CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Since Mattie had cooked and Comfort’s baby was making the expectant mother miserable, Christiana insisted on washing the dishes that she helped Mattie carry back to her cottage. Like Vallé, Mattie had a separate cookhouse out back, but this one featured built-in flat-topped grills in addition to the fireplace and bake ovens. Grills were best when cooking for crowds, Mattie explained as she set the wash basins on her work table and filled them from the kettle she’d left simmering by the fire.
While Christiana scrubbed and dried the dishes, Mattie fed scraps to the shoats that rooted in a small pen behind a neighbor’s cottage. When everything was put away, the two returned to Vallé’s house. Knowing that the afternoon hours would drag without some sort of diversion, Christiana insisted on helping Mattie clean. She put on her plainest dress—the one she’d worn as a governess—and polished the finely turned spindles on the stairs. Next, at Mattie’s direction, she dusted the library shelves but left the door swung wide. If Vallé should come, she wanted this, at least, to be transparent. She would not give him any excuse to question her actions, or a reason to think there was anything to hide. And having the door open let her listen to Mattie’s running monologue on all things domestic: cooking and sewing and cleaning.
Mattie clucked her tongue over the spots on the hall floor, attacking them with hot lye and a vengeance, once she deemed that the gall had been left on long enough. While she scrubbed with the grain, she tossed her pearls of wisdom through the opened library door. Mattie was a veritable fount of information, useful to anyone who might find herself in service, or be in the position of directing servants, whether chambermaid or scullion, laundress or cook.
Mattie was cleaning the salon when young Adrienne came with a message from Vallé, who said to expect him for dinner at seven. When Mattie withdrew to the cuisine to prepare the evening meal, Christiana continued to work in the library, carefully dusting the leather-bound volumes, one by one, a shelf at a time, while mentally cataloguing the titles on the spines. Although some were printed in English, most were in Vallé’s native français, followed by Latin, then Greek.
The selection pointed to someone who had been well educated, someone with a natural intelligence and love of learning. Someone born into a monied family, perhaps even a titled one. What was it Bryce had said, that heiresses had set their sights on Vallé but hadn’t managed to snare him?
Christiana paused, balanced on the library’s ladder with a priceless copy of a book on armaments, some two hundred years old, hugged to her chest. It seemed that Vallé had lived in luxury much of his life, while she’d known mostly hardship. Now that she was nearly eighteen and a woman full grown, a part of her might dream of more but the sensible side recognized fairy tales for what they were. She knew that no frog would turn into a prince, and understood that thirty-five-year-old men of means married women of their same social class, not bastard daughters of Irish smugglers. Yet an inner voice was quick to remind her of her heritage. She came from an emerald isle where gods and goddesses had walked among men, where fairies—fallen angels, cast from heaven for their sin of vanity—found the daughters of men desirable enough to take as mates. A magical place where all things seemed possible, including a love great enough, true enough, to surmount any obstacles the world might place in their path.
Christiana was so lost in thought that the sound of booted footsteps on the floor didn’t register until they stopped at the foot of her ladder.
“Bonsoir,” she offered, helpless to stop the blush that warmed her cheeks at being caught daydreaming. Slanting a look beneath her arm, she saw that Vallé looked tired. And curiously content.
Justin watched Christiana replace the book she was dusting, take her crumpled rag, and start to climb down the library ladder. He stepped back to allow her descent but stayed close enough to catch her, should she somehow start to fall.
“Things went well, I hope,” she said, while he watched her steps with a diligent eye.
“Oui,” he said, processing the complex feelings that sallied forth, emotions inspired by the sight of Christiana working in his home, as if it were hers too. He wanted to protect her, to tell her that he paid others to do such work, and at the same time he was absurdly happy that she cared enough about his home—about him—to tend it. When he’d caught sight of her on the ladder, her green eyes dreamy with secret thoughts, he’d wanted nothing more than to pluck her from her perch and hold her against him, wrap her in his embrace, and kiss her until her eyes were glazed with passion.
