They didn’t speak of the kiss at all the following day between three o’clock and four o’clock.
Out loud, at least.
She arrived at the usual time to find him seated at the desk, attending to what appeared to be a stack of correspondence, also as usual.
“Buonasera, Your Grace.”
“Buonasera, Miss Wylde.”
“At least the day is clement.”
“It is indeed, calm,” he agreed.
This, absurdly, was more or less how the hour proceeded.
They exchanged these polite sentences as though they were passing back and forth something that could scald them if it spilled.
They were absorbed in separate thoughts that were wholly about each other. The air was dense and buzzy with portent. It was as if yesterday they’d stumbled upon an underground cavern, in the depths of which they’d detected a seductive glitter.
Which could either be a treasure, or the eyes of a dangerous man- and woman-eating beast.
Or could be the whites of the judging eyes of the ton, who might strip the duke of his reputation like so many termites stripped wood should they ever learn he was consorting with her. Or run Mariana out of town on a rail.
It wasn’t comfortable. But it was thrilling.
There were any number of times in her life when she had asked, “Why me?”
But she knew the answer to that was, “Why not you?” Fate had such an insouciant shrug it must be French.
He would be an animal in bed, she thought. It was what she wanted. She suspected this said less about their natures than the alchemy of the two of them together.
She was furious—it seemed grotesquely unfair, yet another in a series of events that seemed grotesquely unfair—that her lust was adulterated by emotions she had no business entertaining. Ones that all but guaranteed pain.
And there he sat, a man of absolute composure. She thought of how many people had relied on him for safety. How in large part the reason everyone in England still spoke mainly English instead of French was because the man sitting in front of her somehow had risen to the occasion.
She imagined her arms wrapped around his waist.
She imagined screaming into a pillow while she came with him inside her.
“Is there anything new you’d like to learn in Italian today?”
Do not bother flirting with me, as I have been kissed by the Duke of Valkirk, and he has ruined me for all other men. That would be a useful sentence.
“Oh! I forgot to tell you that I received a letter—a rather plump one—written entirely in Italian. It’s from an opera director called Signor Roselli in Paris.” She did not add, where word that I am a pariah has not yet reached the populace, but it rather went without saying. “Mr. Giancarlo Giannini brought it to me when he, er, visited the other day.”
The name “Giancarlo” narrowed the duke’s eyes.
“I am able to read many of the words thanks to you—and I think he may be offering me a job, and I think he’s sent along a libretto. But his handwriting is quite shockingly bad.” She paused. “And he failed to include any illuminating illustrations in the margins.”
His mouth curved, but he didn’t lift his head, and his quill didn’t pause. “Did you happen to bring the letter with you today?”
She watched, transfixed, as the hand that had so lately squeezed her arse in order to press her up against his cock made what looked like a question mark, based on the swoop and dart of the quill.
She took a surreptitious breath.
“I fear it slipped my mind. I left it in my room.”
“I see.” There was a little silence as he continued writing. Scritch scritch scritch. “If you should find that some of the language contained in the letter eludes you, Miss Wylde . . .” He paused and looked up. Then leaned back in his chair.
“I should be happy to assist with the translation when I return later this evening. I’ve a meeting with my Man of Affairs after dinner, but I will be back in my rooms just before ten o’clock.”
Her heart lurched.
She stared at him.
She was a good pupil. She understood at once what this was.
And he was an extraordinary tactician. He’d seized upon an opportunity, and he’d made a decision. And he’d played a card.
The man who did everything right intended to break a rule for her.
Which meant, of course, it was now her turn to play one.
“Thank you.” Her voice was arid. “Your offer is kind.”
He gave a short nod and resumed writing.
If he was invested in a particular outcome, not a twitch betrayed it.
“Shall we review what you’ve learned today?” he asked politely. He put aside his work.
His Man of Affairs had foisted upon him more requests for donations, sponsorships, quotes, and speeches, and he’d carried it all back with him to The Grand Palace on the Thames, joining the group of ladies in the sitting room, sitting apart at his usual little table. The other gentlemen were out for the evening on a matter of business for the Triton Group. Mr. Delacorte had, it seemed, gone to a donkey race.
