by Lisa Valdez
Aunt Matty pointed a lace-encased finger toward the corner of Passion’s mouth. “You have a red mark there.” She leaned forward and, lifting the monocle that hung from a ribbon around her neck, peered through it like a naturalist examining some new flora or fauna. “It looks a bit chafed.”
Passion’s hand dropped to her chest in relief. It was short lived, however, for she now stared into one hugely magnified gray eye.
“Well?” The gray eye squinted.
Passion paused. She hated lying. “I—when I was in the china exhibit waiting for Charlotte, a potted palm fell right in front of me. I thought it missed me altogether, but I suppose one of the fronds must have brushed my face.”
Aunt Matty dropped her monocle and leaned back. “How shocking. You could have lost an eye,” she said, fanning herself again. “This exhibition will be a complete failure if there are no provisions for the safety of the spectators and patrons.”
His hands had been so firm upon her. She had felt secure in his arms. Safe. “It’s perfectly safe, Aunt. The palm wouldn’t have fallen if not for the influence of three young boys.”
Matty shuddered. “Odious ruffians.” She surveyed the current passersby with disapproval, as if they were all guilty of some offense, and then raised a graying brow at Passion. “I, myself, was jostled by a passing gentleman.” She shook her head. “Though I don’t know why I credit him with that title. He was in far too great a hurry to get around me.” More fanning. “Almost trod upon my toe.”
Passion slid her hand into her pocket. Her fingers closed around the handkerchief. A passing gentleman. It seemed the place was full of them. A sudden uncertainty overwhelmed her. “We needn’t come back,” she said, almost to herself.
“Needn’t come back?” Her aunt looked at her with surprise and then a quickly manufactured consternation. “Well, I wouldn’t have minded eschewing the place altogether. It was for your sake, Passion—for your love of art—that I made plans with Mary and Agnes Swittly to meet me here all week.” More fanning, feathers flying. “Shall I tell them it’s all off, then? I will do it, if you say so. Though they’ve doubtless turned down any number of other invitations in order to join me here. But if you wish it…”
Passion wasn’t duped. Her aunt and the Swittly sisters were inseparable and filled the majority of their social calendars around mutual visits and outings. Besides, what had she to fear? As moving as the experience had been, she and her lover had parted as suddenly as they had met. Once in a lifetime, her mind echoed.
She patted her aunt’s hand. “Of course you mustn’t change your plans, and certainly not on my account. You just seemed so displeased, what with your toe almost being trod upon.”
Matty’s expression turned sacrificial. “Yes, my poor toe, and you nearly blinded. But for your happiness, my dear, I shall brave these hordes.” Her aunt put her other hand atop Passion’s. “Besides, one must take some risks in life, you know. Just because you nearly had your eye poked out, is no reason to shut yourself away from the world. You might as well have just stayed in the country then—at home. No”—Matty shook her head authoritatively—“I won’t let you do it.”
“You won’t?”
“No.”
Passion sat speechless for a moment. Her aunt had the most amazing way of turning a situation upside down and inside out. And there was no convincing her that her mind didn’t follow natural progressions. “Very well, then,” Passion said, humoring her aunt. “Because I was so worried about that—shutting myself away, that is.”
“I know. I know, dear.” Pat-pat with her hand.
Her aunt seemed to have forgotten the time. Passion smiled. “Don’t you think we ought to go? Charlotte has not arrived, and I’m sure she won’t at this late hour.”
“Oh!” Matty pulled back as if startled then stuffed her fan into her reticule. “That Charlotte Lawrence! I don’t know how you have any patience with that cousin of yours. She will never paint flowers upon china as nicely as you do, my dear.” She looked up at the sky through the high glass ceiling as Passion helped her to her feet. “And we’ve missed tea, surely. It’s no wonder I’m near fainting!”
As Passion walked quietly beside her chattering aunt, she luxuriated in the heavy soreness that throbbed between her legs and pulsed inside her. She welcomed it, moved with it. With each stride it touched her deeply, conjuring visions of intense blue eyes and the smell of verbena. Her fingers closed possessively around the handkerchief in her pocket. There was no denying it. She wished she could see him again.
