Three Lessons in Seduction

by Sofie Darling

  A lightning bolt of desire shot through Mariana. And she’d thought she was in control. Rather, intoxication, bright and pervasive, flowed through her, as if she’d downed the entire decanter of bourbon in a single swallow. Its hot glow had found its way into her bloodstream, transforming her body into a vessel incandescent with brilliant light. She lifted her other leg and touched toes to silk.

  Her eyes lifted and met raw craving within his. The space between their bodies no longer mattered. “And what is my body communicating right now?”

  “Mariana . . .”

  The rest of his words slipped away. His eyes did his talking when they lowered to her pointed toes and raked up her ankles before lingering on her exposed thighs for a moment too long. Her core throbbed and ached. Unhurried, his gaze continued over her hips, her breasts, her collarbone, and her parted lips before reaching her eyes. Piercing gray burned into her, leaving no doubt about the message she’d communicated, and the one he’d received. Her breath came shallow and quick as exhilaration surged through her. Contrary to what she’d assumed for the past decade, Nick wasn’t immune to her.

  In three decisive strides, he moved to her side of the table, erasing all distance between them. She remained in her chair, her head tilted back to take in the length of this gorgeous man—all long lines and strong angles. He reached over and lifted her necklace off the table. Its locket swung like a pendulum between them.

  Her hand flew to her chest for confirmation that the locket wasn’t there. How had she forgotten it? The man before her was how.

  “Do you mind?” she asked, rising to her stocking feet. Oh. Scant inches separated their bodies. The outside world felt as distant as if they’d created a world of two, its sole occupants her and him. She couldn’t look away.

  ~ ~ ~

  Nick could have handed over the necklace. He should have handed over the necklace. Instead, he reached for the curve of Mariana’s hip and guided her around until her back faced him. He stood poised to drape the necklace around her elegant neck and allow its locket to resume its rightful place between the ripe curve of her breasts.

  It was another instance of what he should have done. But a feeling too basic to deny overrode his intellect: he wanted her—badly.

  Without thought for their past or their future, he lowered his head and touched his lips to her bare skin. Her back arched, and her shoulder blades slid together. His hand reached around her waist to the flat of her belly, steadying them both as his tongue flicked across her salty flesh.

  “Nick . . .” His name emerged from her lips, not on a scold, but on a sigh. She was waiting, anticipating. She felt the same intense desire.

  He sensed it in the stillness of her body and heard it in the hitch of her breath. His tongue traced the ridge of her spine and up her graceful neck until it reached her earlobe, drawing the tender flesh between his lips and teeth for a testing nip. Her head tilted to the side, granting him access to more of her. He released a soft groan into her ear, and goose bumps rose beneath his touch. The rigid length of his cock thrummed in anticipation of what came next.

  That ridiculous bed behind them dominated this room for a reason. It wasn’t a bed constructed for a good sleep. It was a bed constructed for a good tup.

  She was a single ragged breath away from giving in to this need . . . But that breath never came. Her hand covered his. At first a feather light touch, it became viselike as her fingers clamped around his hand and lifted it off her body.

  Reactively, he took one, two steps backward. She turned to face him, a rosy blush tinting her skin, her breath coming fast and hard.

  Oh, yes, she wanted it, too. But it was she who had put a stop to the madness. Her lips were a firm, determined line as she reached for her dress and slipped the drab garment over her head. Her movements, quick and efficient, contrasted sharply with the soft and languorous moment just left behind.

  Thoroughly unbalanced, Nick felt like a rank amateur. And he was supposed to be the teacher. He’d lost focus, pure and simple. It was the sort of gaffe that could cost him his life in more tenuous circumstances. His body aching and bitter with unrequited desire, he snatched up his evening jacket.

  Blast. Tonight had served but one useful purpose: a reminder of the man he became around her—the man who could never have enough of her.

  A rapid succession of knocks sounded on the door, turning into a haranguing of the door. Necklace still in hand, he pocketed it as he strode to answer before the door came off its hinges.

