He pressed a lavish kiss to her open palm. “Leave me before I abduct you.”
She stepped down into the street with the aid of Andre’s groom. Climbing the steps, she heard another carriage pull up and paused to watch Uncle Killian’s town coach approach. He emerged, his black hair ruffled by the wind, his top hat off, his evening cape flying behind him as she caught up to her. The two of them entered the hall when Foster opened the door for them. The butler took his master’s cape and waited for her to give him hers.
“I’ll take mine upstairs, Foster. Thank you.”
Killian arched one long dark brow.
She understood that he wanted news of the night. “The girls had a wonderful time. I did, too.”
The butler disappeared down the hall.
“Remy pulled it off, eh? Good. I understand he asked his friend the Comte du Maine.”
“He did,” she said as unbuttoned her summer jacket. “Both men enjoyed themselves.”
“Not a total chore for Maine then. Fine, fine. I like him. And I know Remy had a fine evening.” He gave her a lopsided grin. “Ada behaved?”
“Impeccably, sir.”
“What about those two friends of hers? How were they?”
“No faux pas this evening.” Even if they’re up to something. “Well, I’m off. Good night, Uncle.”
She was halfway to the first landing when he called up from the foot of the stairs. “I see Valmont across the street.”
She halted. He couldn’t forbid her from going. Not now. Not after she’d waited so long and been so attentive to Ada.
Killian put an elbow to the balustrade. In his black cutaway and starched white cravat, his inky hair swept from his brow, he looked like a sleek jaguar she’d once seen in a circus sideshow.
“He waits for me.”
Killian nodded once. “Enjoy yourself, my dear. You deserve the right to every moment.”
Like water over a fall, her doubts drained from her. She wanted this. Needed the satisfaction of a rendezvous with a man she cared for. Cared for deeply. “I will, Uncle. I leave by the kitchen door. I’ll see you at breakfast.”
“I’ll instruct Foster not to lock the doors just yet and to unlock them early tomorrow. At dawn, shall we say?”
“Dawn would be right, yes.”
With a winsome smile, he turned on his heel and made his way toward the servants hall.
Chapter 8
The coach was cool. Valmont had opened one of the windows and the night air was a refreshing breeze upon her heated skin.
She closed her eyes, at peace with the decision that had been conceived in instinct and—after all these months and so many occasions—was borne in conviction. She adored Monsieur le duc de Remy, prince d’Aumale, Andre Claude Marceau. In that realization, she rested secure and happy.
The streets at this time of morning were quiet. Though the bon ton traversed the boulevards, to and from the theaters, the cafes or the boudoirs of their loved ones, their sounds were muffled, discreet. The clop of matched horses. The whisk of a coachman’s whip. The footfalls of pedestrians on their way home denoted that all was well.
Her journey would be short. A good thing since her heart was unable to beat a steady tattoo since she’d entered the brougham and sunk to the plush squabs. Inside the cozy cab, Valmont had strapped a silver ice bucket to the tiny drop-down table. He’d poured her a full measure of crisp champagne into the crystal flute upon the inlaid polished wood. She took one drink, unwilling to cloud her mind for the scintillating experience she welcomed with all her heart.
She alighted at an impressive home, two stories high. In milky Parisian limestone that gleamed in the lamplight, the house reflected Remy’s personality in its elaborately carved robin’s egg blue front door and the multitude of huge paned windows that marched along the first and second floors. She put out her hand to knock upon the varnished wood and it fell open.
A half bare mighty arm reached out into the night and drew her in.
She giggled.
Andre caught her up in his arms and whirled her about, laughing himself. In his foyer, the chandelier above blazed in tiny lights. She could see him. See him as she’d never seen him before.
Wildly happy. With the broadest grin on his chiseled lips. The merriest twinkle in his incomparable eyes.
“You must put me down,” she told him, her hand to his chest.
“Why?”
“You’ll get dizzy. I am.”
