“I feel the same way,” Isabel said.
Sarah laughed. “Well, I think the best thing for me at present would be not to talk about my situation. When I think about it, I am almost overcome with sadness and terror. Let’s talk about you! Your adventures are all that buoy me in these times of trouble.”
Isabel blushed. The only other person in her world who knew her secret was Sarah. She’d never been more terrified or relieved of that fact today.
“I have adventures to share, as well,” she said, sinking onto the settee. Sarah followed her, her face suddenly concerned.
“You know I worry about you in that…that place,” Sarah breathed, glancing toward the door as if all the chaperones in the empire were about to come crashing down around them.
Isabel nodded. Sarah was an innocent, of course. She didn’t really understand Isabel’s drive to explore the passions that boiled inside of her.
“I know,” she said. “I know and I won’t say you don’t have reasons. The Donville Masquerade is not a place for a gentlewoman.”
“And yet you still go,” Sarah said, worrying a loose thread on the hem of her sleeve. “I assume you went last night.”
“I did. And I must tell you what happened, for I am about to burst from it.”
When Sarah caught her hands and let out a shuddering sigh, Isabel took a deep breath and told her everything. From the moment when she was accosted until she’d fled from the powerful, passionate kiss of a masked stranger. When she was finished, Sarah got to her feet and paced away.
Isabel stared at her friend’s back, hoping she’d not gone so far as to push Sarah away at last. But then she turned and Sarah’s cheeks were bright with color. “I know I shouldn’t say it, but that sounds very romantic.”
Isabel bent her head. Her feelings on the matter were not exactlyromantic. More scandalous. Wanton.
And yet the kisshadbeen rather romantic, when she retraced the steps of it. Being swept away like that, in a place where anyone could see…there was a romance to it.
“I did like it,” she admitted with heat burning her cheeks. “Oh Sarah, I convinced myself I could just watch, that it would be enough, but when that man touched me…I wanted more. What is wrong with me?”
Sarah ducked her head. “Perhaps nothing. After all, there are times I want more. Want to experience what I fear I will never have a chance to feel. And I assume your uncle continues to talk to you about remarrying.”
“Nearly every day.” Isabel let her breath out in a long sigh. “I know he doesn’t mean to be cruel, even when he cannot help but be blunt and dark with his grief. Still, he wants to marry me off, get me out of this house so he can continue to worship at the shrine of his dead daughter. He has no intention of matching me with someone who will warm my heart. He will find me someone suitable, just like my parents did with Gregory.”
Sarah worried her lip. “Right now, I would take an older merchant with money.”
Isabel recoiled. “Oh, Sarah, I’m sorry. I must sound so glib and terrible considering your situation.”
Sarah moved to her and took her place again. Her expression was gentle as she said, “You don’t. You and I are in very different positions, that is all. There is nothing wrong with wanting someone who makes your heart sing, makes your body…weak. That is natural, I think, no matter what they tell us. I only worry that your uncle’s insistence makes you…reckless.”
Isabel drew in a few breaths. What she had done, what shewasdoing, it was reckless. “I’m going back,” she whispered.
Sarah’s eyes widened. “Isabel…”
“I know. I know it’s foolish,” Isabel said. “But it’s now a draw I can’t deny.”
“And if this man is there again?” Sarah demanded. “Are you certain you will not go too far when it comes to him? Push past even more of the boundaries that you established when you first decided to do something so wild?”
Isabel leaned back and easily conjured an image of her very handsome stranger. Of his mouth on hers, his hands on her, his passion that had begun as muted and careful as her own and then flared like a wildfire.
“I don’t know,” she admitted. “I don’t know what I will do if he is there again. I suppose it is something I will decide in the moment. I will have plenty of time to be staid and proper and alone if my uncle succeeds in his plot for my future.”
Sarah nodded slowly, and for a while they sat in silence, both pondering the unfairness of the futures they each faced. Only Isabel’s mind didn’t stray to whatever marriage would come, but rather what would happen the next time that stranger came into her proximity.
What she would do to capture that moment of desire and connection between them.
Why was he here?
That was the question that had been in Matthew’s mind from the moment he entered the Donville Masquerade for the third time in as many nights. And yet he still came, despite the little voice in his head that kept screaming at him that it was wrong.
The voice that told him Robert would laugh and laugh if he knew Matthew’s desperate search for a woman whose name he didn’t know, but whose taste still lingered on his lips and in his heated dreams.