A sudden palpably anguished, tense silence made him look up abruptly.
“It’s the ballroom ceiling, Your Grace,” Mrs. Pariseau explained, gravely, noticing his gaze.
Everyone involved in the planning, and even those who were not, were deeply, passionately committed to a midnight-blue sky twinkling with stars for the Night of the Nightingale, but no one could agree on the best way to achieve it. Tammy, velvet, tulle, and silk were variously rejected as too expensive, too outlandishly expensive, or pure madness. And the notion of affixing the number of stars necessary to enchant all the guests was daunting, and neither Delilah nor Angelique was eager to put holes in a ceiling they’d only recently fully repaired.
“Fishing nets.”
Everyone in the room swiveled to stare at the duke. It was the first thing he’d said all evening.
“Dye fishing nets indigo or black. Attach the stars using fishing line to the holes on the net and then hoist the nets up. The stars will be easier to adjust in height that way if you wish. No need to attach anything to the ceiling. Use the chandelier as a center point to help support the nets but don’t light it, of course. Any hooks you install on either end of the room will be practical and support the weight of bunting or anything else you might use to decorate the room in the future.”
They listened to this crisp recitation with wide eyes.
And their expressions transformed as though he’d just won the war again.
“We’ll layer the nets,” Delilah said at once. “To get a denser sort of blue.”
“And I suspect we can get them, and the dye, free or cheaply or for trade of some kind, given the Triton Group’s dealings with shipping and the like,” Angelique added.
“I thought so,” he said pleasantly.
“Thank you, Your Grace,” Delilah said fervently.
He nodded.
It was the least he could do for spending the last half hour imagining the Night of the Nightingale’s star naked beneath him, her fingers digging into his shoulders as he thrust.
It seemed every breath he took was hot, as if the room was a blacksmith’s forge instead of a parlor full of pleasantly bickering people. Every muscle in his body, his every cell, was as alert with anticipation as the night before a battle.
He was balanced on the knife-edge of propriety.
He never equivocated. He either did things or he didn’t do things, as his moral compass dictated. He never wasted time on sexual reveries. He knew how to get satisfaction when he needed it.
For the first time in his life, he was conscious of rationalization. Of searching out a reason he could live with for what he wanted to do. Because the only compelling reason to break the rules here at The Grand Palace on the Thames with a notorious soprano was that he wanted to, and it was a weak man’s reason.
Even as the stack of mail upstairs congratulated him, in part, for being the inspiration that kept the young men of the ton out of the clutches of women like her, he knew it was less about wanting to fuck someone than it was about looking down into Mariana’s face and watching how her eyes changed when the pleasure he gave her became too much to bear.
He—they—had set this thing in motion. He knew full well that every avalanche began with a few pebbles. But that didn’t seem to be a compelling reason to stop it, either.
Mariana, imagine how it will be. You know how it will be with us.
Come to me.
He could see her now in profile.
She turned slightly. Met his eyes.
She turned away, with obvious difficulty.
Mariana, don’t come to me. I’m not the sort of man who has sex with notorious opera singers just because he can.
I’m not the type of man who takes advantage of a young woman’s sensuality and fascination for me to get her into bed.
I do not ever want to hurt you.
But if you come to me . . .
She might not come.
And if she didn’t, he would not seduce. He would not coerce. He would not beg. He would, and could, pretend as though nothing had ever happened between them, and he would protect her decision, and her, from his desire as if it was his sacred duty.
But he would take note of every minute between now and ten o’clock as if they were punishing lashes.
She’d dressed in her green silk, the one that made her eyes “bewitching,” or so Lord Revell had said, before she’d broken with him. Before all of this.
And then she’d put on her fur-lined pelisse that Revell had given her, as a gift. Not a payment.
She sat on the edge of her bed for a long time, in the dark. She took long, deep breaths. And with each one, instead of feeling steadier, she felt weaker. She hadn’t the duke’s chessboard, whip-crack mind. She couldn’t reason through this.
She glanced over at that unwritten letter on the desk, and imagined writing:
Dear Mama,
I hope this finds you well.
I want him.
