Chapter 14 #3
His eyes landed squarely on the expanse of bosom exposed by her fashionably cut open robe.
It was one of Mlle. Beaudoin’s creations, a creamy chintz block-painted with rose stripes and intertwining flowers.
The damp fabric molded to her body, and the white petticoat clung to the shift beneath, which had already attached itself to her legs.
He would be able to see the shape of her body and a great deal of décolletage.
Lucasta sucked in her breath as his eyes absorbed every inch of her. She held perfectly still, feeling her heart pound against her tight stays. She ought to cover herself. She ought to shy away. She couldn’t move.
A curious heat flushed through her, raising the soft hairs on her skin. It was rather like the sensation she got when she heard a new piece of music that she would grow to passionately love. Jem’s gaze tracing her body held her in the same breathless state of suspension.
The brown in his eyes turned darker, a beckoning shadow. She stepped toward him, drawn by an impulse she couldn’t name.
“Ahem.” Jem cleared his throat and stepped away from the hearth, letting her near the revived flames. “What did you say?”
Lucasta’s mind had blanked of all but the image of his captivating eyes, the steam rising from the broad shoulders of his coat, the flex of his muscles in the breeches pressed wetly to his legs, the heat drenching her from his body—no, from the fire.
Gracious, girl! Take hold of yourself. She looked for a place to drape her wet things.
“I—er, I am curious why your shop has a kitchen. And a housekeeper.”
“My assistants live above the shop, and I have up to a dozen at any one time.” Jem took her sodden neckerchief.
His warm fingers brushed her cold ones, a startling touch.
“There was always a kitchen of sorts—the building was one of the first houses built here, back when it was Portugal Street. After a while I noticed that my apprentices were spending most of their wages on dinners at the cook shop and saving very little for their own futures. So I expanded their pay to include room and board, and Mrs. Coolidge came on as cook-housekeeper. I’m afraid she can’t resist mothering them now and again—she raised any number of children of her own. ”
The delicious smell of stew wafted from the huge pot on the back of the stove, combined with the fresh loaves wrapped in towels keeping warm in the oven, attesting to the fine meal waiting for the apprentices later. Lucasta’s heart squeezed.
Jem was generous to his employees, a benefactor to orphans like Mlle. Beaudoin, and he had taken in his half-siblings as well as supporting his sisters, when surely that was his father’s obligation.
And she had accused him of being a dandy concerned with nothing more than the perfection of his appearance.
“I expect your apprentices are glad for a bit of mothering,” she said.
As if he were a man at ease in a kitchen, he poured water from a nearby pitcher into a kettle and set it on the stove. He raised his fingers to the elaborate buttons on his velvet coat, then caught himself.
“Do you—er—mind terribly if I remove my coat? It’s damp, and I’d rather—”
“Of course. I mean, of course I don’t mind,” Lucasta hurried to say. She supposed she ought to turn around or look away. It was such an intimate act for a man to disrobe before her. It was this intimacy that kept her eyes riveted as his fingers worked the row of expensive buttons.
Carefully he peeled the tightly fitted fabric from his shoulders, tugging the sleeves over the lace at his cuffs, then arranged the garment over the back of a chair pulled up to the table. He untwisted his cravat as well, draping the length of linen over another chair.
It was such a domestic scene with their clothes steaming before the fire, the cozy warmth of the kitchen chasing away the chill of the rain, both of them in a state of undress. As if they were at ease with one another. As if they were man and wife.
Her heart tapped against her stays. She was not at ease.
She couldn’t take her eyes from the breadth of Jem’s shoulders, the skin of his exposed throat, the shape of muscled arms through the sheer linen of his shirt.
The way his waistcoat, so broad around his upper chest, narrowed around his waist. He was a splendidly made man.
She was entirely alone with him. “Where did Bertie take herself off to, I wonder?”
Jem shrugged, and Lucasta’s eyes followed the ripple of movement across his shoulders. “Poking about. She’s insatiably curious.” His eyes rested on her, something warm and potent in his gaze. “Would you like a look as well?”
At first she thought he meant she might look more at him, and a heat blazed through her face and neck. Then she realized he meant she might see the shop.
“May I? It isn’t open. It feels—illicit.” The word sent a thrill through her, or perhaps the thrill was due to Jem, standing near her, partially undressed.
Lucasta Lithwick had done a daring thing or two in her life, usually provoked to it by one of her fellow Gorgons, but never in her life had she done something illicit.
Jem laughed, the sound rich, deep, smoky, wonderful. “Darling, it’s my shop. We can do whatever we like.”
He held out his hand, a well-shaped, strong-fingered, masculine hand, and Lucasta took it. As she did, she had the strange feeling of completing an action that had been set into motion some time ago and was finally coming to its sure end.
She had the stranger notion that whenever Jeremiah Falstead held out his hand to her, she would take it, every time, and follow where he led.
Where he led her was to the front of the shop, and poor, plain Lucasta Lithwick stepped into a fairytale.