“I will?” I asked at the same moment that Kit’s incredulous “He will?” rang out.
“Yes. I won’t be able to sleep otherwise. Go pack your things.”
And just like that, I was staying with Celine. In her house. Where she lived. Without a suitable chaperone.
Suddenly the house that had seemed so overwhelmingly large yesterday felt impossibly small in my memory.
Twenty-One
CADIEUX HOUSE, LONDON - JUNE 14, 1816
WILLIAM
There wassomething unbearably vulnerable that came with crying in front of someone—with someone. It left both of us a bit stilted at supper that night.
Supper.
At Celine’s house.
Where I would be staying overnight.
Across the hall from where I remembered her dressing room to be.
The damned guest room was nearly as large as my entire apartment. Aptly named the blue room, it overlooked a little terrace that opened out onto the second floor. Perfect for making my escape when her proximity drove me out of my mind. There was even a helpful trellis running up the wall beside my window.
The entire house smelled of her—vanilla and spice and some ridiculous flower I couldn’t name to save my life. How was a man to think of anything else when all he could breathe was her?
I hadn’t the time to thoroughly examine my feelings about this morning either, my livelihood tossed about like trash. Kithad been kind, but word of the break-in would certainly impact our clients. After all, privacy was of the utmost concern to them.
And then there had been Celine in her sheer nightgown like a female being out of mythology—a nymph, a goddess, Aphrodite herself. All golden skin and loose curls.
She made a joke in the hall before slipping into her boudoir that evening, promising to be fully dressed at breakfast tomorrow. It was a miracle I managed to refrain from begging her to change her mind. To wear that slip of purple silk and lace—it and nothing else. Always. To burn the rest of her clothing. I could help her. There was space on the terrace for a bonfire.
I was going to wear a hole in the carpet, pacing between window and door as I was. It was a tetchy combination of exhaustion, anxiety, anger, and arousal, and with no other way to release it, I paced.
Phantom curls trailed through my fingers, and my lips longed for the ghostly brush of her skin. And the knowledge that I carried all day, of exactly how many layers of fabric stood between me and miles of sun-kissed skin, was a kind of torture I had never known.
The whisper of a door moving against carpet came from the hall. Certainly a figment of my imagination. Or, Iwascertain until a breath of candlelight seeped under the crack between my door and the floor. Light and shadow.
Unwittingly, I found myself in front of the door, my hand hovering above the brass knob. Waiting for a nock, a sound, a sign.
A minute passed. Two. I stared at the rich wood inlaid with delicate florals. The shadow never moved. If I closed my eyes, I could almost hear the soft breaths of my visitor. My hand slid to the door, gliding up to press against it.
I had a vision of Celine’s hand pressed against mine through carved, stained mahogany, separated by nothing more thanwood and nerves. Each of us waiting for the other to gather courage.
With a fortifying breath, I broke first. “Are you going to knock, love?”
“I don’t know yet.” Her answer was softly delivered and muffled through the wood.
“Your decision, what is it based on?” Slowly, she set the candle down on the floor, just visible through the crack. It cast a clean semicircle on the carpet beneath my feet. Then came the brush of silk against wood. I could picture it, her back pressed to the door as she slid to settle on the floor. Her chin would be propped on her knees.
I had no way of knowing how accurate the image in my mind was, but her shadow offered no counter. I found myself mimicking her presumed position, back against the door. One leg sprawled into the room, the other bent and serving as an armrest.
“The way I see it, there are three possibilities if I knock. I’m not certain whether I can live with all of them. And, of course, the fourth, where I don’t knock at all.”
“Tell me?” I begged.
“If I step away, door unknocked, we continue as we have been. We dance around whatever it is between us until one of us breaks.”
