Chapter 8
Amélie showed no surprise that Isobel remained willing to participate in what Nathaniel had outlined thus far, although she did ask if they had discussed the matter of where Isobel would stay.
She’d not thought of that yet. Of course it must be a consideration. So much, she would need to learn. “It wouldn’t look right, would it, if we did not appear to share rooms at night. But where should we—?”
“I have a set of rooms closer to the Palais-Royal,” Nathaniel said. “Or rather, Beaumont does.”
She smiled. “I suppose Nathaniel Beaumont would hardly stay in a sparse garret.” Although she rather thought Nathaniel Blackmore might prefer it, as she came to know him just a little. “Even one above an exclusive maison de tolérance.”
“Aye. I’ve most recently stayed every night in these other rooms, save the night I found you outside the église Saint-Eustache.”
“It is not without its risks to you,” Amélie interjected, “relocating away from L’Orchidée.
Although if I did not believe Nathaniel equal to the security of your person, I would not be in agreement, as well he knows.
The first rule of these matters is that one must always recognize when danger is too great.
But you need enact none of this, ma chère, if any part of it is for you uncomfortable. ”
“No. I trust that he will ensure my safety.” She truly meant it too, she realized, although it had not yet been a full forty-eight hours that she had known him.
Amélie turned towards Nathaniel. “Have you discussed yet between you what it is that Isobel’s name and background are meant to be? Or the manner of your meeting? You must be square on these details now, both of you.”
He shook his head. “We’ve not yet worked it out.”
“A name?” Isobel asked. “As an equivalent to your use of Beaumont? If it is only a matter of taking a different surname than my own, as you have done, would my mother’s maiden name suit?
Blanchet? Even in a tense moment, I do not think I would forget to lay claim to that.
Or should it be further from the truth?”
“Blanchet will suffice. It is generally best to have a grain of truth in everything.” He looked thoughtful. “And if asked, we need only say that we met one evening upon rue Montmartre.”
She laughed. “Certainly, for it can be said without the least falsehood that you knocked me off my feet upon meeting me there, shortly after my arrival in Paris.”
Nathaniel’s mouth turned up on one corner. How much she liked it, that it had. “So I did.”
Amélie smiled as well. “I will then ring for Louise. We will see about packing a trunk with such items as Mlle Blanchet requires in addition to your own little valise. And I will help you to dress before I send you in a fiacre to Nathaniel’s rooms for this introduction at Café de Foy to M. Baudelaire.”
Several hours later, directed by a boy at the gate who was expecting her, Isobel made her way up the stairs to Nathaniel Beaumont’s rooms. She took a deep breath and knocked.
Nathaniel’s voice acknowledged her, and in another moment he opened the door.
He wore a white shirt of fine lawn with a waistcoat of heavy silk, bronze in color, and close-fitting black pantaloons.
He had recently finished shaving; behind him on a chest of drawers a razor was laid out to dry on a cloth alongside a cravat.
A fashionable cutaway jacket of superfine black wool was draped atop the back of a chair.
There had been nothing of formality in their interactions, untethered to usual social dictates as they’d been.
She had seen him in casual undress. It was nonetheless almost uncomfortably intimate, interrupting his partially completed toilette.
Underscoring it was the formality of his evening attire and his clean-shaven face; she had heretofore only seen him in rougher clothing, face shadowed by several days’ worth of beard, looking somewhat disreputable.
A lover in truth would view her man thus before a night’s entertainment, midway through dressing. She felt off-kilter as he moved aside for her to enter.
This transformation was another facet revealed in what was already a continual series of ever-shifting perceptions. This man was someone new, someone whose appearance made her breath catch slightly. He’d been compelling before; now he was something much more than that.
Nerves buzzing, she hesitantly removed her pelisse and laid it on a divan, turning to face him as he reshot the lock. “Amélie has dressed me as she believes will best suit.”
He looked at her silently for a long time, making no secret that he was assessing all of her.
From the way his brows came together, his perception of her was undergoing a shift as well.
His eyes moved from her carefully arranged hair to the gown, the cut somehow making something of what few curves she had.
Seeing how his eyes lingered a moment on the low squared neckline, she resisted the urge to fuss with it as he continued his perusal.
