With the extremely warm July weather, the windows in the suite were opened wide, the lace curtains stirring occasionally as a breeze flowed through them, the sounds from the street below also drifting through the gossamer fabric.
It was just before midnight Monday night, the sky vaporous gray through the veiled windows, the sounds of carousal lessened but never completely extinguished in the thoroughfare outside. The bed curtains hung limp in the sultry heat, the ticking of the clock the only sound in the shadowed bedroom. Adam sat with Flora on a chair he’d pulled close to the open windows, her nude body resting on his lap, her head on his chest, her breathing the regular cadence of peaceful slumber.
He found sleep elusive. It was the heat, he told himself, avoiding the more complex reasons having to do with his powerful response to Flora Bonham. Their time together was almost gone. Gazing down at her, he reflected how pleasant it would have been to have met her years ago, before Isolde and all the complications she had presented to his life.
But in the next pulse beat he cautioned himself to a more cool-headed reason. Persistent sex with Flora Bonham could have something to do with his warm feelings toward her, he reminded himself. The emotions assailing him were difficult to separate from the intensity of their carnal bond. If past experience was any indication, he’d find it difficult to remember her name by winter. But even as he rationally considered the possibility that this was another transient liaison, a niggling doubt questioned such cool logic.
Flora stirred in his arms, snuggling closer like a sleepy kitten, and a smile touched Adam’s mouth. She made him happy; her simple presence could make him smile.
He was lowering his head to gently kiss her when a barrage of gunshots exploded outside. And a second later the cry followed, “Meagher’s dead! Meagher’s dead!” the clamorous yell louder as the messenger galloped down the street toward the Planters House. Another volley of gunfire punctuated the screams, calling the town to attention.
The second round of shots at close range woke Flora.
Lacing her arms around his neck, her eyes drowsy with sleep, she murmured, “Another gunfight?”
“A messenger with news of Meagher’s death.” Adam’s deep voice was without inflection. But he gathered her firmly in his arms and suddenly rose from the chair. “I’m going downstairs for a minute,” he softly said, carrying her over to the bed. “And find out the details.”
“He won’t be after your clan now.…” She wasn’t fully awake yet, and her words were only a murmur of sound.
“I’ll be back in a few minutes,” Adam quietly said, placing Flora in the center of the bed, lingering a moment to kiss her.
She clung to him. “Ummm … don’t go.” Obsessed, greedy for the feel of him, she pulled his head back down. “Stay …,” she whispered against his mouth.
He relented temporarily, tasting her sweet mouth in a lingering kiss that elicited a delicious purring sound from the lady beneath him. “My unquenchable darling,” he whispered with a smile, extricating himself from her clinging arms, “give me five minutes and I’ll be back.”
“You won’t forget me, now,” she said, her voice low-pitched and sultry, her lithe body stretching in an unforgettably sensual way.
“I’ll definitely remember that,” Adam murmured, grinning. “Don’t go away.”
He dressed with masculine swiftness and exited the bedroom with a wave and a blown kiss while Flora felt that first faint quiver of dread.
This was how she was going to feel when he was gone from her life in another few hours—empty, abandoned, bereft of his energy and spirit. She shivered in the sultry summer heat. Shaking away her melancholy, she resolutely took herself to task. She wouldn’t dissolve away from the loss of one man, no matter how beautiful and accomplished he was. Her life was too full for her to wallow in self-pity and despair over the termination of a love affair.
Abruptly rising from the bed, she walked into the sitting room as if escaping the site of so much of their passion. She’d better control her sensibilities, she warned herself. But they’d made love everywhere in the sitting room, too, she realized as her gaze swept the room. Snatching up a shirt Adam had dropped onto a chair, she slipped it over her nakedness, feeling a sudden need to cover her body as though she could shield herself from passion with a linen shirt. She began pacing, agitated by her desolation, her emotions in turmoil. The men in her past had never affected her like this. Never. They were charming diversions to her life, but they didn’t impinge on her emotions. Or they never had. Until now. Threading her way around the bulky furniture, she crossed and recrossed the room, restless under the charged tumult in her brain.
To her horror, when Adam walked back into the suite short minutes later, she stopped, looked at him, and burst into tears.
“I’m sorry …” She hiccuped, mortified, tears streaming down her cheeks.
“What happened?” Adam softly exclaimed, striding swiftly toward her.
“Nothing … I’m fine …,” she gasped, weeping in great gulping sobs, looking like a small child in his overlarge shirt, her legs bare, her toes curled into the flowered carpet.
Sweeping her into his arms when he reached her, he hugged her close. “I shouldn’t have gone,” he whispered in self-reproach. “Tell me what happened.”
His compassion, the particular aptness of his words, only brought on fresh tears, and perplexed, he searched her face. But she only uttered a muffled, “Nothing happened,” when clearly something had. Debating how to comfort her, he moved to the couch, sat down, and, holding her in his lap, sympathetically said, “Just tell me.” He lifted her chin gently so their eyes met. “I can make it better.”
“I’m … being … silly,” she stammered, gulping hard to control her weeping. “I must be … tired.”
“Did someone come in while I was gone?” He gently brushed the wetness from her cheeks.
She shook her head, forcing back the tears flooding her throat.
“You didn’t hurt yourself?”
