“Fame is not my intent.”
“I never assumed it. But fame comes with artistic acceptance.”
“I’ve always had friends. Money, land. My work allows me unbridled private indulgence. An exploration of the mind.”
Exactly the exuberance she felt when she drew women, children, babies. Him.
“You understand that?” he asked her.
“I’d like to think so.”
He arched a brow, appearing nonchalant. “Meanwhile, you are a mystery to me.”
“I’m no one you would notice.”
“Oh, but I have Madame Roland. I have.” He took a step nearer.
She could not move, did not wish to. Part of her mourned that he had not called her by her given name. Was she to him once more the removed, the polite, Madame Roland?
He peered down at her. “Your hair, your brows, your chin, your very person. I see you and I am enchanted by the ensemble and the façade. Tell me about the woman beneath.”
His praise had her rushing to answer him. “There is not much more to my story than what I told you the night we were at the opera. I am ordinary, Monsieur. Born on a farm near a small town in Virginia. Married to a neighbor I’d known since I was a child. Appalled by how shells and bullets destroy a man. Compelled to nurse the wounded. And widowed now for many years.”
Beyond the walls, the sounds of patrons in the halls swelled. If they intruded, they’d ruin her one chance to talk privately with him. She yearned to remain, talk with him until she emptied herself.
“That is a very long time to be alone,” he said as he examined her closely.
“I wasn’t.” Twirling her Grandfather Duquesne’s gold signet ring on her finger, she set her jaw. She hated talking about the war. “I avoided Confederate renegades and Yankee barricades to cross to the north to get to my uncle and his wife in Baltimore.”
“You are valiant. More than any woman I know.”
“Not valiant at all. I had to leave. The hospital I worked in was bombed by the Yankees. There was no food and I was hungry. Tired. And I wanted family.”
“And they took you in.”
“Yes. Yes, they did. And they were kind to me.”
“I understand,” he said with compassion. “And all these years, you’ve been alone?”
She frowned. “No. With my uncle and my cousins.”
“Forgive me.” He seemed ill at ease.
Why? “Did you want to ask me something else?”
“You are an extraordinarily lovely woman, charming and…”
“And?”
“Have you truly been alone all these years?”
“Ah. You meant to ask if I took lovers?” When he nodded, she said, “No. Never.”
“Why not?”
She lifted her face and examined the ceiling. “Oh, any number of reasons. Perhaps I don’t know how. Or I’m not adventurous. Or that I haven’t found anyone I’d like to take to my bed.”
He was so close now, she noted how the sky blue shards of his eyes darkened to azure. “Would you find peace if I were in your bed?”
Her lips parted. How had he known her temperament so well that he could ask that of her. “I wonder myself. Often.”
“And your answer?”
Truth would help her maintain her freedom. “I’m not certain if you would bring me peace. But I do know one thing. You would remake my life.”
“Ah, Marie, I would not change you.”
She laughed tremulously at his use of her shortened name that her father had preferred. “Not perhaps intentionally.”
“I like you, ma cherie, as you are. Quietly stalwart.”
And I like you. Too much. “You see me as fierce. I’m not so much that. But you would not like my independence.”
“How do you know?”
“Men don’t care for that in any woman.” My husband did not.
Andre chuckled. Crossed his arms. “But I am not any man.”
The truth of that roared through her like a siren call to decadence. “Definitely not.”
He reached out to run a fingertip over the outline of her lips. Where he touched burned. She yearned to bite him, keep him, show him she could be as bold as he. Memories of them on the balcony at the Opera Garnier swamped her. “Are you afraid that you would want your independence less than you would want me inside you?”
She grabbed a breath. “I doubt that.”
He stiffened. “Why?”
“Because our interlude would be short.”
He scowled at her. “How short?”
“I’d want you only for one night.”
Astonishment brought him up short. He blinked. “One?”
“I’d not risk more.”
“Gratifying to learn I am not worthy of more.”
“That’s not the reason,” she blurted.
“No?” He smiled, fiend that he was. “Why not?”
“You’d be difficult.”
“Would I? How so?”
“You’d demand things of me.”
“Such as?”
She frowned at him, but a smile lurked inside her. “Rendezvous.”
His mouth tipped up in a lop-sided grin. “So many.”
“Precisely,” she agreed.
“In secret places, too.” He feigned a grimace. “The challenge would unnerve you.”
“Frankly, that I’d welcome.”
He shot her a look of disbelief. “I shall remember that.”
“No need,” she told him, happy to have the upper hand at the moment. “We’d be discovered.”
“Half the fun…for some.” He ran his gaze over her in appreciation.
How he could melt her with those ravenous looks.
He bent to her as if to share a secret. “I’d want to lock you away with me.”
She threw out a hand. “There you are. You’d want me—”
“As long as I could keep you,” he said.
She swallowed hard. This kind of possession was dangerous. “That’s scandalous. I could never do it.”