He wished he could see her again. What was she doing now?
Mark quickly ascended the steps to his town house. His butler, Cranford, held open the door for him.
“The countess is in the study, my lord.”
Mark’s mood immediately darkened. He frowned as he handed over his hat and gloves. “Thank you, Cranford.” Damn it. The last person he wanted to see was his mother. He wanted to be alone—alone with thoughts of her.
“Shall I have some refreshment brought, my lord?”
“No. My mother won’t be staying,” Mark said loudly as he crossed to his study.
Lucinda Hawkmore lounged upon the sofa, a glass of brandy suspended between her fingers. “How rude.”
Mark sat on the opposite sofa and, crossing his ankles, propped his boots on the table between them. Crossing his arms, he stared at his mother.
Lucinda cast a disdainful glance at his feet and then about the room. “When are you going to sell this tiny house and move into something befitting your station? I’m embarrassed to be seen arriving here.”
“Then don’t arrive.”
Lucinda barely blinked. “You can’t even properly entertain here.” She gestured at the room with her glass. “It’s a matchbox.”
“I do not come to London to entertain. I come to work.”
“To work,” Lucinda scoffed. “How bourgeois. As if you needed to work.”
Mark grit his teeth. “I entertain at Hawkmore House. I work because I love architecture. Now, Mother, what do you want?”
Lucinda shrugged. “When you marry, you’ll need a proper house here in London, that’s all. Build it yourself, I don’t care, but this will have to go.” She sipped from her glass. “So? What do you think of Miss Lawrence? She’s a lovely girl, isn’t she?”
“I wouldn’t know. I didn’t see her.”
“What?” Lucinda sat straighten “Abigail told me she would be there—in the china. You saw no young lady in a yellow bonnet with a scarlet plume?”
“I told you, she wasn’t there.” Mark thought of long-lashed hazel eyes. “It doesn’t matter anyway.”
“Why?”
“Because tomorrow I’m going to offer your dear friend, Abigail Lawrence, a great deal of money in exchange for your letter.”
“She doesn’t care about money. She wants a title for that simpering little daughter of hers.” Lucinda lowered her lashes and sipped from her brandy before asking, “How much money?”
He had been going to offer fifteen thousand pounds. But now he felt an even more urgent need to be free of this entanglement. He didn’t want to think about anything or anyone but her. “Twenty-five thousand pounds ought to do it.”
Lucinda gasped. “You’re going to offer that bitch twenty-five thousand pounds? She’s blackmailing me, and you’re going to offer her a fortune?”
Mark’s anger flared. “Blackmailing you?” he sneered. “Tell me, Mother, what price are you paying in your friend’s little scheme?”
“Abigail Lawrence hasn’t been my friend for years,” Lucinda said haughtily. “She ought never to have been. She was beneath my station. But I was young and didn’t recognize that I had no business consorting with a mere merchant’s daughter, no matter how rich.”
Mark’s hands balled into fists beneath his crossed arms. “Oh, but she was your ‘dearest and most trusted confidante.’ The ‘sister of your heart,’” he roared before delivering a furio
Lucinda didn’t even jump. “When I realized my error in judgment, I jilted her. And when I jilted her, noble society jilted her as well.” She shrugged and brushed a bit of lint from her skirt. “She thought she would get a titled husband through me.” Lucinda lifted her brows. “I put a stop to that.”
Standing, Mark whirled away from his mother and crossed to his desk. Once safely behind it, he leaned on his fists. “Your conceit is unsurpassed, Mother. Though you are the cause, I am the one who Abigail Lawrence is attempting to force into marriage with her ‘simpering little daughter.’ She isn’t blackmailing you. She’s blackmailing me—me and Matthew, though I vow he will never know it.”
Lucinda stared coolly at him from across the room. “Well, I have a care for my reputation even if you do not.”
