Chapter 9
CHAPTER NINE
“ I ’ve failed.”
Melisende laid her head on the keyboards of the harpsichord that sat in the smaller drawing room, a parlor Philip hadn’t seen yet, where she had brought him after dinner. The grand duke and Count Voronsky still held counsel in the dining chamber, along with the Earl of Cholmondeley, who had lately returned as the British envoy to Prussia.
Philip knew Cholmondeley in passing; he was a man with a keen eye for feminine beauty, had been associated with most of London’s most celebrated courtesans at some point, and was known to place entries in the book at Brooks betting on his next sexual experience. The earl currently had his eye on a political appointment, as well as a high marriage, and so Philip judged it meet to withdraw with Melisende alone to plan strategy and stand guard if Cholmondeley’s gaze began to rove to the beautiful daughter of his host.
“You haven’t failed.”
Philip conquered the impulse to push away a curl that fell before her face. She’d powdered her hair red, a mix of cassia and cloves that brought out the mahogany tint in her natural color. She smelled like mulled wine, and she looked equally delicious in the robe à la turque with heaping layers of silk duchesse satin, lace at her three-quarter sleeves, and a striped scarf tied elegantly around her. Her costume had been the perfect note for Lady Aldthorpe’s breakfast, but they hadn’t stayed to enjoy the entertainments beyond the tightrope walker and a gondola ride about the garden canal. Melisende had been distraught after Aldthorpe rejected her bid to remove his book from the library, and all Philip had been able to concentrate on was helping her keep up her facade of calm and detached amusement.
“I have failed,” she insisted. “Where is Frau Gamper with the schnapps? I told her I’d rather that than tea.”
“You succeeded. You located the book.”
It wasn’t like him to devote himself to pleasing a woman. Unless he were attempting to seduce her, and in those cases, the effort required was typically not extreme. With another woman, he’d give into temptation and rub a thick curl between his fingers, testing to see if the texture was the silk it appeared. Then he’d run a finger down the seam of material along the elegant curve of her back. Push aside the masses of hair to kiss the warm, shadowed back of her neck.
His body tightened, blood heating. He wouldn’t lie to himself; he very much wanted to seduce the Lady Melisende.
But, in a longing that was entirely out of character for him, he wanted her to still like him after.
He also wanted to remain privy to her schemes, which meant that his typical custom of amusing himself with a woman, then giving her the congé , wouldn’t do.
“It didn’t have the documents.” Her words emerged muffled by her silken sleeve. “I’ll look again, of course, as soon as it’s polite to call. Tomorrow. But all I saw was another map.”
“Look again now.”
Philip tapped on the case of the harpsichord, exquisitely painted with a natural scene. She lifted her head, and again the sweet curves of her face and that sleepy, seductive slant to her eyes pierced him like a darning needle pulling taut through his gut. She was so very beautiful.
He pulled the book from inside his frock coat and held it toward her.
Her eyes rounded. “You didn’t.”
“I did, and I feared every time Aldthorpe looked at me, he’d detect the line of my coat was off, though this one is particularly good for hiding things. Deep interior pockets, my own design.”
Her hand trembled slightly. She’d left off her gloves for dining, it being an informal dinner, practically en famille , she’d said, which was why Philip had managed to invite himself by the simple fact of not leaving the house after he’d returned her home. She had long, shapely fingers, hands as regal as the rest of her. Every inch of this woman was shaped for imperial rule.
“Once again you have thieved from a lord’s house, and in this case, the lord will be aware you are the culprit.” She fairly snatched the book from his grip.
“I’ll go to Mass on Sunday and repent.”
She opened the volume and paged swiftly through it. Philip watched the expressions fleeting over her features, the retrousse nose with its turned-up tip, those lips that at rest seemed almost pouting, the broad brow narrowing to a pointed chin. He wondered what she would do if he slid aside the curl falling over her shoulder and kissed that place between her collarbone and neck.
She might not look up from the book. She was singularly focused on it.