He hooted in laughter. “Nonetheless, you’d test my resolve and chance to come to my bed for one night.”
She stood her ground. “Yes.”
He tilted his head to one side. All humor fled his visage. “Very well. I accept. One night. Beginning at what time?”
“What? Well…um…. Six.”
“Six o’clock, I see. Until when?”
“Six the next morning.”
“You’d rise early, I suppose?” he asked with measured reason.
“I would.”
“Before the shops are open?”
“Correct. And so that—”
He smirked. “You could arrive home before your Uncle Killian knew you were gone.”
“Exactly.”
“And before he took one of his pistols and came to my home to kill me.”
“No, of course not. He’d never do that. I’d tell him of my plan.”
“Would you? Oh, mon dieu, I must definitely put final touches to my last will.”
“Uncle Killian understands passion,” she said, not believing but hoping that the rebel blockade runner knew how to temper his emotions.
Andre lowered his chin and stared at her. “My darling, you understand nothing about men. Your uncle would challenge me on the matter of honor.”
“Not if I told him we were intimate just once.”
Andre winced. “Once, mon dieu.”
“What’s wrong with once?”
“It sounds as if we were blasé about our affections. I assure you, my pet, with you, nothing about our affair would be light or easy.”
“It could be,” she pressed him.
He chuckled. “You stand before me, breathing heavily, your cheeks pink, your lips parted. If you come to me for an affair, it is for days or weeks or months.”
She shook her head. “I wouldn’t. I promised my uncle one year.”
“One year of what?” He froze, anger slashing his features in harsh
lines.
“One year to aid Lily. The rest to launch her sister, Ada.”
“You are their guardian? Their governess?”
“No. Their older cousin. A chaperone of sorts.”
“Your gratitude to him demands that you do as he wishes?”
She wrung her hands. “That I help his daughters enter society easily and marry well, if they like. And that I behave responsibly.”
His brows rose. “Are you prone not to?”
“No! But he has set aside a dowry for me. And I want it.”
“Do you? A dowry.” He crossed his arms, anger staining his cheeks red. “Do you plan to buy a husband then?”
“Oh, no.” There’ll be no husbands for me. “Listen to me.”
He spread his arms. “I am.”
“I’ve never had money. Not a lot. Not any to speak of. I was a child, and then I was a child bride. And then I was…”
He focused on her, his blue eyes hot. “You were what, ma cherie?”
“I was a wife.” And I hated it. Him.
Andre waited.
“And I—was obedient. Quiet and hard-working in the house and attentive to the slaves.”
“Slaves?” This shocked him.
“We had them. Four in the house. Forty-two for the fields.”
Andre cursed roundly in French.
“They left, all of them, during the war. Thank god they did. And I—I’m old enough that I do want my own home, my own life, my own—”
“Your own what?”
“Affair. If I wanted it.”
“Do you?”
“I’ve never considered it…until lately. Until you.”
“You want a man in your bed simply for the fun of it?” His eyes danced in merriment.
“Well, yes! You make it sound awful. I’m not. You’re not and you’ve had mistresses! For the fun of it, I would guess.”
“Fun, oui. There is much to say for fun.”
“Oh!” He infuriated her. “It doesn’t matter. I came to see your work. I have. So I’ll go.” She whirled for the door.
He caught her by the wrist. “Stay.”
She wanted to. His arms came around her waist and his big warm body pressed against her back.
“Marianne, stay and talk to me.” His words were whispers on her skin. “Stay.”
She turned to face him.
He gave her a small smile and pushed hair from her cheek. “I thought you said you valued your independence.”
“I do.” What was he talking about now? He befuddled her.
“An independent woman makes her own rules.”
“I did. I do. I’ve wanted that since I was young and…”
“And now?”
“I still need to, but frankly—”
He arched an inquisitive brow.
”At the moment, it pales. And the only thing I want is you.”
He crushed her against his strong hot body. Deliciously hard in all the right places, his body enflamed her. “Oh, ma cherie.”
She pushed away. “But it cannot easily happen. Not even for one night.”
“What? Why not?”
“For a lot of reasons. The most important is that it may take awhile, even years for Lily and Ada to find men they’d marry. I cannot act in such a way that damages their prospects. That’s no way to pay back my uncle for his generosity to me.”
“That’s a lot of work and a long time to wait for only one night of bliss.” In his eyes, hope and humor mingled.
She had to make him smile. “Ah, but then you may not like me once you’ve seen me for hours on end.”
He arched his brows. “I could say the same.”
“We could prepare so that neither of us is disillusioned.” Horrid thought that he might take her, she might adore him and afterward, he might not care a bit about her.
He lifted her chin with two fingers. “Ah. You have an idea how that is done?”
She gave in to the joy of possibility, the daydream he might desire her. “First?”
“Yes?”
“I thought we’d see if we truly liked each other.”
