“Celine Chauvin.”
“A New Orleans lady?” He slid his assessing gaze over her person, not unaware of the effect his perusal was having on her. “In the strangest set of red petticoats I’ve ever seen.”
Not even among the most celebrated harlots in New Orleans had Rhys ever seen a woman so suitably attired to please a man’s senses. The petticoat was all of one piece of supple red that followed her form. The neckline dipped invitingly between her breasts. Her waist length hair spilled over her bare shoulders in a riot of dark curls, slightly pulled back at the temples. Kohl played up the sultry color of her Creole-dark eyes. She wore dangling earrings, several bracelets on her wrist and her long fingernails were painted as red as her dress. Even her toenails on her daintily sandaled feet were painted. As if to complete the rather exotic effect, her fragrance wrapped around every one of the senses that pulsed hotly through him. She did more than please his senses. She invoked them. She was a heady concoction no doubt intended to put a man off guard. So why should he believe her avowed distress?
She nervously crossed her arms over her breasts. “Will you put me out dressed like this?”
Rhys had the strongest inclination to take her lovely mouth in a kiss that would test what sort of woman she was. He stepped closer until there was hardly an inch of space between them, seriously contemplating the idea. Her breath faltered and those dark Creole eyes locked on his with fear, anticipation and melting resolve.
“Ferrell sent you here, didn’t he?” he challenged in a low voice meant to coax the truth from her. Ferrell would be the sort to place his consort in such a tenuous position.
“No,” she whispered.
“But you are lying to me about who you are.”
“I’ve nowhere to go if you put me out,” was her only defense.
Every nerve in his body demanded he kiss her. He could almost feel the brush of her strange petticoat on his skin. He surely felt her tension—and her temptation. If he tested her, he knew she would yield and melt into such willingness he might not want to stop.
Rhys stepped back and watched both relief and disappointment sweep through her. Now was not the time. He fetched his robe and regretfully watched her hasten into it. He’d make an inquiry to the captain on her behalf, he decided. And though he doubted the availability, he’d see if there was an extra room for her. He dressed quickly and left, locking the door and taking his key.
When the door closed behind Rhys, Celine’s legs turned to jelly. She sank to the floor. This was no dream—she was too awake, too lucid. But her mystery man in the century-old painting was here! He was vital and alive and God help her, a potent temptation that overwhelmed her reason.
How was any of this happening? When was it happening?
Curiosity urged Celine into action. With a surge of adrenaline she tore through the stateroom until at last she found the evidence she was looking for. As a historian she could appreciate the pristine, nearly ageless condition of the papers she found, affidavits with Rhys Butler’s signature as a witness. They accused one Thomas Ferrell of crimes against his business partner. And they were dated in the months of May and June of 1871!
Celine’s fingers trembled as she stared at the indisputable documents. The words time travel glared through her mind. But that was the stuff of twenty-first century fiction. It couldn’t be real.
“When the mouse is away, the cat will play.”
Caught, Celine whirled around too late to stuff away the affidavits. With deadly calm Rhys plucked them from her hand.
“Do you think I’d be fool enough to leave my only copies alone in this room? You can tell Ferrell it’s far too late for him to stop my investigation. Mine are not the only hands to hold evidence that damns him.”
“This is not what you think.”
“What I think, is that it’s time for you to leave.”
“Please let me explain.”
“Explain what? How clever Ferrell and you were to smuggle you aboard? Was I going to find a knife in my back before morning? The captain has no record of a Celine Chauvin on the passenger manifest.”
“I swear I don’t know anything about this Ferrell person other than what I read on your papers. I wanted to see what year this is. Please, tell me what year this is.”
Rhys narrowed a hard gaze on her. “You won’t derail me by mumbling inanities.”
“What year?” she insisted.
“1871,” he ground. “Why?”
The blood rushed from her. Hearing him speak it gave it the sense of reality she’d been denying. She sank into the chair nearby.