“I’ve been dizzy since I met you.” Panting, he stopped and fell back against the wall. “If I want to make you as lightheaded as I am, you cannot blame me for trying.”
She put her palm to his cheek. His strong jaw lay in her hand and she marveled at his perfection. “I’ll blame you for my joy. An exhilaration I haven’t had since I was a child.”
One side of his mouth hooked up in a rogue’s grin. “I’ll take that, ma chou.”
She winced. “I do not approve of being your cabbage.”
“Very well. My star. My moon. My sun.”
“Use them all. Why not? Now put me down before you injure your back. Show me the house.”
He set her to the floor and put his hands on his hips. “What would you like first?”
She pointed toward the road. “Actually, I could do with the rest of that fabulous champagne.”
He snapped his fingers. “I have more. Come with me to the kitchen.”
He took her hand and led her down the massive hall, adorned with brightly colored paintings on the walls. They depicted ordinary women and men at parks, dancing, drinking, picnicking on verdant grass. “Do you like them?”
“Very much. I like you more.”
He wiggled his brows. “I dismissed my maid for the night. My assistant too.”
“We’re alone.” She was pleased, struck to the quick once more by his kindness.
“We are.” He stopped in the middle of the long hall. “You like these?”
“I do. Who painted them?”
“My friends whom you met last night. Renoir for this one. Du Bois, this one. And this—” He stood beside her as she marveled at the simplicity of a painting of a blond-haired baby, fat and jolly, rolling in his lacy crib. “You like this one?”
“Oh, I do.”
“This is by another friend of mine. Louise Antoine. If you wish, I will take you to meet her.”
“Do others like her work? They should. I can almost hear his burbling about how he loves his fat little toes.”
“Louise exhibited with us last April and sold a few paintings. Enough to pay her rent and buy a few rounds for us all at the Agile Rabbit.”
“Did you ever starve for your work, Andre?”
“No. I am fortunate.” He picked up her hand and kissed the back. “Starving the body is not always the best way to find a path to your true self.”
How well she knew that. “Starving is never the best way to do anything.”
He circled his arms around her, his impressive hard body a firm reminder that she was not here for the remembrance of bitterness. “I want you to be happy with me here.”
“If you don’t give me that champagne, how can I proceed?”
He hugged her and took a few steps into the kitchen. It was a cavernous room lined in big white cupboards, a huge trough for a sink, and a long wooden worktable in the center. “Viola!”
“You could feed an army from this place.”
“Never will. Not my intention. This is for the cook. Or cooks. I’ve had perhaps ten friends at most to dinner. And never as formal as what you’ll have when you come to the house in Rue de Rivoli.”
She didn’t want to talk of friends or dinner parties. “I’d just like my champagne, good sir.”
“Pardon e moi, Madame.” He bent to his task of opening a bottle, popping the cork and pouring her a large draft. Before her, he plunked down a mug. “Are you hungry, too?”
“No.”
“Then let’s go up.” He grabbed the bottle of champagne
and hooked his other arm around her waist. “Madame must see the rest of the house.”
Along the corridor, he pointed out his tasteful salon. Then he led her up the granite stairs. “When I bought the land here, I decided not to excavate the hill, but to use it to my advantage.”
“What do you mean?”
“This appears to be a second floor here in the rear of the house, but it is in fact the first floor. I had the builders pour a firm foundation because I needed stability in my studio floor to support the marbles.” he said as he paused before a massive door. “And I wanted wonder of the universe each time I walked in to my studio.”
He flung the door wide and the glory of the starry night fell over her. She put down her mug on the nearest bureau, needing no wine to intoxicate her with the moment or the man. Her head back, she could not get enough of the black sky, the flickering stars in the firmament, the infinity of the universe. Tears obscured the view.
Andre was beside her, his arms around her, his lips tracing the whorl of her ear.