Clutching the dust rag in her hand, she caught her bottom lip between her teeth and looked away rather than meet his eyes. “Mattie said the shelves needed cleaning,” she said quietly, doubtless remembering the instructions he’d given, how he’d told her this room was his domain, not to be entered without his permission.
If she only knew how many times he’d sequestered himself here, thinking to dull his senses with brandy or Madeira, only to be plagued by memories, mental images that juxtaposed themselves quite realistically on the room’s contents as he imagined himself making love to her on his desk, in the chair, on the rug before the hearth.
Justin lifted a finger and stroked the delicate curve of her cheek. “I’m certain they did, and I thank you,” he said softly.
The contact seemed to reach her very core, sparking a reaction that came from deep inside her. She trembled beneath his touch. “Y—you have a…a wonderful collection,” she stammered, inhaling sharply, her thoughts clearly not on his books.
Perhaps she was thinking of him, or them. Together….
Hoping to encourage her, he mentally shrugged off the yoke of his responsibilities, borne since he’d left her at sunrise this morning. She’d protested his going, though he doubted if she remembered it, half asleep as she’d been when he’d quieted her with a sweeping kiss across her lips and the promise that he’d make it up to her tonight.
He smiled softly. “Feel free to read them.”
Christiana looked up, clearly startled—and delighted—by his offer.
“You’re welcome here as long as I’m not working. I am afraid you would prove too much of a distraction, ma belle.” He caught her hand, the one with the cleaning rag, and felt her pulse quicken beneath his touch.
“Vallé!” Color flooded her cheeks. She cast an anxious glance toward the door. “Please! What if Mattie should come?”
Justin relented. They would not truly be alone until after dinner. Silently acknowledging he must cool his heels and his ardor, he brushed a kiss across her knuckles and released her.
Like a songbird freed of her cage, she dipped her head and disappeared out the door.
Watching her go, he listened to the now-familiar sound of her footsteps on the stairs and gave thanks that he was a patient man. She was worth waiting for, he reminded himself, and he’d better get used to this. If Christiana stayed with him, they would eventually have to be discreet around far more servants than one. Since he was seldom in residence and Mattie could call upon the island’s other woman and children for help as needed, he’d never employed a staff. But with Christiana here, he had a feeling his sea-roving days would be numbered to those times when he could drag himself from her—and the babies he imagined—oui, hoped—that they would create.
The mental image of himself as the head of a household full of children as adventuresome as their mother made him smile. At the same time a sweet, piercing pleasure grasped hold and refused to leave. True, he was old enough to be her father, but the feelings that Christiana stirred in him were hardly paternal. And no longer frightening, he realized with some surprise. Sometime since this morning, when he’d torn himself from her side to see to his duties, the idea of permanency, of keeping her here even at the cost of his bachelorhood, had nudged his subconscious and taken root, wrapping its tendrils around the heart he’d guarded for so long.
Oui, mused Justin. He was the right age to wed, and Christiana would be able to fill a nursery with
fair-haired sons and dark-haired daughters as beautiful and spirited as their mother. But before he was free to discover if her desires matched his own, he had a job to do, one not without its dangers. Only when he returned with her father, and this business was finished between them, could he approach her and ask her to stay with him forever. And only when she said yes could his home be filled with warmth and laughter, no longer an impossibility now that her presence had finally managed to banish the ghosts of the past.
Vallé was quiet, almost thoughtful at dinner. Attentive, though. He looked at her far more than the food on his plate, though he kept at it long enough to finish. Afterwards, he invited her into the library, where he selected a book for her to share. While she read aloud the poetry of John Donne, Vallé sipped a glass of wine and watched her until she went quiet.
“Dying men talk often so.” Donne’s words were unnerving. Unsettling. Like being caught in a crow’s nest when a wall cloud pushed through, shaking loose anything that wasn’t tied down.
She thought of her plan to seduce Vallé and found herself being seduced, without a word, just a glance, a look, the way he held the goblet, as if it were her body and every sip was a taste of her.
