by Edith Layton
“I can’t wrestle a ghost,” he said, and looking up, the starlight enabled her to see that he wore a rueful smile, “but I’ve learned that one oughtn’t to try. Some ghosts should be made welcome, and asked in to tea, because only by entertaining them can we live with them. And some, we should definitely live with, if their presence is comforting. But we living have to go on living too, you know, and sometimes we linger too long with them when real life becomes too confusing. So,” he said gently, looking down at her until she could swear she could see his light hazel eyes glow in the faint light, “the only cure I know for a surfeit of ghosts, is an abundance of life, don’t you think?”
And he smiled so sadly at her that she nodded again, oddly comforted by that deep, soft voice and the concern it voiced. Then, very simply and entirely naturally, he bent his great tawny-maned head to kiss her. He hesitated only for a second to gauge her reaction, but she didn’t move away or try to evade him, for she remembered thinking that it would be a kind, and brotherly, and entirely comfortable thing to have him do.
It was not.
His lips were cool and gentle on hers for only an instant, and in that instant it was as though something had sparked there between them, tingling like some sort of tactile starlight at the slight touch of his lips. And then he took her up in his arms and kissed her deeply, and she found herself yielding to far more than a desire for sanctuary as he held her closer than any comforter might, moved beyond mere sympathy to deeper needs. For all his strength, she was aware only of wanting to be held closer; for all his control, he was aware only of wanting to lose it entirely. At the same moment that she discovered herself shocked to be so lost to his embrace, he ended it. And stepped back to look down at her with an unreadable expression on his craggy face. But before she could begin to fear him, or herself, he spoke again.
“I didn’t lie, you see, I did mean seduction, just as I promised,” but there was no laughter in his husky whisper, and none at all in his eyes.
“But don’t say a word just now, please,” he said, putting up one huge hand. “Think on this tonight. And tomorrow. Until we meet again. And then you may slap me or challenge me to a duel or call me a beast, or even, if you like, kiss me again. But for now, please, just think on it, will you?”
Before she could reply, he took her hand, and in the most conventional way placed it on his arm and walked on with her as though for all the world they both weren’t, each in his own way, completely and entirely staggered by what had happened.
After he’d left her at her door, she went within and prepared for bed, still dazed by the encounter. For he’d made her forget Harry entirely. It had been as if Harry hadn’t existed at all, but had only been some pale daydream of her youth. She went to her bed for once exorcised of his demanding ghost, only to be visited again and again in the night by her thoughts of the substantial and vigorous reality of Arden Lyons, whom she might not trust, but now believed she would never forget.
Arden lay awake for a long while as well, considering how to proceed. She was far more than he’d thought, and just as he’d told Julian, far more than he deserved. He’d meant to court her more subtly, he’d even meant to quote poetry, but she’d overset his plans long before she’d overset him so completely. The sight of her uplifted face had robbed him of speech and he’d had to use his lips to better purpose. He was grateful that she wasn’t some dewy miss who’d have taken alarm at his ardor, and glad he’d enough experience himself to have ended it before she’d time to question her response or fear it, or him. There were many things he was grateful for tonight.
He blessed her foolish father for casting her in his way, as he lay and rested his head on his arms on his pillow and stared at the night, seeing only the way her great-eyed face had tilted to his and still feeling the warm sweetness of her generous mouth, the way her body had shaped to his, and the way her hair had blended with the night to sift like night mists through his fingers. He had a silent thanks for Harry Devlin too, for he well knew that without that poor devil’s death, he’d never have had a chance at Francesca. She might never love him as she’d loved Harry, but she’d need him now. He’d told Julian no less than the truth of that. Because if she weren’t world-weary, and lost, and in need of a man to shield her again, he’d never have begun his campaign for her. He’d not have asked for anything from her. He’d not have dared.