Mark expelled a bitter bark of laughter. “Your reputation! Madam, you have trod upon your own reputation so often, and with such energy, that it is indistinguishable from the muck that runs in the gutters. I wonder at your believing you have any repute left to protect.”
Lucinda downed the rest of her brandy before setting the glass upon the table he had kicked moments before. “How like your father you are,” she said, her lip curling. “God help me, you’re more like him every day.”
“Not so much like him that I’ll let you destroy me,” Mark bit out. He felt his breath coming fast and forced it to slow. He was not going to let her draw him into an argument about his father. Not today. “I care not for your reputation,” he said tightly. “I care not for my own. Matthew’s, however, is worth protecting. He is my brother, and I count him as such despite this recent revelation regarding his paternity.”
Mark closed his eyes and envisioned his brother having tea at the knee of his beloved fiancée, Rosalind—Lady Rosalind. Christ, Matthew was so deeply in love with the girl. Too deeply.
Mark looked at his mother and found her slipping her hands into her gloves. Good, she was leaving. She crossed smoothly to the door.
He spoke to her back. “Lord Benchley will never permit Rosalind to marry Matt if there is even a question surrounding his name. Swear to me that you were only stupid enough to write one letter.”
Lucinda turned to gaze across the room at him with cold green eyes—so different from her warm hazel ones. What if he never saw those beautiful eyes again? He must.
His mother hadn’t answered. His frown deepened. “Tell me now, Mother. Will any more skeletons come knocking?”
Her eyes tipped to the floor. “No,” she replied bitterly. “No more skeletons. I was only ‘stupid’ once.”
Mark let his head drop forward. He could argue that, but didn’t want to. He wanted his mother out. A moment later the front door slammed. He slumped into his chair and, resting his elbows atop the architectural drawings scattered across his desk, supported his head in his hands. How he hated her. How he detested her selfish preoccupation—her constant need for attention and preeminence. It was suffocating.
He took a deep breath and strove to shut his mother from his mind. Leaning back in his chair, he let his eyes fall closed and took himself back to the Crystal Palace—to her. How had he not noticed her immediately? He’d been so preoccupied with his own thoughts that, had it not been for the falling tree… Thank God for mischievous boys. He’d simply reacted, pulling her from harm’s way without thought. Then, in the next instant, awareness of her—her body, her scent—had overcome him in a dizzying rush. And then she’d turned and he had stared into the face of desire.
Mark drew a deep breath. He pictured her reciting the words from the Song of Solomon, heard her gentle voice, saw her soft mouth forming the words. Words she knew by heart. That had been surprising.
He remembered the sound of her muffled cries and the feel of her clenching flesh. His cock stirred. He wanted her again. Desperately.
Which was odd. After having her, he had thought to walk away and never see her again. And though he’d never been with a stranger who wasn’t a courtesan, walking away had never been difficult, even from women he knew well. But today, he almost hadn’t been able to do it. He had forced himself to leave her. Had even denied himself the luxury of looking back. He shouldn’t have left her like that.
He’d made a mistake—a terrible mistake.
“M.”
“M” for mistake? God, she hoped not.
Dressed in her nightgown and bolstered against her bed pillows, Passion stared at the blue letter embroidered in plain block. No flourishes or decorative framing for her mystery man. She fingered the fabric and held it before her bedside candle. The linen was of the best quality. She brought it to her nose and inhaled the fresh scent that clung to the finely woven fibers. Her eyes closed briefly. No, not a mistake. Never.
He had given her a gift—a gift she had longed for. Rapture instead of restraint. Desire instead of disinterest. Freedom and fulfillment instead of duty and obligation.
With a sigh, she pressed the handkerchief to her breast. He had made her feel vital—alive.
