Flora’s smile widened. “Is the serious discussion over?”
He grimaced. “I sure as hell hope so. I don’t like to see you cry. Am I excused now?” he asked like a young boy chafing to play outdoors.
“If you can make your way out,” Flora answered, glancing dubiously at the audience around the piano. “The gauntlet looks daunting.”
Adam grinned. “Watch me. I’m very good at this.” Releasing her hands, he patted them lightly. “Now, go to sleep early, bia, and I’ll pick you up at eight.” Rising, he winked at her and strolled away. Stopping at his hostess’s chair, he leaned over and spoke quietly to Charlotte. She instantly smiled, nodded, smiled once more, and when Adam bowed over her hand and kissed her fingertips in farewell, she was visibly beaming.
All eyes avidly followed the Comte de Chastellux as he exited the room. And as soon as he was gone from sight, a buzz of conversation rose in competition with the faltering rendition of a Bach étude. Glances were cast in Flora’s direction, some curious, some envious, others of a minute scrutiny as if to say, “Tell me all the details.…”
She blushed under the contemplation, or was it only the rosy glow of happiness? Adam hadn’t said he loved her, but he clearly wished to please her. “Celibate” … he’d said the word in moody, sulky ill humor, but he’d said it. The sound strummed through her mind. He was celibate for her. It was an Adam Serre declaration of love.
Sarah quizzed her niece on the short walk home that evening, but Flora only said she was pleased Adam had come.
“It looked as though you had some angry words,” Sarah persisted.
“Not exactly,” Flora ambivalently replied, too much in tumult to disclose her feelings, or the possibility of truly loving Adam. “He said I looked like an angel in this dress.”
Sarah’s smile was hidden by the shadowed night. A victorious first skirmish in her campaign, she complacently thought. “What did you think of Bobby Randall?” she asked to gauge the efficacy of her plan. “He seems a handsome, charming blade.”
“He’s the most dreadful bore. Adam’s taking me for breakfast in the morning.”
“How nice,” her aunt replied as if the two sentences were a single happy thought. “The mornings are so wonderfully cool for an outing.” Definitely an evening of successes on several fronts, she cheerfully reflected. “How fortunate, then, that we’re getting home early so you can get your beauty sleep,” she tranquilly added.
Adam, on the other hand, was missing his sleep, having returned to Morrissey’s to sit in on the poker game again. He was in an expansive mood regardless of the monumental problems in his personal life. Flora had said she loved him. It was enough; it was everything. He played more recklessly than usual and still won.
“Damn you, Adam, how the hell can you keep getting those hands? It’s been a dozen in a row now,” Caldwell grumbled. “No wonder you’re smiling, although you were in a helluva good mood when you came back in here too. Was the lady friendly?”
“Friendly enough,” Adam cheerfully said. “We talked.”
“Right, and I’m a Sunday-school teacher.”
“Don’t you ever just talk to ladies, Caldy?” Adam blandly retorted, gazing at his friend from under his dark lashes.
“Not unless they’re damned plain, Serre, and to my recollection that flame-haired beauty you’ve been wooing so assiduously ain’t within shouting distance of plain.”
“We listened to a piano recital,” Adam related with a faint smile.
The declaration gained everyone’s attention.
“You serious?” one of his friends said, his eyebrows rising to his hairline.
“You’d all do well to cultivate a little culture,” Adam cheerfully remarked, the cigar smoke thick enough to cut, the table littered with liquor glasses. “You needn’t spend all your time at Morrissey’s.”
“Don’t,” one player laconically noted. “There’s the track too.”
“Suppose you’re going to be winnin’ there, too, Serre,” Caldwell muttered, tossing his chips onto the large pile in the center of the table. “I’ll raise.”
“My horses are resting tomorrow,” Adam pleasantly said. “And so am I.” He met the bet and raised it another five hundred.
