“It is!” Archie cried in agreement then immediately reversed himself. “I mean, no. No. It’s fascinating. But”—he leaned across the table and motioned his two companions closer—“observin’ isn’t fun.”
He sat back as though he’d just delivered the answer to one of life’s crowning mysteries. “This”—he slapped his palm on the table—“is fun.”
“Hear, hear!” Ned raised his tankard in the air.
“Tonight . . .” Archie started to say and then thought a second and made an amendment, “today,” he thought again, “well, ever since I jumped from the wharf onto that ferry—”
“You jumped onto a ferry boat?”
“Yup.”
“Why?”
“To get to her.” He nodded toward Lucy.
“Oh.” Both men nodded as though this made perfect sense.
“Anyway, ever since I jumped on that ferry and straight into the maw of madness,” he paused, rather liking the poetical sound of the phrase, enough so that he repeated it, “straight into the maw of madness, I’ve been smack-dab in the center of things.
“You know, Lucy’s right.” He looked from Ned to Denis. “She is. You can’t understand something unless you live it. Or a person.”
“You can live a person?” Denis asked doubtfully.
Archie nodded owlishly. “Inhibit, I mean, inhabit their skin. Walk a mile in their shoes. That sorta thing.”
“But of course,” Denis said.
“Your shoes,” Archie said, “are fun.”
“The night is still young, my friend. There is much more fun to be had.”
“Oh, I think he’s had plenty of fun for one evening.”
At the sound of Lucy’s smoothly amused voice, Archie looked up, blinking as the room seemed to swim around him.
“Lucy!” he cried rapturously.
“That’s my name,” she said, taking his hands and hauling back on them so that he was forced to stand. “Come on, Champ.”
“Are we going somewhere?”
“Uhm-hm,” she said.
“Where?”
“To bed.”
Lucy hadn’t intended to do anything more than guide Archie to his room, topple him onto his bed, pull off his boots, and leave him in a beer-induced slumber. Though because they’d spoken in French, and fairly slurred French at that, she hadn’t been able decipher what the ex-champion, the Irishman, and Archie were talking about. But from the overly friendly exclamations, the pledges of lifelong friendship, manly slaps on the back, and slow-blinking affability, she had a pretty good handle on one thing: Archie was blotto.
But apparently not as blotto as she’d thought.
Once she maneuvered him through the door, he wheeled around to face her, grinning with a sort of boyish disingenuousness that she couldn’t help but find appealing.
“That was fun.”
“It was,” she agreed, manhandling him around again so she could start peeling off his jacket. He looked over his shoulder at her. He smelled of ale and sweat and, well, Archie, and it shouldn’t have appealed to her nearly as much as it did.
“You’re fun,” he said as though he’d just awarded her the highest of compliments.
“Why, thank you. I think.”
He frowned. “Whaddaya mean ‘You think?’ ”
“Well, in certain circles, a ‘fun girl’ is the same as a ‘fast girl.’ I hope you don’t think I’m fast?” She gave him her best big, reproachful doe-eyes. She didn’t really think he’d buy it—Archie had unerring sense of when she was putting him on—even though those doe-eyes had sold a lot of tickets to a lot of shows.
But she had reckoned without taking into consideration how much he’d drunk. An expression of such shocked contrition filled his handsome face that she couldn’t bear to play the scene out. “Maybe just a trifle racy,” she amended.
“I don’t think you’re racy,” he said earnestly.
She’d finally wrestled his jacket off and propelled him toward the bed. Once there, she carefully positioned him facing her with the backs of his knees against the mattress. Then, with an impish grin, she set her hands against his chest. “Oh,” she breathed, “but I am,” and pushed.
Nothing happened.
He stared down at the hands splayed over his very hard, very masculine chest. She put a bit more weight into the endeavor. Nothing. Except now a loopy grin had appeared on his face, a grin that, were it just a tad less loopy, would have been brutally sexy. He covered her hands with his own, flattening her palms hard against his chest. His smile crooked up just a little more at the corners, making her breathlessly reassesses her former opinion. Goofy smile or no goofy smile, he was incredibly sexy.