“You are persistent, aren’t you? I’m not buying any of this, Miss Chauvin.”
“Rhys … I work with a group of people in New Orleans.” Her confessional tone gained his sudden attention as she hoped it would. He folded his arms, looking ready to listen, but not necessarily believe. “Last summer there was a terrible storm,” she said. “Houses were destroyed, people left homeless. No use trying to remember it because you wouldn’t have heard of it. In the attic of one house there were several very old paintings—they were badly damaged in the storm. A few were destroyed.”
“What does any of this have to do with Thomas Ferrell?” he asked.
“It has nothing to do with him. I told you, I don’t know the man. Please hear me out. This is difficult enough to tell.” He looked resigned then and she dared to continue. “The paintings were given to our group for restoration. It’s a difficult task—it can take months of cleaning, restoring, and repainting the damaged areas. Then we study and research the history that hopefully surfaces. I’m a portrait specialist. My job is to restore a particular piece, the history of which has completely eluded us. I’ve been working on it for months. The painting is one-hundred and thirty years old.”
“If you don’t know anything about it, how can you tell it’s that old?”
“There are tests that we run. And certain criteria we look at, the clothing of the subject, technique, color and various other little details tell a lot about a painting’s age. There’s no doubt the painting I’ve been working on is at least over a century old.
“Rhys … the man in the painting … is you.”
He stared at her as though she were totally insane. “You mean he looks like me.”
“Very well, if you please. He looks exactly like you. I believe it is you. In fact, aren’t you wearing the exact jacket and waistcoat you wore for the painting?”
His closed expression proved to her the painting had already been rendered. He’d taken on the detached, collected look of a gambler playing his hand close to the vest. After a moment he said with coolness. “It can’t be me. I’m not a hundred and thirty years old.”
“And I’m not from this century. Rhys, I’m from the year 2006.”
He scoffed at the notion. “You’re original, Miss Chauvin, I’ll hand you that. But if you mean to make a fool of me you’ll have to do better.”
“I don’t expect you to believe me.”
“Then why tell me this?”
Rhys detected the troubled shadow that crossed her delicate features. “I don’t know what I would gain by not telling you,” she said. “If you throw me out, I literally have nowhere to go. I don’t know how to survive in your time. And I don’t know how to get back to my own.”
He said quite frankly, “Looking like you do, you will have no trouble surviving my time.”
Rhys could see she understood his meaning in an instant and it frightened her as if she hadn’t any options. There was a sort of truth in her look and he put away for good the idea that Celine Chauvin was a woman of loose morals despite the seductive scarlet she wore.
He sighed in surrender. He might be damned to hell for this, but if there was the slightest possibility she was really in trouble he’d not put her out. He retrieved a quilt from the closet and pushed it into her hands. “Only one night,” he warned, “but you’ll have to share my bed.”
She turned almost as red a
s her petticoat and he knew by the nearly imperceptible shake of her head she was formulating her protest.
Rhys couldn’t resist. He traced a finger over her shoulder, experiencing a rush of heat for his tease. A gasp caught in her throat that nearly undid him and her gaze darted to the door. Despite the fire that pulsed though him, Rhys laughed.
She frowned. “You’re not funny.”
“I really don’t intend to sleep on the floor,” he warned.
* * * *
Long into the night Rhys realized the floor would have been the wiser and more comfortable choice. Celine had balled up her quilt and drawn it to her like a shield—but he still felt her heat as her fragrance wove through him, intensifying his awareness of her. She slept now, but earlier they’d talked hours. She’d spun strange tales about New Orleans in the twenty-first century, about a storm that crippled the city and destroyed her departed grandmother’s home. She spoke of heartbreaking losses in such tones that Rhys understood; whatever the truth was about her, Celine guarded her heart. She asked many questions about him as if she really had spent months wondering who he was. Her questions weren’t the kind Ferrell would find useful, but little things that seemed to fill a long borne curiosity.