That’s all she could think. Three mundane words when taken separately. Rather drab to look at, when written. But: lo voglio. She knew just how she’d sing them. She would tear the hearts out of her listeners with a howl of equal parts anguish and ecstasy, a cry for help.
Her breath seemed uncommonly loud in the dark of her room.
No one could save her but herself.
As it turned out, she wasn’t up to the job.
Ten minutes later she stood in front of the door with a lit candle in her hand. For a time, she did nothing but experience the bass drum thud of her heart. It seemed to vibrate her entire body and send her blood whooshing like waves in her ears. Surely it would wake the house.
She passed rows of doused sconces (and all the maids were in bed), and the floor upon which Mr. Delacorte snored (all the guests were sleeping). She crept down the stairs, skipping the creaky ones (surely it was the first thing any person who was not a saint sussed out upon moving into a house). Then through the passage, which was chilly at night and dark. The great, sturdy door with the peep window was barred and locked for the evening. The shutters were latched and the heavy curtains drawn against the night chill. The chandelier scattered only one or two amber twinkles on the marble floor, as the fires in the parlor were allowed to die and the crystals only shone by virtue of its light.
If anyone should come along, there was no way this could be construed as an innocent visit. She, and her trunk, would be thrown bodily out of the building.
The door swung open so abruptly, she gasped like the heroine in The Ghost in the Attic.
The duke filled the doorway.
He was in shirtsleeves, cravat-less, rolled up, bootless, and the firelight cast the V of visible skin at his throat in copper. Dark hair curled up from it.
Her head went light.
“Miss Wylde.” He managed not to inflect the words with anything other than conviction: she was indeed Miss Wylde.
She did not reply, because she couldn’t. She could not move her eyes from his bare throat. She thought if she touched her tongue to the bones at the base of his throat, his skin would taste like toasted bread coated in honey.
Her skin was everywhere warm suddenly, like the pelt of an animal. It remembered how it had felt to be crushed up against his body, and every inch of her wanted that again.
“My apologies for startling you.” This was how he interpreted her speechless stare. “I saw the toes of your slippers flash in the crack beneath the door.”
She looked down. “Oh. I suppose they are shiny by candlelight.” She was mildly pleased by this.
She looked up again to find a slow smile spreading across his lips. As if no one had ever said anything more charming or absurd in a doorway of a boardinghouse.
Which made her realize: he’d likely known precisely how long she’d been standing here.
Her cheeks went hot. She hadn’t realized it was possible to simultaneously feel like a virgin and a whore.
And then it occurred to her: he might have been waiting by the door, too.
Nothing about him betrayed impatience. But his silence was unlike him. Perhaps he was mesmerized by her in candlelight.
But his silence made her wonder if he had rifled through a rash of reservations between this afternoon and this moment.
She cleared her throat. “I . . . I brought the letter I told you about.” She brandished it. If she clutched it for one second longer, the ink would transfer to her damp palms. “I’ve come to believe the other pages are a libretto or lyrics.”
“Ah. Very good,” he said. There was a pause. “Shall we read it together?”
He slowly turned like a drawbridge lifting, and the room behind him was revealed in flickering gold firelight and dense velvety shadow. The lamp next to the dark contours of a roomy bed put out a hazy nimbus of light. The light picked glints off a decanter of brandy, a snifter, a vase next to the bed.
Tomorrow. During the daylight. That’s when they should read the letter. That’s what she should have said.
She looked up at him, mutely.
He gently, chivalrously took her candle from her.
He closed the door behind them and slid the bolt once she was inside.
“I was sitting on the settee and reading and having a brandy. May I offer you a . . . or would you rather . . .”
He didn’t know the protocol for whatever this was, either, clearly.
“Brandy would be lovely.” Did ladies drink brandy? Did it matter? She was hardly a lady at this point. It needed to be something. Sherry seemed far too tea-with-the-ladies for the occasion.
She stood just inside the room, rule breaker that she was.
The room smelled of him. Manly, expensive, perhaps a little sweaty. Excellent soap and the best tobacco and a little of the citrus, woody scent that had haunted her since she’d kissed him. He didn’t baptize himself in scent the way Giancarlo did.