And so the play continued as it did every night in the private room on the second floor while the liquor bottles emptied and stakes rose. Until shortly after one, when the door abruptly burst open, and a disheveled, very drunken gentleman swayed on the threshold. Bracing his hands on the doorjambs to steady himself, he cast an unfocused gaze on the men at the poker table. “Where’s … that bastard redskin?” he demanded, lurching forward a step as he lost his balance.
“Any particular bastard redskin?” Adam politely inquired, his eyes on Ned Storham’s young brother.
“Aha!” the inebriated man exclaimed like an actor in a bad melodrama, his fingers clenched white against the door frame to hold himself upright. “I foun’ you.”
“Unfortunately,” Adam calmly said. “You should go and sleep it off, Frank.”
“Don’ wanna sleep. Wanna kill you.”
Adam sighed, glanced at his cards, and shoved some markers into the pile. “Maybe some other time, Frank. I’m in the middle of a game.”
“Gonna shoot you,” the drunken man emphatically declared, fumbling with his coat pocket.
Calmly setting his cards down, Adam rose to his feet.
“Want my derringer?” Caldwell quietly inquired, his gaze on the intruder in the doorway.
Adam took the gun, pushed his chair back, and, walking around the table, strolled toward the teetering man still attempting to extract something from his pocket.
“This isn’t wise, Frank. You’re too drunk,” Adam said as he soundlessly moved across the plush carpet.
“Wise my ass,” Frank muttered, a smile appearing on his face as his fingers finally closed on the revolver in his pocket. “Damned if you’re gonna lake our grazing land.” Pulling the weapon free with a convulsive jerk, he pointed it directly at Adam.
“Your brother is going to be really angry if you get yourself killed, Frank,” Adam murmured, his gaze shifting between the wavering gun barrel and his assailant’s resentful face. “Let’s put the gun away. Someone might get hurt.”
Frank laughed. “Hurt? You’re gonna get killed, Injun. Start singin’ your death song.”
As Frank took a tottering step forward, Adam’s hand closed with blurring speed on the shaking gun barrel and wrenched it from the drunken man’s grasp in a smooth twist of his wrist. He tossed it to Caldwell, then took the befuddled man by the shoulders and turned him around. “Now, why don’t you go back to your hotel room, Frank?” Adam gently said. “Your head’s going to hurt like hell tomorrow.” Shoving him out into the hall, Adam called for one of Morrissey’s men.
A burly ex-fighter came on the run.
“He’s had too much to drink, Finn. Will you see that he reaches his hotel?” Adam handed five gold pieces to the bouncer.
“Yes, sir, Mr. Serre. Right away.”
The disruption put a mild pall on Adam’s good mood. Frank Storham in Saratoga was a loose cannon he’d rather not deal with. Frank drank too much and, unlike his older brother, who had made his fortune in the cattle business because he worked hard, didn’t mind taking what wasn’t his and paying for hired guns to fight his battles. Frank had inherited the Storham temper and none of the brains.
“You all right, Adam?” Caldwell inquired when Adam returned. “I had him covered in case the fool could function well enough to pull the trigger.”
“Thanks. I’m fine,” Adam replied, sitting down and picking up his cards.
“One of your enemies from Montana?” one of the players asked.
“His brother has his eye on my land.”
“Got enough men to defend it?” Caldwell inquired, familiar with range wars in his native Texas.
“So far. Lord, I’m getting tired. This is my last hand.”
“Good. Then the
rest of us will get a chance to win,” Caldwell said with a broad smile.
But Adam didn’t go back to his hotel room when he left Morrissey’s. He found himself walking toward Franklin Square, and a few minutes later he was standing before the neoclassic facade of Sarah Gibbon’s house, his gaze on the lighted second-floor window.
Chapter Eighteen
The knock on her bedroom door was a firm double rap, and Flora’s hand froze in arrested motion over her head, the hairbrush in her hand suspended in space, her face in the gilt-framed mirror before her registering shock.