Celine Chauvin tempted him to believe she spoke the truth. It would explain her strange manner of dress and the strangeness of her speech, despite the notable flavor of New Orleans in her soft inflections. He slid his gaze from her face and her tempting mouth to follow the curve of her bare shoulder and the seductive fit of the thing she referred to as a cocktail dress. Had this strange woman somehow slipped through some crack in time? Why here? Why now?
Rhys had never been more willing to give himself to the discovery of a woman than he was at this moment. He wanted to believe her. He did believe her! She’d walked out of her own time and into his life like a gift, maybe brought here by her fascination with a portrait of him on which the paint could hardly be dry. He’d only sat for it this week in New Orleans at his mother’s insistence. Celine’s story was, of course, impossible. But somehow Rhys believed her.
She stirred and thoughts of discovery more to do with physical instinct raced through him. He found himself imagining getting her out of her strange dress and discovering what twenty-first century women wore beneath such a scant little thing. It was the kind of discovery of which he’d never tire.
In truth, after the hours he’d been with her, Rhys was convinced Celine Chauvin was a woman worth knowing in more ways than one. And, he was more than certain, a casual liaison would not be enough to satisfy him. There was something about her that promised to fill a void in his life. A breath of goodness that had slipped into the world of underhanded dealers and cheats he investigated. He meant to hold onto that. By damned, whatever it took, he would hold on to her.
* * * *
Morning light seeped through the slatted shades of the stateroom door, slanting across Celine’s face. She awoke confused, and tried to sort through the dream of Mr. G. which still seemed to cling to the atmosphere around her. But a deep unsettling insisted it was not a dream.
Rhys Butler was real.
But he wasn’t in the room.
Celine got out of bed and pulled his robe on over her dress. The loose silk rubbed against her skin, stark proof she was in fact in 1871 with Mr. Gorgeous! The sexual energy between them last night had been breathtaking. Like none Celine had ever experienced.
Good thing he’d behaved himself. She might have surrendered! She was already in danger of losing her heart to him, something she could not let happen. What if whatever brought her here happened again and propelled her just as suddenly back to 2006? Even if she couldn’t return, or wake up from this surreal dream, what did she really know of Rhys Butler beyond her intimacy with his portrait? He could be a scoundrel or a heartbreaker? Yes—definitely a heartbreaker. If she gave in to the emotions he evoked in her, she’d likely fall hard and he’d break her heart into a hundred little pieces. She reached for the pendant that was once her mother’s. She didn’t think her heart could stand to be broken any more.
That’s what she was thinking when Rhys came through the door, his arms draped with women’s garments.
“We’re going to breakfast,” he exclaimed, dumping them onto the bed.
God, he was so handsome with the morning sunlight spilling in behind him. He closed the door and began to show her the things he’d borrowed, explaining the pieces to her as if he expected her to be unfamiliar with them. Did he believe her then? The thought touched her and Celine felt her resolve to be hard toward him slip.
He let her freshen up in the water-closet and she put on the fresh chemise and petticoat. When she stepped back into the stateroom, Rhys examined her for a long silent moment. She knew appreciation in the eyes of a man when she saw it. In Rhys, it was coupled with a searing, heated gaze that threatened to melt her.
He held out the corset. “This, I believe, is next.”
“I’m sure you more than believe it’s next. I’m sure you know it’s next.” Celine’s honesty was a warning to herself. She said, “I’m familiar with what it is. I just don’t know how to put it on.”
“Hmm … yes … obviously not something you’d wear with your cocktail dress. Shall I?”
Rhys drew it around her, fastening the first clasp beneath her breast. His fingers brushed so close Celine barely managed to keep her breathing steady. He turned her to the mirror, her back to him, enabling her to see as he worked each clasp, watching his own movements from over her shoulder. Celine believed him absorbed in the task, until she noticed in the mirror he was paying intense attention to the swell of her breasts that the corset pushed up.
