Chapter 6
Simone had never felt as powerful a desire to follow someone she’d just kissed in her whole life.
To forget rules of engagement and calm collectedness while she climbed into Caroline’s carriage and continued what they’d started.
And then comfort her in her obvious terror at encountering Arabella in the midst of such upheaval.
Somehow she stayed just where she was, even though she ached as she watched Caroline’s carriage roll away through the window.
“What did you do to my aunt?” Arabella asked.
Simone pivoted on her but saw instantly that Arabella was teasing. She hadn’t seen or guessed anything at all.
Simone forced herself to remain calm. “Nothing at all, I assure you. We’ve had a few interactions over the years.”
“You have?” Arabella appeared truly shocked.
Simone shrugged in the hopes it would create a sense of nonchalance that was not real. “You don’t know all her business. Or mine.”
“We delight in teasing her at how red she blushes when your name is said.”
“Does she now?”
Simone’s toes curled in her slippers at the idea that Caroline blushed when she thought of her.
God knew she’d probably blush even deeper now.
Simone felt her own cheeks growing hot, too.
She hadn’t meant to kiss Caroline. She’d been trying to avoid it, actually, but the woman was irresistible and now that Simone knew her taste, she feared she’d never be the same.
“Caroline was raised in a very sheltered way,” Arabella said with a sad expression. “That she didn’t cut herself off from me, and later from Evelina and Julia, speaks to her loving heart.”
Simone nodded. That loving heart was one of the things she’d always found most attractive about Caroline. She truly didn’t judge her nieces, even if she didn’t understand them. There were few in the world who offered such full-throated acceptance to women like them.
Women like Simone.
Arabella was still talking. “Still, the facts of our lives are still shocking to her, I’m sure. Was she concerned about something specific?”
Simone flashed once again to the image of Caroline’s pupils darkening just before Simone dared to kiss her. To the sound of her moans as that same kiss deepened and slowed.
She jolted. “Don’t you worry. I took care of it. Would you like a drink?”
Arabella took a place on the settee. “The tea is fine.”
Simone was just as happy for that answer because tea took a moment to prepare and that would allow her to calm her racing heart at last. Arabella was clever—if Simone kept running off in sensual thoughts in her head, she was going to notice.
Not to mention to keep doing it over a kiss… a kiss…was foolhardy.
She had calmed her breath by the time she set the cup before Arabella and instead of sitting beside her on the settee where she’d only just considered ravishing her aunt, took a place in one of the chairs across from her.
“What are you doing?” she asked, moving the topic to one that was far more under her control.
Arabella blinked. “Doing?”
“I’ve heard the whispers, you know. Actually it’s all louder than whispers now, though not quite shouts. You and Silas.”
Arabella’s expression flickered, revealing too much. “Well, it’s all supposed to be breezy,” she said. “It’s just meant to be a bit of fun.”
Simone sipped her tea. “But?”
Arabella shifted in her seat and cleared her throat. “Have you ever…cared about a man?”
“No,” Simone said. And it was true. Of all the men she’d bedded, she’d never cared for even one of them.
But sudden thoughts of Caroline pushed through.
Unwanted thoughts that were about far more than kissing.
“I’ve cared about a lover, though,” she admitted.
God, Caroline wasn’t a lover, was she? Even though that kiss felt as intimate as stripping her down and having her on the settee.
She forced her thoughts back to Arabella. “You are saying you care about Silas.”
“I do. I think I’m…I’m falling in love with him.”
Simone’s thoughts of Caroline flared again, but she pushed them aside and set her cup down. In this moment, her duty was to Arabella and she needed to focus on that. “Arabella, you’ve been falling in love with him since you first saw him at Vauxhall Gardens. This is not news.”
Arabella scrubbed a hand over her eyes. “Possibly that’s true. Probably that’s true. He’s…he’s special. He’s so intense and passionate.”
“You’ve been with passionate men before,” Simone said.
“But he’s also bright and he’s…he’s caring.”
Why did every one of those descriptors yank her back over and over to Caroline and their encounters over the years? Like there was some future? Like that was some connection beyond a shared affection for the Comerford girls and one little kiss. She set her jaw. “And he’s leaving.”
She said it for herself as much as Arabella and it seemed to hit them with the same weight.