“It has all the same parts. The history section, from the first encounters of the Romans with the tribes they called the Raeti. The woodcuts of the flora and fauna. An account of the rebellion and how the Duke of Merania arranged a peace. A bit about the music and culture, some recipes—including one for apple wheels, those are my favorite. And another map, this time I am sure it is Meinhardin castle, but—wait.”
She rose suddenly, a swirl of cream and gold silk wrapped with her striped saffron scarf. The heels of her shoes left small indentations in the patterned carpet as she strode from the drawing room, a cool, elegant room patterned in gray silk and silver, to the warm, dark bronze and leather of the library. Philip trotted to keep up as she rustled toward the worktable and laid the twelfth volume open in the grid of books, completing her collection.
“The map is complete now. It says something about a key—only there is no key on how to read the map, or to explain what these symbols mean.”
Hastily she set to thumbing through the other books. “Devlin—find the key.”
“You know I don’t read Ladin.”
“You can recognize a box of words with symbols beside them. You see these marks?” She held the book toward him, finger tapping at the scattered symbols, which looked something between Cyrillic letters and runes. “They’re on every map, but there is nothing to explain what they identify.”
“How do you know they require a key?”
She moved her finger down the page. Her nails were trimmed short, the nailbeds a healthy pink. She wasn’t a woman given to fashion or cosmetics, save what would adorn her natural beauty.
“It says right here. Refer to the key to unlock the location of the…oh, dear.”
“What?” He bent his head to peer into her face.
She chewed on her lip and lifted her eyes to his. A gold rim radiated from her pupils, getting lost in the darker brown of her iris. He swore the colors danced and sparkled.
“Treasure,” she said with a groan. “The key is necessary to decipher the map, and the map explains the location of the treasure.”
“So Cadmus wasn’t wrong.”
“And whoever hinted to him that the book told where to find a treasure knew more than I did. Oh, hang it. Do you suppose this has been a wild goose chase all along? And I was drawn into it, like any fool. But I truly thought…”
She sank with fluid grace into a straight-backed chair and put her hands over her face. “All I want is the patent. The letter was so clear. The claim of the rightful ruler of Merania is hidden in the book. The book sent away for safekeeping.”
“What letter?”
Melisende looked up as the door swung inward and Frau Gamper entered with a tray. She spoke to her mistress in German, and Melisende gestured with a weary hand. The very line of her shoulders appeared defeated.
The housekeeper asked about the fire, and Melisende shook her head. Personally Philip thought there was a chill to the room; it had been a wet spring and promised to be a damp, surly summer. But perhaps people raised in mountainous regions were accustomed to the cold, because Melisende didn’t seem to feel it as an English woman might. His own mother would command a fire in every room on a cool spring night, but Melisende merely directed the housekeeper to light several candles, and she brought a branched stick near the table where her books lay in neat rows.
She held a small glass out to Philip. “Drink.”
Something about the gesture, the intimacy of it, them sharing a drink alone in a candlelit room, snaked warmth through his gut. He liked being alone with her, too much.
“Is this the cherry again, or something else?”
“Something stronger this time, a recipe of my own. I intend to fortify myself for the task ahead, and I invite you to do the same. Prosit .” She held the glass toward him in a toast, then tipped the clear contents entirely into her mouth like she was taking a dram of medicine.
Philip did the same, and valiantly tried not to choke and sputter. “God have mercy.”
“This is plum, though I’m perfecting an apricot. If you were an Austrian child, you’d have been raised on it.” She watched him with amusement.
“I was just thinking you Tirolese are a hardy people.” He coughed. “Must come from being raised in the mountains.”
“Like the blue goats,” she said, pouring them both another glass and moving back to the table. “Very sturdy stock, good climbers. Their herds are led by the females. And all of them develop horns, even the kids.”
“Nothing about you, Melisende, puts me in mind of a goat.”
“Then you have not yet learned how hard-headed I am. If there is a key here, we will find it.”
She stood without moving, staring down at her papers with nearly a bleak expression. Candlelight flickered over her features, and Philip harbored the fleeting impression of an empress surveying a map of her terrain, in fear for the future of her people. Or a warrior princess planning a strategic battle, knowing everything rested on the outcome.