And then there was actual leather, which could be ascribed to the Hessians standing next to the hearth as erect as if he was still in them. They were considerably shinier than the toes of her satin slippers.
She was a cobbler’s daughter. She knew Hessians like that cost the earth, relatively speaking.
It was ridiculous, but suddenly, the beautiful boots, and the great distance between where they stood at the hearth and where she stood at the doorway, underscored their stations in life. This room was vast, and she could only imagine what his actual home looked like.
She took in a breath, feeling absurdly shy.
The settee was long and tall-backed and looked shiny and plump. Perhaps the finest piece of furniture she’d met in person, and this belonged to a room in a boardinghouse.
“If you’d like to have a seat there, we’ll have a look at the letter together.”
She took his suggestion, and discovered the fine settee was nicely sprung. She could not resist giving a gratuitous bounce.
He sat down beside her, almost gingerly, close but a decorous distance away. So close to touching, but not yet touching.
She wondered if he was nervous.
“What have you been able to read?”
She flattened the letter in her lap and pointed to a scrawled paragraph. “I think he is inviting me to Paris to work? A role in a new opera? But I do not know what this part means. Aragosta? His handwriting is a bit unusual.”
He read the letter carefully. “Excellent. Yes, you are being invited to work, and I believe your role will be . . . you will be a . . .”
He turned to look at her, his expression carefully blank. “A lobster.”
She stared at him, dumbstruck.
“A . . . l-lobster?”
“Yes,” he said gently, as if breaking the news of a death in the family. His eyes, however, glinted. “I believe you’re being asked to play a singing lobster.”
She was speechless.
“Operas don’t have to make sense, Miss Wylde,” he reminded her, his tone entirely sober, his eyes pure, dancing wickedness.
Dazedly, she slowly raised one arm, bent at the elbow.
Then the other.
He watched her face, taut, then trembling with some suppressed emotion.
Slowly, experimentally, she turned her hands to face each other, like claws.
And then clacked them.
They both gave shouts of laughter. And then they doubled over with it.
“Oh, oh, no. Oh, dear,” she sighed happily, and wiped her eyes. “Oh, my goodness.”
“Hold.” He held up a hand importantly, catching his breath. He coughed. “Now let’s think a moment. It could be very poignant. Think about how lobsters wind up in cages . . . there could be an injustice done . . . perhaps it will be like Lobster Newgate!”
That set them both off again.
He referred back to the letter. “Before you get too excited about your role . . . wait one moment . . . let’s be sure.” He cleared his throat and scanned the page. “It’s possible I was mistaken. It’s possible he means for you to be a mermaid. He mentions a sirena, and I believe that’s a mermaid . . .”
She dropped her jaw. Then made an indignant sound.
“But . . . that’s . . . are you sure?”
He referred to the letter again and squinted, as if he could bring the man’s scrawl into better focus. “Yes, I believe it does. The lobsters are . . .” he frowned “. . . merely . . . stage dressing? I believe? Or they might be minions. Ye Gods, was this man drunk when he wrote this? His handwriting is abysmal. It might be a chorus of lobster minions. Please let there be lobster minions,” he muttered.
She studied his profile as he read. He still had tears in the corners of his eyes from laughing. She stared at the glint of them. She stopped breathing from the sheer, untenable happiness.
“A mermaid is much better,” she said, distractedly.
He turned to her in all seriousness. “Is it?”
“Well, I could have a very pretty tail for a costume. Just imagine! Perhaps done in net and paste jewels. And a magnificent wig,” she said dreamily.
As he studied her, his face settled into that bemused wonderment.
“Even so, Mariana, no matter what . . . you’d be the most riveting lobster to ever grace the stage.”
“That’s the nicest thing anyone has ever said to me.”
He gave a soft laugh.
They sat in the kind of silence Mariana had never known. It was perfect.
“You are gifted,” he said.
“I know.”
He smiled at that again, and damned if he didn’t look pleased with the answer.
“But that’s precisely it, isn’t it?” she said. “It’s a gift. I hadn’t much to do with it. I’m a . . . vessel for that voice. I got lucky.”