He wouldn’t dare, she incredulously thought, even as the solid reality of the sound echoed in her mind, the knock so like him—not diffident, but strong, sure. Glancing at the small jeweled clock on the dressing table in front of her, she checked the time. One-thirty. Could she have been imagining noises in the night? she nervously equivocated. Perhaps a servant had been checking the gaslights in the hall and accidentally banged against the door.
But even as she attempted to discount the truth, she watched the door behind her open in mirror image and saw a tall familiar figure in evening dress enter her bedroom. Shutting the door in a whisper of sound, Adam smiled at her.
The hairbrush fell from her hand and she froze where she sat, every sound in the large house magnified a thousand times in her ears. Sarah would hear. The servants would know. Everyone was listening to Adam’s footfall crossing her floor.
Coming up behind her, he touched her hair first, sliding his hand down its shimmering red-gold length as if marking her as his possession, vetting her and branding her in one simple gesture. Then his fingers slipped forward, glided up her throat, gently gripped her chin, and lifting her face slightly upward and toward him, he bent his dark head low.
“I couldn’t wait,” he murmured against her soft mouth. “I don’t know how to be friends.…”
“You’re drunk.” Her voice was hushed, the taste of brandy fragrant on her lips.
“I don’t think so,” he whispered, slipping his hands under her arms and raising her from the small satin-covered bench. “I wish I were,” he murmured, turning her, pulling her hard against his body, his hands on her lower back warm through the cotton eyelet of her nightgown.
“So you’d have some excuse for coming here.” Her palms lay on his satin lapels, the familiar feel of him initiating a rush of pleasure, her senses immune to the danger of his presence.
“Yes.”
“But you don’t.”
“I haven’t thought of one.”
She could feel the strong beat of his heart under her hand. “Perhaps you love me.”
He grimaced and the silence was profound.
She smiled at his resistance in the context of such obvious necessity. “We could just be friends.”
His brows drew together in a scowl.
“But you came here for something else, didn’t you?”
Another silence while she surveyed the dark beauty of his face as if searching for her answer in the subtle play of light and shadow.
“I came here because I can’t live without you,” he said at last.
“I know,” Flora softly replied, her fingers stroking the fine silk of his lapels, the feel of him beneath, hard, strong. “I’ve missed you.”
Adam glanced at the clock on the dressing table.
Like a drenching in ice water Flora was reminded of the style of his liaisons. Short, sweet, numerous. “Do you have another engagement?” Resentful, instantly jealous, she tried to pull away.
“You haven’t lost your hot-blooded temper,” he teased, his arms unyielding.
“Don’t patronize me,” she snapped, locked hard in his embrace despite her resistance, hotspur anger in her eyes. “Am I keeping you from something, dammit?”
“I have to be back when Lucie wakes up.”
“Oh, Lord,” she whispered, a mortified, flaming blush coloring her cheeks. “How humiliating.”
“No more than my coming here,” he quietly said. “When I shouldn’t.”
Unguarded desire trembled through her senses, the heat of his body burned into her palms. “How long can you stay?” she murmured, beyond shame, helpless against her need.
“Three hours, probably four. It’s up to you”—he smiled—“and the servants’ attuned hearing.”
“I should send you away,” she whispered.
“But you won’t.”
“No,” she softly said.
“Good,” he murmured, his gaze bare of well-mannered civility, flame hot. “Because I wouldn’t go.”
Reaching for the blue ribbon threaded through the scooped neckline of her summer nightgown, he gently pulled on the bow.
She didn’t move in the quiet of the bedroom, aware of the tremulous beating of her heart, aware of the delicate touch of his fingers as he untied the silk ribbon and then loosened the gathered fabric. He slowly slid the fine eyelet over her shoulders, the brushing warmth of his hands flaring through her body, the intoxicating pleasure feverish, familiar, and she thought: How long has it been?
Weeks.
Hours were too long to deny such soul-stirring rapture, and it had been weeks since he’d touched her.
Now that he was standing before her, tall, powerful, aroused, she wondered how she’d ever been able to rationalize away her longing.
