Chapter 8 #2
The sign above the shop proclaimed the modiste was a Madame Beauchamp.
He knew the name; his older sisters favored her for their ball gowns.
They said Madame Beauchamp was a genius, a tartar, and she actually was French.
That sounded promising. But unlike the last time he had been here, the shop looked empty, and the front door was locked.
James went back round to the alley and counted off the doors. This one should be for the modiste’s shop. And it was ajar.
He hesitated.
Hang it all.
He slipped in the door and could hear an argument taking place at the front of the shop. A man’s quiet voice. That was DuBois. A woman’s voice, loud. They both spoke in French, naturellement.
“—she is here now, but I think we will find nothing. I asked some questions of her, you know, the last time she came. And she never brings her lady’s maid with her. I will have to find another way—”
Then DuBois’ voice. But James could not make out what he said.
The woman again. “I wish you had told me before. You force me to work in the dark. You see, I encouraged her last time about matters of the heart, and I am making her a dress that will ensure a proposal—”
James crept past empty cutting tables, scraps of lace and satin on the floor, half-finished dresses on dress forms. A set of stays made from a sheer cloth, with scandalously low-cut cups, was strewn across one table.
The woman’s voice, louder. “So there is already a proposal? But she has not answered him? Surely, this is a good thing, and it means she will say no—”
The voices seemed to be coming even closer.
He ducked through a door and into another room just as DuBois and a tall woman came around the corner. James quietly pulled the door almost all the way closed and then hunched to listen at the crack.
Madame Beauchamp was arguing she needed more money. She had spent a great deal bribing different lady’s maids to get all the letters Monseiur le marquis wanted, and she needed to cover her expenses.
DuBois answered the money would be no problem, because the brother of the beef, after all, had twenty million francs. She would be paid. And then they would come to the rescue of the beef . . . what did he say? No, not beef or boeuf, but veuf. Le veuf. The widower.
A small sneeze behind him. Almost not a sneeze. The very softest of kerchews.
His heart stopped. The room had been empty, hadn’t it? He had come in so quickly that he hadn’t really looked around.
He turned slowly.
A goddess stood above him on a pedestal, lit by a shaft of sunlight.
Her hair was of gold. Delicate brows over large, brilliant blue eyes.
A small, finely formed nose. Generous lips.
Inch after inch of perfect pink-and-cream skin.
True, she wore a petticoat, but above the waist, she was all luscious, naked flesh, just her arms covering her breasts.
Catherine Lovelock.
The last woman in the world he wanted to see.
She was pure enticement. She still distracted his thoughts, even though he had not seen her for months. Not since the wedding of his friend Thomas and her stepdaughter Harry.
He recalled his enormous relief when Thomas admitted Catherine had refused him.
It shouldn’t have mattered to James. He had no plans to pursue a woman, any woman.
He had worked hard to create his reputation, what Mr. Bulverton called his cover, and he worked hard to maintain it.
James could not risk discovery by getting involved with a female. Any female.
But now, looking at her, his ardor, his admiration—nay, his worship—came flooding back.
Yes, she was a goddess. But she was no placid goddess of love. She was rigid with . . . fear? Anger? Anger, he decided. She was a goddess of the hunt, perhaps, or of war, absent a metal breastplate.
See how she knits her brows together in fury, how she opens her lush lips as if to curse and castigate me—
But she mustn’t speak. He held his finger to his own lips.
She closed her mouth and took her arms away from her breasts.
Those breasts. Full and round and heavy. Large, pale-pink areolas on creamy skin, crowned with darker-rose nipples the size of a holly berry. Everything and more he had imagined when he had looked down at the top of her bosom at Lady Huxley’s ball.
Thank God, the flow of French continued unabated outside the room, and the voices seemed to be moving farther away.
He spotted a length of blue silk on the floor and went to it quickly. He did not think he would have enough reason for what might follow unless he could get her to cover her breasts again.
