Until she’d said those fatal words, Amethyst had been prepared to ignore Fenella’s little homily. She was only doing her job after all, which was to protect her reputation. But to hear the very words her own father had used against her, when she’d needed understanding...
‘I have no intention of letting any man turn my head,’ she snapped. ‘I am not some silly girl who is still holding out for marriage. Let alone love.’ It was passion she wanted to experience. Just passion. And Harcourt was the perfect man to experience it with. ‘There is nothing he can do, or attempt to do, for which I am not completely ready.’
She had no dreams for him to smash, this time. Not that marriage was her dream any longer. She’d come to value her independence. She’d first earned it, then fought for it. And she had no intentions of surrendering it to the likes of Nathan Harcourt, of all men.
Anyway, he’d made it clear, both ten years ago and in the last couple of days, that all he wanted was an affair. Which was exactly what she wanted, too.
‘Oh, dear,’ said Fenella. ‘I can see there is nothing I can say to make you reconsider.’
‘Not a thing,’ she replied cheerfully. She’d done all her arguing with herself, during the long, sleepless nights she’d spent recalling how wonderful it had felt to be in his arms. Or just having him stand close to her. Her whole body ached to get that close to him again. In vain had she tried to build up a case for abstinence, warning herself of all the potential pitfalls of getting involved with Harcourt again. There was only part of her that was still sensible, cautious Amy. That Amy stood no chance against rebellious Amy and lonely Amy’s clamouring for fulfilment.
She was set on her course. And was fully prepared to face the consequences, whatever they might be.
Of course it was easy to say that with a cushion of vast wealth behind her. She couldn’t help but compare her own situation with that of the many girls who gave themselves to men who didn’t deserve them and paid a terrible price. If the precautions she was taking proved ineffective and she ended up pregnant because of this affair, she would still have a comfortable lifestyle. Even if she was no longer welcomed in the homes of the narrow-minded, morally superior, leading ladies of Stanton Basset, she could simply retire from society and become a recluse. It would not affect her ability to run her businesses. She already did so from behind a screen of companies, with which Jobbings communicated on her behalf. Only...it would be a shame if Fenella felt obliged to withdraw from her employ. Having to work for a woman who had actually committed the crime of which she’d so often been accused might prove too much for her delicate sensibilities.
‘I will be discreet, Fenella,’ she promised as she went to the door. ‘I wouldn’t want to do anything to make you uncomfortable.’
* * *
As her carriage drew up outside the hôtel where Harcourt lived, she raised her eyes to the top floor where he had his rooms and reminded herself she could still turn round and go home, before things went too far.
Only, why should she? She wanted to have this experience. She’d chosen it. He hadn’t seduced her into it, which had annoyed her at one point, but now she was glad of it, or she might have felt as though she’d let him weaken her. Broken down her resolve. Instead, coming here like this, flouting all the rules, taking a risk for once in her life, made her feel brave and adventurous. And more of an equal partner in this venture than she’d ever been in any other relationship in her life.
Fate had given her the opportunity, finally, to lie naked in his arms. To have him the way a wife should have a husband. And she’d never forgive herself if she didn’t take it.
With her mouth set in a grim line she entered the house and began to climb the stairs.
But both her trepidation and her excitement at the prospect of finally achieving something of her only girlhood dream had worn off completely by the time she’d climbed all the way to the top floor. All she felt was cross. Oh, yes, and don’t forget breathless.
Why on earth hadn’t she ordered him to attend her in her own rooms? He could have brought his easel and paints, and...and...
And then she pictured Sophie innocently dancing into the room to see how things were progressing. And finding them locked in a clinch, semi-clothed, on a sofa...
The door flew open just as she imagined Sophie shrieking in shock to see Harcourt doing something unspeakably wicked to her and blushed right down to the soles of her boots.
‘I thought you would never get here,’ he breathed, fiery-eyed.
‘It’s your own fault...for living up five...flights of stairs,’ she panted. ‘Are you going to ask me in, or shall I just expire on your doorstep?’
‘My, but you are prickly tonight,’ he said with a smile.
Well, that was what came of arguing with herself all the way here—and ever since Harcourt had made his wicked proposition.
He swept her an ironic bow. ‘Pray, do come in.’
‘You may as well know that I’m nearly always prickly,’ she said, moving past him and into his rooms. It was all pretty much as she might have expected a bachelor apartment to look like. The furniture was functional rather than pretty and there was a general air of disorder that was strangely welcoming. There were books piled up on the mantelshelf, interspersed with bottles and glasses. Gloves and a hat tossed carelessly on a side table by the door. Bills bursting from the drawers of a small writing desk and cards of invitation stuck at crazy angles in the frame of the spotted mirror propped up on it. And, permeating through the familiar dusty smell that rented rooms always seemed to have, the distinctive aroma of linseed oil.
‘You never used to be,’ he said as she drew off her gloves and tossed them on the table next to his. They landed in a kind of tangle, which looked peculiarly intimate, almost as though they represented two invisible people, holding hands.
‘When we knew each other in London, I always thought you were...sweet,’ he said with a wry twist to his mouth, as though he was mocking himself, or the memory of her.
