“You are useful, just not to—”
“You?” She stood perpendicular to him, her gaze fast on the interior of the carriage. “Well, isn’t it your job to make me so?”
“Mariana—”
“One more lesson, Nick,” she said, hating her inability to keep an imploring note out of her voice.
After a moment’s hesitation, he said, “One more lesson.”
She finished her ascent into the carriage, and Nick shut the door behind her. He gave the boot two quick taps, and it lurched into motion.
Mariana resisted the urge to peer out the window and watch Nick recede into the distance until he blended with the shadows. Instead, she pressed her back flat against unforgiving leather and turned her thoughts to her nerve endings.
Not ten minutes ago, she’d been focused on their pleasure. Yet it was the other side of a raw nerve ending that claimed her attention now that the pleasure had receded:pain. As a midnight Paris streamed past her window, she sensed a nascent, yet familiar, pain held at bay, a pain she would rather avoid.
If this was truly the case, then why had she all but begged for another lesson? She knew why. It was for the same nervy, hedonistic reason she’d staked her locket last night.
While there was a fifty percent chance she would find pain once she reached the end of this particular nerve, there was another fifty percent chance she would find pleasure there. After all, she’d vowed to follow Nick’s example and ignore their past. Such a gloomy past was better left in gloomy London. This Paris idyll was a time and place for unreality to rule the day.
And if a few nerve endings were pleasured along the way, well, wasn’t that what Paris was for? People risked more for less.
She shifted uncomfortably on her seat.
A risk greater than a heart? a tiny thought nagged.
Chapter 14
Comfortable importance: A wife.
A Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue
Francis Grose
Feet cutting a brisk clip across the mist-slick cobblestone byways of an early morning Paris, Nick dared not let up the pace. He’d kissed her.
No, kiss was too simple a word for what he’d done. He’d ravished her mouth with his and would’ve done more if the gendarme hadn’t appeared.
But the gendarme and even the kiss itself weren’t what troubled him most. He’d lost control . . . again. From the moment she’d whispered the taunt, “Am I invisible enough now?”, he’d had to have her. There had been no question of it in his mind. He’d wanted her to understand precisely how invisible shewasn’t.
His first instinct upon seeing her inside La Grande Salle had been correct. Trouble had arrived. And here his prediction was playing out as he’d envisioned. Only the passing gendarme had saved him from himself tonight. Who would save him from himself next time?
He looked up and slowed his pace. His feet had carried him to the banks of the Seine, where he inhaled air ripe with sewage and river stench. How smooth its murky black surface appeared in these last hours before dawn, as if its façade of tranquility continued deep below the surface, but nothing could be further from the truth. Just beneath that calm surface roiled a river teeming with vibrant life, straining to arrive at its final destination, the Channel.
How like a person a river was. How like Mariana.
Her surface was a sleek and sophisticated exterior similar to so many ladies of her class. A cursory glance might tempt one to assume her depths uncomplicated by the world outside her rarified orbit. After all, in that way she slotted in seamlessly with her peers. One, however, would be mistaken.
Strong currents lay below Mariana’s surface. Many had dipped in a toe, only to find themselves swept along by the force of her tide. Like the Seine, Mariana, too, had inevitable destinations. Only she willed where they led.
And one of her inevitable destinations was him. Indeed, they were fated in certain ways.
He turned away from the river and set out across the bridge.One more lesson.
Blast. Why hadn’t he followed Villefranche into the night? If he’d come into the café, wasn’t it possible he’d have other unexpected stops on his way to meet his agent?
But these weren’t the questions that bothered him most. A different question plagued him: why had he agreed toone more lesson?
He knew the answer, too. He was losing focus, unable to resist the pull of her current. He’d never been able to, not really.
