But Marianne did not budge.
“No,” Elanna shot back. “You won’t let me smoke so give me something else I want.”
“Fine. What would that be?”
“A kiss.”
“Ha! No.”
“Why not?”
“Because I—”
The rest was lost in the sounds of rustling skirts and sighing kisses.
“No more,” Pierce said at last, his deep voice gruff with desire. “I’m leaving.”
“Oh,” Elanna declared with anger, “do please let me chase you off!”
“Don’t be foolish. Wait a few minutes,” Pierce barked at her. “Then follow.”
Elanna cursed at him. “Wretched man.” And she stalked off, the sounds of her feet along the gravel punctuating her outrage.
“Oh, Christ,” Pierce moaned and moved off more deeply into the maze.
A minute passed as Marianne rested her cheek on Andre’s frock coat. She was quiet, still.
He ran his fingers along the fine line of her spine.
Presently, she sighed and pressed closer to him, her arms tight around his waist. “Elanna does not want to marry. Not the man she’s engaged to.”
Andre drove his lips into her fragrant hair. “That’s very sad, but it does happen. Occasionally, between husband and wife relationships improve.”
“I doubt it can between those two, although I can’t tell you why I feel that way.”
“Carbury. I didn’t care for him when we met the night in the Opera Garnier.”
“The same. I’ve been in company with him since then and I find him oppressive.”
“He seemed intent on her from the start,” Andre said, recalling how the older man poured over the young sister of his friend, Julian.
“Lily says she must marry him because there are financial needs. The Setons are not able to support her with more Seasons or much else.”
“As if she’d need such formal exposure. She is lovely and charming when she’s not hunted.”
“Or run to ground like an animal,” Marianne said with a shiver.
“Come inside. We’ll have more champagne, oui?” He gave her a tiny hug, then stepped away from her. “We will talk and laugh and plan our walk in Paris. In three days’ time, don’t you think?”
Marianne halted, impish and tugging him around to face her. “Monsieur le duc, you mean to tell me you didn’t bring me out here to kiss me?”
He shook his head once. “No, ma belle. I did not.”
She was crestfallen. “Why not?”
He smiled faintly and pushed a silken blonde tendril of hair over her ear. “I intend to kiss you, darling, but not here. Not in England.”
Her heartbroken expression gutted him and pleased him. “What are you doing to me?”
He put a finger to her lower lip and rolled it down. The lush beauty of it spurred his body to painful need. “When next I kiss you, my Marianne, I pray we have hours to explore every part of each other. Lips and hands, breasts and hips. More. Much more.”
She caught a breath and hope spread like golden sunshine into her green eyes. She put two fingers to his lips and he kissed them away.
“Holding you here for these minutes has proven to me what I suspected. I cannot touch you and be content with only a small part of you. Your lips, lovely as they are, are the icing on a beautiful creation. I yearn for all of you.”
“Andre, that is—”
“Madness?” That’s what he expected her to say. To demure, to postpone, to deny if she dared, the inevitable.
“Not that. No.”
“What then?” he asked her tenderly, not expecting any affirmation of their attraction. Women did not do that. Not women of Marianne’s status. Statements of desire were not ones taught in any etiquette class.
“I yearn for every part of you, as well.”
His heart exploded in his chest, hopes of her surrendering to him blending with her agreement that indeed they would make love. Stunned that her statement could assuage his impatience, he pulled at her hand and wound it around his arm. “Come inside. We begin our journey toward friendship. Good friends, who understand the other. Who come to each other for all the benefits that friends share.”
So that soon, you can come to me for all the passions that lovers share.
Chapter 6
June 27, 1878
Seton House
London
“Would you like another champagne?” Andre bent near to ask Marianne. The Setons’ London ballroom was a crush of society, every lady in their finest satins and each man in the stark black beauty of their formal suits and white cravats. None, however, seemed as arresting as the Duc de Remy, her Andre.
“Merci beaucoup but we are waltzing soon and I’ve a care not to step on your toes.”