“What if the patent is gone?” she whispered. “What if it’s been lost for centuries, or was a myth that never existed?” She raised her gaze to meet his. “What if I’ve been told a fairy tale, spending my years trying to prove a myth?”
He couldn’t bear the look of despair on her face, hollowing her cheekbones, tightening her lips. He had a glimpse then into the weariness of a life led with no home, always on the run. He had the family castle to return to in Ireland, where in trade for bed and board he would accept his role as the worthless least son, the one who had made nothing of himself. He knew what it was to racket about London, changing bachelor quarters when the landlord precipitously raised the rent or the landlady’s daughter grew too forward in her attentions. But to have been exiled from her home, like Eve from paradise, and to make her way in the cold world…
He would rather she have the dream to sustain her. The hope of return, even if it proved futile.
He reached around her, brushing the lace at her sleeve, to draw a book toward him. “We will find it.”
She straightened her shoulders, wincing as the gesture pulled at the not-yet-healed wound on her shoulder. Then she nodded decisively and lifted her glass to him. “I’ll drink to that. Prosit! ”
She drained the glass again, set it on the table with a decisive clunk, and pulled the next book to her.
Philip had known many odd experiences in his work gathering intelligence for the British government. He’d suffered many a hangover after a night keeping pace drinking with riotous young bloods who were suspected of having revolutionary sympathies. He’d spent cold nights trailing dockworkers and bricklayers and men of more dubious employment who were suspected of supplying resources to anti-government forces. He’d often been chosen as the one to seduce an opera dancer or established mistress suspected of sharing her protector’s secrets with Britain’s enemies. He’d been in more than one brawl, had more than one scar to show for it, and had talked his way out of more than one threat to his life with nothing but his charming Irish tongue and his blue eyes.
It occurred to him, around the time he was on book four, and Melisende beside him looking at number eight—and several glasses of schnapps consumed between them—that this was the strangest mission he’d ever been on. Also the most pleasurable, and likely to be the one where he risked the most, because he couldn’t imagine how he would walk away.
The gentlemen never joined them. Philip heard, somewhere in comparing books three and six, the front door open and shut, suggesting the rest of their party had departed to other entertainments. Perhaps to Langford House, where Lady Aldthorpe’s breakfast was no doubt still going strong, and it was to be hoped no one had discovered the Langford library was absent one book.
He had Melisende all to himself.
Another woman would be concerned about the appearance of this. Servants came and went, but servants could be bribed to silence, then bribed to share what they knew. The great oaf Bruyit presented himself to report that the thief who’d assaulted her in Angel Court had not yet been run to ground; it appeared he’d been hiding, as Philip suspected, in the garden behind the court, and had somehow made it through the locked gate. Melisende shrugged as if she’d forgotten the attack, but as she bent her lovely neck to the book in her lap, Philip relived that bolt of fear when the attacker had launched himself at her, knife held high.
He had lunged himself with one intention: to kill the man before he could touch her, or put himself between her and the blade if he could.
He wasn’t concerned about the consequences if his thievery were discovered; he could talk his way out of that with the charm he had made a point to cultivate, as a survival instinct within his family, as a way to survive in the broader world. He was marginally concerned that whatever Melisende was looking for, someone else wanted, too, and was willing to take it by force.
But the deeper danger lay in the woman beside him, and how much he wanted to be right here, with her.
“I’ll look further into the matter, Bruyit,” Philip said. “See who owns the garden. If the duchess doesn’t know them, I might.”
Bruyit nodded and met Philip’s gaze, man to man. The other’s rough features had been blunted, Philip guessed, by more than one fistfight, but he could read speculation and wariness. “You’ll stand guard over her highness tonight?”
“I don’t require a guard in my own home, Bruyit,” Melisende said. “But thank you.”
“I’ll keep an eye on her,” Philip said when it became clear the bodyguard wasn’t departing until satisfied he had handed over his command.
Bruyit nodded and left to whatever place in the house held a bed large enough to accommodate his frame.
“He’s very dedicated,” Philip noted.