  After a short exchange with a drunk who had the wrong room, Nick turned to find a dressed and expectant Mariana standing with reticule primly held before her. The previous interlude had been wiped from existence. Wasn’t that the fiction best for them both?

  “My apologies for the necessity of such dicey accommodation,” he pronounced superciliously, breaking last night’s promise. He needed to batten down his defenses against her. “This place must be quite a come down from your usual milieu for entertainments.”

  He caught a glimpse of bewilderment on her face, but before he could examine it, it turned into something else—something harder and less vulnerable. “I am certain you know nothing of my milieus, Nick.”

  With those words, their past was again their present, implacable and insurmountable. He could forget that for a wild moment a different outcome had felt possible, even inevitable.

  “I believe we’ve covered duplicity and guile sufficiently,” he found himself saying.

  “Until our next lesson?” she asked. “Soon, the seduction begins.” She swept past him and out the door.

  He rushed to the doorway and peered down the corridor’s narrow distance long after she’d disappeared down the stairs, leaving behind only a faint wisp of her scent and a familiar desire that neither time nor distance had erased.

  Soon, the seduction begins. Or had it already? He’d never met a more seductive woman in his life.

  Never met? Of course, they’d met. It was such a small word for everything they’d done. They were married, after all. Except the Mariana he’d left ten years ago hadn’t yet developed into this woman. She’d always been irresistible to him, but not a seductress.

  Seductress. The word landed with a crash. She wasn’t here to seduce him; she was here to seduce another man. The smack of reality struck him hard.

  He would do well to remember its impact.

  Chapter 10

  Island: He drank out of the bottle till he saw the island: the island is the rising bottom of a wine bottle, which appears like an island in the center, before the bottle is quite empty.

  A Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue

  Francis Grose

  Next Day

  One word for the state of Mariana’s being this morning came to mind: crapulent. Hedonism had its drawbacks.

  A woman was entitled to slumber the day away when she’d spent the previous night drinking and gambling in a bordello with a pair of strumpets and her estranged husband. She’d earned the right to sleep, and Hortense should have let her. But Hortense happened to be the sort of lady’s maid—and spy . . . they still hadn’t discussed that development properly—who believed in an invigorating and early start to the day.

  The girl had taken one glance at her this morning and released a little cry of distress. “Mon dieu! Zee puffs beneath your eyes . . . I shall fetch you a mirror.”

  Eyes closed to relentless morning light, Mariana had held up a hand. “Non, Hortense, no mirror. If my head looks anything on the outside like it feels on the inside . . . just non.” She needed more time to wallow in her crapulence. Last night’s flirtation with whiskey might have gotten the better of her. Yesterday hadn’t been the most auspicious start to her life as a spy.

  She heaved a deep sigh of relief when Hortense’s footsteps receded from the bedroom.
How on earth could she possibly call on Helene to collect the twins’ letters today? She would have to send the hotel’s errand boy. She couldn’t face Helene in this condition.

  Efficient footsteps sounded outside the bedroom, and Mariana stifled a groan of annoyance. Hortense was returning. Through a forest of fuzzy eyelashes, she watched the girl pour a pitcher of cold water into a washbasin before taking a knife to a cucumber and slicing off two thin slivers.

  At Hortense’s insistence, she left the comfort of her warm bed and washed her face in the cooling water before taking a seat on a firm chair, allowing Hortense to tilt her head back and place the slices over her eyes. The girl maintained that she not lie back down.

  “Non, non, your head must be elevated. Zee bad puff must flow down, down, down.”

  It was here Mariana remained for the next thirty or so minutes. She had to admit to feeling somewhat less crapulent sitting here with her head resting back on a firm, cushioned surface with vegetables covering her eyes. They felt nice.

  Soon, the seduction begins. Through the fog of day-after crapulence, the words came to her, echoing through her head like a gong. Why had she spoken them? To him.

  She knew why. She’d hoped those words would imbed themselves under his skin like little, sticky burrs.

