Chapter 18 #4
A brief flurry of activity from the men of business attended the doctor’s verdict, a last ordering of documents and signing of signatures.
Lady Payne, a grim set to her mouth, went to the clock on the mantel, opened its back, and stopped the hands.
Then she opened a lower drawer in the bureau and withdrew a white sheet which the secretary helped her drape over the mirror.
Lucasta felt the ancient thrill of superstition shiver over her skin, remembering how she had done the same when her father died.
As the woman of the house, it would fall to Lady Payne to prepare the body for burial and attend to all the other funeral and mourning preparations. Lucasta wondered who would sit with the Marquess tonight.
She had sat with her father’s body that first night, before the rest of his family could arrive.
While the candles burned down to nothing, she sat watch in those solemn, sacred hours.
She knew the vigil for the dead came from an ancient superstition of not letting a demon enter a fresh body, but she herself had huddled in that liminal darkness like a shelter, knowing that when she emerged, she stepped into a world where her father no longer lived.
In that threshold she had felt him, lingering, as reluctant to leave as she was to let him go.
Jem slipped out the door and Lucasta, returning her flute to her pocket, followed. She suspected he would, like a wounded animal, seek to be alone, and alone was the last thing he needed.
She found him before the tall window at the end of the hall that overlooked the street.
The day’s clouds had rolled away, leaving a last blush of golden afternoon light before evening fell.
When she neared, her skirts swishing across the thick rug, he turned sharply, as if he might attack.
But she held her hands out to him, offering, and he swept her into his arms, pressing his face into her shoulder.
His body was warm and hard, as it had been during their embrace in his shop, and as she slipped her arms around his shoulders, she felt again that deep sense of completion, as if she had arrived at some place she had longed for without ever knowing what it was she sought.
She must not give in to that dangerous softness.
She offered the warmth of one human creature to another, no more.
She did not forget that he had laid some plot against her and she had stepped into it like a trusting fool.
She did not forget that he had brought her in friendship into his second home, acquainting her with his sister and the rest of the family he kept hidden from the world, then had slammed that door shut when he deemed her unworthy.
She did not forget that when he kissed her, the rest of her surroundings melted to nothing, and she kissed him back as if nothing in the world mattered save for him. That way lay a sure path into madness.
“It’s all mine now,” he muttered into her hair.
She paused in the act of stroking his shoulder. He had such fine, firm shoulders, taut with fabric but not padding. He was not a man who deceived others about who he was.
“Your father?” she said tentatively.
He rubbed his forehead against her shoulder as if trying to erase a memory. “He will have the control but leave the running of it to me. I will have to carry out his decisions, distasteful as I might find them.”
“Your grandfather has men of business. I saw them in the chamber.”
“And they must be overseen as well,” Jem said bitterly. “The marquess didn’t trust them, and I do not either.” He sighed, his shoulders heaving. “My shop—my business—there will be no time for any of it. And my family…”
“Bertie will hate to go into mourning again,” Lucasta murmured. “But perhaps at the end you might have a grand come-out gala for her, and bring Judith out as well.”
“Judith.” His shoulders stiffened, and he drew back his head to stare at her. “Why are you so concerned to expose my sister to ridicule and shame?”
Lucasta’s mouth parted. “I am only thinking of what she wants—”
“You know nothing of what she wants!”
Lucasta pulled away, stung by his obstinacy.
He would do this now? “I happen to have spent many hours of conversation with her about her dreams. But it seems her wishes for her future do not matter to you. You have already decided what she will have, and what she deserves. You care only about what you want.”
A dark glitter entered his eyes, and he leaned toward her. They were already very close, and the action made the large buttons of his coat brush against the scarf she had wrapped about her bodice.
“And what,” he said in a hoarse mutter, “do you presume it is that I want?”
A thrill of alarm singed along her spine. The shadows in his eyes were the same gray as a cloud of smoke drifting past the window. She did, in fact, know nothing of an adult, healthy male’s wants or needs.
