely resembled the ideal, privileged viscount that one could forget. But who was he really?
A different man altogether, she suspected. One who intrigued her too much. This room, and him in it, wasn’t helping her Lord St. Alban problem.
“Did you have this room imported whole cloth from Japan?”
“Nearly.”
Her eyes swung up to inspect the expertly latticed woodwork on the ceiling. “I’ve never seen its match.”
“Not even in the mysterious Jiro’s studio?”
The mysterious Jiro. The words struck her at a wrong angle. Or rather it was the way he’d inflected the words. Something her ears picked up that she couldn’t quite lay her finger on. And turning around to see the expression on his face wouldn’t help at all. She would go absolutely tone deaf at the sight of him.
“Is there something you wish to know about Jiro?” she asked. “Does Miss Radclyffe require an art master?”
One second, then another, passed, a resounding silence filling the air. She’d begun to question whether he would reply at all when he s
aid, “No, Miss Radclyffe doesn’t require an art master. That is a tansu.”
Olivia saw that she’d begun to feather her fingertips across the intricate ironwork of a chest. “Lovely.”
“It’s a mobile storage chest used by the Japanese.”
She half turned toward him and almost took no notice of his naked chest. Or the bruises strewn haphazardly across its surface. Almost. “It’s bold, yet refined, too.”
“Boldness can be found in even the most refined objects,” he said before adding, “Unexpectedly so, at times.”
Again, she pivoted away from him, unable to hold his gaze when he spoke in so suggestive a manner. Yet wasn’t he playing into her plan? Hadn’t she come here to be bold?
Her courage, nay foolhardiness, failed her with each successive moment, her plan becoming impossible, an embarrassment, truth be told. Too bold.
She cleared her throat and focused on the tansu. She needed to be gone from this room, now, but her feet felt mired in quicksand.
“There are tansu for every use”—His voice sounded farther away now. Had he retreated to the sliding door? She wasn’t sure if she was relieved or disappointed—“clothing and food storage, money, linens, even apothecaries use them. Every ship trading along the Pacific carries one onboard for safekeeping valuables and as a sort of status symbol for trading purposes. Funa-dansu, they’re called, the most ornate of the tansu.”
Her eye caught his over her shoulder, and her body followed. It almost didn’t matter that this man, whom she’d kissed with a passion resembling a mystical experience, stood no more than fifteen feet away nearly stark naked. Almost.
“Did you carry a funa-dansu on your ship?” she asked, although she shouldn’t. She had an insatiable curiosity about this man.
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