He drained his own glass, put it aside and chided her with an arced brow. “Ma chou, you’ve never stepped on my toes.”
“No. As I recall, I tripped over them.”
“You’re finished with that,” he assured her. “As we should soon be finished with the formalities here.”
Stepping to one side, he indicated the approach of the Duke of Seton and his wife, the Duchess. The couple took to the center of the marbled expanse of their ballroom and offered a nod toward their daughter Elanna and her bridegroom, soon to be her husband, the earl of Carbury.
A more mis-matched pair Marianne had not seen in years. Not since my own wedding, in fact. Carbury, since she’d last seen him at the Opera, was suddenly running to fat, jowly and paunched. His predatory nature surfaced with his eagle-eyed vigilance, stalking his intended wife minute by minute. Elanna, twenty and impossibly lovely with her slim form and excellent carriage and pile of rosewood hair, once warm and sweet, had, since her engagement, become a shrew.
The duke introduced the two to polite applause. Carbury, taking his due, gave a slight incline of his head in thanks, while Elanna offered only a lowering of her long lashes and a stiff lip.
Marianne might have once thought that Elanna’s demeanor was the norm for well-brought up daughters of the English aristocracy. Since she’d overheard Elanna’s encounter with Pierce in the Piccadilly garden, however, she tended toward the belief that this future bride had little to smile about. She smarted at her station in life and hated the horrendous bargain she was about to make tomorrow morning at ten o’clock.
The duke glanced at the orchestra and the maestro struck up a Viennese melody. The two couples took their partners and led off the dancing, round the chalked floor. Of the four, the Setons appeared to be relishing their turn more than Carbury who took small steps and huffed, while Elanna placed her lifeless hand on his shoulder and gazed off as if she saw hell in the distance.
“I fear for her,” Andre whispered as he turned away from the sight of them.
“As do I. I wish I could reassure myself there’s some saving grace for the two of them but I doubt it.”
“Julian is furious that she accepted him. He wanted her to wait. He wished to give her at least another Season to find someone she might care for, but he was too late. She had already committed herself.”
“I know the Setons have financial issues.” Marianne hated talking of such sensitive matters, but she and Andre had passed the point of politesse. They were friends. Over the past two weeks in Paris, they had passed each afternoon and many evenings in each other’s company.
The day they’d arrived in Paris, he had come to call and brought an armful of white roses, the color of new butter. Though he said they were for all the ladies in the house, he’d told her the next day when he called for tea that they reminded him of the color of her hair. “Pale and silken,” he’d murmured when Ada had left the salon for a few minutes.
Nor was that his only gift or his only compliment. He came the next day, and as promised, he’d arrived in his own landau, his coachman at the reins. Pierce and Killian had claimed a business meeting but Ada had come along with them to the gardens of the Tuileries. Andre’s chef had packed
a basket with charcuterie, cheeses and breads, white wine and for dessert, macarons from Ladurée.
Seducing Marianne with flowers and food and picnics in the gardens were preludes to his arrival the next day and the next, this time in a sleek red lacquer barouche. Off they went, his coachman at the reins, two matched grey geldings trotting onward, Ada next to her and Andre opposite them. The day was sunny without a cloud in the perfect blue sky as they made their way to the Bois de Boulogne, a glorious expanse of greenery and water, rocks and fauna in the middle of Paris. Ada by now was tuned to the attraction between Andre and her. Throwing all her social training to the winds, Ada remarked that she thought them both charming in their restraint.
But the drives, the picnics, the scenery, the food, the wine were nothing to compare to the glory of going to Andre’s Paris home in the Rue de Rivoli and waltzing in his own ballroom.
Ada, impressionable and gushing over the opulence of his house, had clapped her hands and sighed at the sight of the vermeil-covered ballroom walls and the profusion of crystal chandeliers.
“How do you dust all that?” she’d asked him, her gaze turned up to admire the glittering lights dangling from the ceiling. “Forgive me. I would guess you don’t dust it.”