“Do you feel ready?” he asked when his eyes returned to her face.
“Amélie has done all she can to prepare me, for which I am grateful.” She smoothed a hand down her skirt, needing an outlet for the restlessness in her veins.
During the journey to Nathaniel’s rooms, she had not discovered a graceful way to phrase this next part.
“Still, it will take me only so far to convincingly play your—lover. There must be some sort of . . . ease between us. I have not . . .” Her cheeks were growing hot.
“I married at eighteen. I have no experience with—with touching anyone else . . . familiarly.” It was the best she could manage. She adjusted the lacing on one glove.
He exhaled audibly. “Then you must come to me.” His face betrayed none of his thoughts. “I will do nothing without your consent,” he added.
She ceased fussing with the laces. A peculiar lightness in her limbs made it difficult to move towards him. She stopped an arm’s length away. Nerves jangled in her stomach. He had said she must come to him, and so she had, but now she was here, she was at a loss.
He reached out, enfolding her gloved fingers in his larger hands.
And then one hand moved up along her arm and carefully over the bare skin between glove and sleeve, featherlight, continuing across her collarbone and around to rest at her nape.
His changeable eyes were full dark in the dim room.
He watched her—for hesitation, perhaps? His bare fingers were warm against her skin; contradictorily, she shivered.
For a moment they merely shared the same air. Was he waiting for her to make the next move? To decide just how this would go?
She closed enough remaining distance between their bodies that her skirts brushed his pantaloons. This near, his body’s warmth met hers even without contact. She became aware of the tension in his frame by how still he held himself.
She set fingers lightly against his chest and reached to brush her free hand up along his jaw. She smelled his shaving soap, something spicy.
He turned his chin into her hand, eyes closing.
A sort of nervous energy suffused her body. There was uncertainty but also awareness: that he was attractive; that he was here, so close. That his eyes earlier hadn’t been impersonal. That hers weren’t either.
“It will be easier after we start,” he murmured, and then his mouth lowered, slowly enough she could have dodged it had she wanted to.
Gently, a bare acquainting of lips at first, but an unmistakable warmth unfurled low in her belly.
It gave her a kind of courage that she could do this.
She deepened the kiss, and he responded immediately, still demanding nothing she wasn’t willing to give.
It was a relief in its way that it was not difficult to touch and to be touched, to be kissed by someone other than Jamie. Moreover, the stirrings of desire were real. It would be easier to do whatever she must in public; neither Nathaniel nor his touch repulsed her.
He knew his way about kissing. She stopped analyzing and just felt.
The tightness in her chest loosened into a warmth that spiraled outward.
Tentatively she touched her tongue tip to his lower lip.
He inhaled sharply and opened his mouth more fully on hers, his arms coming around her.
He tilted his head, and she twined her arms about his neck.
Slight space remained between them, but she was very aware of how near every part of her was that did not yet touch him.
If it was only for practice, he’d have stopped, or she would have. Instead, she leaned into him, seeking deeper kisses.
His hand moved to her waist and splayed on her hip, his warm fingers firm through the thin layers of silk but still gentle enough that she might break away at once if she wished. “Shall I stop?” he murmured against her mouth.
“Not yet,” she whispered. She slid a hand up his arm, measuring through his shirt his forearm’s strength, the tautness of his biceps.
His hands spanned her waist and down the curve of her hips.
She let her hands roam farther to his shoulders and back, nothing but hard muscle beneath his leanness.
His body had not gone the way of softness when his time on the Peninsula was done.
He made a small sound when their tongues touched, his thumb brushing the hollow at the base of her throat. She shivered again.
“Enough?” he murmured.
No was what she wanted to say, but she nodded instead. “Yes, I believe so.” Her heart still threatened to beat its way from her chest.
He stepped back. “Then I will finish dressing, and we may be on our way.”
Muted golden light from the clearing sky set the stone facades of the famed Palais-Royal aglow, and the few tenacious leaves clinging to chestnut trees around the perimeter were living flames.
Fashionably dressed men and women filled the chairs and tables at the garden’s edge despite the nip in the air.
Still more strolled beneath the soaring arcades.