Chapter 6 #2
She’d never said such a thing. If she’d pushed him with a finger at that moment, Jay would have fallen like a stone. His sight narrowed to a pinprick. A roar sounded in his ears. The world was collapsing around him, the shingle disappearing beneath his feet, the earth opening to swallow him whole.
She was not his. She was to marry another.
“You…you had not said,” he stammered.
She glanced up again, brows pulling together. Such elegant brows. Such an elegant line to her face, that straight nose, those lips—those lips that were so familiar—
“I told you,” she answered, “last night.”
“Last…night?”
He focused on the pin at her neckcloth. “I have a cravat pin exactly like that. With a ruby at the tip.” Actually, he had worn it to Hedone last night, but had not returned home with it, for when he undressed in a daze of sensual memory, there had been no pin, because Erato had undressed him and…
He gaped at her, and all the puzzle pieces snapped together, this time in a coherent whole.
That mouth. Only one woman he knew had that precise shape to her mouth, those full lips that looked puckered in a tiny, secret smile as if she harbored mischievous thoughts.
That nose with the pert tilt at the end. Those arched brows and wide, expressive eyes.
Effie had the same birthmark. A small brown mark beneath her ear, as if the fairy kind she came from had marked her with a tiny kiss before delivering her to the human world.
“No,” Jay said in disbelief.
Effie rocked back on her heels. “I did tell you. Last night, when I— Do you honestly not remember?” A tumult of emotion crossed her face: puzzlement, crimson shame, and then, finally, comprehension.
“You didn’t recognize me? Jay!” she cried. “How could you not know?”
How could she accuse him? “She has brown eyes!” he exclaimed.
“I do not. An effect of the candlelight.”
He stared at her light brown hair, several curls beneath her hat stirred by the endless breeze. “Darker hair.”
“Candlelight, again.”
“You have freckles.”
She rubbed her nose, crinkled into a rueful expression. “Paint.”
“She smells of vanilla. You smell like the sea,” Jay said stubbornly.
This was the sticking point. The two women had completely opposite scents, one smoky and seductive, one fresh and bright.
Two completely different personalities. Erato was headstrong, intelligent, a bit fierce in her opinions, and confident around men. Effie was an innocent.
Or had been until last night. When he’d despoiled her. Jay’s heart raced.
Effie stared back. “How could you not identify me?”
“How could I have? Why would a girl like you, a gentleman’s daughter, be in a place like—like that? When you are to be married!” He shoved a handful of rocks aside, feeling frustration build. He could not have her. He’d thought he could, and now—
“That is exactly why I was in a place like that.” She was angry, too, shoveling small rocks out of her way, but she rubbed a glove across her nose as if it stung her.
“It is not a marriage of love. It is a marriage that suits our families. He’s a rogue and a fool, and when I marry him, I will disappear.
I wanted— Oh, what does it matter?” She sniffled and shot him an accusing look. “You said you were to be married also.”
“To you!” Jay roared, flinging a handful of stones away from him. “I wanted to marry you!”
She stared at him, her mouth hanging open, and Jay would have reached for her then. He wanted to drag her against him and kiss her until everything else disappeared and it could only be the two of them, together, everything else falling away, and—
A shadow fell between them. The mother seal inched her way down their slide, her body arched and bucking.
Effie scrambled forward to smooth the rest of her way.
The seal bunched and stretched like a caterpillar, propelling herself across the shingle on her fins, calling to her pup with a series of short, steady barks.
The pup cried back, swimming closer. Effie scooped and Jay scrambled to help her, hands colliding and crossing as they both worked, and in a few short moments the seal had muscled her way into the water, where she shot like a bullet toward her offspring.
Effie leapt to her feet, clapping her hands and jumping up and down like a child.
Then she burst into tears. She turned toward Jay at the same time he reached for her, and then she was in his arms, her face pressed to his shoulder as she sobbed, and her hand slipped around his neck and she lifted her face.
He pressed his lips to hers and she met him hungrily, her cheeks damp, her mouth opening to the sweep of his tongue.
“Jay.” She said his name over and over in soft, little pants. “You wanted me? You were going to ask for me?”
“Yes, and now— Dear God, Effie.” He’d debauched Effie.
Not Erato, a mysterious and unnamed woman who had pulled him into an alcove and pleasured him with her lips and tongue until he was mindless and sated.
This lovely woman in his arms. He’d had these breasts in his mouth.
He’d had his mouth between her legs. He’d touched her in ways he’d never touched another woman, never wanted to, and she fit in his arms as if she belonged there, day and night, and she was going to marry another—
“Good Lord.” Jay tried to catch his breath. “Your husband is going to kill me.”
She shook her head wildly. “No. I’ll never tell him. That was the point.”
“But I can’t not— You have to tell him. I have to tell him. It’s not right—”
“Jay, you can’t! Are you going to tell your wife about me?”
He wasn’t going to have a wife, because the woman he wanted was promised to another. Jay felt as if part of his heart had been shot out of his chest and was following that seal, lost and disappeared at sea.
“I— No.” He couldn’t breathe. His ribs hurt intolerably.
She curled her fingers into the shawled collar of his coat. “Do I still get to dine with you?”
He was going to die of this ache. He couldn’t have her, and he couldn’t bear to let her go. “What will your husband say?”
“I won’t be pressed to anything until my family arrives in town, and they’re not due for several days. I came ahead to stay with a friend and be my own woman as long as I could.”
A woman who’d been taking the last freedoms available to her.
Visiting a pleasure club. Acting out her fantasies.
Enticing and flirting and pleasuring herself with a man who adored her, who’d been besotted from the first sight of her, even if he hadn’t the sense to realize the nymph and the goddess were the same woman.
She’d wanted him as much as he wanted her. Some small consolation.
“Please, Jay,” she whispered. “I want to see you again.”
Losing her was going to kill him. He was going to bleed out like a soldier left on the field. He didn’t even have the sense to try to protect himself from further hurt. More time with Effie before he had to say goodbye: that wasn’t a choice.
He settled when he would collect her, then saw her friend approaching across the shingle with a crowd. Jay knew he had to remove himself. He needed time to think, to recover his wits. He gestured toward her throat. “Your—my pin.”
She lifted her chin. “It’s my pin now. I’m keeping it.”
She closed her fingers around her prize, as red as his heart, which she had in her keeping. Jay left before he made himself any more of a fool. He walked away, but part of him would be standing on that beach forever, waiting for her to find him.