*
Deep in Julian’s arms, pleasantly weary and quite content, Roxanne nestled her chin on his chest and sighed. “The baron’s on a winning streak,” she said, “ever since I left his side. Do you think that means he’ll decide to be shut of me? And then what shall I do?” she hinted, as she traced a teasing question mark in the golden down beneath her cheek with the tip of her finger.
“Not to fret. He’ll be on a losing streak soon.” Julian yawned.
“Poor Fancy, then,” she said, seeing it was too late and too soon to pursue the question of the duration of their affair. He’d only promised her a night, she’d gotten near a week; she aimed at longer, but knew how to bide her time.
“Fancy?” He frowned in incomprehension.
“Francesca,” she explained, “that’s what the baron calls her. What shall she do if he goes to pieces again? And the way your friend Arden’s after that mooncalf Cee-Cee, it looks like poor Fancy’ll have to find herself a new post soon enough. Speaking of that…” She raised her head, and seeing the slight smile he wore, poked him with her finger. “Here,” she complained, “I’ve got me ogles, laddie. One minute the giant gent’s sighing over the sapskull blond, and the next he’s staring at Fancy as though she was the dog’s dinner. Which of them is he after, eh?”
She didn’t really care. She liked Francesca well enough, but while not precisely selfish, she never bothered herself over the fate of another female for long. She’d herself to lookout for, hadn’t she? And who’d ever helped her? But Julian never spoke about himself or his friend, and not only would a bit of gossip bind them closer, for nothing ties a fellow to his wench like confidences, she knew, but also an interesting tidbit would please the baron, and perhaps she might find out something for his daughter too. Fancy had an eye on the big gent, whatever she pretended. Roxanne was selfish, but tonight, in this golden gentleman’s arms, she could afford to be generous.
“Arden’s a man of his own mind,” Julian said obliquely.
“Ah, poor Fancy,” Roxanne sighed, fishing. “With funds, she might dress up a treat; without, the big man mightn’t even consider her for a fancy piece. Not that she’d consent, mind,” she said primly, “since he won’t get her as easy as you got me, m’lord. She’s a good, decent, pure girl,” she added mockingly, so he could congratulate her for not being one.
“I sincerely hope not,” he laughed, “for her sake, since it’s her experience that interests him. There’s quite a market for widows these days, you know,” he said, wrapping one long hand lightly about her neck and giving her a playful shake, which pleased her enormously to turn into an excuse to bite his shoulder in reply.
“Oh, yes, widows are what every gent wants to wive,” she said, daring an outrageous, and likely just as outrageously ineffective, hint under the cover of her laughter.
“In my friend’s case, yes,” he answered thoughtfully, stroking the neck he’d just mock-throttled as he pondered what he’d said, “although, whatever his intentions, I doubt he’d have the time of day for her if she weren’t. Widows seem to thrill him. At least, despite her other obvious charms, and she has not a few, that seems to be one of her largest attractions for him, if not her chiefest one,” he said in some wonder, before he recalled whom he was speaking to, and never wanting to betray any confidence of Arden’s, he veered from the subject, and leered on a whisper, “and I can see why.”
“Oh, Lor’!” Roxanne breathed, dismayed, suddenly realizing the coil the baron had got Fancy into, and, “Oh, Lord, love me!” she groaned, realizing, too, that the baron knew far too much about herself for her to betray the c
harade to her own benefit, before, “Oh, Lord, yes, love me that way, do,” she sighed again, when, much to her pleasure, she found he’d misunderstood her, delightfully.
*
“And then?” the gentleman urged tensely.
“And then, monsieur, he kissed her,” the busboy reported, scratching his head and yawning, for really it was very late, and if it weren’t for the extra coins he needed, he’d be asleep and not here in the kitchens talking to the English gentleman.
“Kissed her?” the young gentleman asked, his face growing gray.
“Perhaps ‘devoured’ is a better word. What an embrace! Right there, in front of the hotel, before my eyes.”