And now she sat, alone in her room, waiting, wondering, searching in the mirror for answers. Her pupils were wide in the candlelight from the single taper that burned in its silver stand. The flame undulated, highlighting her cheeks, painting her hair with red highlights and casting golden light upon the sheer white shift she wore. Trimmed with yards of fragile lace, it was fit for a bridal trousseau—and so she’d told Comfort when they’d finally met today. As soon as she’d spoken, she’d regretted it. She was certain that Comfort had made it exactly for that purpose, each stitch done with the highest hopes, which were dashed when the intended groom disappeared. Christiana hadn’t asked questions. She didn’t know the reason for his desertion. She’d kept her questions to herself and thanked Comfort for her thoughtfulness. Now she wondered if she’d done the right thing, wearing it tonight. She didn’t need an ill omen. Perhaps she should change—
The sound of footsteps on the stairs made her heart skip a beat, then flutter in double time. Christiana studied her reflection and wondered no longer why she’d chosen to wear Comfort’s gown. It was beautiful. Seductive. Designed to celebrate the wearer’s femininity while stirring a man’s desire.
As if Vallé’s needed stirred.
To calm herself, she brushed her hair, drawing the soft bristles from her crown to the nape of her neck and trying to quiet the butterflies that had taken wing in her stomach. She heard Vallé pause outside her door before moving on to his own chamber. She listened to the latch release, the door swing open, heard his footsteps as he started across the room but stopped short of his bed.
He wanted her. In the library, he’d allowed her to see the fire that smoldered in the depths of his eyes. Nor had he hidden himself at dinner, but had done all in his power to fan the flame that burned between them, so successfully he nearly singed her. And now he was but a door away, peeling off the veneer of civilization. He would rid himself of clothes until he was as magnificently naked as the earliest man, with the same primal drives, the same elemental needs, one with every other male who’d ever walked the earth, knowing that life’s greatest pleasure was to be found when he lost himself in his chosen mate’s body, joined so deeply, so completely that their souls seemed to touch.
Donne could have been describing Vallé when he wrote “Thy body is a naturall Paradise in whose selfe…all pleasure lies….”
And he was but a door away.
She lifted the silver brush, and the flash of emerald fire on her hand made her pause with it midair, a moment suspended in time while she searched for the truth in the mirror. She saw a woman who was afraid—afraid of the future and what it might bring: cursed knowledge and untold pain, or her father’s rescue and the affirmation that her trust was not misplaced.
Try as she might to convince herself otherwise, she knew that her love for Vallé would be her damnation or her salvation. Somewhere in the world, cities were besieged, wars were being waged, and battles won, but her universe had narrowed to this man, this house, this quest to free her father…and thus free herself, she realized.
She would never forgive herself if she didn’t do everything within her power to save him. One more reason to sail on the Bold Avenger if her attempts to persuade Vallé to take her proved futile.
She finished brushing her hair, regretting its loss. To compensate, she found an ample length of ribbon, fit it around her head, and tied it into a bow—a female vanity she’d had even as a child. Lace edged the low squared neckline of the shift she wore and adorned the full, long sleeves. The sheer fabric draped her curves like a fine mist, the dusky areolas tantalizingly visible. It invited a man’s touch, ready to be meticulously removed in a gradual unveiling, or to be sent flying when that proved too slow and he simply stripped it from her body. Given Vallé’s great store of patience, what would drive him to the brink, poised on the edge of self-control until she pushed him over?
What would it take? she wondered. What could she do? She thought of all that she’d seen in her youth, how bawds would tease and tempt, competing for attention. She considered what tricks they had used and mentally compared them, looking for the boldest, the wickedest, the most seductive thing a woman could do to a man.