“Because paid well. Better than prizefighting, I think, or at least a more reliable source of income.” She flipped a page of her book, absorbed in the text.
Philip suspected Bruyit’s loyalty was not the kind that could be purchased. Nor did Frau Gamper’s care for her mistress seem that of a servant aware of her comfortable station. Melisende and her father had found retainers who would join their exile, who served them out of devotion.
He wasn’t surprised. Melisende seemed the sort of woman who would inspire adoration. London’s upper class at the moment swayed between distant and fawning, not sure what to make of her station, her fashion, her utter self-possession. But were her father secure in his station, she’d be welcomed into London’s drawing rooms as if she were a queen. More than just the amiable types like Lady Aldthorpe would be vying for her notice and approval.
Though it meant he was lagging behind in his assignment, Philip snuck another study of his companion. She had, somewhere after her second schnapps, kicked off her shoes and bid the housekeeper to bring her a pair of slippers and her favorite shawl, which looked as if it had been repaired with loving care several times over. Her curls had tugged free from whatever pins had attempted to hold them at the crown of her head for the hours of the day. The scarf meant to add a Turkish flair to her ensemble had come untied and she’d simply belted it around her waist.
He had the nearly irresistible urge to continue peeling away the layers that encased her and discover the shape of the woman within. He imagined she was soft and fragrant and would taste like apricot brandy.
He couldn’t seduce a woman he had agreed to protect, damn it.
“What letter?” he asked again.
“Mmm?”
“You mentioned a letter that told you to look for the book.”
“Oh, that.” She turned another page, the vellum crinkling lightly. “I found it in the muniments room in our castle when I was young. That is the?—”
“Yes, I know. Place where the lords of manor store the documents holding their deeds of title and so on. We have one at Bhaldraithe Castle.”
This made her lift her head. “Your family also has a castle?”
“Aye, in Queen’s County. They needed a castle since the locals didn’t like the English coming in and taking their land, now did they. I ought to take you to visit. My mother would adore being able to say she had entertained royalty.”
Melisende shook her head. “We are not royals.”
“You are the family with the ancient right to rule over your land, yes? As good as royals, then. And the letter you mention?”
He hoped she would not press further for his family’s history. Her family’s struggles were much more straightforward, a welcome distraction.
“Yes, that. I was left on my own a great deal as my mother was often busy nursing my siblings, and my nurse called in to help her. So I spent my time exploring. In the muniments room, where we stored the deeds confirming that Merania was held in vassalage to the Holy Roman Emperor, I found another sealed letter explaining that the muniment granting sovereignty over the duchy of Merania to the Meinhardin family had been removed. The letter described how the imperial patent had been sent away and hidden in a book when the emperor’s armies marched into nearby Brixen to put down the rebellion, then came to Merania to take it back. And the duke who had saved much of Tyrol for the emperor’s rule was sworn again to be his vassal. He took the oath and upheld it, but he had the letter placed in the room to let his successors know that the document had once existed, and where they might find it.”
She sighed. “Trust my ancestors to do nothing so simple as to hide it behind a brick or something. No, they must make the whole process overly difficult. If not impossible, since the letter could have been a fraud in the first place. I never thought of that.”
She let the book she held fall into her lap. Philip poured them both another dose of schnapps. “Courage. You believed it at the time. Why?”
“The letter was in Ladin, for one thing. Not Latin, the language of the government, and not German, either. Ladin, our tongue, or at least our dialect of it. My father learned the language and had his children trained in it, though my sister never cared for the study, I think. So I was certain there was some truth in the letter, as any officials of the emperor’s wouldn’t have been able to read it—only the officials of Merania.”
“Did your father know of the patent?”
“He’d heard stories as a child, claims his father made about being the rightful owner of Merania, not a servant to a woman—my grandfather did not like taking orders from the Empress Maria Theresa. My father thought the claims nothing but a family legend until I found the document. Then he became just as captured at the thought, as I was, of locating the patent and the imperial grant that would make him a grand duke of his own territory. After my uncle, his younger brother, usurped his rule, all the more so.”
