Chapter Nineteen
If the apocalypse began with heavy rains, then surely this was the end of days. Elliott stared out the window of the parlor and wondered at God’s cruelty. Bad enough that he had to help negotiate Amber’s marriage settlement with that wholesome prick, Christopher Jupp, now he had to spend more hours in her company without touching her. Without thinking of how he longed to please her. Without slipping into the library just to watch her create something marvelous out of wax.
She was destined for someone else, and no gentleman should touch another man’s wife.
If he were alone, he would drive the carriage himself despite the rain. He wanted to be back in London, where there were plenty of distractions from the delectable Amber. But he could not force his coachman to return in this weather and certainly not Mrs. Hopkins with her aching knees and feet. In truth, he did not like the idea of Amber out in this weather, either, so he stood in the parlor and glared at the rain.
There was nothing to do but think of her. And drink. He had already had too much of his host’s fine brandy. Any more would have him disreputably drunk, and that would certainly have him giving in to impulses he had just this morning sworn to never indulge. Ever.
He set aside the bottle and tried to read, but his mind was on her. Supper was served, and he and Amber sat together for the meal. Her expression held despair. His was no different. She had finished the wax mold and declared it acceptable. He promised they would return to London—with her reputation intact—as soon as the rain stopped in the morning.
And he prayed it would stop because the sight of her so sad cut at him.
He tried to ask why. She was to be a future baroness. Christopher was everything she ever wanted. She’d even said she was desperately in love with him. So why did she look like she wanted to drown herself in the nearest river? But when he asked, she merely shrugged.
“I am not fond of rain.”
“No one likes this kind of weather,” he returned. Not when the world seemed to be an endless curtain of wet.
She merely looked at him and nodded. There was no fire in her to challenge him. No flash of humor. He had three sisters and a mother. He knew that sometimes women got into moods, and there was nothing a man could do but stay out of their way. But he didn’t want to stay out of Amber’s way. He wanted to hold her and tease her until he coaxed a smile from her lips. Or she told him what was wrong.
But that wasn’t his place. That was Christopher’s place, and he damned himself for ever stepping into the Lyon’s Den where he’d met her and began this crazy situation.
“I think I shall retire early,” she said. “It’s too dark to work, and there’s no sense in burning the candles when I am overtired anyway.”
He didn’t want her to go to bed. He wanted her to stay with him. It made no sense, but his world was not right when she was so unhappy.
“Good idea,” he forced himself to say. “I will, likewise, retire early.”
And so, the meal was quickly finished, and they both retreated upstairs to the chambers that had been prepared for them. He purposely did not bring up the brandy decanter. If he did, nothing would stop him from steadily consuming until he was completely insensate. Instead, he continued what he’d been doing downstairs. He stood at the window and stared into the darkness while his thoughts turned over and over on one topic.
Amber.
He remembered every moment they had been together. It surprised him that he dwelled as much on her laughter or the animated way she argued with him as he did the moments when he had slipped between her thighs. Somehow, she brought him out of himself. When she was happy, his heart was lighter. He looked about the world in a warmer way. And though he still focused on politics, he also noticed the sunlight on her cheeks, the curl of her hair that escaped her chignon, and the birds that she loved to look at. And when she was out of sorts, she pulled his attention out of his own misery and into hers. His burdens were nothing compared to her hurts, and that, too, was good for him. He spent too much time in his own head. It was good for him to think of someone else, to measure the world through someone else’s eyes, and to be in a place that wasn’t choked with men’s cigars or women’s perfumes. Those were the places of society, and he was sick of it.
Amber wore no perfume, and since escaping the Lyon’s Den, she did not carry the acrid smell of cigars. She was clean and a true artist who created beauty out of wax and metal. And she was so vibrant in his mind, especially when he compared her to the bland girls his mother had forced on him. None of them was as intriguing as Amber.
But he would not disgrace her. He would not slip into her bedroom and attempt a seduction. She was not for him. And that made him hate everything and everyone. He didn’t sleep. He didn’t drink. He just stared and grew more depressed with every tick of the clock.
“Elliott?”
At first, he thought he’d imagined the soft word. He’d been remembering how she whispered his name in the throes of passion. Surely that breathy whisper was from his own mind. But then it came again.
“Elliott?”
He spun around. She stood just inside his closed doorway. She wore a nightrail she’d borrowed from the housekeeper. Her honey-colored hair was loose about her shoulders, and her eyes looked so wide, they seemed to encompass her whole face.
“Amber? Is something wrong?” He took a step forward, but then stopped himself. She was temptation itself, but he was trying to be a moral man. He would not give in though every cell in his body pushed him to touch her, taste her, take her.
“I have come to a decision,” she said, her voice surprisingly strong.
What decision did she have left? Her marriage was secure, her father was in full support, and she would become a baroness. There was no decision to be made.
“Would you like to know what it is?”
“Of course,” he responded. It’s what a gentleman said when a lady posed such a question.
She took a careful step into the room, then lifted her chin and looked him in the eyes. Such a bold stance. He was so busy admiring her strength that he nearly didn’t hear the words.