“And she struggled?” the young gentleman prompted, his white hands turning to fists.
“All my women should struggle so, please God.” The busboy winked.
“And then…?” came the terse question.
“Then?” The busboy shrugged. “What else can I say? The big man and the Widow Devlin walked off arm in arm, back to the hotel. I can watch the hotel and the grounds, monsieur, but I cannot peek through their keyholes. Please understand, the manager is always after me!” he protested, seeing the look on the gentleman’s face. “To say nothing of the large gentleman, should he catch me! I am afraid. You should understand,” he said slyly, or matter-of-factly, the gentleman could no longer tell.
The busboy caught the thrown coin in one hand and smiled, although to the gentleman it looked more like he sneered, just as it seemed to him that all men who looked at him directly did, these days.
9
It was precisely the sort of gala, lavish, festive ball that had started a revolution. Now, of course, some of those who’d been servants a generation before were dancing in silks and satins, while some of those lucky few who hadn’t been forcibly separated from their titled heads were covetously watching from the shadows or the servants’ quarters, so all was well and egalitarian and comme it faut again.
“Democracy in France does not seem so dissimilar to democracy under the old regime,” Arden Lyons commented to the Viscount Hazelton. “…except for the powdered wigs,” he corrected himself thoughtfully, “which are vanished, because I suppose they were a mark of decadence. But the servants look as underfed as they might have before the glorious revolution for all that they’ve earned the right to call their employers ‘brothers,’ though not aloud in company, I suspect.”
“Cynicism becomes you,” Julian answered idly. “That must be why you never leave it off—actually, now that I think on it, I’ve never seen you wholly enthusiastic about anything. Except that”—he looked a pointed glance across the room before he smiled into his glass of champagne as he drained it—“and I can scarcely blame you.”
Arden frowned, but didn’t look to the lady Julian indicated as he stared through his glass.
“So apparent as that?” he asked, troubled.
“Only to me, my dear mountain. To anyone else I imagine it seemed as though you merely noted her. But I saw your lids open that extra fraction when you greeted her, and saw the ferocious glint in your eyes revealed. Such passion, my friend—I’m amazed at you. But why don’t you want her to see even that paltry salute? She’s magnificent tonight and deserves much more. That new gown has created a new woman, or is that all there is to it? She’s looked to you often tonight. I wonder where she looked last night.” He grinned at his friend’s impassivity before he went on. “Whatever. She glows, Arden. You were right. But then, I believe you could find a diamond in a coal heap.”
“I wish she’d remained in one, or at least in the nearest representation of one—one of those sad black old rags she was used to favor. You forget, my rash youth, that the Deemses wouldn’t be best pleased to see Your Devoted slavering over dear Cee-cee’s companion. So the lady will just have to appear to be wearing sackcloth and ashes as far as I’m concerned tonight. My eyes will not widen enough to let in a slit of light again until darling Cecily dances into my line of sight. Ah, there she is. Behold me enraptured,” Arden said as he put down his own glass and greeted Cecily as she emerged from a dancing square.
He had to pass right by Mrs. Devlin, where she stood by the wall, to reach the little blond girl, and he did so without so much as a glance to the widow, though it was like trying to drag his eyes away from the sunrise in order to look at his shoes. She was everything he had dreamed she could be when he’d first seen her. And she was not even gotten up in highest style or her best new frock.
She wore the yew-green one, for a chaperone couldn’t appear to be trying to outshine her charge. It was a dense color, the green of mosses and certain deep-woods ferns. It wasn’t half so low in front as most of the other gowns to be seen at the ball, even though, since it was stylish and French, it exposed the top of each high, pointed breast so that an observant gentleman could see how they rose from her slight rib cage to tempt the fabric of her gown to an indiscretion and the observant gentleman to far more. The green gown clung to her waist, though it had none, being belted below those impudent breasts, just as it then flowed down her rounded hips and outlined her long legs. But it was a discreet hue and exceedingly ladylike, unlike those more fanciful gowns worn by luckier females who didn’t have to work for their livings, or if they did, then worked (even though their protectors wouldn’t have cared for the word) at exactly what their gowns implied, with their bright colors and scant necklines.