She spun into him and choked back the clog in her throat. “You’ll have to help me disrobe.“
Wordless, he began with the crocheted frogs at the collar of her coat, his gentle fingers sliding open the closures, sliding the garment over her shoulders, down her arms and draping it over a chair. He came back, his pale eyes afire, and walked around her, his tender ministrations counterpoints to the pounding of her pulse. The cooler air rushed in to lick her skin as down, down, down he opened her simple day gown and pushed it to the floor.
She stepped out of the pool and bent.
But he said, “No,” and picked up the piece to place it upon the same chair as her other garb.
Planning for this moment, she’d not donned a chemise. Only her most comfortable corset, one petticoat, her finest stockings, garters and shoes. Drawers she’d left home, too. Boldness was an adventure, one she’d ignored for more than a decade. Tonight, she wished to show this assertive man she could be his equal. If only for one night.
Behind her, he pulled and tugged at the lacings to her corset. Made of soft white cotton, the garment was cut low, skimming the swell of her breasts. The whalebone could cut into her flesh, but before supper she’d ordered her maid to lace her loosely. To dance with Andre, she’d needed breath. To make love with Andre, she wanted speed.
The corset undone, she inhaled deeply.
He swept it away. Her breasts fell free and she sighed. He unhooked her petticoat tapes. Her last modest covering slid to her feet.
He sucked in air, the sound at once invigorating and soothing to her senses. She waited for his next move.
But he did not.
She gazed down at her naked body, her nipples pointed, aching for his hands, his lips, his tongue. She swayed and he caught her by the shoulders.
She turned to him.
He gazed only at her face. His expression was reverent, matching her own emotion.
“I’ve imagined this rendezvous for months,” she told him, her own voice surprisingly even, if raw. “Each time, I began by admiring you. As I do whenever I first glimpse you.”
He raised a hand, shaking, to release two combs that held up her curls. Her hair fell around her shoulders, a few strands draping over her breasts. He still did not look at her body, a twitch to his left eye told of his tension.
“May I undress you?” she asked him, her tone shockingly one of a schoolgirl asking favors.
He held out his arms, his breathing deep and fast.
Tonight to the Moulin de la Galette, he’d worn casual clothes. A dark linen jacket, cream linen trousers and a soft white shirt. Upon return here, he’d discarded his coat, kept the shirt and changed to loose dove grey pants. These, she surmised, were his work clothes. This was who he wished her to see. The sculptor. The man with ambition and substance.
She stepped toward him and undid the ties at the neck of his shirt. She gathered up the material, loose and giving in her hands, and pulled it up over his head. She spun and placed it atop her own clothes in the chair. When she turned back to him, his gaze flowed over her hair, her mouth, her nose, her eyes. His pants were secured round the waist by a leather belt, the fabric gathered haphazardly to keep them up. With her gaze holding his, she undid the leather, a loop of supple leather, and pulled it away. The garment whooshed to the concrete floor. As he had done, she did not fill her eyes with his nakedness.
With both hands, she framed his face. “I spent nearly two years of my life tending the wounded and the dying first in my own home and afterward in a Rebel hospital. They came in, walking, hobbling, some on stretchers. Filthy, starving, ragged, they were torn by bullets and ripped by bombs.”
Andre ran two hands through her hair, his expression pained and reverent.
“I learned the human body in my parlor and that church. That the perfection God created can be blown open, desecrated by other humans in the name of some cause, some purpose. I saw that blood can rush and muscles cramp, that arms and legs can be blown away, and the result is a man, deformed and reduced, sobbing for his mother. I never wish to see that or hear it. Never again.”
Did he have tears in his own eyes?
She stepped against him, her skin on his, warmed by his body heat. “I want to memorize your body, feel your strength, absorb it if I can.”
He brushed his thumb over her bottom lip. “My darling, whatever you wish is yours.”
She felt suddenly young, terribly young, as if she’d never despised her cowardly husband, never suffered war, never nursed any man through amputation or blindness or madness. “I want to admire how perfect you are.”
He pressed his thumb to her mouth and stepped backward.
