One night of passion, p.7
One Night of Passion, page 7
In fact, she hadn’t seen him at all until this moment, which seemed to imply he’d been otherwise occupied, somewhere out of the public eye.
Perhaps with the woman currently simpering in his arms.
“Are you certain you’re all right?” Colehaven asked again.
Priscilla nodded jerkily. “Capital.”
Besides, what had she expected? She’d told Thaddeus that she was uninterested in marriage; he was a charming bachelor who was interested in marriage…
It was just a matter of time before he found what he was looking for and abandoned his silly epistolary friendship with Priscilla.
As soon as the music drew to a close, she dipped the requisite curtsy to Colehaven and fled the dance floor.
She was finished with ballrooms, finished watching Thaddeus dance with other women. Young, pretty, eligible women. Women that would actually marry him.
With the requisite quadrille out of the way, she could now safely retire to the library for a set or two. No one would notice her absence, and a bit of quiet solitude would allow her to regain her lost equilibrium.
Just by crossing the threshold into the silent, peaceful library, Priscilla felt her pulse slow back to normal. This was what she needed. Something to take her mind off a romance she’d known from the moment she’d seen him at Almack’s that she could not have.
She strode to the bookshelves at the far side of the library. This section was furthest from the soft light of the fire, but the books on these shelves were more interesting. Three entire rows of uncut volumes on travel.
Priscilla would never presume to slice someone else’s pages for reading—tempting though it might be—but must content herself instead with the maddening game of imagining everything she was missing as she leafed through.
As before, there was still only one volume dedicated to equatorial Africa. She’d all but memorized the fifty visible percent of its pages during past escapes to this same nook of the library.
She reached for the volume anyway.
“Bonsoir, Mademoiselle Weatherby,” came a low, familiar voice.
Priscilla spun about, abandoning the travel book.
“Oh,” she stammered. “Er, good evening. I mean, bonsoir.”
Splendid. Incredibly fluent. She was going to take the entire world by storm with her effortless command of riveting French conversation.
“Toutes les soirées que je passe avec vous sont belles.”
Likely, Priscilla should at least attempt to parse this phrase and respond accordingly.
She could not.
The air had been sucked from the room upon his arrival. She had thought this phenomenon an ancillary effect of the stagnant air in her grandmother’s townhouse, but here in the Everetts’ spacious library, Priscilla had been breathing very well until Thaddeus entered the room.
He looked like a painting come to life. Not some Roman statue or an insipid fashion plate, but a warrior disguised behind a neckcloth and tailcoat. The heat from his eyes made her tremble with desire.
She did not feel safely sequestered in the shadows of a slightly chilly private library, but rather like a young gazelle exposed on the wide plains of the Sahara desert, skin drenched in sun and sweat, her scent on the wind, her trail too obvious to hide. And yet she did not run away.
“You were dancing,” she said inanely.
He stepped closer. “So were you.”
There was nowhere to go. Her shoulder-blades all but touched the wide mahogany shelves behind her back, and his broad chest was little more than an arm’s breadth away.
Not that she felt like running. She was more likely to use the shelves as a crutch to keep her upright.
“I didn’t know you were here.” Her cheeks tinged with heat. “Before I saw you dancing, I mean.”
“I wasn’t in the ballroom,” he agreed. “Diana wanted Lady Everett to have a current list of—” He shook his head, his expression one of fond indulgence. “Never mind the proper weight of a grain bushel. How can a man possibly keep weights and measures reform in his head when his eyes are looking at you?”
“Er,” Priscilla said brilliantly. “Je ne sais pas?”
What she did know was that she was ridiculously, irrationally relieved to discover Thaddeus had not been wooing some other woman, but rather had been on a mundane mission for his cousin.
Relieved and melancholy.
His obvious affection for his cousin was heartwarming… and also tied him down. Although he possessed no political obligation to the House of Lords, it seemed Thaddeus would never venture far from London or family.
She’d learned everything about everyone, to better arm herself to play the game. She used her knowledge to stand just outside the circle. Thaddeus used his to stand right in the middle.
He was a settling-down sort of man, a home-is-where-the-heart-is sort of man, a here-have-a-leg-shackle sort of man. A marriage proposal from him would be nothing more than a pretty prison. An invitation to never leave the one place she longed to escape.
He was not for her. And yet…
Thaddeus leaned a shoulder against the closest shelf, his warm brown gaze meeting hers. “I missed you.”
“I wrote you five letters today.” Poring over each word of his reply. Deducting a thousand points each time.
“It wasn’t enough,” he said softly. “I longed to see you. The sweetest words are the ones I witness falling from your lips.”
Don’t get swept away, she warned herself. Charming gentlemen reused the same thoughtless compliments with every lady they met. It meant nothing. She wasn’t special.
“Today,” he continued, “I learned the word taloua.” His eyes were hot on hers. “It means ‘beautiful.’ Or possibly ‘maiden.’ To be honest, every Baoulé word reminds me of you.”
To this, Priscilla had no response. Formulating coherent answers was difficult when one’s heart had just swooned in one’s chest.
“You’re learning Baoulé?” she stammered.
