“I’m sorry,” he said. “It’s not your fault.”
Everything was his fault. She would not have done it had he not wanted it. And of course she knew that he wanted it—lust steamed from him like the scent of blood from an abattoir. During the day his mind turned to her with an obscene frequency. At night he dreamed incessantly of her.
She made no response. His ears caught the tremble of a sob. She was weeping. He was instantly at her side. “Did I hurt you? Are you all right?”
He felt her shake her head, but he didn’t know which one of his questions she’d answered. He caught hold of her face—both of her cheeks were wet and cold—and tried to wipe away her tears.
“Don’t cry. Please don’t cry.”
Fresh tears rolled down her cheeks, warm rivulets against his thumbs. Before he knew what he was doing, he’d leaned down and kissed her tears, tasting the salt and faint bitterness of it.
Her skin was not flawless softness, but that was on a par with saying that Helen of Troy did not excel at embroidery. It simply did not matter. It was her, her jaw, her cheek, her eyelashes fluttering against the corner of his lips, her hair and clothes and skin that retained the lingering scent of the madeleines.
She tilted her face a little and suddenly their lips were only a fraction of an inch apart. He imagined he could see her exhalation as little puffs of ghostly vapor. She was breathing fast; her breath smelled of warm apple pudding. And he was hot all over, hard and hungry and impatient for his downfall.
He wanted to sink his mouth against hers, lick the inside of her lips, and stroke her moist, mobile tongue. He wanted to roll her gorgeous nipples between his fingers and feel them engorge. He wanted to push up her skirts and take all the liberties that she would allow him—many, he was sure, for her breath shook and trembled in anticipation.
It would be simple and sweet to take her right here, to ease the ache of desire that had never subsided since the moment her chocolate custard had first touched his lips. A quick, mindless fuck, to wean himself from this irrational lust that had gone on too long already. A quick, mindless, explosive, luscious, incendiary, staggering—
With his last iota of control he took a step back, and another. He was to be married, to a dear girl with whom he’d chatted warmly only hours ago as they took their round in the park, a dear girl who did not deserve the disgrace of a fiancé who shagged the help seven weeks before the wedding.
And even if he’d never proposed to Lizzy, his reputation could ill survive this. No one had forgotten his origin; they but refrained from mentioning it when they could find no fault with his conduct. The moment he started consorting with undesirables, the gossipmongers would nod at each other and concur that it had always been only a matter of time before he revealed his true heritage.
“You are all right, I take it?” he said, making sure that his voice was free from inflections.
“I’m perfectly well. Pray do not let me keep you,” she said, her breathing under control.
There was something commanding, even imperial to her formal answer. It astonished him. Somehow he’d never noticed before that despite her strong accent—she spoke the throaty French of the South—her grammar was impeccable and her verbs, from past pluperfect to futur antérieur, perfectly conjugated.
He wasn’t aware that French cooks were culled from a higher social stratum than English ones. Where had she come by her educated speech? From Bertie? He could see Bertie helping her with her English perhaps, but teaching a Frenchwoman to speak better French?
In the end, it was she, not he, who first walked away, her footsteps echoing on the damp stone floor. She did not go up the service stairs, but entered the kitchen, shutting the door behind her before turning on the light.
He listened for a few minutes to her quiet, purposeful motion in the kitchen. And then he and his still heavy loins fumbled in the dark until he found the beginning of the steps that would take him up to the green baize door and out, back to his world, a world that had no tolerance for passionate mistakes—at least not for a man like him.
Chapter Fourteen
Lizzy loved a good dance, but it must have been two years, at least, since she’d last attended one. Mrs. Mortimer’s dance was her reward for herself, an evening of fun and frolic to bid good riddance to her overlong stay on the shelf. And during the first hour, she enjoyed herself thoroughly. She talked; she laughed; she showed off her engagement ring and danced every set. Then, in between dances, Mrs. Douglas, a junior minister’s wife, approached her. Lizzy did not care for Mrs. Douglas, an avid gossip and busybody who never met a rumor she couldn’t spread like so much manure. But she pasted a smile on her face and received Mrs. Douglas’s congratulations in good grace.