Beneath his skylight, the moon washed pale rays over him. He was big. She’d relished that from first sight of him. He was tall and stately, standing as he was nonchalant, but intent on her, a tender smile upon his lips. His neck was thick, strong, his blond hair, white in the moonlight, curling around his nape. His chest was wide, corded with muscle from the years of chipping stone and lifting marble. Tapered and rippling over his ribs. His arms were long from shoulders that bunched with movement, to massive hands and elegant fingers, the nails short.
His hands hung lax at his side and she was tempted, so very tempted to slide her gaze to his groin. Years of etiquette caught up to her. His thighs, heavy and roped with long hard muscle, sent ripples of excitement to her stomach. His legs were shapely, his ankles lean. His feet, bare, were long and broad.
This was a glorious man. A noble man. Huge and powerful in form and spirit. One who had breeched the confines of his own class to become what he wished.
And there at the juncture of his massive thighs was the essence of his manhood. The element of his body she craved as much as she needed his smile, his laugh, his touch. And he wanted her. Desired her with a passion living in his eager assessment of her.
She strode up to him and plunged her fingers in his hair. Thick and silken, his heavy mane filled her hands. His scalp was wide, his forehead high, his temples pulsing with desire for her.
She caught his gaze, permissive of her folly to define him with her touch. She etched his pale expressive brows, brushed the edges of his blond lashes and ran both her forefingers along the Gallic arch of his nose. His cheekbones were broad, the hollows beneath them deep. His mouth—his wide appealing sensuous lips—curved up as she traced the outline. His chin, his jaw, a square declaration of his heritage. Warrior, Norseman, Celtic, king, emperor—they’d all been his forebears and he represented them with a noble visage.
But his throat was sure symbol of his strength. His shoulders, cut with cords of honed muscle, put her in mind of Atlas who held up the world. He had a sculpted torso, ribs prominent, hips too. She traced the line of his thighs with the flat of her hand and strolled around him, her fingers skimming the indentation of his waist and the leanness of his hip. His back was broad, more impressive than his chest, his bulging muscles rippling with tension as she
splayed her full hands wide to measure him. She glanced down. His derriere looked firm and when she smoothed her palms over him, he flinched.
She pressed her naked body flat to his back, her arms circling round him, her lips against his scapula, offering a kiss in homage to his strength.
He caught her hands against his stomach, his head arching back. Then with a sharp inhalation, he grasped her wrists and led her hands down to his penis. She squeezed shut her eyes, blocked out all but the feel of him. The thick hair of his groin and the long rigid form that was his manhood. And he was not shy about leading her to define all of him. He took her index finger and smoothed it over the tip of his cock. Drops of moisture beaded there, thick and hot.
Desire whirled through her, her loins pulsing, demanding. She held him and swooned a little, wanting all of him inside her.
He spun in her arms, a rogue’s smile upon his lips.
His huge hot hands crushed her close. His skin was fire, his might the bulwark she’d always assumed it would be. He embodied protection against hell. Salvation in heaven.
He pulled back to cup her face between his hands and took her lips in a slow sweet declaration of his need. “Come learn more of me as I do you.”
“Yes, oh yes.” She took a step.
But he caught her up in his arms and carried her to a large bed. There he laid her down so that when he loomed over her, she saw him as light within the black of night. He swept her hair from her cheeks, then lay along her length. Up on his elbow, he traced her brows, her nose, the outlines of her mouth with his fingers. His lips followed.
Mesmerized by his care, she lifted her knees and rolled into him. He snatched hair pins from her coif, dropped them to a night table. He swung back to kneel over her, hovering there, to grasp her hair in handfuls and drape it over her shoulders and down her breasts. Her hair tickled and she squirmed, arching her hips up and discovering the hot imprint of his penis and balls upon her core.
She groaned and he bent to take her chin between two fingers and hold her there as he kissed her and took all that her mouth could grant him.
Daring Widow: Those Notorious Americans, Book 2 Page 14