  Hortense began fluttering around the bed, straightening blankets and pillows. “Zee green fairy, non?”

  Mariana peeked out from beneath a cucumber. “Pardon?”

  “Zee absinthe, non?”

  “Non.”

  “You don’t know of zee absinthe?”

  Mariana shook her head and immediately regretted it. “It was zee whiskey.” She sensed now might be her opportunity to discuss Hortense’s other duties. “Have you been in your other line of service very long?”

  Hortense’s gaze met hers, and Mariana saw that the girl understood this turn in the conversation. “Since I was fourteen years of age.”

  “How many years have you now?”

  “Twenty.”

  Shock traced through Mariana. At twenty, she’d been a married woman with a pair of twins to care for, a household to run, and a philandering husband to ignore. “Is Hortense your real name?”

  “Zee answer to that question is . . . complex.”

  “How did you become—?” Mariana hesitated.

  “Your husband saved me from a bad family situation.”

  “Nick casts a wide net, doesn’t he?” Mariana said, unable to hide her sarcasm.

  “Your husband is a great man,” Hortense said, her dark eyes flashing. “You are lucky to call such a man yours.”

  With a start of surprise, Mariana understood this girl knew nothing of her relationship with Nick. He’d certainly succeeded in keeping his two lives distinct.

  As if realizing she’d overstepped the mark, Hortense blushed bright scarlet and busied herself fluffing pillows that had been fluffed minutes ago. She must say something to put the girl at ease. “Your loyalty to Nick does you credit.” Strangely, she meant it.

  Hortense nodded once in acknowledgement, and the mood in the room lifted. Mariana snuggled deeper into her robe and again covered her eyes with the cucumbers.

  What had gotten into her last night? What had gotten into Nick?

  Whiskey.

  But that wasn’t all there was to it. To blame the spirits was too easy of an absolution. The whiskey had simply made it easier to remember what she liked about her husband. Too easy. In the future, she would stay away from whiskey around Nick.

  A soft, but insistent, tap-tap-tapping sounded on the exterior door to her rooms. Mariana’s ears strained toward the sound of Hortense turning the key in the deadbolt and opening the door on smooth hinges. Hortense had no time to ask for a calling card before a cacophony of voices filled the rooms. Mariana knew those tones, rhythms, and cadences nearly as well as any on earth. Family had arrived.

  More irritated than alarmed, she flicked the cucumbers into a rubbish bin, cinched the belt at her waist, and strode through the doorway to her sitting room. She could ignore the mild, persistent throbbing at the base of her skull. “Uncle Bertie? Aunt Dot?” Their names emerged in the halting staccato of bemused disbelief. “How extraordinary to see you.” It was the politest way she could think to ask what they were doing here.

  With her characteristic cloud of unruly white frizz puffed about her head, Aunt Dot rushed across the room and took both of Mariana’s hands in her own slightly damp ones. Aunt Dot ever had moist palms. “Oh, my dear. Oh, my dearest.” She rotated back and forth between Uncle Bertie and Mariana a few times. Mariana likened Aunt Dot to a spinning top once she got worked up. Today, she was in top form. “Oh, my dearest dear.”

  “Has something happened?” Mariana asked, genuine alarm beginning to creep in.

  “Has something happened? Has something happened? Oh, my dear.”

  Mariana glanced up at Uncle Bertie, a ponderous man whose great jowls sagged lower than ever, and lifted her brows in query. “Uncle?” she asked in a weak voice, bracing herself for the worst.

  “Oh, my dearest, your face—”

  “My face?” To be sure, she wasn’t looking her best this morning, but she was quite certain that she hadn’t sprouted a wart on the tip of her nose overnight.

  “Your face says it all. Oh, my dearest dear.”

  Mariana reclaimed her hands from Aunt Dot and began to worry that she’d walked into a scene straight out of bedlam. She only questioned whether it was she or they who belonged in the padded room.