She waggled her head no again, her curls a wispy caress on his chin.
“Would you like to sleep? I should have let you sleep more.”
“It’s not your fault,” she quietly said, her tears nearly stanched. “And I really don’t want to sleep.”
“What do you want to do?” he asked in an attempt to cheer her. “Tell me and we’ll do it.”
“Go to Paris,” she replied, her teasing smile trembling for only a second.
“I’ll pack,” he softly replied, touching the susceptible corner of her mouth with a light brushing fingertip. “We’ll have dinner with the emperor.”
“And you’ll take me to the races.”
“I’ll definitely take you to the races.” His voice went very quiet. “Every man will envy me.”
“I’ll stay at your house.”
“I won’t let you out of my sight,” he affirmed, holding her tight.
“We’ll dance at the Tuileries.”
“Or at St. Cloud.”
“And every woman will envy me,” she whispered. “Our holiday will last forever.”
“Forever,” she said very, very softly. “Now kiss me before I cry again.”
And he did with a special tenderness as though she were fragile. He kissed away the damp trails her tears had left on her rosy cheeks, he kissed her delicate earlobes and silky lashes, he kissed the sighing warmth of her mouth.
She found his kisses fortifying, her distress melting away in his arms. “You’re an extraordinary man,” she murmured, her fingers laced through his hair, her spirits recovered, her smile restored to its former glory. “Tell me how you do it.”
“To begin with,” he teasingly said, “I always have a good breakfast and see that I get plenty of sleep and—”
“You never sleep.”
“Sometimes I do. This isn’t one of those times, for obvious reasons.”
“Because of our limited time.”
He looked at her closely before he answered, gauging the stability of her mood. “Yes,” he said. His sigh ruffled her hair. “With Meagher dead, I should ride north,” he quietly added.
“How soon will you be leaving?” Pride kept her voice level.
“Right after you do. The camp probably has the news by now, but the militia will have to be monitored for a short time at least. And then if all goes well, if the volunteers disband soon, I’m hoping to take my horses to Saratoga for the August races.”
“Lucie tells me she’s going along this time,” Flora said, politesse serving as barricade to her feelings.
“I’m hearing the same thing. She wants to see Magnus run.”
“You should win with him.” It was remarkable, she thought, how her smile could be detached from emotion.
“I’m planning on it.”
“If you need to leave earlier for the camp—”
“No,” he quickly interjected.
“You’re sure? I don’t want to feel guilty about a foolish wager.”
“I’d like to stay longer if I could.” His voice was soft as velvet.
Her smile held her old assurance. “We’ve another four hours, anyway.”
“Four and a half,” he said with a grin. “What kind of chocolate should I order this time? Chocolate with ambergris?”
“Are you trying to seduce me?” Her voice was fluty with heated allure.
“Of course not,” he murmured with a faint smile. “Only comfort you.” Brillat-Savarin referred to ambered chocolate as chocolate of the unhappy, for its pleasant capacity to allay suffering of any kind. “Or would you prefer Russian chocolate?”10
“I’ll have both,” she softly replied. “Will you feed it to me here or in bed?”
He gazed at her for a moment, his dark eyes heated, covetous, as though he’d not touched her before, as though he were a hot-blooded youth offered his first woman. “I’ll see what you like best,” he murmured, remembering where he’d indulged her in the days past. How he’d fed her chocolate mousse in the chair by the window one afternoon while she’d pleaded for his touch; how he’d offered the little meringue-and-almond chocolate drops to her as she lay on the sofa—in exchange for her kisses. And the Dobos torte, eaten in bed at first, had reminded them both of Budapest and later of a particularly memorable bath.
“You’re too good to me,” she whispered, a sweet, restless coquetry in her voice.
“Why shouldn’t I be? You’re peerless delight.”
She smiled. “For four and a half hours more, at least.”
“No,” he quietly said, sensitive to the impression she’d made on his life. “For always in my heart.…”
But Flora eventually stayed an extra half day because she couldn’t bring herself to leave, no more than Adam could let her. And when she finally forced herself to go, they both found their last good-bye difficult.
“I’m sorry,” Adam quietly said, holding her lightly in his arms, leaning against the door so she couldn’t walk away for a few moments more.
“It’s too soon,” she softly replied, understanding his cryptic words as if he’d gone on at length about the disarray of his marriage.
“After marriage to Isolde,” he ruefully admitted, his voice very low, “it might always be too soon.” In his darkest moods he wondered if the scars of his marriage might never be erased.
The reasons for it.
The day-to-day misery of it.
The combative residue of it.
He’d never be completely rid of Isolde.
“I understand,” Flora said, sensible, pragmatic, a rational focus having long determined the direction of her life. “Thank you for everything,” she said with a smile. Reaching behind her, she gently removed his hands from her waist and stepped back.
Adam sighed at the inevitable and then returned her smile. “You’re entirely welcome,” he softly said. “And thank you, too, for a rare pleasure. Lucie and I will miss you.” He pushed away from the door and released the latch so it swung partly open.
Flora’s smile was less easy suddenly, for she would truly miss them both. But her life had never revolved around any man; she had no intention of bartering her independence for that dependency, no matter how poignant her feelings of loss. “Good-bye, Adam,” she whispered.
And picking up her valise, she walked out of the room.