“I was afraid you might be having second thoughts.”
A ray of hope pierced him. If she confessed now, if she was drowning in remorse, rightfully fearful but still courageous enough to admit what she had done and take responsibility, he would forgive her. Not in an instant, but he would. And in return, he would come clean about his own fiendish plot.
“Why would you think that?” he said.
Do the right thing, Gigi. Do the right thing.
She hesitated. For a fleeting instant, she looked conflicted and frightened. But in the next moment, she was again in control of herself, a young Cleopatra out for her own best advantage. Her eyes traveled down his person and slowly back up again. “Wedding-night jitters, I suppose. Nothing more.”
Instead of honesty, she had fallen back on that old cliché: feminine wiles. She thought him so stupid that he'd go on in an erotic daze and never notice that he sported an ass's head.
Rage, great and raw, exploded in him. He tossed aside the decanter. In a heartbeat, he'd already covered half the distance between them. He was going to dangle her lying, scheming rump out the window until she screamed, begged, and sobbed the truth at last.
She opened her robe and let it fall. Beneath the robe she wore a chemise as transparent as a water goblet, a layer of gossamer that hid nothing.
He stopped and stared, his body reacting instantly. She was a pornographer's dream: high, firm breasts, rosy nipples pointed at a man's eyes, miles of legs, and hips that flared decadently, magnificently, hips meant for a man's hard grasp as he drove himself full hilt into her.
You bitch, he thought, in a dozen languages. You prick. That was for himself. The die was cast at last, the choice finally made. The high roads would be deserted and untrod. He had embarked on the path to purgatory.
Fire blazed in the grate, but the English winter crept damp and insidious along walls and floors. He closed the distance between them. “Come to bed,” he said, taking her by the wrist. “You must be cold.”
Beneath the pad of his index finger, her pulse raced madly—her mind was cold and calculating, but her blood certainly ran hot. She followed him obediently and let him usher her up the stool and under the bedspread.
She sat straight against a mound of pillows, the bedspread reaching only slightly past her abdomen. Her gaze flitted to him, then darted to a corner of the room. Her fingers clutched the covers.
What was she afraid of now? Solomon himself could not discern Camden's ultimate goals, so eclipsed were they by the inferno of lust that threatened to flame out of control.
Understanding dawned with all the gentleness of an artillery-shell impact. She was nervous because she was a virgin, and this would be her first time with a man. He almost laughed. How normal. How charming. How frigging sweet.
God help him.
He undressed slowly, shedding honor and rectitude alongside waistcoat and shirt. Her curiosity must have prevailed over her uncharacteristic shyness, for she watched him as if he were the very miracle for which she'd spent a lifetime on her knees, devoutly praying.
Don't look at me like that! he wanted to bellow. I am as unprincipled, disingenuous, and blackhearted as you. More, if anything. God, don't look at me like that. But she did, her eyes shining with the kind of trust and devotion that hadn't been seen since the Age of Chivalry.
He climbed onto the treacherously soft bed on the side away from her and sat as she did, upright, a wall of pillows behind his back, the bedspread drawn over his trousers. For once, he wished he'd debauched his way through St. Petersburg, Berlin, and Paris. His body burned with hellfire, but his mind was an abysmal blank. How did one make love, exactly, to a girl one despised with greater intensity than all the love in the world put together?
She cleared her throat. “Would you . . . uh . . . be needing a nightshirt?”
He chuckled despite himself, and the answer came to him. The only way to do it was to make love to her as if the past thirty hours had never taken place, as if his heart still overflowed with optimism and tenderness.
He slid a strand of her hair between his unsteady fingers. It was as cool as well water. He lifted it and pressed it to his lips, inhaling its sweet cleanness, as fragrant as a blade of young leaf. “No, thank you,” he said. “I don't think I'll need a nightshirt tonight.”
She cleared her throat again, more softly. “Well, then, should we say our prayers and go to sleep?”
He laughed. Frightening how easy it was to slip back into the earlier hours of the day before, to be amused and delighted with her every utterance. He gathered her to him, kissed her, and tasted the lingering astringency of her tooth powder, flavored with sweet birch oil.