  “Why don’t we all take a seat and perhaps ring for tea?” Uncle Bertie suggested in his usual proper and diplomatic manner as he settled his cumbersome body onto the sofa.

  “Of course, Uncle,” Mariana replied, following his lead and perching on the edge of the opposite settee.

  “And have you a dollop of French cream to accompany tea?” Aunt Dot asked, eyes wide and innocent.

  Mariana nodded once toward Hortense and returned her attention to Uncle and Aunt, who watched her with twin expectant looks on their faces. It occurred to her that they may all need more than a dollop of brandy before this visit was through. “Have you recently arrived in Paris?” It seemed like a fitting question. Their disheveled appearance suggested they’d arrived this very moment.

  “Have we recently arrived? Have we recently arrived? Oh, my dearest dear. On a wave from Noah’s flood, I daresay.”

  “Is it raining?”

  “Is it raining? Is it raining? Oh, dearest, is it raining. We have nothing like this in England. I can assure you of that, indeed. Oh, the French—” Hortense entered the room bearing tea service, and Aunt Dot lowered her voice. “How do they live the way they insist on living?”

  “Aunt,” Mariana began, resisting a sigh, “the French can hardly control their weather.” Out of the corner of her eye, Mariana noticed Hortense stiffen as she commenced her task of arranging the tea tray for service.

  In a loud whisper, Aunt Dot asked, “Does the chit know how to make tea?”

  “Yes, Aunt,” Mariana replied, her patience beginning to run thin.

  “Proper English tea?”

  Impatient to redirect the conversation, Mariana turned toward Uncle Bertie. “Are you in Paris for long?”

  “We do not yet know the duration of our stay.” His gaze locked onto hers and held. “And you, my dear, have you found what you must so desperately seek?”

  Alarm bells sounded inside Mariana’s head. “I suppose—”

  Her reply was cut short when Aunt Dot, who wouldn’t cease monitoring Hortense’s every movement, called out, “Girl—how do you say girl in French?”

  “Une fille?” Mariana supplied the word and instantly regretted it. She was only feeding the beast. “Aunt, Hortense speaks perfectly serviceable English.” />
  Aunt Dot, however, had had enough. She rose in a huff and rushed around the sofa, her hand extended. “I’ll take that,” she commanded, referring to the tea strainer held by a stunned Hortense. She released the instrument and took a step backward, allowing Aunt Dot ample room.

  “Now, fille,” Aunt Dot said as she began advising Hortense on the intricacies of making a proper English tea, enunciating every word loudly and clearly as if Hortense was both deaf and mentally slow, instead of simply French. These were one and the same for Aunt Dot.

  Every so often, Aunt inserted an incorrect French word, and Hortense corrected her, saying, “Madame, I speak English fluently.” But Hortense’s protests were all for naught; staunch English ladies were neither swayed nor changed.

  Meanwhile, Uncle Bertie leaned forward in a confidential manner. “I came as soon as I heard,” he intoned on a low note that wouldn’t carry beyond the few feet separating them.

  A prickle of foreboding tingled down Mariana’s spine. “Heard what?”

  “About Nick, dearest.”

  Mariana glanced around, caught Hortense’s steady eye for a fraction of a second, and leaned in closer to Uncle. “I’ve seen Nick.”

  “Alive?”

  Mariana recoiled from Uncle’s narrow gaze. A sense that she’d said the wrong thing snaked through her. The glint in Uncle Bertie’s eye was keen, too keen.

  He reached out and covered her hand with his. It took every ounce of her resolve to leave her hand where it lay, even as her instinct would have her snatch it away. By sheer force of will, she returned Uncle’s gaze and felt a moment of connection. A knowledge lay within his eyes . . . It was a knowledge that shouldn’t be there, unless—unless, he’d received a note, too.

  Aunt Dot interrupted this disconcerting line of thought when she swept around the sofa in a peevish flurry of muslin skirts. “Oh, my dear, you simply must keep a sharp eye on that girl,” Aunt Dot proclaimed in a less than discreet voice.