‘You couldn’t have been more wrong,’ she replied tartly, as she tugged the ribbons of her bonnet undone. ‘My sisters always used to call me Thistle.’
‘Thistle?’
At least the revelation had wiped that sardonic look off his face. He was openly curious now.
‘A variation on Amethyst. I always wanted people to call me Amy, but they invariably ended up following my sisters, and calling me Thistle, or Thistly, because of my prickly nature.’
It was probably why they’d all been so thrilled when she’d come back from London in pieces. She’d been strict with them, coming down hard on their faults because her mother had stressed that, as the eldest, she had to set them all an example and she’d been flattered and pleased, and done her best to make her mother proud. What a waste of effort that had been!
She tossed the bonnet aside in the same way she was mentally tossing aside all the expectations her family had ever had of her. With determination. She’d stopped feeling repentant by the time she’d returned home after her trip ‘round the Lakes’ with her aunt. Ever since then she’d been angry. The most she’d been guilty of had been naïveté where this man was concerned. Had it really been such a terrible sin?
But now she jolly well was going to sin. She’d already been punished for crimes she hadn’t committed, so there really was no point in not committing them.
‘What would you like me to call you?’ His face looked quizzical as she scanned the room, looking for somewhere to sit down.
‘I don’t really care,’ she said. ‘I just want to sit down and get my breath back.’
‘Then come through here,’ he said, indicating a door to his right. ‘To my studio. I would like to capture your features as they are right now, all flushed and breathless.’
He hurried through and went straight to a table from which he selected pap
er and charcoal.
‘Sit, sit,’ he said, waving his free hand towards a couch under one of the many windows which she could tell would flood the room with light during the day.
She sat, rather disgruntled at his very far from lover-like behaviour. He hadn’t offered her any refreshment, he hadn’t paid her any compliments and now he was scurrying round, adjusting lamps and candles around the sofa. Then he went back to his stool and started sketching her without saying a word and only looking at her with the dispassionate eye of a workman.
Had she got it wrong? He had said he wanted them to become lovers, hadn’t he? Or had she imagined it? Got herself all worked up and gone through that agonisingly embarrassing interview with the apothecary—much of which had to be conducted in signs and gestures—for nothing?
He tossed the sheet on which he’d been working aside and got abruptly to his feet.
‘Now for your hair,’ he said and stalked towards her. ‘I want it loose, tumbling round your shoulders.’ Before she could protest, he’d yanked out half-a-dozen pins and was undoing her tightly bound braids. She clenched her fists in her lap. It was beyond infuriating, the way she felt at having him so close. Her heart was pounding, her breath kept catching in her throat and her lips felt full and plump. And he hadn’t said or done anything to produce this reaction. He was treating her as though she was just...a subject. An interesting subject he wanted to draw.
But then, as he started to fan her hair out, spreading it like a cloak around her shoulders, something happened to his eyes. They sort of...smouldered. And the lids half-lowered. His fingers slowed in their task and, instead of just arranging her hair to catch the light, he kept on running the strands through his fingers, as though he was getting the kind of pleasure she’d got from stroking the barn cat when she’d been little.
‘It’s so soft,’ he murmured, never taking his eyes from it. ‘So beautiful, and lustrous and soft. It’s a crime to bind it up in braids and shove it under an ugly bonnet the way you do. You ought to have it always on display.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ she said, her cheeks heating. To think she’d felt hard done by because he wasn’t saying anything lover-like. Now he’d gone to the other extreme, uttering such absurdities. Besides, her bonnet wasn’t ugly. Not any longer. It was brand new and quite the prettiest article of attire she’d ever owned.
* * *
Nathan quirked one eyebrow at her petulantly clenched mouth. It was as though she felt uncomfortable with his flattery. He looked at her plain jacket, recalled the positively dowdy way she dressed and wondered if she was deliberately hiding her beauty. He supposed being seduced and abandoned when she’d been so young had taught her a harsh lesson.
So why had she decided to come to him like this? He studied her face, the tense set of her shoulders, the way her mouth seemed to settle naturally into a bitter line, and wondered again how she had lived these last ten years.
It couldn’t have been easy, with an illegitimate child to care for. Society was harsh upon unwed mothers, while the men who’d seduced them got away scot free, for the most part.
She hadn’t been the real villain of the piece at all, he suddenly perceived. She’d been damaged by what had happened in their youth, too. It had made her treat him badly, but then perhaps her experience had soured her against men. Perhaps she hadn’t known that he had a heart to break, having been used and tossed aside by some rake.
On a pang of sudden sympathy, he said, ‘One day, I’d like you to tell me about that little girl’s father.’
‘Sophie?’ Her eyes widened. Then she frowned. ‘Why?’
She clearly didn’t want him to pry. Perhaps it was still too painful to speak of, even after all this time. Perhaps she was reminded of the man who’d fathered her, every time she looked at that abundance of fair hair, or into those intelligent and rather mischievous blue eyes.
‘Forgive me. You are correct. That has nothing to do with this, does it?’
‘No.’
‘Then why not take off your coat?’ he suggested with a smile.
‘My coat,’ she repeated, looking down as though she’d entirely forgotten she was still wearing it.