The heat of him soaked through the thin shirt, toasting her palms. His chest rose and fell in deep, even breaths, and uncontrollably, her fingers curved and pressed, testing the dense texture of his pectoral muscles. Her eyes tripped up to meet his. Black as tar, wicked as midnight sin, they gleamed with an unsettling light, regarding her with an expression that heated her from fingertips to belly, lips to thighs. He bent his head, bringing his lips within inches of her ear.
“Try harder,” he whispered, the warm wash of his breath making her tingle.
She did as instructed. He pitched backward like a falling tree, at the last second grabbing her around the waist and pulling her down on top of him. She landed with a surprised “oof!” and pushed up onto her forearms, her hair spilling over her eyes.
A gentle hand swept her hair back and lingered to cup the side of her face. Lucy found herself staring into Archie’s eyes, drowning in them, helplessly transfixed. Slowly she became aware of her breasts against him; of their hearts beating in duet, hers a rapid staccato, his slower and heavier.
His hand trailed back from her temples, his fingertips spearing through the tousled locks to cup the back of her head. Gently, he urged her head down toward his. He angled his face and with exquisite tenderness touched his lips to hers.
She trembled.
“That’s for the clumsiness of the last two kisses,” he murmured. He touched his mouth to hers again, a soft buffing of her lips. “That’s for the clumsiness that is sure to come.”
His mouth ambushed hers in a rough, voluptuous kiss. Her thoughts went muzzy, reason fleeing before the onslaught of a melting pleasure, filling her like candle wax, turning her warm and pliant. Her arms slipped around him, provoking a breathless, gratified laugh.
She answered with her own ardent kiss. Her lips parted to his tongue, warm and insistent, brushing the roof of her mouth and the inside of her cheek, then tangling in voluptuous combat with her own. Her head spun, drunk on sensation. Vaguely, she became aware that he was rolling her beneath him; she went willingly. His thumbs brushed the corner of her mouth as his large hands bracketed her face before tipping her chin higher, stroking back her hair. He kissed her, then kissed her again. He lifted his head, breaking away from her mouth to taste the hollow at the base of her neck, his tongue swirling in luxurious exploration and then moving lower, to the swell of her breast exposed by the modest neckline.
She arched into the glorious sensation, her fingers digging into his back, the shirt keeping her from that marvelous, corrugated muscle. She popped the top buttons free of their holes and slipped her hands beneath the opening only to find herself further thwarted by his undershirt.
With a sob of frustration she jerked his shirt off his shoulders.
He lifted his head. His breath came heavy, his hair falling in dark, disheveled curls over his forehead, his dark beard shadowing his jawline and smudging the cleft in his chin.
“Lucy,” he said, looking down at her. “Lucy, we—” He groaned and dropped a kiss on her mouth that she returned even as she continued working to free him of his shirt.
“We shouldn’t,” she finished for him as soon as he raised his head again. She undid the last button and tugged the shirt off of him.
“No. I mean, you’re right,” he said. “We mustn’t.�
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“Mustn’t.” Now she tugged at the undershirt, but then his head dipped to the lee of her neck. She buried her fingers in the cool, silky curls, holding his head tighter, panting softly.
His hands slipped up her back to peel her blouse from her shoulders, the cool air sifting across her bared flesh. Bared flesh . . .
She grabbed the material at his waist, yanking it up.
“Our society frowns—” he rasped, then there were more kisses; wilder, wetter, longer kisses. He tore his mouth free. “Not all societies.”
“Really?” She could barely hear her own voice. He raised his arms and she pulled the soft undershirt off and now, finally, her hands were free to explore his gorgeous physique: to plumb the density of his pectoral muscle; stroke the velvet ladder of his rib cage; rake the soft, light smattering of fur that crossed his chest and speared in a thickening line down into his trousers.
“This is madness.” He was working on her blouse now, trying with clumsy fingers to push her blouse buttons free and failing miserably.
