He wasn’t yet married.
And he knew other allegedly “great” men kept mistresses.
Valkirk had always found the word “kept” distasteful in this context. One kept sheep, or horses, or pigeons, or perhaps a hothouse filled with citrus and exotic plants that ate flies, like a certain earl he knew.
Mainly because he could not imagine “keeping” Mariana any more than he could keep sunshine in a jar. And part of the magic of these few weeks had been the fact that she willingly came to him, night after night, despite the risk. Or, perhaps in part because of it. It was all good. Every bit of it.
The sweetness hid a blade, and it was this: the possibility that she might not come to him at all.
That contributed to the texture of the bliss.
And yet.
He struggled to imagine parting with her. He could not imagine a day when he did not know if she was well, or suffering from a shortage of funds, or fighting off grabby male hands, or brazening her way through a conversation full of words she hadn’t yet learned.
Or suffering with a loneliness that would drive her into someone else’s bed. Somehow he knew she would find no solace there. Some types of loneliness had only one cure. He was hers.
She was his.
But the notion of that was unbearable.
God help him. He just wanted to keep her.
Chapter Seventeen
Their last four nights together featured few words. Occasionally the sensual demands they made on each other in bed were nearly punishing in their ferocity, as if they were furious that life was parting them. As if in colliding, nipping, pinning, hair tugging, they could brand each other.
And other times, their hands and lips traveled every part of each other’s bodies as though they could transfer the memory of each other through their fingertips right into their souls. Every texture, every curve, every bump and hollow and angle. The whorl of an ear or the space between fingers or toes, the crease of an elbow or knee, was found and caressed and loved. They played with the elasticity of desire, whipping it into a wild peak, drawing it out again until they were utterly netted in it, until the shattering release inevitably came.
Mariana knew she ought to have gotten used to goodbyes, and to paying attention only to each moment, and drawing a tall wall between the moment and anything that might follow. It was the only way she would ever be able to part with him.She didn’t want the thought of a tomorrow—of a forever—without him to steal a single second from their last moments together. When there was time, when she was alone, she would sit and, with as much pragmatism as she could muster, have a look at the condition of her heart. The way one might check to see what was left after an explosion.
Tonight he hadn’t said a word, apart from her name when his release took him. She loved knowing that she was the one who could make him, in that moment, forget who he was. Take him utterly out of himself.
She felt it when his breathing went shallow, since she was using him as a pillow. It was her first clue that he was about to break the long, fraught silence.
“Mariana... what if you don’t go to Paris?”
Her heart gave a jolt. Her languor was officially shattered, and her heart began to slam as though it were running. From or to something, she could not say.
“Stay here in London? I made a commitment to Signor Roselli. And I’ll need to earn a living, of course.”
She could feel his body tensing with the words he was about to say.
“I wondered if you would like to discuss a more formal arrangement.”
She was afraid to breathe. Her entire being felt balanced on a wire. The moment was both exhilarating and terrifying.
“If you would . . . like to stay in London and continue to enjoy . . . our time together . . .” His words were gruff. “I can arrange for an allowance for you, and we can find an apartment to your liking, where I can”—he took a breath—“discreetly visit.”
The wire snapped, and off she tumbled into the abyss.
She slowly pulled away from him. Sat up and stared as if he was a stranger.
Her hands went to her face in shock.
He sat up, too. “Mariana?”
“Oh, my God... all this time... youdidthink I was a harlot,” she breathed in horror.