How long had she felt numb? The answer came immediately—since her marriage. Over three interminable years, her husband had killed her with indifference. Never cruel, never kind, he had worn away her spirit with aloof disinterest. She might have borne it better had she had a baby to love and be loved by. But no baby had come. And no pleasure or satisfaction had come with the trying. Her husband had always done his “work,” as he called it, in less than a minute. At first, her body had yearned for more. But as time passed, the yearning had become a scream. Night after night, year after year, she had clamped the tight hand of suffocating denial over her body—forcing its shrieking pleas for release into strict, unrelenting silence.
She hadn’t shed a tear when he died.
But today she had cried.
And he—he was the fulfillment of dreams she had forgotten she had. She could almost feel his mouth upon hers, could almost taste him. She traced her lips with her fingers. His hands had caressed her and held her with such unabashed intimacy. She ran her hands firmly across her breasts and down her sides. There had been no hesitation, no ambivalence in his touch. He had taken her with passionate ferocity, demanding everything from her in return for all that he gave. Her hand stole between her legs. His cock had filled her, stretched her, beyond the boundaries of mere pleasure and into ecstasy. She could almost feel it in her hands. So big and so beautiful.
God, what had come over her? Jerking her hand from between her legs, she clasped the handkerchief to her chest. She had given herself to a stranger! She could barely believe she had done so. The memory was amazingly vivid but strangely dreamlike, too.
And it could only have happened with him. She frowned—only with this man and in this way. He was as rare and unavoidable as a meteor falling from the sky. And there she had been, in the Crystal Palace, when he had fallen upon her. One man, one place. One time?
Of course, it must be one time. Her life was prescribed and quiet. She had come to find a comfortable satisfaction in that. Duty and obligation had their own fulfillment. Duty and obligation had sustained her through her marriage and after. She had found her place.
Passion sighed and lifted the handkerchief to her nose once again before folding it carefully and tucking it beneath her pillow. She would probably never see him again, but the smell of lemon verbena would forever bring him to mind—would forever belong to him.
She turned on her side and stared into the flickering candle flame. Tomorrow she would return to the Crystal Palace. An unquenchable thrill ran through her. Deep blue eyes filled with a beseeching urgency flashed before her mind’s eye. She remembered the curve of his lips—her hand stole beneath her pillow—the angle of his jaw. Her fingers closed around the small square of fabric. The feel of his heavy penis in her hand.
Despite the folly of it, she wanted to see him again.
What would tomorrow bring? Probably the conventional continuation of the life she was accustomed to. But perhaps, just perhaps, she might have the chance to lose herself once again in the dark depths of his blue eyes.
Tomorrow. It seemed forever until tomorrow.
*
Chapter Three
Tomorrow
Mark strolled once more through the main gallery of the Crystal Palace, scanning the late morning crowd carefully. Where was she? He had been searching for more than half an hour. Discouragement rolled heavily over him. The place seemed more crowded than the day before. Why had he thought it would be so easy? He had been sure she would be here, sure he would find her.
What if he never saw her again? He shoved the question from his mind angrily. Not a consideration. Absolutely not a consideration.
He paused beside a tall statue of Psyche. Assuming she was there, they could pass each other all day and never know it. He must stay in one place and wait. But where? If she wanted to find him, where would she go first: china, silver, or gothic furniture? He made his decision quickly and headed for the gothic furniture. Yes, she would go there. It was their place.
Mark’s shoulders tensed as he strode purposefully forward. She would come. She must come. He need only wait. Damn. He hated waiting.
Crowds of people gathered in tight clusters before every heavy piece of furniture in the exhibit. At the back of the room, a small group stood before the prie-dieu. Mark’s gaze locked immediately upon a woman in dark blue. The muscles in his gut clenched. Only half revealed through the crowd, he traced the straight line of her shoulder and the tight curve of her waist with his eye. When the rest of the group turned off toward another display, he saw the wide black ribbon tied around her upper arm.
His body relaxed, and his blood coursed again in his veins. He’d found her. Relief flowed over him like a wave—relief and something else. Something indefinable that made him want to smile. Pulling off his gloves and unbuttoning his topcoat, he approached her slowly. It must be desire. He could feel it, even now, stirring in his sac and tingling down his prick.
-->