He’d laughed. “I know the three downstairs maids take two days each month to accomplish it.”
“Worth it,” Ada concluded, hands on her hips, gazing at the lights.
“I wonder, Remy,” Pierce said as he bent to examine the wainscotting. “How old is this house?”
Andre looked pained. “Would you like the long or short version?”
“Long, definitely.”
“Oh, Pierce,” Ada complained and extended a hand toward the four musicians Andre had hired for the afternoon. “You will pre-occupy the Duc de Remy with that for hours. Can you not come another day or at least wait until after we waltz?”
Pierce flapped his arms. “I bow to necessity. I’ll ask you for the detailed version soon. I think city planning such as your Baron Haussmann did depends on saving gems of private dwellings, too. Wouldn’t you say?”
“I do, Pierce,” Andre said with a smile, “I am at your disposal for another day. Choose it.”
“Thank you, Remy. Tomorrow, perhaps?”
“At ten o’clock?”
“Agreed.” Pierce stepped toward Ada. “When you are ready, I am.”
“Finally.” Ada rolled her eyes at him. “Do know, Monsieur, that my brother has never favored dancing.”
Pierce shook his head. “Not with you, my pet. But I am improved. I’ll show you.”
Marianne struggled to quell her laughter. “These two, Remy, have bated each other since childhood. She loves to dance. He loves to torment her and usually challenges her to make up for his intended clumsiness.”
“Today we shall all be superb.” Andre lifted his chin and spoke to the musicians upon the dais. “We can begin, eh?”
She licked her lips, put one hand to his shoulder and another in his own and when the musicians began their tune, off she and Andre went round the long pink marbled floor. Outside, the day was grey. Clouds were heavy and the air thick. Inside, the room was cool, brightly lit and sparkling from the refracted rays of crystals in the chandeliers.
Most delightful of all were the lights in Andre’s eyes as his gaze caressed her and told her tales of charms to come. In his arms, she was weightless. In his care, she was a creature of the air. He was graceful and decisive. She was flexible, agile, well-tutored by his instructions. Enchanted by his devotion to improving her skills on the floor. Rediscovering that she could be gay, frivolous and dance in a man’s embrace and be proud of her conquest, eager to hold him.
They’d practiced for an hour or more that day. And twice more, they’d gone to his home. Once solely to feed Pierce’s desire to learn more about the house. The day before they’d all left Paris to travel to London for Elanna’s wedding, they’d practiced again with Andre’s musicians in attendance.
Ada marched up to them as they waited for Lily and Julian to take the floor with the rest of his family.
“Honestly, will you two show them how well you practiced or stand here all night?”
Andre gazed down at her. The two of them had become fast friends, Andre treating her almost as irreverently as Pierce did. “We must find you a beau, Ada.”
She waved her fan and sighed. “Please don’t bother. I haven’t seen anyone here who in the least appeals.”
“I see someone who might,” he said as he raised his chin to acknowledge someone across the Seton’s ballroom. “At least try to talk to him. Then Marianne and I can leave you here.”
“Fine. Introduce me and then shoo.”
The tall, blond elegant man who joined them resembled da Vinci’s David. His jaw was square. His eyes liquid gold. His shoulders broad. His hands massive. His attire impeccable. His demeanor, attention, polite. His burnished hair perfectly combed back from his high forehead. Yet when he spoke, Marianne was shocked. The man stammered.
“He virtually quakes when he talks to her,” she whispered to Andre as they left the Ada to muddle on with him.
“Lord Henry Drake is noteworthy.” Andre led her out to the edge of the circle. “He’s the second son of the Duke of Stratton.”
“That earns him favor,” Marianne chuckled as she placed her hand in Andre’s. “But only with Uncle Killian. Ada is bored to tears.”
Andre slid his hand around her waist, his long fingers strong and insistent on her back. “Perhaps she can teach him a thing or two about spontaneity.”