The blood rose high in her cheeks at the first memory that played out before her mind’s eye. ‘Twas the night O’Malley and his second-in-command had left her in the fo’c’sle of the Annie Laurie whilst the two of them went drinking and wenching with Vallé. But rather than stay in the wretched dampness, crammed together like a hound in a kennel with the rest of the crew, sharing a sodden blanket with the cook’s snot-nosed help, that even more wretched Jimmy, she’d snuck back to the spacious captain’s cabin, awaiting O’Malley’s return. But Vallé had come instead, and what happened then had educated her more in true intimacy between a man and woman than any of the wild tales that Jimmy passed as gospel truth.
At first she’d been so very saddened that her idol had clay feet. She held Vallé in highest esteem and to learn that he was human—with a man’s desires—was a cruel blow. But overriding her initial angry disappointment was the curiosity to see what he’d do, and how he’d do it. Knowing she shouldn’t watch yet unable to help herself, she blushed from head to toe and staying motionless in the pitch-black corner, while this great secret unfolded before her eyes.
For the first time, she heard not pleas for mercy or bestial moans or the false flattery used to hurry a customer along so the next could come. Instead she heard male laughter, feminine giggles, and cries that weren’t of pain at all—the whore’s exclamation of surprise when Vallé did something that had her begging him to do it again.
As young as she was then, all of twelve years old, Christiana had seen rapine and drunken lust, purchased pleasure taken against a wall, upon a table, in a darkened doorway, but until that night, she’d never witnessed true and healthy passion. Vallé had carried in his partner, tossing her on the bed amidst a flurry of giggles and petticoats. He undressed her with his teeth, pulling free the ties on her chemise and petticoats, dragging them off and tasting every inch of golden skin he uncovered. Then he’d braced himself on steely arms above the dark-haired lady-whore, her legs wrapping around his waist while his hips drove in hard enough to lift hers off the bed, eliciting cries of delight that echoed in the night.
She’d dreamed of it for months. For years.
Still dreamed of it, truth be told.
A few days after she’d watched Vallé take his pleasure with the dark-haired whore in O’Malley’s cabin, she had gone ashore, seeking O’Malley in his favorite tavern on French-held Tortuga. She’d found him, all right, but the message she carried was forgotten when she saw O’Malley sitting with Vallé. A red-haired wench was draped across Vallé’s lap, and a striking blonde pillowed the back of his head between her breasts as she
stood behind him. O’Malley had two women as well, buxom identical twins vying to see which one of them would win his business for the night.
She had slipped to the side, unseen, and watched while the whores plied their skills, fascinated and repulsed at the same time. O’Malley finally took both sisters upstairs, leaving Vallé with his two companions.
He allowed them free access to his person, but did not encourage their attentions. He seemed almost bored, sitting aloof, until the prostitute on his lap slid down, onto her knees.
Christiana couldn’t see below the table, but she knew what it meant. She watched Vallé’s face, the lean, hungry features, the tautness of his clenched jaw, the blue fire in his eyes when he erupted from his chair and dragged the red-haired courtesan behind him, upstairs and out of sight, to a private room where they could finish unobserved by the eyes of others.
The thud of a discarded boot brought her attention back to the present, and she inhaled sharply. Through the closed door, she heard a second boot drop on the floor. She listened to the splash of water, followed by the brisk efficiency of a dampened cloth and thirsty towel. She shook herself, aware of the rapidity of her pulse, the flush of her skin. The night air was heavy, humid from the recent rain. Coupled with her erotic memories, it was warm enough to raise a fine sheen of sweat that made the shift cling like a second skin.
From Vallé’s room, there came a sudden cessation of movement. She could imagine him at his shaving stand, looking toward her door, wondering if he should come to her, or hopeful she might come to him. After last night, he had to know that she’d gladly forsake her own bed for his.
Christiana listened, breathless, as she waited for the thin thread of light that stitched the outline of the door to widen. Instead it snapped, and bare footsteps padded not to the darkened door that stood between them but to his lonely bed.
A thousand thoughts crowded her mind, but she forced them away. She wanted Vallé, needed Vallé, and if he—for whatever reason—did not come to her, then she must go to him. Seduce him. Enthrall him so completely, he would not consider leaving her behind.
Touch the Wind: Touch the Wind Book 1 Page 19