Inside was quiet, except for the fire’s crackling, but the quiet was so heavy that Ripley felt as though he walked through chest-deep mud.
Or maybe quicksand.
He thought, and picked his words carefully. “Is that why you bolted today? Because of the feelings Ashmont’s uncle helped him put into words?”
“Yes.” She unfolded her arms and paced to the fire, then to a window. “I wanted to cry. But when I got outside, away from everybody, I couldn’t cry. And I couldn’t go back and arrange the books to calm myself because everybody would find me, and then I would certainly cry. So I walked.”
“If you don’t want to marry him, don’t marry him,” he said.
“I don’t want to. But I must. But I can’t. How can I? How can I, when—”
A crash outside cut her off. The windows lit again. Another crash, with echoes.
As his eyes adjusted to the changing light, he saw that her pained expression was gone, as though the lightning had blasted it away. For a moment she seemed puzzled about something. Then she took a deep breath and let it out. He watched her bosom rise and fall. He told himself not to look there. He didn’t listen, as usual.
“Never mind,” she said. She unwrapped the white neckerchief from around her throat.
He hadn’t understood why she’d needed it in the first place, except as decoration for a very plain dress. And yes, it made sense to take it off. It had grown rather warm inside, with the windows closed and a fire blazing perhaps more fiercely than a damp day in June warranted. Because of thinking too hard and not paying proper attention to what he was doing, he’d made a great deal more fire than the small room needed.
Then she started unbuttoning her dress.
Ripley experienced the same sensation he’d felt a short while ago—a lifetime ago—in the library, when she’d set down the letter and walked out. He closed his eyes and opened them, but no, this wasn’t a fantasy or a dream.
“What are you doing?” he said.
“I’m being unsubtle,” she said.
The dress was made like a coat, buttoning from neck to hem. She was halfway down the bodice already, though there must be more than twenty very small buttons there. And another two or three thousand on the skirt.
While she went on unbuttoning with alarming efficiency, it took his mind a moment to make sense of I’m being unsubtle.
Then he remembered.
“Olympia,” he said.
She went on unbuttoning, concentrating very hard on what she was doing, apparently, because she caught her bottom lip in her teeth and a small crease had appeared in her brow, directly above the nosepiece of her spectacles.
“Dammit, Olympia.”
“Everybody says that,” she muttered. “‘Dammit, Olympia.’ Well, damn you back.”
“Stop it.”
“I think not. This situation is intolerable, and I don’t see how it can get worse.”
She’d got the dress unbuttoned to the waist. He could see her smooth throat, all of it. He caught a glimpse of skin farther down, and a sliver of white undergarments.
He told himself he was bigger and stronger, and could easily make her stop. But he couldn’t. He’d have to touch her.
He could not touch her.
Not unless . . . until. Not now.
“It can get a great deal worse,” he said. His voice had dropped an octave.
The storm went on, flashing and crashing about the little fishing house.
He swallowed. “Yes, well, maybe not such a bad idea, after all. Your clothes are wet.”
So were his. He was keeping them on.
She said nothing. She undid the belt and tossed it onto a chair.
The room grew oppressively hot.
She continued unbuttoning. She had to bend forward now to do so, and he could see the swell of her breasts above the chemise’s simple neckline. And a lacy edging directly below the chemise. It was the edging of her corset. The one he’d bought her. Good God. Pink ribbons and lace and naughty stitching, around and over the—the—there. And there was ripe and full and creamy.
“Olympia,” he said hoarsely.
She went on unbuttoning, and the front of the dress opened up, displaying the corset in all its delicious sinfulness and the neat waist it hugged . . . and the sweet curve tracing the fine swell of her hips.
Leave, he told himself. All he needed to do was open the door and walk out. A little thunderstorm wouldn’t hurt him, and if it did, that was all to the good.
He tried to turn away, but she’d worked her way downward past her hips and was steadily, inexorably, opening the garment to her knees. He could see all of the corset and part of her petticoat, which was plain white, much plainer than the wicked corset, and couldn’t have been a more innocent petticoat if a nun had been wearing it. But she wasn’t a nun, and there was the naughty French corset . . . and her breasts, threatening to spill out of it.
He stood where he was, unable to move except for clenching and unclenching his hands, while his temperature climbed and his pulse rate with it. He stood, like the fool he was, watching as she unbuttoned, bending easily down, down to the very bottom of the dress. And when she’d undone the last button, she twisted and turned and wriggled her way out of the tight armholes and pulled the dress off, then tossed it onto a chair.
She looked up at him, her face pink, her eyes glittering, her soft mouth curved in a triumphant little smile.
She had every right to look triumphant. There she was, in all her shapely beauty and unpredictability. There she was, the spirited general of a girl who’d mowed down a bully. There she was, in a lot of white underthings and a naughty corset, the most deliciously irresistible thing he’d ever seen.
Ripley never resisted temptation. He hardly knew how.
He couldn’t look away or run away or do the right thing. He’d never been a saint and he wasn’t about to start now, of all times.
She said, “Is this too subtle for you?”
“No,” he managed to choke out. “Dammit, Olympia.”
Two limping strides closed the space between them. Two more brought her up against the wall.
Chapter 14
Olympia looked up at him. He was so near she could feel the heat of his body. His eyes had narrowed to dangerous green slits.
Her heart beat so fast she could hardly breathe, and a sensible and practical voice in her head said, Run.
But that was nonsensical advice, not to mention it came far too late. If running could have solved anything, she’d have run faster and farther, the day she’d left her drunken bridegroom waiting with the minister.
She’d called herself a damsel in distress, but she wasn’t. Damsels in distress were always virtuous ladies in trouble through no fault of their own. She was in trouble she’d made for herself. No dragons. No evil sorcerers. No stage villains twirling their mustaches. No heartless parents or stepparents.
No, it was all Olympia, dammit.
And it was still Olympia, dammit, half-naked and looking up into Ripley’s wicked wolf face, and smiling up at him while his green eyes sparked as hot as any dragon’s flames.
A true damsel in distress would have at least tried to get away.