“Madness.” She proceeded to demonstrate more madness by launching a battery of kisses on his mouth and throat, chest and shoulders. Then she abruptly pushed him away and searched his face worriedly, earnestly. “I want you to know, I have . . . I’m not . . .”
He shut her up with a long, hard kiss, broke it off, his forehead pressed to hers, eyes half shut with pleasure. “I don’t care.” A tender smile flickered across his face. “Me, either.”
She gave him such a rapturous smile he groaned again and slewed his mouth over hers, his hand fumbling with her blouse. She only wanted to be free of the thing, to feel every inch of her flesh against his. And then . . .
“I can’t get the stupid thing off,” he growled.
She must have made a sound—dismay or frustration or simply encouragement—for all of a sudden he took the bottom of her blouse and stripped it off over the top of her head in one motion. He tossed it aside, his gaze locked with hers.
For one brief second he went absolutely still, his eyes afire, his face almost reverential.
He took a shuddery breath. “God, you’re beautiful.”
And after that, the only conversation they had did not need words.
Thump! Thump!
“Get up or you’re going to miss the train!” Ned shouted through the door.
Archie came awake with a start, snapping upright on the bed—Lucy. He swiveled round and there she was beside him, lying on her side beneath a blanket, snoring lightly. A corona of rich brown curls surrounded her face and she’d tucked one hand beneath her cheek.
Jesus. He raked his hair back with his hand, staring down at her. She looked ungodly beautiful, wholly appealing. Jesus!
“Are you awake? Answer me!” Ned renewed his pounding. “You have twenty minutes to get to the station!”
“All right! All right!”
Beside him, Lucy stirred. He looked down again to find a pair of gorgeous green-and-gold-shot hazel eyes calmly regarding him. Without thinking, he bent to kiss her, pulled along on a rip tide of attraction. Somehow he found the wherewithal to stop himself.
“What did he say?” she asked.
“What?” He couldn’t help it, he looked at her, tousled and sleep-muzzed and sex-flushed in his bed—or was it her bed?—and all he could think about was that he knew there was a mole on the inside jut of her left hip bone, that the backs of her knees were ticklish, that she laughed even as tears spilled from her eyes as she reached her climax, that her nipples were silky and that her skin tasted toasty.
“What is he shouting about?”
He came back to his senses with a start. “He says the train is leaving for Châtellerault in twenty minutes.”
Her eyes flew wide with alarm. She bolted from the bed, dragging the blanket with her, covering herself.
“Don’t just stand there,” she said, grabbing up her discarded clothing. “We have to go. Now.”
She was right, of course. There wasn’t a second to waste. But this was not how he envisioned or wanted this morning to play out.
He snatched his trousers off the floor, and, still sitting, stabbed his feet through the legs. Behind him he heard the sound of clothes hastily being donned. “Lucy, about last night—”
“Archie, we don’t have time for this. Not now.”
Damn, but she was being cavalier about this. Which was fine for her, but he didn’t have quite her, well, considering the situation he couldn’t call it worldliness, could he? Her laissez faire?
“Look, I’m . . . I appreciate—” No, he didn’t. “I, ah, defer to your pragmatism but this—” He stopped, feeling stupid and frustrated and worried, worried sick.
He didn’t have a clue what to say. He had no idea what she was thinking, what she expected or even if she expected anything, let alone know what she wanted. Or what she felt.
In other words, he had no idea where to start but he had to start somewhere. So he started with the one certain, unassailable fact. “Why did you say you weren’t a virgin?”
The rustling abruptly stopped. “What?”
“Why did you say you weren’t a virgin?” All the shock and dismay and sense of betrayal he’d felt upon making this discovery last night—which, granted, had lasted all of five seconds before other thoughts, or rather feelings, banished them to the background—filled his voice.
“What?” She sounded as amazed as he’d felt.
“Didn’t you think I’d notice?”
“I didn’t think.”
Which made two of them. He snapped his shirt off the bed’s corner post and shoved his arms through the sleeves before turning to face her again. She was stuffing the ends of her blouse into her skirt’s waistband. Twin brackets scored the area between her eyebrows.