“I imagine your uncle was raised on the same story, as your cousin would have been. Did they know of the document, or the letter telling you how to find it?”
Melisende tilted her head to the side. “I told my sister. But I never told Rudolf. It seemed cruel to taunt him since he would never inherit.” Her mouth tightened. “At least, I assumed he would never inherit. But then my brothers died.”
Philip sipped his schnapps. This was as thrilling as his strategy evenings spent closeted away with one cabinet minister or another, plotting the moves that would keep their world as they knew it intact. Though he’d never found his co-plotters quite so distracting, with such soft, inviting surfaces that he wanted to touch, to explore with hands and lips.
Philip shook his head to clear it. “Was there any reason the duchy would pass to your elder sister and her husband, the duke of—wherever it was?”
“Carinthia?” Melisende frowned. “He might have wanted it, for all I know. Merania and his territory are neighbors. My father and sister quarreled, I never knew why, and after she left, my father declared his intention to make me his formal heir. We were planning the ceremony of investiture when my mother fell ill, and after that…well.”
She swung her legs over the arm of her chair where she’d draped them, as casual as any opera girl relaxing in the green room after her performance. “It’s possible Carinthia would feel he’s entitled. My sister is older than I. Perhaps that’s the reason he wouldn’t extend my father aid when he asked. No sense helping instate the rightful ruler if there’s no chance of the title coming to him, though in his shoes, I would have made it a requirement of my assistance.”
“So. Your rivals could be your uncle, your cousin, or your sister and her husband, all of whom stand to benefit if Merania is theirs, which would mean keeping you and your father from the title. Is your country rich?”
“Not vastly, on our own. There are silver mines in the mountains, the source of my country’s wealth, and the land is fertile for crops and livestock. We are more secure than wealthy. But three different passes over the mountains come through our valley, so we have always been a center for trade. That is what the Romans were seeking when they first came, and what the Habsburgs wanted by claiming title. A trade agreement with a fellow ruler isn’t as lucrative as being able to directly tax the commerce coming through our streets and rivers and customs houses.”
“Is that what your uncle wanted?”
“The income? Almost certainly he was displeased with the allowance he had from my father, a few key posts more ceremonial than practical, enough income to live well if he did not try to style himself a king. My uncle disagreed with my father on matters of rule as well. He wanted to keep to the old ways, with the duke being in absolute control, and my father thought it wiser to modernize with the rest of the world.”
She swung her feet back to the floor, giving him a tantalizing glimpse of clocked stockings and a sweetly feminine curve of ankle and calf. She laid the book she held back in its place and drew another toward her, handing the second volume to him.
“And what is your cousin’s place in all this?” Philip inquired.
“That, I don’t know. We’ve assumed my uncle has been grooming Rudolf to take over the reins when he passes. Several months ago, when we were still living in Lyon, Rudolf sent a letter pleading for my father and I to return and reconcile with them.”
“And you didn’t?”
“My uncle’s condition was that I marry Rudolf. He thought the arrangement would please my father. But it did not please me .”
Philip stilled. “So instead of going to Merania, you came to London.”
Melisende met his eyes. “I told my father to go without me and reconcile with his brother. He is the one who deserves to rule. I knew if they trapped me into marriage to Rudolf, my father would never see his rightful place. I refused to be a pawn. Of course, by then I already had nine of the books, and I thought the other three would be as easy to recover. I was gambling on their holding the secret.” She slumped in her chair, blowing out a sigh that ruffled the curls about her forehead. “More fool I.”
Philip wanted to pass his hand along her brow, smooth the frown that had appeared there. Then sink his fingers into her hair. Drag his hand down the elegant slope of her neck, trace her collarbones with his fingertips, and?—
He shifted in his chair. His thoughts were becoming wayward, no doubt an effect of too much schnapps, the scented candlelight, the dessert scent of her wafting into his brain.
“So marriage to your cousin is off the negotiating table.”
She stared at the book in her hand. “It was. Until I hit a dead end.”
He refilled her schnapps and handed her a glass. “Then get to work. We’ve a key to locate.”