He was being deliberately, seductively slow.
Her hair brushed against his cheek and Rhys turned his face, inhaling her fragrance. When he finished with the clasps, he spread his hand low over her belly and drew her backside to fit snug against him.
She shouldn’t let him! But Rhys was stoking fires which had lain dormant for a long time. Never had a man’s attentions been so sensual.
He nuzzled the veil of her curls to press his lips to her neck. His free hand cupped her breast, his thumb caressing a provocative circle through the cotton chemise.
Celine sucked in as if she’d been singed.
Driven by the sound of her passion, Rhys turned her in an instant, his mouth swooping over hers to part her lips in a kiss that devastated any resolve to resist. His lips commanded hers. His tongue tasted and caressed the recesses of her mouth at will, plunging her senses into chaos. His lips were beautiful, strong, taking and giving, demanding until finally leaving her mouth with a fevered promise to return. Rhys buried his face in her neck and groaned her name in a whisper. Celine’s hands moved over his shoulders with a will of their own, testing the shape and strength of his muscles. She moved them upward to dip fingers into his hair. He kissed her again. Fear of losing her heart was as rampant as her need for him.
Rhys pushed away the thin cotton that veiled her breast, nipping against the sensitive bud with his fingers, eliciting her groan of pleasure. He suddenly lifted her, his mouth feverishly taking what he’d exposed. God help her, she didn’t want him to stop. Her will was opening to him like a morning glory opening to the risen sun.
“Rhys,” her protest was barely audible. “Wait. Oh please.”
With a low growl of frustration he ceased, turning his face away only a little. It was enough for her to know he would comply should she insist he stop.
She didn’t insist, only begged his understanding. “I … I … can’t. We shouldn’t…” Her voice reflected the rift in her willingness and her breathing was all wrong, no doubt revealing how easily she could be persuaded. He lowered her to the floor still holding her. “I shouldn’t even be here,” she tried to explain.
“But you are here.”
“Yes, but for how long? What if it happens again?”
“Celine,” he cajoled, his whisper at her temple. His breathing w
asn’t right either. “You are here now. Isn’t that enough?”
Suddenly angry, she tried to pull away. “Perhaps for you!”
He refused to release her. “I didn’t mean it the way it sounded. Do you think I don’t know your heart will be in it if we should come together? You think I mean to use you then just toss you away like yesterday’s rubbish? Let me assure you, I’m a better man than that. Trust the fate that brought you to me, Celine.”
Trust fate that had broken her heart too many times? “Please!” There was greater resolve in her voice this time and with a great sigh, Rhys let her go.
Celine thought at first her legs would fail her. She was trembling when he brought the gown and helped her into it. She stared at her reflection as he fastened the buttons. What would she have thought had she ever come upon a portrait of herself in her work? Would she live out the rest of her days in this century with a heart Rhys Butler had broken? She recognized the danger of falling in love with him—but was it too late?
His eagerness for her likely had more to do with them being stuck in close quarters than any true feelings he might have for her. After all, she was sure he couldn’t possibly believe her story.
Finished with the buttons, he took her pendant in his fingers, proving her right with his next words. “You shouldn’t wear this. Mrs. Ferrell is aboard and has already claimed her necklace lost. Seeing it around your beautiful neck might upset her.” He reached around her to unfasten it without waiting for her reply.
“You still think I’ve been lying to you?” She knew he could see how flushed she’d become, but she couldn’t help it when she realized how close she’d been to yielding to him.
And, it would’ve meant nothing to him.
He placed the necklace in her hand. “Don’t jump to conclusions. The necklace is exactly like hers. Hers is lost. If she sees it on you she might conclude the worst. I’m sure she’s not ignorant of the fact that her husband is a scoundrel. Here,” he said, “you can keep it in this if you want it close.” Rhys handed Celine her own evening bag.
Blue Moon Magic Page 15