“Just before . . . before things became . . .” God, if only he had Lucy’s gift of frank speech. “Became intense, you said you wanted me to know that you weren’t a virgin.”
Her scowl became more pronounced.
Ned shouted through the door again. “Ten minutes!”
“I most certainly did not.” She sounded flabbergasted.
“You said you wanted me to know you weren’t a virgin.”
“I can’t think how you—” The frown disappeared, replaced by dawning comprehension. “You have it wrong. I had been about to say I wanted you to know I didn’t have any regrets over . . . you know.” Amazingly she blushed, enchanting him anew. “And that I’m not going to.”
“What?”
She scooped up a half boot and stuck it on, hopping one-footed as she tried to push her heel into place. “Of course, I was a virgin. I—” She broke off suddenly and stopped hopping and stared at him. “You thought I was apologizing?” She gasped. “You did! For not being a virgin! Save me from the hubris of men. That is the most conceited—”
“No, no! I swear—I mean, yes, I did, but I swear I didn’t think you needed to apologize, that’s why I said—”
Her eyes grew round as she finished his sentence, “ ‘Me, too.’ Archie. You mean you weren’t a virgin?”
He closed his eyes. In his worst imaginings, he could never have envisioned this conversation proceeding as it was. “Does it matter?”
“I suppose not.” She finished lacing up one boot and made quick work of the other before hastening about the room, snapping up sundry articles of clothing and stuffing them in the kit he’d purchased.
“Honestly, Archie,” she muttered as she worked. “What sort of woman goes about declaring she’s not a virgin?”
“Lucy, please. I just need you to know that I am so—”
The look on her face cut his words off midsentence. “If you say you are sorry, I shall never, ever forgive you. I will consider it the most . . . the most caddish thing ever.”
“Lucy, I—”
“Come on, Archie!” Ned yelled through the door. “I’ve sent a lad to see if he can delay them but they won’t wait long.”
“Yes! I heard
you the first time!”
Lucy glared balefully at him.
Things had gone from bad to worse and he hadn’t even said anything yet. At least, nothing important. And he needed to, he could see that. He needed to say something and he needed it to be far more eloquent than anything he’d managed thus far. Probably in his entire life. But with Ned banging on the door and Lucy shooting daggers at him, eloquence just wasn’t going to happen.
So, he opted for the only sensible course open to him: he kept his mouth shut.
He seized the kit in one hand, strode to the door, and yanked it open. Then he went back into the room, grabbed Lucy’s hand, and pulled her after him.
The daily train stopping in Châtellerault had no private compartments but they did have semiprivate ones. Even so, Lucy thought the tickets expensive. After paying for the tickets from Archie’s winnings—and wouldn’t you think the purse offered for the winner of a regional boxing championship would be more than a hundred francs?—they had little money left, a fact Archie swore he’d sort out with a local bank as soon as they’d reunited with her great-aunts.
Lucy crammed herself onto the bench seat alongside a pair of men in checkered suits and bright yellow vests engaged in an animated discussion. Judging by the leather sample cases piled on the racks above them, Lucy supposed them to be traveling salesmen. Across from her an apple-cheeked English nanny clasped a wiggly toddler on her lap while a boy sandwiched between the girl and Archie regarded Lucy with round, somber eyes.
Archie was frowning. Oh, not at her, but at the unfortunate floor, as though it could offer up some answer to a vexing problem but refused to do so. Lucy suspected she was the vexing problem.
She shouldn’t have been so flippant about last night. But she’d awoken to find him staring down at her with what only an idiot would recognize as something, anything, other than desire. Every fiber had responded to that in kind.
Until she’d also recognized his dismay. It wounded her in a place she hadn’t known existed, and then the innkeeper had started shouting again and so she’d done what had become second nature to her: she’d donned a persona, that of a thoroughly modern, thoroughly unsentimental girl with a train to catch. Because the last thing she wanted to do was listen to Archie’s litany of self-recriminations.
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