He did not move. “You won’t confide in me?” he asked. “You won’t let me help you? It was not of your own free will, was it? This was not consented to, was it?” He ran one finger lightly along her upper lip.
She grabbed for his wrist and gripped it.
“There is nothing to confide,” she said. “There is no mystery.”
“And yet,” he said, “you preferred your life as it had become in London to the one you left behind? And your Daniel would not come after you to rescue you?”
“He did not know I was leaving,” she said, still gripping his wrist. “He did not know where I went.”
“If I loved you, Fleur,” he said, “and knew that you loved me, I would turn heaven and earth upside down to find you if you disappeared.”
Her eyes followed his scar up from his chin to his mouth, up his cheek to his eye. And she looked into his eyes.
“No,” she said. “No one loves that much. It is a myth. Love can be pleasant and gentle. It can be selfish and cruel. But it is not the all-consuming passion of poetry. Love cannot move mountains, nor would it wish to do so. I don’t blame Daniel. Love is not like that.”
“And yet,” he said, and his dark eyes burned into hers, “if I loved you, Fleur, I would move mountains with my bare hands if they kept me from you.”
She laughed a little uncertainly. “If,” she said. “Make-believe is a children’s game. It is very easy to live with ifs. But real life is different.”
She knew he was going to kiss her several moments before his lips touched hers. She supposed afterward that she could have avoided it. He did not imprison her with his arms or back her against a wall. But she did nothing to avoid it. She was rigid with shock, her hand gripping his wrist like a vise. And there was a certain fascination, too, in seeing that dark harsh face, not hovering above her as in her nightmares, but bending close to her own face until she was forced to close her eyes.
And his kiss was so startlingly different from either Matthew’s or Mr. Chamberlain’s that she did not for the moment think of springing away. There was none of the grinding of lips and teeth that there had been earlier up in the gallery, none of the firm pressure of the night before, but a light and gentle warmth, a living movement over her own lips. And a parting of the lips so that her own were enclosed in moist, brandy-flavored warmth.
He was only the third man ever to have kissed her. Strange,when he had done that other to her more than a month before. But there had been no kisses to accompany that.
And then she panicked and bent her head back away from him.
She caught sight of the expression on his face before one of his arms came about her and the other behind her head to press it to the folds of his neckcloth. He had looked lost, pained. And it was there in his voice when he spoke.
“Don’t spurn me, Fleur,” he said. “Please. Just for these few moments don’t spurn me. Don’t be frightened of me.”
And yet every part of her body rested against him and remembered—remembered the sight of him, male and powerful enough to crush the life out of her with his hands, the terrible purple scars of the wounds down his left side and leg. And remembered the feel of him, his hands, his thumbs, his knees holding her legs apart. And the feel of him plunging into her, tearing at her, and the repeated thrust and withdrawal until he was done and there had seemed to be nothing of herself left.
But there was the kindness of the inflated payment and this job, the concern for her well-being, the surprising warmth and gentleness of his kiss, the vulnerability on his face and in his voice. And her terrible loneliness.
And it was difficult to take that memory and this present reality and combine them in her mind. It was difficult to believe that he was the same man. It was difficult to feel with her body the revulsion that her mind instructed her to feel.
She made herself relax against him, feel his body against hers without shrinking. And it was not, after all, hard to do.
“Just for these moments only,” he murmured. He was rubbing his cheek lightly across the top of her head.
She did not consciously lift her head. But she must have done so because she was gazing into his eyes again and angling her head for his kiss. And his warm lips were gentle on hers again and moving over them, and the tip of his tongue wasmoving lightly over her lips until she parted them and opened her mouth, granting him what Matthew had demanded earlier and not been given.
His tongue moved against hers, circled it, explored the soft flesh inside her mouth, the sensitive flesh at the roof.
She heard herself whimper, and stilled both body and mind to the knowledge of what she was doing and with whom. She would not let her nightmares intrude into this waking moment. And it was but for a moment. Just for this moment only. His shoulders were broad and firm beneath her arms, his hair thick and silky between her fingers.
His mouth moved from hers at last to kiss her cheeks, her eyes, her temples. And he wrapped both arms about her, held her arched in to him, and set his cheek against the top of her head.
“God!” he whispered. “Oh, my God.” His arms tightened like iron bands about her. “My good God.”
She felt the breath shudder into him, and he released her.
They stood looking at each other.
“Fleur,” he said. He lifted a hand, and she saw it and knew again to whom it belonged and what it had done to her. She trembled as he cupped one of her cheeks with it. “I wish I could say I am sorry. God, how I wish it. Tomorrow I will apologize to you. Tonight I can’t feel sorry, God help me. Go to bed. Go. I cannot escort you tonight. I would not be able to stop at your door.”
She went, hurrying to the door, fumbling with the knob, running along the hallway, pounding up the stairs, and racing along the corridor to her room as if she thought he was in pursuit of her after all.