“How?”
She filled her sight with his magnificence. “We’d start with a kiss.”
He smirked. “Prudent. When?”
“No time like the present, don’t you think?”
He grinned at her.
With a smile, she rose on her toes and put her lips to his. His flesh was cool, firm. He tasted of mint. She wanted more of him and brushed her mouth on his.
He did not move.
Bracing herself by cupping his shoulders, she leaned into him and kissed him once and then again.
He wrapped his arms around her, a cocoon of rapture, and he kissed her in one long dive into deep enchantment. His lips claimed hers in a hot river. His tongue explored the caverns of her mouth and she gave the same ardor back to him. Moaning, he pulled away and skimmed his lips over her cheek to her temple. “That was too many kisses.”
“Are we rationing them?”
He set her away from him. “We are. Too dangerous to continue until you are fully ready.”
“Are you?”
“You, my darling, may be thirty but you are naive about men.”
“About you, oui, certainement,” she corrected him.
Both his brows arched high as he considered every inch of her before him. “Then hear this. I’ve been mad to hear each sigh of yours since first I saw you in the Rue des Abbesses. With us? Speed is not wise.”
Disappointment rang through her.
“You must come to Montmartre. To my studio. There you will see more of me. More you need. Now you must go. I’ll send an invitation to my studio. Bring your cousin if you must.” He strode to the door and put one hand to the knob.
She did not follow. “I cannot. There is another problem.”
He stared at her. “Tell me.”
“My uncle, Lily and I close up the house in the Rue Haussmann and leave for London in a few weeks for the start of the Season.”
“How long do you remain?”
“Perhaps only during the spring for my cousin Lily to begin her introduction to English society.”
“After that where do you go?”
“My younger cousins, Lily’s sister Ada and her older brother Pierce arrive in London in June, but we’re to come here for Ada to go to Worth’s to have her wardrobe designed for next year.” She smiled at him and the opportunity that might give her to see him again. “That may mean we arrive here in July.”
“And if I came to London, would you receive me?”
That she hadn’t expected of him. He had a life of his own long before he’d met her. He was a prince, a man of means and, by the crowds here and stories about him in the newspapers, he was becoming a sought-after artist. “I would.”
Frowning, he thought for a minute. “I will follow you when I can.”
She’d never had a man take extraordinary measures to please her. Hope blossomed like a rose.
“But I have one matter that may deter me.”
She held her breath.
“My mother is frail.”
Marianne was taken aback. “I’m sorry. I did not know.”
“Nor would you. She gives the cut direct to anyone who sends tales of her to gossip sheets. But you must know that she is the light of my life. If I am to visit in London, away from her, I must arrange that someone is with her every hour. I’ll write to my cousin who lives in Tours and who, I hope, can come to Paris to stay with her. She herself needs companionship in her older age.”
“Andre,” she said as she approached him, “I do not mean to change your life—”
“Not if our affair is to last for only one night?” He was teasing her.
“Yes, it must be.” She lifted her chin, valiant and sad that she’d ever stipulated such restriction.
He eyed her critically. “My darling, one night, be damned.” He looped an arm around her waist and brought her with one mighty pull up
against his massive chest. He took her mouth in a searing kiss that branded her and left her light-headed with soaring satisfaction. Then with a sigh, he put her to her feet.
“We will drink from each other all there is to give, ma cherie. Now, go, please, before I take you to the chaise longue and your visit here becomes the one night you wish for.”
Chapter 4
March 1878
No. 110 Piccadilly
London
Marianne sailed into the dining room early their first morning in their London house. In the rush to prepare to leave Paris, she’d found no opportunity to talk with her uncle privately. Usually she’d find every reason to confide in Lily about her desire to ultimately return to Paris, but she was reluctant to reveal her scandalous intentions to her cousin. Lily was not naive about the nature of intimacies between men and women because she’d lived on a ranch observing animals. Yet Lily thought Marianne’s references to taking a lover were witty by-plays. Nothing she’d seriously consider. And in fact, she never had until she met Andre, the duc de Remy. Lily would learn soon enough her intentions, if her hope ever became a probability. In the meantime, Marianne wasn’t confident that her Uncle Killian would easily accept her wishes, let alone condone them. Still she owed it to him to notify him.
As she hoped, he was already in his chair finishing his breakfast. His two newspapers to hand, he furrowed his black brows as he read the page before him.
“Good morning, Uncle Killian.” She took her chair and the footman backed away. “Something disturbing in the papers?”
“News about a company whose shares I’m interested in buying.” He picked up his coffee cup and drained it. “You’re up early.”
“I hoped I might have an opportunity to talk with you. I wonder if you can spare me a few minutes.”
“I can. Always. What’s on your mind? A problem?”
“Not at the moment, no.”
“Will you have something from the sideboard first?” her uncle asked.
Daring Widow: Those Notorious Americans, Book 2 Page 7