She turned another corner in the endless hallway and stopped. While most of the rooms were dark, there was a small sliver of light coming from under one door at the end of this hall. Her heart began to pound as she moved toward it, hoping she’d found Baldwin. Fearful she had. Totally lost as to what she’d do if he was behind that door.
She knocked, but there was no answer. Her shoulders slumped. The room was likely empty. She moved to go, but before she could step away there was the clatter of something hitting the ground and a muffled curse from behind the door.
She reached out and pushed the door open.
If there had been a lamp lighting the room, it had long since burned out. The fire was all that remained, and it flickered and sent long shadows throughout the chamber. It was a study, much like the one in Baldwin’s London home.
When she turned to look at the fire, there he was. He had been seated in front of the mantel, but now he rose, rather awkwardly and stared at her.
He gripped a bottle in his hand. A half-empty bottle, at that. His jacket was gone, his cravat was gone and his shirt was half undone, revealing a shocking expanse of skin peppered with wiry chest hair that a lady should not see. Not when she had such wicked thoughts about a gentleman, at any rate.
She caught her breath and stared at him. He stared right back, unblinking, unmoving, unreadable.
“Are you a dream?” he finally asked, his words just ever so slightly slurred.
She glanced over her shoulder. He would not want others to find him this way. She stepped into the room and pulled it shut behind her. For a moment she hesitated, and then she turned the key in the lock, granting them privacy and a heavy dose of inappropriate aloneness.
“No,” she whispered when she could find her voice.
“That’s worse, actually,” he muttered, and collapsed back into the chair with a grunt. The bottle in his fingers slid free and rolled away, spilling the remainder of its contents on the carpet. “If you were a dream, I could have what I want.”
She moved forward, confused and driven and attracted and terrified all at once. “You left your party, Baldwin,” she said gently. “I was worried when you didn’t return.”
“Everyone else gets what they want,” he said, ignoring what she was saying. “Have you ever noticed that?”
She eased into the chair beside his and leaned forward, examining his face carefully. She’d thought him unreadable, but that was wrong. No, emotions were there. There were just so many that it was hard to parse them all out.
“Some people are lucky,” she conceded.
He laughed, but there was no pleasure in the sound. No light. No happiness. It was harsh and cold. “Oh yes, so many. My friends are lucky. Half of them are married and oh-so happy.”
She frowned. “You cannot mean that you’d begrudge them that, Baldwin. I know you care for them.”
The hardness of his face softened a little, and he shrugged. “No, not begrudge. They earned it. They deserve their joy. But I still have to look at it, don’t I? Those little looks between them, their endless comments about how I should marry for love. ‘Marry for love, Baldwin.’ They have no idea.”
She swallowed hard. “No, they don’t. You haven’t told them the truth.”
He stared at her, and it was like he saw her for the first time all over again. “You’re going to be very rational, aren’t you?”
She smiled despite the precarious situation. “I suppose I am.”
“Why?” he asked. “It’s not like you get what you want, either. Here we are, two people who’ll never get what they want because of what someone else did. Because of what we did to ourselves.”
She flinched. He had no idea what he was saying, but he was awfully close to home, to her secrets that she had to keep silent in order to find any kind of peace with her past. She bent her head.
“I suppose there is such a thing as acceptance, Baldwin. Torturing myself does no good.”
“Yes, I’m torturing myself,” he agreed. To her surprise, he suddenly leaned forward, nearly off the chair. His face was very close now, too close. “You’re here, aren’t you? You’re here under my roof. In a bed just ten or twelve doors from my own. In my study with the door locked. You are a torture, Helena Monroe. Because what I want, more than anything in the world right now…is you.”
The slurring had gone out of his words as he said them. Like what he said was true enough that it overcame tipsy foolishness. She stared at him, at that handsome face so close to her own. Every rational thing in her screamed at her to get up and walk away. To pretend like this had never happened.
Except rationality wasn’t her most powerful drive in that moment. So instead of listening to that very wise voice, she reached out and let her hand cup his cheek.
He let out a long, steady hiss of breath. He caught the edge of her chair and dragged it forward, the legs screeching against the floor as he pulled her into the space between his legs. She was shaking as she drew her fingers up through his hair.
He grunted out some incoherent sound, and then he leaned in and his mouth touched hers.
In the garden, his kiss had been gentle. Tentative, even. The kiss of a man with all his senses and reason. This was something entirely different. The alcohol had not stolen his senses, but dulled them a little and left him much wilder. His lips slanted over hers, hard and demanding, and she opened without hesitation. He drove in, tangling his tongue with hers. She tasted scotch and desperation and drive and need. She found herself lifting closer, drowning in his kiss.
He pulled her, and she tumbled off her chair and firmly into his lap. His fingers pushed into her hair, drawing down some of the locks as he kissed her and kissed her and kissed her.
She let him. He had been right that she would never have what she wanted. And yes, she had been telling him the truth when she said she accepted that fact. But there was also pain. And grief. But when he touched her all that faded away, and all that was left was the pulsing drive she felt to surrender to him.
His hands drifted lower as he kissed her, his fingers tracing her neck, her collarbone, the edge of her plain gown. Then they folded around her breast and she tilted her head back with a moan of pleasure. She hadn’t expected that sensation, but there it was, powerful and wonderful and overwhelming all at once.
He lifted his mouth to her exposed throat and began to swirl little patterns with the tip of his tongue. She found herself rocking against him almost against her will, her fingertips digging into his chest as he did things to her that made her forget every other thing in the world but him.
His hand dragged from her breast and she was faintly aware through the fog of desire that it was drifting lower. He cupped her hip, then she felt her skirt hitching up. Up and up until the warm air that stirred from the fire tickled her calves and her knees.
Desire was like the ocean and she swam through it, knowing she had to surface, to become aware of her surroundings again. Somehow she managed to do so and stared down first at her uncovered legs and then at him.