“I know. I know. And even if he wasn’t, what do I know about sharing myself? About loving someone?”
“You think he wants your love?”
“I know he wants more of me, even if it’s not love he craves.
He presses me, tries to crack me open. I’ve always run from anyone who did that and I feel that same desire to run with him.
But I also feel this need, this want to—to tell him everything.
To give him everything he ever wanted. Even though I know if he sees me, truly sees me… how will I ever protect myself?”
Simone let out a shaky breath. Once again, this conversation felt too close to home.
“Oh, Arabella, I wish I knew the answer to that question. I never taught lessons on love aside from avoiding it because I didn’t know it then.
” What was she saying? She didn’t know love now!
She pushed on, “And right now, looking at you, my gut tells me not to support this. To tell you to hide yourself away, to break with him as cruelly as possible so that he won’t pursue what could hurt you. ”
“But?”
“But I know him and I know you. You two together, truly together…it makes some kind of sense.”
And that was true. Silas was one of her favorite former lovers and he had the same spark as Arabella. They were two of the same kind and if they chose to be together, there was nothing stopping them from being happy.
That was different from herself and Caroline. She couldn’t forget it.
“I came here so you could talk me out of this.” Arabella got to her feet and paced to the same window where Caroline had stood a few moments before. “Christ, Simone, don’t tell me it makes sense, none of this makes sense!”
No. Nothing made sense anymore. The world had been shifted on its axis, it seemed. “But what do you want to do?”
“Want to do? When did want ever come into it? Need was first, wasn’t it? That was what you taught me. Access what I need, determine how to get it. Want would only get me in trouble.”
“You quote me back to myself so easily.” Simone stood even though her knees shook because what she wanted felt far too dangerous.
“Because I memorized every line. You are successful because you don’t fall, you don’t even waver. You give exactly the amount that is needed but never an ounce more. You mentored me to make the same choices and I have. I have and I’ve been…happy.”
“Happy.” Simone bent her head. Had she ever been happy? Had she ever allowed anyone to be in control of that feeling? Could she ever risk so much? “I’m not sure I ever taught you to be that. Just to survive. Happy might take a little more risk than I’ve ever been willing to take.”
“If you haven’t been willing, then how can I?”
“Because you are young, Arabella. And Silas isn’t like—” She cut herself off and drew a short breath. “He isn’t like anyone else. He isn’t some duke who pretends to care while he is just getting what he wants. Silas is…singular. So what do you want to do with this emotion in your chest?”
She was asking herself the question, she realized.
And the answer was loud. She wanted to go to Caroline and kiss her again.
She wanted to draw her into her arms and do more than kiss her.
She wanted to whisper secrets she’d never told anyone and be folded into the warmth of Caroline’s acceptance.
Because Caroline would accept her. Simone felt the truth of that down to her bones.
Arabella was speaking again and her words cut through the warm fog of Simone’s fantasies. “Perhaps what I must do is…end it.”
Tears stung Simone’s eyes. Arabella was being far wiser than she could be herself. The student had apparently become the master.
“Oh, Arabella,” she whispered.
“I should end it, and get a new arrangement and be finished. He’ll go back to America or…or do something else that will be better for him. Make him happy. What was between us will become nothing more than a pleasing memory I’ll recall when I’m trying to orgasm with some fumbling gentleman.”
Arabella said it with a sad chuckle, but Simone couldn’t join in. She knew full well it had been fantasies of Caroline that had been helping her orgasm for some time. That would only be more powerful now. Caroline would become her specter, haunting her every sigh and moan.
She pushed that thought aside and crossed to Arabella. “Are you certain?”
“No. Yes. No. But that doesn’t mean I shouldn’t do it.”
“I’m sorry,” Simone whispered. And meant it. For both of them.
Arabella let out a shaky sigh and they embraced. “So am I. So am I.” They stood like that for a moment and then Arabella pulled away. “Enough of this. We are who we are. I’m certainly stronger than the kind of woman who moans over a man day and night.”
Simone forced a smile. “Would you stay for supper?”
“No,” Arabella said. “I think the sooner I do this the better. Thank you for your counsel.”
Simone escorted her to the foyer and there they said their goodbyes. She stared out onto the drive for a long time after Arabella’s carriage was long gone, though. The afternoon had been a shocking one and everything felt turned on its head now.