But when he held the cloth out to her and she took it from him and wrapped it around her chest so her bosom was covered, he cursed himself.
He would likely never gaze on those breasts again.
He was only slightly comforted he could still see the topography of her erect nipples pressing through the fine silk.
Catherine could take pity on James, but why should she? His very presence was maddening—he took no pity on her. But still, she flattened her breasts with the blue silk and then crossed the cloth behind her back and brought it up over her shoulders, tucking the ends into the band she had made.
James stepped nearer and crooked his finger. He dwarfed her by more than a foot when they stood on the same level, but on the platform, she had to lean down for her face to be even with his.
James moved even closer. She saw the merest trace of golden-brown stubble under his nose and on his chin. Mmmm. So the boyish jaw she had seen on every other occasion was due to his valet’s skill. He could grow a mustache and beard, if he chose.
A wide mouth with lips he quickly moistened with his tongue. Long, golden-brown lashes fringed those pellucid gray eyes. His face came even closer to hers but veered at the last moment to the side, almost skimming her cheek. He put his mouth to her ear.
“I must have you—”
An unutterably sweet twinge in her groin as her breath hitched.
“I must have you quiet,” he rasped. “I beg you.”
She nodded, a small movement of her head.
His breath lightly stirred the curls by her ear. “And I must leave without being discovered.”
Her mind raced with questions. Which she answered herself.
Of course. Why else would he be in the shop of a modiste? He had come with a young mistress in order to help select garments, perhaps even clothes for seduction, but he now feared being caught by someone. A husband? A father? Another lover of the girl?
Her lips were by his ear, as well. “Is your life in danger, my lord?” she managed to choke out, trying to give her words the bite of mockery.
“The short answer is . . . maybe, Mrs. Lovelock,” he whispered back. Then he pulled his head away from hers and looked into her eyes.
This was a new man. She hadn’t met this man before. This was a man of vigor and potency. The beautiful youth of fantasy had stirred her loins dozens of times in the night, but now she felt a gnawing ache deep in her chest for . . . this man.
She did not want that ache. She knew that ache. It heralded pure pain. It meant the destruction of her carefully constructed life of safety, security, and sanity.
She had the sudden urge to cry out in protest, but she bit her lip and restrained herself. She didn’t dare make a sound that could bring danger down on his head.
Because if James had accompanied a mistress here and another man caught him because of Catherine, he might have to duel a father or a husband.
He could be injured. He could be killed. He could be forced to marry. All three outcomes were unthinkably tragic.
And it would be her fault.
She nodded and held out her hand to be helped down from the platform, but the portable set of stairs had been kicked away by Madame Beauchamp earlier.
James ignored her hand and instead put his hat back on his head and placed both of his hands on the bare skin of her waist and easily lifted her down.
He was strong enough—and chivalrous enough—to hold her apart from him as she made the short trip to the floor.
She would have welcomed being crushed against his chest and abdomen, even if for only a moment, just as she had been when she tripped on the cathedral steps at Harry’s wedding. But no such luck.
Was it her imagination or did he whisper upsidaisy as he lifted her down? And did his warm hands linger on her waist even after she was safely on the floor?
Her skin was soft velvet, and his fingers and thumbs touched each other as his hands spanned her waist. And without a corset or stays.
So small. He only removed his hands because she leaned over to pull off her heeled slippers, and the blue silk seemed in danger of slipping.
But no. The cloth stayed wrapped and tucked.
Barefooted, she tiptoed across the floor, and he followed, equally silent in his well-oiled boots, admiring her smooth, white back. He almost reached out to stroke her spine as it rose out of her petticoat into the delectable curve of her lower back, but he clenched his fist instead.
A large cheval glass stood in the far corner. She gestured, and they shifted the mirror together. Behind was a narrow door. She put one hand on the knob and the other on his forearm and lightly tugged on the sleeve of his coat.
He leaned his head down to hers, and she whispered, “It’s a lover’s door.”