He flashed a shy, boyish smile. “I’m not fluent, but I could try. If you wanted.”
She could have laughed. Or cried.
He was everything she wanted. Sweet and caring, considerate and insightful, unashamed to admit he’d been thinking about her and perfectly willing to do something about it. He missed her. And told her so. Was there anything she’d yearned for more?
“You’d really learn Baoulé,” she ventured, “just to write me letters?”
“That’s the only practical use I see,” he said with a little laugh. “It’s not like I’d go there. Can you imagine how long the trip would take?”
“Five to six months,” she said immediately. “From port to port. The rest would be by land. If you took a camel—”
“I would not take a camel,” he assured her. “Keeping cat hair from black trousers is difficult enough.”
“I recommend forgoing evening suits whilst astride a camel,” she advised him. “I’m no valet, but I do feel camel-riding is more of a buckskin breeches activity?”
“Hmm.” He affected a pose of deep concentration. “But what if I am riding the camel during the evening?”
“Then no one can see the little yellow hairs on your breeches anyway,” she pointed out. “Besides, by the time you got wherever you were going, your clothes would be out of fashion anyway. Not to mention sun-faded and mud-stained.”
“And that,” Thaddeus said, “is the real reason I would never do it. I am a very fashionable gentleman, constantly out-fashioning everyone else, and it would wound my ego to become the second-most fashionable gentleman because I decided to take a six-month hackney ride.”
Her lips twitched. “You might be the first-most handsome gentleman in all of London, but that waistcoat hasn’t been à la mode in three seasons.”
He clutched his palm to his chest with a gasp. “A well-bred lady would never insinuate such a horrid thing!”
“Well-bred ladies also don’t ride camels,” she said with a shrug, and then paused. “That can’t possibly be true. How else could they get from one place to another?”
“Horses,” he pointed out. “Or giant marmots. Whatever’s native. Why are you so determined to do everything on camel-back?”
“Because I’ve never done anything on camel-back,” she admitted. “Or marmot-back, now that you mention it. But I’ll let you go first with the marmot.”
“I’m not going at all,” he reminded her with a little shudder. “Think of all I would have to give up. What if Gunter’s has no tea shops in Africa?”
“What if there are countless treats a hundred times better?” she countered. “Don’t you agree it would be amazing to hop on a ship and explore the four corners of the world for the rest of your life?”
“No?” His expression was comical. “Have you ever tasted quinine?”
She blinked. “Have you?”
He waved this away. “It sounds like something that would taste dreadful. I’ll stick to the ales at the Wicked Duke, if you please.”
She bit her lip. “Would you really be content never to leave England?”
“I have left,” he admitted. “As soon as the war was over, I took an extended trip to the Continent. France is a stone’s throw away. I would return in a heartbeat.”
A pleasant rush of surprise took her. “You do like to travel?”
“I love people,” he reminded her. “Other countries are full of walking biographies. If I had the means, I’d spend a month on the Continent every year.”
If I had the means. Therein lay the rub.
He was almost perfect. He did like adventure. But he wasn’t willing to go further than the Continent, and didn’t even have enough blunt to do that much. Add in the expense of a wife, and Thaddeus Middleton would be spending the rest of his life in England whether he wished to or not.
“What about you?” he asked. “Would you really give up having roots and a place to call home?”
“It’s what I’ve always wanted,” she said softly. A life of excitement and adventure. It was the driving force behind everything she did. “Not everyone has the same dreams, and that’s a good thing. Your biographies must illustrate that. Differences are what make people interesting.”
“True enough,” he conceded, his eyes losing focus. “If everyone was the same, I wouldn’t have filled up half as many journals with…” He cleared his throat and turned toward the shelves. “What were you in here looking for?”
“Just a moment.” She folded her arms beneath her breasts and stared at him in fascination. “You don’t just read biographies… you write them?”
“No,” he said quickly. “I take notes. Copious notes. For future biographies that I also definitely won’t write. It’s very boring. Let’s go back to talking about quinine. Malaria is such a charming subject. Are you planning to contract scurvy first? It is a long boat ride over.”
“You write,” she said in wonder. “I would love to read something you wrote.”
“You read my words every day,” he reminded her. “I have kept you faithfully up-to-the-minute on the goings-on at Chez Middleton.”
“And you’re brilliant at it,” she told him. “Even in French, I can picture everything just as you describe and giggle over the amusing bits even on second or third reading.”
He stared at her, startled. “You reread my letters?”
“Endlessly.” She gave him a lopsided smile. “Your words could only be sweeter if I witnessed them fall from your lips.”
“That’s not all my lips can do, ma très chère,” he said with an exaggerated swagger, clearly meant to break the spell of the moment.
But the magic only intensified, pulling them closer together.
“Show me,” she said, daring to place her fingertips against the heat of his lapels. “What can those beautiful lips do?”
He answered with his body, rather than with words, angling his head closer, slowly, allowing her time to laugh and pull away and claim it had all been a game.
But she was no longer playing for points. She wasn’t playing at all. If she was about to have her first kiss, she wanted it to be him.