She snorted, seeming unruffled when her fingers brushed his as she took the glass. “ Now you’re motivated.”
“Someone else is out to find this treasure. I find competition extremely stimulating.”
“How very surprising, for a spy.”
“I am an informant, not a spy. Drink up and get to work.”
She shot back the contents of her glass, and Philip tore his eyes from the movement of her slender throat, the way her hair fell against her neck, the ripple of her shoulders as she straightened her spine. He bent toward the table and paged through his book. She sat forward also, leaning against his shoulder, a gentle pressure of lace and silk and woman.
Melisende’s body, touching his. Philip’s mind blanked.
“Devlin,” she said.
“Philip.” His voice, low, grated in his ears.
She blinked. “We are not intimates.”
He stared into her face, so close. His heavy breath stirred the wisps of curl around her ears. Her pillowy, pouty lips lay less than a hand’s breath away. He could close that distance in a heartbeat.
“Oh, yes we are.”
“Philip,” she whispered, her eyes wide and dark.
He lowered his head.
She stuck a book before his face. “Look.”
He reared back, trying to retrieve his scattered senses. Thought had disappeared under a roaring tide of triumph at the prospect that he was finally, finally going to kiss Melisende of Merania. Kiss her properly, as she’d never been kissed, until she forgot her quest and the wounds she’d garnered, forgot her purpose, forgot her own name.
“What?” he growled.
“There are pages missing in this book.”
He cleared his throat and hauled logic back to the forefront. Damned schnapps.
He watched her fingers as she lay the book she held next to his, flipping through section by section. “Nothing is different.”
“Right here. In your book, the one you took from your friend’s library. See here? Pages were cut from the binding. There may be a whole quire missing.”
“And that means?—?”
“The key,” she said. “The key was removed.”
Philip pushed his mind away from the excitement that animated her features, bringing a rosebud flush to her cheeks and making the gold flecks in her eyes dance.
“It might still be in Arendale’s library. There was a set of papers, a small pamphlet, on the desk beneath the book. I thought it was a collection of love sonnets or something. Cadmus is ever getting billets-doux from women.”
“He is the Viscount Rudyard, is he not? Heir to the Earl Payne, who is in turn heir to the Marquess of Arendale. Moreover he is single, unattached, and not terrible to look at. I imagine he wades through swaths of adoring females each time he sets foot outside his door.” She ran a hand down the binding of the open book, smiling in satisfaction.
“You’ve met him,” Philip growled.
“He invited me to go punting on the Thames,” Melisende murmured, examining the binding of her book from all angles. “And to a concert at Ranelagh Gardens, and a ball at the Pantheon. I’ve danced with him any number of times.”
“You have,” he bit out.
She lifted her face and delivered a merry look, clearly detecting the jealousy rampant in his voice. “All to sweeten him so I might have access to his library. Before a spy beat me to my prize.”
That mischievous look had the effect of a hand around his throat, choking off air, leaving him giddy. Philip entertained the passing suspicion that he, along with any number of men, were the eager dupes of this woman, who drew them all like marionettes on her string. In fact, it was possible that women possessed of her beauty were the true rulers of the world, well aware of the bald reality that men existed to serve them, entirely bewitched by their intoxicating allure.
He’d go to his own doom whistling, then, because apparently he didn’t have the sense to back away. Instead, he watched his hand obey an impulse his brain had only entertained, a need that came from somewhere deep and primal. He threaded his fingers through the fall of hair and slid his fingertips over the back of her neck.
“Let us hope he is still sweetened enough. I imagine the book is sitting on his desk.”
She shivered, and that sign of her awareness was his undoing. He coaxed her toward him, pressing lightly with his fingertips, and she didn’t resist. He lowered his head until a mere hair’s breadth separated their lips and the gust of her inaudible sigh brushed his cheek. She rose that last fraction to meet him, lifting her chin, and the meeting of their mouths blew the last shreds of logic from his head like a flag of surrender torn by a cannon blast.
