Twenty-one
Part of Peter wanted to laugh or sing or grab her by the shoulders, roll her in the cashmere, and tell her how happy she made him.
But the other part of him was terrified.
He had used her ill. His performance had been loutish at best, brutish at worst. He had taken a gentlewoman, an affianced gentlewoman whose feelings for her husband-to-be had been made clear to him, and lowered her to the level of a courtier.
However pleasured she might have been, no woman, in the sober light of day, would thank a man for that.
Unless, of course, her feelings for her husband-to-be were not what he imagined.
He stroked the satin skin of her hip and tried to keep his heart from haring off in three directions at once. Already he was constructing the inducements he might offer the Executive Guild to break a centuries-old ban and let him stay.
But she was so quiet, so still.
Everything depended on the next words from her mouth.
He settled his face into the edges of her hair, trying to lose himself in the gentle, clean smell without disturbing her. He wanted to kiss her, to seek reassurance in her touch, but he was afraid to move.
She sighed and heaved herself from the blanket. He saw her shoulder rising above the gown, straight and unforgiving.
She did not turn.
She stood and drew the flaps of the silk tight around her. He watched, feeling the sudden coolness of the room, as she made her way to the fire. She stooped to pick up her purse and fiddled with it abstractedly.
“It sounded like a most amusing story you were telling earlier,” she said. “I’d love to hear the end of it.”
“An amusing story?”
“The one about Giselle…and Van Dyck.”
The hair on Peter’s neck bristled. Another question about Van Dyck. Surely this was a coincidence. He thought of Mertons’s warning.
“It wasn’t amusing at the time,” he said slowly. “As I said, it made things difficult between him and me.”
“A bit of an intrigue, I suppose.” She gave him a sparkling look of encouragement. It was the first time she’d met his eyes since they finished. “It would have to be with a woman named Giselle.”
But Mertons had said the writer was a man, a man named Campbell Stratford—His stomach dropped like lead. Campbell. Cam. She’d said her name was Cam. He was the one who’d expanded it to Camilla. Camilla, the mortal who ran so fast she could be in two places at once.
He couldn’t have been so stupid. Surely she was the woman she said she was. But Mertons had only read the book. He hadn’t met the author. It would be the most natural mistake in the world to assume Campbell was a man.
A thousand thoughts raced through his head, but none of them took him anywhere except right here, to this bed, a witness to the destruction of his dreams.
“Giselle…” He shook his head, hoping, praying he was wrong and she’d allow the subject to pass.
“Van Dyck must have been such an interesting character. I’d love to hear a story or two.”
He was glad he hadn’t eaten, for he thought he might be ill. He rolled onto his back and closed his eyes. He thought of the plan to trick the writer Mertons had constructed. Peter would never have imagined he’d have to implement it with the woman he’d just made love to.
“Would you?” he said. “I’ve got a few tales that would curl a listener’s hair.”
She pulled a ringlet from her tousled mass, lifted a brow, and they laughed.
* * *
Stephen, who had been sitting at his desk attempting to fix a particularly ill-prepared printing plate, cast a worried glance down the hall.
He had been made privy to a range of sounds this evening, including some that could only be described as indelicate, and he would have just as soon been standing at the riverside next to his fellow revelers with a bottle of ale in his hand, but nothing would have induced him to leave the watching of the stairs to anyone else.
Nonetheless, the silence above him seemed ominous, especially given the most particular set of noises that had preceded it.
His experience, while not broad, was consistent, and silence, such utterly perfect silence, did not fit his notion of proper postcoital relations. Which is why when the sudden sound of laughter rattled through the floorboards above, he released a breath he hadn’t even been aware he was holding.
Saints be praised. Peter has found his savior.