‘Here, let me help you,’ he said, when her fingers fumbled at their task. He knelt on the floor beside the sofa, deftly slipping the buttons from their moorings. She tensed at first, but made no move to stop him. And when he went to slide the sleeves down her arms, she leaned forwards, helping him speed the process.
‘And now your gown, I think.’
She sucked in a sharp breath as he reached behind her for the tapes that held the bodice fast. She blushed and he could see a pulse beating wildly in her throat. And her eyes darted away, looking anywhere but at him as he slid the loosened gown from her shoulders.
If he hadn’t known better, he would have thought she had no experience with this sort of thing at all.
Perhaps she hadn’t. Perhaps her seduction and ruin at such a young age had put her off men altogether. He’d already discovered she wasn’t being kept by that Frenchman, but was it too much to hope that after that one youthful indiscretion she’d had nobody else?
Her hands went up to her bodice when he went to bare her breasts. And that little show of reluctance made her seem so shy and nervous that he could almost believe he meant something special to her. Whatever had happened to her in her past, whatever had driven her to come to him tonight, she clearly wasn’t finding this easy. She didn’t seem to be the kind of woman who changed her lovers with as much ease as she changed her gown. She didn’t seem to know how to flirt, or tease, or arouse. The fact that she’d got herself here at all made him feel as though she was taking a chance on him, in a way she’d never done with any other man.
And something hot and primitive and possessive surged up within him as he leaned forwards to place a kiss on the pulse that beat so wildly in her neck. For a moment, he felt like a conqueror.
But then he went cold inside.
By God, she was dangerous. All he had to do was get a glimpse of that milky skin and his wits had gone wandering. He was building up a picture in his head of someone he’d once wanted her to be, not looking at the reality of where they both were now.
‘Don’t move,’ he grated, drawing back. He had to get things in perspective. ‘Stay exactly as you are, so I can capture that dazed look before it fades,’ he said, dashing back to his stool and grabbing hold of a pencil as though it was a lifeline.
* * *
Amethyst couldn’t believe it. He’d started to undress her, had her practically swooning with desire and then he’d darted away and started drawing her again.
When he finally deigned to speak to her again, it was to make a complaint.
‘You are frowning again.’
‘You would frown,’ she retorted, ‘if someone half-undressed you, then shot across the room to do something more interesting instead.’
He smiled in comprehension.
‘My apologies. Had I known you were so impatient to share my bed I would have tumbled you first and sketched you in the afterglow.’
He set his sketching pad aside and got to his feet.
‘In fact, I think that would probably be for the best.’ He stalked slowly towards the sofa. ‘I have a feeling you will be a much more co-operative subject once I’ve released you from all that tension you’re carrying around with you.’
* * *
Harcourt smiled a wicked smile, then leaned down and scooped her into his arms. She let go of her bodice, briefly, to balance herself in his arms, and the material made an attempt to slide all the way down to her waist, revealing more of herself than anybody had seen since she was about ten years old. Mortified, she grabbed at it again, just as he swung her sideways to manoeuvre through a narrow doorway and into yet another room. His bedroom. Her gaze fixed on the bed, whi
ch was in the very centre of the room. The sloping ceilings made that the only sensible place to put it, if he didn’t want to brain himself every time he got in or out of it.
She swallowed nervously as he laid her on it, but he didn’t give her time to express any last-minute qualms by following her down and showering her cheeks, her neck, her shoulders with brief, tantalising little kisses. They had the effect of stopping the breath in her throat so that she was incapable of speech. Not that she could think of anything to say at such a moment. Except she was making breathy little moans and squirming all over the counterpane, which expressed exactly what she felt far more clearly, to her way of thinking.
She didn’t want to protest at all when he went to pull her bodice down again, because he was making little noises expressing his own delight too. And then he proceeded to make her feel as though she was made of some delicious substance, the way he licked, and nibbled at her breasts, before swirling his tongue round her nipples. She had never, in all her life, experienced anything so indescribably wonderful.
When he moved off her, quite suddenly, she wished she’d been bold enough to put her arms round his neck, instead of clutching at the covers, so that she could have held him in place and made him carry on doing what he’d been doing.
But he’d only stood up from the bed to yank his shirt off over his head, slip off his shoes and remove his breeches.
She supposed she ought to avert her gaze, but he didn’t seem to mind her looking, so why shouldn’t she look? Anyway, she didn’t think she could have prevented herself. He was so very much more pleasingly put together than all those cold marble statues she’d glimpsed that day in the Louvre. In fact, the sight of her first naked, adult, flesh-and-blood male just about stole the breath from her lungs.
But before she could catch much more than a glimpse, he was back on the bed beside her, determined to dispense with her clothes.
If he’d paused to stare at her, once he’d got her naked, she didn’t think she could have coped with it. But he seemed far more interested in touching and tasting what he was uncovering. And his blatant hunger for everything about her put paid to most of her shyness. Besides, his caresses and kisses were making it just about impossible to think at all. He was reducing her to a molten mass of delightful sensation which drowned out intellect. There was no longer any place on that bed for shyness, or hesitancy, or logic.
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