As his lips brushed hers, she felt herself falling back toward the bookshelves.
He caught her and pressed her to him, aligning their bodies indecently in the best possible way.
His lips were warm and firm and patient. But Priscilla didn’t want to wait. She wanted it all. No holding back. When she left, there would be no more kisses. But for now, could it not be an innocent indulgence like the letters they shared?
Perhaps not completely innocent, she allowed as she sank her fingers into the wild curls at his nape. One of his hands cupped her head, the other supported the small of her back. But she wasn’t going anywhere. Not yet.
He pulled his mouth from hers just long enough to ask, “What are your intentions with me, mademoiselle?”
“Carnal and dishonorable,” she answered, sliding her bosom against him as she rose up to bring her mouth next to his. “I’m a heartless rake who promises nothing and wants everything.”
His mouth curved into a wicked smile brimming with temptation. “Then let me give it to you.”
The next time he brushed his parted lips against hers, she parted hers as well. He tasted her mouth, her tongue, coaxing, giving, taking. If it weren’t for his arm about her waist and her hands twined about his neck, she could have swooned from the delectable sensations.
Except, no—she was far from swooning. With her heart galloping and her passions aflame, she had never felt more alive. This was life. This was adventure. Exploring the shape of his mouth, the taste of his tongue, the hardness of his muscles, the softness of his hair.
This wasn’t just a kiss. This was Thaddeus. She could no longer deny her feelings, if only to herself. Magic like this was something that could only be built together.
He was taking her to new peaks, showing her new climes. She had not known that a trail of kisses along the curve of her neck could be felt all the way to her core. She had not known about the sensitive spot behind the shell of her ear, or how the brush of his thumb against the side of her ribs would cause her nipples to—
“—library is just up ahead,” came a shrill voice from the corridor.
They flew apart, panting, their bodies still yearning to cleave back together.
Priscilla snatched the book on Africa off the shelf and hugged it to her breathless bosom.
“Go,” she whispered. “Before we’re seen together.”
He hesitated, then lifted a hand to her cheek. “If we were caught, I would have no problem with—”
“I would,” she interrupted, pulling away from his touch. “It can’t be more than kisses. I'm sorry.”
Chapter 8
It can’t be more than kisses.
Thad was trying very hard to return coherent greetings to all the friends he passed as he made his way through the Vauxhall pleasure gardens, but all he could think of were the last words Priscilla had spoken.
Kisses. Plural. That was a positive sign, was it not?
She had not said, “We’ll never repeat this” or “What was I thinking?” but rather seemed to imply that as long as he could content himself with clandestine kisses, Thad could have as many of them as he liked.
He very much liked. He could think of nothing else in the days since the Everett ball.
Their letters had not slowed in number, but of course made no mention of how it had felt to finally find themselves in each other’s arms. That was not the sort of missive Priscilla would wish intercepted by her grandmother, and if Thad were honest, scandal was not his first preference on how to visit the altar.
When he wed, it would be to a woman who chose him, not one who was forced to settle for him. Perhaps that meant Priscilla wasn’t the one.
He felt more entwined with her with each exchanged letter. Watching her sail off for Africa would wrench a heart-sized hole in his chest. But he would not force her to pretend something she did not feel. To accept a life she did not want. He would rather be lonely forever than ruin two lives with one marriage.
So, yes. He could console himself with kisses. Hot, sweet, drugging kisses. The sort of kisses that made a man wish he did long for scurvy on the high seas or whatever else it took to keep her hands about his neck and her soft curves locked tight against him.
“Missed you at the Wicked Duke this week, old chap.” A vicar clapped Thad on the shoulder. “Weren’t you meant to debate with Barrett?”
Was he?
“Next time,” Thad said vaguely.
He could not recall having promised such a thing. For the past fortnight, he’d only accepted invitations if there was a chance of Priscilla being in attendance. Only women with little or no reputation stepped foot in the tavern.
Then again, Priscilla was far from the usual missish debutante. She was just as likely to burst into the Wicked Duke on the back of a camel as anything else. Perhaps he should give up on pleasure gardens at once, and see if she—
“Middleton,” called another friend. “Going to Tattersall’s tomorrow to see the new racehorses?”
“Doubtful,” he called back.
Unlike the Wicked Duke, Tattersall’s didn’t allow women at all, regardless of how tattered the reputation. He would stick to the places Priscilla was known to frequent.
Tonight, in any case, he had promised his cousin Diana to find her near the supper-boxes. The sun was setting, which meant she and her husband would be finishing their meal.
Thad did not hurry. The Colehavens would stay for the orchestra, and besides, the evening was too fine for barreling through it with one’s head pointed at the ground.
Vauxhall was his favorite pleasure garden, and one of the most crowded places in London. He loved to daydream about all the fascinating biographies passing by on all sides. Tightrope walkers, pie men, groundskeepers, flautists, royal footmen. He could write about someone new every day of the week without having to leave the park.
The indefatigable energy of the flower girls. A secret smile between a milkmaid and a vegetable vendor. The trysts unfolding in the infamous Dark Walk as the sun slipped out of sight.