She tasted of plums and wine, all the richness of summer. Her mouth was warm and soft, her lips smooth as chocolate cream, and when she tilted her head back, yielding to him, his mind blanked of anything but sensation. She was a dream of sin, fragrant woman wrapped in yards of thick satin, and when she welcomed the slide of his tongue into her mouth, catching and tasting him, his body hardened instantly. She knew how to kiss.
She knew more than that, for with the lift of her arms about his neck and the press of her luscious breasts against his coat, she was an enchantress luring him into her snare. He went willingly, following the sweet dance of her tongue as she dueled with him, their fencing match all over again. She matched his ardor, growing in him like rising bread. The deeper he delved into her mouth, the sweeter she tasted. She would be caramelized sugar at her core, tempered with fire.
He caught her tongue between his tongue and teeth, tugging slightly, and it was as if he tugged at a ribbon. With a low moan she melted against him completely, folding into his arms, all clove spice and woman. Her hips met his, and thought snagged in his brain—had she climbed him, or had he lifted her? She bent back over the table, clinging to him from shoulder to hip, her body a graceful arc, and his body pressed against hers in a promise of what he wanted to deliver. She plunged her hands into his hair and tugged, as if she could press his mouth to hers all the more firmly, and the pleasurable prickle danced along his scalp, bringing him to his senses.
He was a moment away from running a hand up beneath her skirts, exploring the hidden territory there, testing her body’s readiness for him. It appeared he was prepared to ravish Melisende of Merania—without any preamble, without any seduction at all—in her own library, on the table spread with her books, the books holding the map to her future. A future that put her so far above his reach, it was laughable.
He released her mouth with the greatest reluctance, lifted his head with greater reluctance still. She untangled her arms from around him and cool air rushed in, sobering him. Her eyes studied his, huge and dark, the gold flecks swimming like swirls of stars.
“I was afraid of that,” she murmured.
Afraid he would attempt to ravish her? No doubt many another man had attempted the same. She would drive any lover of feminine beauty past restraint. Philip cleared his throat, wondering how to begin to apologize for something he didn’t regret in the least.
“Afraid I would like it that much,” she added, lifting her hands to rearrange her hair. “When you properly kissed me.”
He stared at her, stunned. “The first time wasn’t proper?”
She nodded. “Too rushed.”
“And this time?” He felt as if the room had spun round and everything lifted, then settled back in a different place, not quite in the same orientation. She might either be weeping that he’d ruined her or scratching his face for his presumption, and she was coolly informing him that she’d liked kissing him.
Her lower body still pressed against his, thigh to thigh.
He’d liked kissing her, too. The evidence lay between them.
She finished with her hair and brought a hand to his chin, tracing the line of his jaw, her palm scraping his evening stubble. Her warmth calmed and steadied him, even while arousal yet roared through his blood.
“We’d best stop now,” she said, regret in her voice, but also the slightest tremor, too. She was as affected as he was.
“Shall we call on Arendale tomorrow?” His voice had lowered an octave, gravel in his throat. The urge to fasten his mouth to her—to fasten all of her to him—was strong.
“I will ask when Lady Payne is expected to be at home. I can send the new boy around.”
“Yes, the little imp that followed us home from Langford House.” Philip grinned, stepping away. “Why did you bring him?”
“He was very insistent. And he could be useful. These street children, the ones that serve as link boys and sweepers, you find them in every large city, and they know every part of it. He can gather information for me.”
“ I can gather information for you,” Philip growled. “That is my profession.”
She slid her feet back into her house slippers. “Come tomorrow morning and fight with me. I need to train. Then we can hunt for the rest of the book.”
He took his leave, though what he wanted was to stay, kiss her again, carry her to her chamber and explore every inch of her. But even then, he was certain, Melisende of Merania did not reveal her secrets. Not to friends, not to lovers. He could draw as close as skin to skin, and she would remain a maddening mystery.
And she would leave a mark on him forever. He knew that even as he stepped into the street and found, without surprise, the boy from Queen’s Square waiting with a torch to light Philip’s way home.
A man who kissed the Lady Melisende once, twice, did not walk away unscathed. He’d tasted the most delicious woman he would never meet. What did that bode for the rest of his life?