“You know her.” Marianne laughed. “She won’t take the time.”
“He wants to enter politics.”
She blinked. “He’s devilishly good looking. An arc angel, really. But to win votes, he’ll need a social reformation.”
“She could inspire him.”
“Or shock him and leave him where he stands.”
Andre frowned. “Harry’s loss. Shall we dance, ma cherie?”
He led her off and the world opened up for her. They’d danced in his ballroom and he’d held her like this before. But this in front of others was so different from ever other time she’d danced with him. She was his partner, a natural element of him, and he of her. He took her into the turns gracefully, lithe as a feather and she floated, as enchanted with him in the middle of a dance floor as in private beside him on a blanket on the lawn near the cascading waterfall in the Bois.
The others in the room fell from view. Only he existed for her. Only the music lifted them up and sent them on their way. Even in the faster movement of the chase, she was his, mesmerized by his command of her body. Thrilled by his desire for her.
All too soon the orchestra stopped and the two of them stood facing each other, breathless, smiling like clowns at each other.
“Come for a ride with me now alone.”
She opened her mouth, wishing she might. “They’ll notice we’ve gone.”
“Please.” He held her hand, his fingers urgent on her palm.
She nodded. “We must tell my uncle.”
“Darling, you are old enough—”
“And wise enough to tell him so that he’s prepared for the gossip.”
Andre sighed and nodded. “We’ll go now.”
Marianne glanced around to find Uncle Killian in deep conversation with Ada and a young man whom Ada had met before and dismissed as a bore.
“Yes, let’s.”
But the gentleman asked Ada to dance and led her away.
“I’m stunned she accepted him,” Killian said to Andre and her.
“Can she bear him for five minutes?” Marianne asked, as Ada went into Lord Gerald Winton’s embrace looking like a sleep walker.
“When I came upon them,” Killian said, “she was giving him what-for about whatever he’d said about Apache Indians.”
“What does he know about our Indians?” Marianne asked her uncle.
“Not much.” Killian shrugged. “I gath
er he must’ve said something about indigenous people needing an understanding of economics. She was setting him straight about how some tribes of Apaches did raise their own crops and traded farm goods.”
Andre and she chuckled.
The three of them watched, glued to the sight of handsome Lord Winton sweeping Ada into the line of those on the floor.
“One good thing, the man can dance,” Killian said, shock on his face.
“Ada looks like she’s as surprised as we are,” Andre offered.
“If he can’t converse, it won’t save him,” Marianne said.
“He’d better not damage her reputation,” Killian said. “She’d not tolerate the wallflower chairs.”
“I doubt she’ll have problems, sir,” Andre said.
Killian snorted. “There must be a few Englishmen who can dance and talk. Maybe even a man who can joke. Ada needs a man with wit.”
Andre turned around to face her uncle. “Sir, this evening I take Marianne home in my carriage.”
Killian’s silver eyes shot to hers. “You know what you’re doing.”
“We’ve come to know each other well, Uncle.”
He stared into Andre’s eyes. “Remy, I ask that you honor the commitment you made to me.”
Marianne blushed.
“I will, Mr. Hanniford.”
Andre glanced at Marianne as she left him to join Lily and Ada. The guests for Elanna Ash and the earl of Carbury’s wedding milled about the duke and duchess of Seton’s drawing room. Andre had eyes only for Marianne who looked particularly luscious this morning in a gown of yellow and ivory. Last night, alone with him in his hired carriage, she’d been more appealing, her lips ripe strawberry temptations. Though he had kissed her only once, that was all he would permit himself. Playful and yearning, she tried for more and placed her mouth on his even as she begged for more kisses.
“I cannot do it, ma cherie.” He’d pushed her away but nestled her against his chest, safely in his arms. “You return to Paris in a few days and then we shall see.”
She’d jerked away, frustrated and peeved. “Maybe you should go back to your mistress.”
Daring Widow: Those Notorious Americans, Book 2 Page 11