“No. You’re wrong,” he said firmly but ruefully. “One person might look at a little cloudy rock and say, ‘What a nice rock.’ It’s the dedication, the determination, the instinct, the . . . spirit . . . that ultimately tumbles that rock into a glittering diamond.”
She knew he was right. He delivered it as if it were gospel. What must it be like to be so certain of things? What would it be like to be able to rely upon him as a rudder through life? He was so often right.
“If that is in fact true,” she said carefully but firmly, “you may have to contend with the notion that you are in fact a hero deserving of statues and accolades. Not just a man with the conveniently right temperament for an impossible job. Because the same concept applies.”
He was still. Then his head went back a little, thoughtfully, and then came down in a nod.
And then he smiled at her, and that’s how they sat for a moment or two, enmeshed in a bemused glow of mutual appreciation.
He stirred abruptly and handed the letter back to her. “Why don’t you read this paragraph aloud. I think you’ll be able to translate all of the words in it. The one at the bottom of the page. I’ll help if you need it.”
“Very well. I shall give it a try.” She cleared her throat. “‘We . . . should like to’ . . . this word that looks like . . . prove?”
“Prova. Prove. Rehearsal. Rehearse?”
“‘. . . three weeks . . . cominciando’? Beginning?”
“Yes. Very good. Beginning.”
“‘We should like to commence rehearsals in’ . . . oh my . . . that’s nearly three weeks away. I’ve only a very little time to get there! And here are the words ‘Signor Antonio Grieco’—oh, I do like his work! He’s a fine composer. And look at this. The money is good! Am I reading this correctly?”
“Oh, yes. That’s what he’s offering to pay you.”
They had begun by sitting a few inches apart. Somehow, as if they’d slowly been melting, their thighs were now touching, and their shoulders were touching, and suddenly James could no longer think.
A few strands of hair lay against her throat. They glowed like filaments in the firelight. They might as well have been actual gold.
Tension spooled. Tighter and tighter.
Her words grew quieter, faltered, trailed off, stopped.
Her eyelids had shivered closed. And now the little tendril of hair behind her ear fluttered with her breathing. He could see the pulse beating in her throat.
And then finally, delicately, gently he swept those red-gold strands away, his own hand shaking a little from all that he held in check.
He felt like an animal. He wanted to mount. To ravish. Devour.
He warned her of this. Into her ear he confided, each word soft with amazement, scorching with intent:“I want you.”
She turned up to him a heavy-lidded, fully surrendered, lust-drunk gaze, pupils black as the hearts of pansies.
Her eyelids dropped. Her lashes shivered, casting shadows on her cheeks. Her lips were parted; her breaths were uneven. He watched, mesmerized, the lift and fall of her breasts, her nipples already ruched and hard against her bodice. He took her earlobe between his teeth, lightly, as he unlaced her dress with a pickpocket’s vanishing touch. Then dipped his tongue into her ear, softly tracing its contours, chasing his tongue with his breath, until her head fell back on a helpless “oh.” Then he dragged his lips to the silky hollow where her pulse thudded and opened his mouth to place a hot kiss there. He could feel the little skip in her breath as he dragged her bodice down, down.
And she turned to him, nude to the waist, her arms reaching to wrap around his head. Her head fell back to meet his lowering lips, and her moan hummed against his lips as his hands filled with her breasts.
The sweetness of holding this particular woman’s body against his. The sheer bloody luck of it. It seemed this unsatisfied craving for her, just for her, had lurked in him a lifetime.
The warm, silky weight of her breasts nearly did him in. He stroked; his fingers teased her until her breath was sawing. She reached for his trouser buttons; they gave beneath her fingers. She found the jut of his cock beneath the folds of his shirt and wrapped her hands around it as their mouths met in slow, carnal kisses. She dragged her fists over him again, and then again, then paused to trace the dome of it with a delicate finger, teasing. He hissed in a breath; his head dipped to touch her forehead, then fell back again as he struggled to accommodate the ramping pleasure.
He urged her back against the settee. His miles of shirt were in the way, and her skirts threatened to impede, but they were, to their everlasting relief, somewhat naked, positioned groin to groin, lips clinging to lips, hands searching for bare skin to savor, to conquer, to arouse.
