“Sir, please.”
There was more than embarrassment in her voice. There was desperation. He waffled, sighed, and gave in.
He returned to his seat and turned off the desk lamp. For a moment he couldn’t see anything. Her dress soughed, woolen skirt on flannel petticoats. Her footsteps, at first clear, the heels of her shoes clicking against the floorboards, became muted as she crossed the Khotan carpet he’d brought back from India.
His eyes adjusted to the darkness. In the meager light that meandered through the window, he perceived her outline, a solid blackness against the more insubstantial shadows of the air.
He regretted his moment of gallantry already. The entire point of his summons was to see her face, not to further whet his curiosity. He felt along the edge of the desk for the whiskey glass and tipped the remainder of its contents down his throat.
The silence stretched. He let it. He could think of nothing to say that wasn’t either stupid or blatantly prurient.
Do it again. Let me watch. Let me see your face when you come.
“You wanted to see—to speak to me, sir?”
Her voice came from the farther reaches of the room—she’d put as much space as possible between them. The darkness and the distance were no doubt meant to salvage her respectability, but all he could think of was the sweet shadow between her thighs.
“My dinner party,” he said, amazed at the seeming coolness of his tone. “Mrs. Abercromby spoke to you of it?”
She didn’t respond immediately. Was she as surprised as he by the perfect propriety of his end of the conversation? “The dinner for eighteen next week?”
“Yes. You had enough notice?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Good,” he said.
Silence burgeoned again. Perversely, he refused to dismiss her. It was a poor gratification to sit fifteen feet from her in the dark, but it was better than nothing.
She broke the silence first. “Would you care to see the menu, sir?”
“No, that will be unnecessary.”
“Would you—” Her voice dropped. “Would you like me to cook something for your dinner?”
His fingers latched on to one of her shortbread biscuits. He bit into it. The sensation was dizzying. Pagan. He imagined crumbling the biscuit over her and licking the crumbs from her skin.
“No. I do not wish to inconvenience you on your half day,” he said.
He couldn’t handle a full meal from her tonight. He would incinerate.
They lapsed into silence once again. Her feet shuffled against the carpet. He broke off another piece of shortbread and let it melt on his tongue, despairing in its divine sweetness.
“Sir, may I—may I be dismissed?”
“I’ve one question and then you may go.”
“Yes, sir?”
He meant to ask whether she needed to send for more kitchen help from Fairleigh Park. It wouldn’t do to be shorthanded for the dinner.
“Tell me, when you were in the tub, what was on your mind,” he said. “What were you thinking of?”
She made a sound that was a choked gasp. Her breaths were fast and shallow. He closed his eyes and tortured himself with another biscuit, the divine sweetness spreading through his veins like hot poison.
How the mighty had fallen. Was it only thirteen years ago that he’d laughed at Bertie for succumbing to the spell of his cook? Now he was the one caught in her allure, an allure that could not be described with any economy of words.
She said something. He barely heard her. It sounded like “New.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“You.”
“What?”
“I said I was thinking of you,” she said. “You, sir. Good evening, sir.”
This time Mr. Marsden wore a silver ring in the shape of a serpent. The serpent had tiny, emerald eyes, and wound itself twice about the middle finger of his left hand.
Lizzy couldn’t stop looking at the ring. She wanted to touch it—and perhaps Mr. Marsden’s hand, too—to see his naked reaction in that first fraction of a second, before self-preservation could intervene.
She’d spent what little spare time she’d had in the past few days staring at his drawings, because she couldn’t get enough of them—or rather, couldn’t get enough of the secret thrill that ran amok in her when she gazed upon their painstaking lines and fragile colors. Couldn’t get past the idea that he’d done them for her and her alone.
She knew it to be a stupid and possibly harmful preoccupation. She knew that it was the vanity in her, yearning to be the object of somebody’s grand passion. She knew that Georgette was never wrong in her gossip. And still she kept at it.
“What do you think?” asked Mr. Marsden.