Emma’s mouth opened beneath it, her body moving without thought, pressing closer. Amélie’s hand slid into her hair, her other arm slipping around Emma’s waist, pulling her tight, tight against her. The silk of Amélie’s robe was hot as fever under her hands, her fingers encountering nothing but smooth, living skin beneath the loose silk. She felt every ridge of muscle, every shallow thrum of Amélie’s pulse, every shivery tremor that ran through her own body. Emma’s good arm wound instinctively around Amélie’s waist, her fingers digging into the silk and deeper, to the heat beneath.
The kiss was a storm. It swept Emma into a space where nothing existed but the insistent press of lips, the urgent taste of berries and wine, the hard thump of her own heart battering against the wall of her chest. Amélie’s tongue traced the seam of her mouth, coaxing it open, and when Emma answered with a hitching gasp, Amélie caught the sound with her own mouth, devouring it.
Emma had been kissed before—sloppily, in the dark. Once by a stable boy, and another time by a suitor.
No one had ever kissed her like this. As if she was something rare and necessary, as if Amélie would starve on the spot if denied. The thought was terrifying, and it sent a hot, shuddering thrill down the length of Emma’s body.
Amélie broke the kiss, but only to move lower, her lips tracing the line of Emma’s jaw, her teeth grazing the thin skin just below Emma’s ear. Emma’s knees buckled, and she would have fallen if Amélie had not tightened her grip, holding her upright, her hands delicate and sure on Emma’s hips. The world tilted. The night air was suddenly not cold at all, but charged with heat, a feverish energy that crackled with every shared breath.
They pressed together, bodies flush from breast to thigh, and Emma could feel the hard tips of Amélie’s nipples through the thin silk and the scant cotton of her own nightgown. She wanted to touch, to seize, to be unmade—but her bandaged arm hung useless between them, and the frustration of it was almost enough to make her weep. She managed to cup the base of Amélie’s neck with her good hand, feeling the rapid thud of the duchesse’s pulse, the slick warmth of skin beneath her palm.
“Is this all right?” Amélie murmured, her lips moving against the tender skin behind Emma’s ear.
Emma could only nod, her breath coming in ragged, shallow pulls. Want coiled hot and liquid between her thighs, a sensation so overwhelming it momentarily eclipsed every other pain. She tried to speak, but her voice had dissolved in the heat of the moment. She tilted her chin, wordlessly pleading for more, and Amélie obliged, mouth returning to Emma’s with a fierceness that left Emma with no air, no thought, nothing but the wild, headlong rush of desire.
They might have stayed there—hidden in the shadow of the hedge, devouring each other—until the sun rose and found them.
Emma broke first. The strength of her own want terrified her, and something in her core buckled at the enormity of it. She jerked her mouth away, chest heaving, lips throbbing and wet.
“I think—” Her voice came out strangled, her breath ragged as a bellows. The hedges spun, silvered and unfamiliar. She steeled herself, managed a half step away, and held out her bandaged arm as if to bar Amélie from approaching. “I think the laudanum and the wine don’t mix,” she said, and immediately hated how brittle and ridiculous it sounded.
Amélie’s hand hovered for a second, suspended in the space where Emma’s face had been. The duchesse’s expression was shadowed, unreadable. “I apologize,” she said. The words were soft but not remotely ashamed. “I misread?—”
“No, I—” Emma’s voice caught, the chaos in her body racing ahead of her mind. “I just can’t—” She blinked desperately, searching for language that would not betray her utterly. “I should not have come out here. I should not have—” She could not finish. She wanted, more than anything, to rewind the moment and start again, but she was already in motion, already backing away along the flagstones, her bare feet numb with dew and cold.
The kitchen was a small, safe haven. She rushed for it, rapping her hip on the edge of the table and nearly knocking over the bottle of burgundy. Her heart slammed against her ribs, her mouth tasted of copper and shame. Amélie had not followed, not immediately, and that was worse than if she had.
Emma braced herself on the battered wood, squeezing her injured shoulder tight to her side. She could see her own reflection in the faint shine of the window: a flushed, wild-eyed creature, lips bruised and hair mussed. She barely recognized herself. She ran her tongue over her teeth, tasting the ghost of berries, the salt of her own sweat, the faint echo of Amélie’s mouth.
She poured a finger of wine into her teacup and knocked it back, hoping it would cauterize the hollow, aching place between her lungs. It did not. She watched her hand tremble, the veins standing in sharp relief under the kitchen lamp. She could still feel the duchesse’s thumb on her jaw, the pressure of Amélie’s body against hers, the wanting that had left her dizzy and weightless.
Her shoulder pulsed in time with her heartbeat. She pressed her palm flat to the table and tried to breathe evenly, but her chest would not obey. The cold from outside seeped into her bones, mingling with the heat that still throbbed under her skin.
She could not stay here. Not in the bright, accusing light, not with the evidence of what she’d done—what she’d nearly done—hanging in the air like a scent.
She fled.
Chapter 6
The morning solarium was a prison of glass and glaring light. The sun, filtered through the broad leaves of a hundred potted plants, dappled the tiled floor in shifting, restless patterns. It was hot, the air thick with the scent of damp earth and something cloyingly sweet from a nearby pot of jasmine. Propped on a wicker chaise, her arm strapped to her chest in a linen sling, Emma felt like a specimen pinned under a naturalist’s glass.
She had been staring at the same page of a book for a quarter-hour, the words dissolving into meaningless black marks. Her mind was not on the page. It was in the pre-dawn garden, caught in the memory of a kiss that had tasted of berries and recklessness. Her lips still felt bruised. Her skin still remembered the feverish pressure of Amélie’s hands through a silk robe. The recollection was a physical thing, a hot coil tightening in her gut, making the throb in her shoulder a dull, distant complaint by comparison.
A soft knock at the door made her start.
Lord Bainbridge stood on the threshold, a handsome wooden box tucked under one arm and a small stack of books in his hand. He offered a smile that was both polite and genuinely concerned.
“I was told the patient was accepting visitors,” he said, his voice a low, pleasant baritone. “I come bearing distractions. I find a war on sixty-four squares is often preferable to the one waged against boredom.”
He advanced into the room, his presence a calm, steadying counterpoint to her inner chaos. He placed the books on a nearby table and opened the box, revealing a set of carved ivory chess pieces.
“My wits are not at their sharpest, my lord,” Emma said, her voice sounding unused and raspy to her own ears. “You may find it a hollow victory.”
“The best victories are the quiet ones,” he replied, setting up the board on a small table between them. His movements were deft and economical, careful not to disturb her. “White or black, Miss Goode?”
“Black,” she answered automatically. She preferred to counter, to react. To let the other player reveal their strategy first.
They began to play. The familiar click of the ivory pieces on the board was a comforting sound. For the first several moves, the game held her. It was a problem of logic, a fortress of rules and consequences that left no room for the bewildering disorder of her feelings. Their conversation remained in the shallow waters of pleasantry. He inquired after her shoulder; she replied that it was a nuisance. She asked if he was enjoying Brighton; he confessed a preference for the country.