He dragged his hand down her softly fuzzed thigh and slipped it between where the skin was tender as a petal, his fingertips cherishing the feel of that as they skated down, down, until they dipped into the satiny, hot slickness hidden by damp curls. His eyes never left her face as he teased at first, stroked and withdrew, circled lightly, watching her eyes go hazy, her lids slit, her neck arch back. The lust was a madness, a pressure in his head, pulsing in his veins. Their eyes locked, both in thrall to the pleasure she took and he gave; her sighs evolved tattered edges, then became moans, then oaths hoarsely whispered against his lips.
“Oh, James . . . oh God . . . please, James . . .”
She came apart with a silent scream, her body whipped upward; she pulsed around his fingers.
He hovered above her, the muscles of his arms all trembling from coursing need. She wrapped her legs around him, locked them about his back, to pull him close, as he thrust himself into her.
The glory of that tight fit, of moving in her for the first time. The triumph of watching her eyes go dark yet again when the pleasure banked. The wonder and amazement and ferocious want evolving in her expression as she felt another release building. He teased both of them at first, or tried; he kept his rhythm deliberate, leisurely; oh, but it cost him. Need had its claws in him. Her hands dug into his shoulders, until she slid them down to his bare hips and gripped him, arching to urge him on, to take him deeply. “James . . . let go. Please . . . oh God . . . I need . . . I need . . .”
It was the permission he sought. Their bodies colliding and arcing as he drove into her, driving them both to the brink and over it into that shattering bliss that blacked his vision.
He went still. He buried a roar against her throat. He pulled from her just in time. She clung to him while their bodies quaked, the bliss still rippling through them.
It was a moment before his sense re-met his body.
He lowered himself carefully beside her. Turned so that her body was half-draped over his, and held her. So she could use his chest as a pillow.
There was nothing quite like the texture of quiet with a woman’s soft, sated weight against his body. He drew a finger along her quivering lashes. Her mouth curved in a little smile.
Her cheek rose and fell with his breathing. His heart thumped against her skin.
This was like the moment after waking, before all of the things of the world sifted in.
They lay still and listened to the clock softly bonging twelve times.
She stirred, and he sat up.
She gave a soft laugh. “Your hair,” she said. “It’s every which way.”
He went to smooth it with his hands.
“Don’t,” she said. “Not yet. I like knowing how it got that way.”
They smiled at each other. With a certain awe-filled caution.
There seemed no need to review what had happened: Sex! Gosh! There’s nothing like it, eh?
But he had never before experienced sex—or himself—or a woman—as an uncontrollable and irresistible force. It had owned him.
There was really no smooth or direct route back to dignity after a sexual frenzy. He found a handkerchief and handed it over. She cleaned her thigh. She pulled up the sleeves of her dress and he, without asking, did up her laces while she held up her rummaged hair. She did the best she could with it.
He suspected he was going to have an affair.
With, to boot, perhaps the most notorious woman in London.
Although he was certain that they would both spend the rest of the night reviewing the wisdom of everything that had just transpired. Wisdom was never present when a man and a woman were naked together in a dark room. The light of day might reveal some stark truths to both of them.
He only hoped she did not and would not regret this. He found he did not dare ask if she did. And this—the not daring, because there had never been a thing he hadn’t dared—was new, too.
“Thank you for the Italian lesson,” she whispered.
He gave a soft laugh.
Her cheeks were still flushed. Her hair was still a bit anarchic, albeit re-pinned. Her lips were rosy and a trifle swollen.
And then gently, almost tentatively, she laid her hand against his cheek. They looked into each other’s eyes, solemnly, in a sort of wary tenderness.
He turned his head to lay a hot, lingering kiss in her palm.
He closed his eyes and breathed her in.
And then he threaded his fingers through hers and stood, and pulled her to her feet, and released her hand.
He found her candle, and handed it to her.
And by tacit agreement, she slipped silently out of the door.
As she made her way through the darkened house, she balanced the candle in one hand lest a stray draft douse it. She carefully closed her other hand into a fist.
As if the kiss he’d put into her palm was another tiny flame she needed to delicately tend and keep until she reached her room.
She slept with her fist against her cheek.