But with his breath on her neck, his scent filling her head, the heat of his nearness raising a prickle of awareness along her skin, all that filled her awareness was this inexorable pull to be near him. It was a deep, yearning ache in her belly that only eased when she touched him.
“I think you wanted to make a fool of me,” she said, battling to steady her voice.
She couldn’t give in to her body’s longings or the deeper desire to push away the haunted, empty look on his face.
She must remember where she stood with him.
“You meant to make me a figure of ridicule and fun. The Gorgon. The Medusa. Let Smart Jeremey show her a hint of attention and watch everyone run to pet and make much of her. I agree it would make an amusing spectacle.”
He winced. “You did not deserve that.”
“Oh, most likely I did, in part. I’m sure my pride and vanity could use pruning.
But you took it too far.” Her throat tightened, hurt threading her voice, and she drew a deep breath for strength.
“You came to meet my foundlings. You introduced me to your brother and sisters and Mrs. Cadogan. You brought Bertie to me. You—dressed me.”
Her voice hitched, and breath left her as she recalled standing in his shop, shivering with delight as he swathed her body in thick, luscious silks and brocades. “You—” He’d kissed her. An unbearable liberty. Even more unbearable to think he might never kiss her again. “You made me—” Want you.
She couldn’t say that. Widgeon! He’d tricked her, manipulated her, made sport of her. How Ashley and Plimpton and all of them must have roared with laughter to see her go starry-eyed the moment Lord Rudyard led her out in a dance. “You toyed with me,” she managed.
“I meant all of it,” he muttered, his face growing haggard, taut, as if he harnessed his own emotion with great difficulty.
“To mock me?”
“I meant…” He raised a hand to touch a lock of hair at her temple, and the heat of his nearness sizzled her skin.
“You bewitched me,” he said hoarsely, as if the words were drawn from him against his will.
“I wanted to hear you sing to your foundlings. I want to hear you sing every day of my life. I wanted you to meet my family because I knew you would love them as I do. I know it makes me a cad, when I made you no promises, no offer of marriage, but when I kissed you…” His breath was a rasp.
“I could think of nothing else then, and I have thought of nothing else since.”
That wasn’t true, the rational part of Lucasta’s brain wanted to argue. He’d thought very carefully about how to hurt her when he found she’d planned for Judith to appear in her benefit concert.
But the rational part of Lucasta’s brain had very little claim on the rest of her at the moment. The rest of her was focused on the turmoil in his expression, the longing in his eyes, the firm, sensual shape of his lips and the persistent, begging ache spreading from her belly into her chest.
He stroked her temple, and the soft slide of his fingers along the side of her face made her breath stop. “Lucasta,” he said, “forgive me.” His face was so bleak, his brow furrowed with regret.
Oh, she was a foolish, foolish girl, to turn to treacle at his touch.
So this was how a girl lost her head over a man.
She forgot her hurt over his calculations, his designs.
Before her stood the raw, real man, stripped of his elegance, his defenses, his mocking demeanor and the careful shield he held to the world.
She had slipped around his fortifications to find the real Jem standing before her. And everything in her leaned toward this man and his touch like a young sprout seeking the sun.
“Very well,” she said huskily, trailing her fingertips across his jaw. “I demand a forfeit. A kiss. One kiss. And then we will shake hands and part, and there will be no more—toying of any sort.”
His eyes flared, and something inside of her opened at the desire on his face. Wanton, shameless girl. When had she become so bold as to ask for what she wanted?
“I have made you no declaration,” he said softly. “I am not in the position…”
She steeled herself not to flinch at that crushing admission. He didn’t want her, not really. Not in the enduring, deepest ways she wanted him. She needed to step back now, take herself away, retrieve what she could of her heart and her self-respect.
Go, said her head. Lucasta always followed her head.
Except with him. The rest of her wanted to kiss Jem, more than she wanted self-respect, more than she wanted dignity.
The ache would not be denied. The part of herself that stood before him just as raw and exposed as he was answered that desperate look in his eyes.
She knew with certainty that he longed for her every bit as much as she longed for him.
The space between them fairly shivered with the weight of that need.