His palms glided over the verge of her shoulders, shoving the light material aside, slipped down her arms, midway to her elbows. And the pale gown slithered to the floor.
He looked at her without speaking, his hands drifting lower until his fingers touched hers and delicately slid through them. Lifting her hands to his lips, he gently kissed her knuckles.
“You’re trembling,” he murmured, his gaze intent beneath the shield of his lashes.
“It must be the cold,” Flora whispered, her smile discounting her words and the sultry summer heat.
“Do you need someone to warm you?”
“I thought that’s why you came.”
It stopped him for a moment, the candid truth beneath the casualness of her reply, the utter lack of coyness.
“I saw your light,” he said.
“From Morrissey’s?”
He grinned. “Is this a quiz?”
“No,” she said, glancing at the bed before her gaze returned to his. “Why don’t you latch the door?”
How did she always manage to disconcert and arouse in equal measure? he thought as he moved away. And when he turned back from locking the door and saw her waiting for him, lounging against the lacy pillows like a practiced courtesan, he questioned his sophistication. A grudging displeasure pervaded his mind.
Dropping into a chair near the bed instead of joining her, he restlessly slid into a sprawl, not certain why he was there, suddenly not certain what he was going to do. She looked very beautiful, playful and inviting, like a Boucher nymph—all pink, blooming flesh. But less cherubic, he noted, more voluptuous and womanly.
“I came to Saratoga to seduce you,” Flora gently said, surveying Adam’s moody sprawl. “Will I have to, after all?” she softly inquired.
“No.”
“You have that sullen look of a man doing something against his will.”
“And you know all about men.”
“Are you jealous? Tell me, because I am.”
His gaze went oblique for a moment before it met hers again. “Yes,” he said. “And I can’t escape it if I ride ten thousand days and nights. I want you in my hands. I want you to be kissed only by me. I’m haunted by the pleasure I take in possessing you.”
“The pleasure isn’t exclusively yours,” Flora gently reminded him, “nor the inescapable need to possess. And don’t look at me like that. I don’t say this to other men.”
“I’m sorry,” he gruffly muttered, “The violence of my feelings threaten any sense of detachment.”
“Your customary sense of detachment, you mean.”
His gaze came up, volatile, fitful, and he looked at her from under
lashes longer than anyone’s. “I see you everywhere—in my dreams, in shop windows, in the mirror in place of my own image. I’m not sure—”
“You want to be in love?”
“I’m not sure I want the calamitous changes in my life.”
He looked spectacularly beautiful, all dark eyes and hair and sullen restiveness, his powerful body elegant in black tails, diamond studs twinkling down his starched shirt front, his hard, flat belly sleek beneath a white satin waistcoat, a large sapphire ring on his right hand catching the light.
“I don’t have your misgivings,” Flora said, sliding her legs over the side of the bed, pushing herself upright. “Love doesn’t frighten me.”
A swift surprise showed in his eyes, and he watched her with a guarded wariness as her feet touched the floor and she moved the small distance from the bed to his chair.
“The fetters alarm you, don’t they?” she murmured, gracefully kneeling at his feet. “You don’t want to be undone by love.”
“I don’t know what I want,” he quietly said, aware the rhythm of his breathing had changed when she knelt before him.
Placing her hands on his knees, she parted his legs so she could move between them. “There’s always one certainty, at least,” she softly said, feeling the warmth of his thighs on the underside of her arms, knowing he could have stopped her at any time. “In this friendship of ours.” Her fingers slid under the placket on his perfectly fitted trousers, closing on the top button. “We agree on that, I think,” she whispered, her eyes on his as she slipped the first button free.
She undid his trousers with the compliant deference of a well-trained houri while Adam gripped the chair arms to restrain his violent impulses.
Her hair smelled of perfume, the scent sweet and heavy, the pale satin of her shoulders and the mounded fullness of her breasts only inches away, tempting, tantalizing as Persian love poems, his for the taking.
Was he willing to contemplate the enigma of love? He thought for the first time in his life. And if he did, what was the price of his freedom?
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