Even Cecily Deems, who was always done up as a positive paragon of virginity, wore her white gown with iridescent sequins upon it so low at her bosom that her thoughtful maid had brushed some spangles across the expanse of bare skin she displayed, so as to give the lie, or tease at the truth of all the available flesh a gentleman saw. But the white flesh of the little breasts bobbling above the sequined gown only made Arden think a great many basically decent iridescent fish had died in vain as he bowed over the little white hand. But then, his eye had been ravished by subtly golden skin that glowed—Julian had the right of it—glowed like a flush of sunset over a yew-green gown.
Cecily’s hair was a wild French fantasy, all bows and curls and random spangles and ribbon-wrapped flowers amidst the flax, so that the gentlemen might know it was a very young girl who’d put on a giddy show. But even as he complimented the display again, as he’d done when he’d first shown her into her carriage to come here, Arden remembered the more sober style her companion had worn, only enlivened this night, as he’d noted immediately, by allowing the mass of it to depend in inky curls from high on the back of her proud head, above the swept-up, brushed-smooth nape that he’d longed to brush with his lips. He yearned to look back at Mrs. Devlin in her new green gown and golden-skinned splendor tonight, even as he took the pastel Cecily into his clasp for the waltz she’d promised him, but brave as he was, he dared not. He’d too much to lose, and being a cannier man than the ill-fated Orpheus, he thought, he dared not glance back to the lady he wanted so intensely lest he lose her forever. He would wait. He could endure. He was, after all, very good at that. But he’d not forget.
He’d walked right past her. She didn’t expect that he’d have stopped to chat, not really, Francesca thought as she turned away as though she’d seen something immensely interesting on the hem of her gown. He’d greeted her at the hotel, and shown her into his coach with Cee-Cee and the others, and then not directed another word to her as they’d ridden to Paris. And now that they’d arrived, when the music was struck up he’d walked right past her to select his partner, with not a word of notice or remembrance of the night before.
But she was, after all, a servant, she remembered. He might have grappled with her in the pantry as soon as embraced her in the cool darkness. With all his gentle kindness, there was really, after all, she thought, staring ahead and trying to pretend she’d smiled at someone who’d been standing behind him, little difference between what had happened between them last night, however profound it had been for her, and a pinch and a tickle or whatever a gent could get from the
downstairs maid. Servants were fair game to the gentlemen, and the pleasure they managed to take from them in passing was as soon forgotten as the ease of the getting of it. And it had been easy for him, she thought in disgust, for no scullery wench could have yielded more easily. Or, she thought in shame at herself, could have wanted to yield more.
He’d comforted her and then disturbed her, but both things had given her pleasure. She’d found that his soft words had eased her mind even as his embrace had not. For she’d become aware that the strong mouth could be as gentle as the words that had issued from it, and far more than a shoulder to lean on, the long body had communicated a world of sensation as its taut, tightly muscled length was pressed to her. But there’d been no force used save for desire, because he’d held her close with great care and no hint of his complete capture of her, and the second she’d thought to hesitate, she’d found herself free.
Still, she’d gone to sleep last night entirely captivated by him. Everything about him enchanted her—his strength, his control of it, his eyes, now intent, now full of understanding, even his scent had intoxicated her, she’d begun to imagine that perhaps some great good turn of luck of the sort her father had always believed in, which she’d always dismissed as foolishness, had finally found her. Perhaps, she’d thought, she’d found herself a mate—for her soul and her body and her life. Because she’d never doubted his intelligence and had come slowly to learn of his compassion, and had begun to dare to believe in his honor, against all rational evidence, against all her doubts. But now she knew that whatever else he had, he’d no honor at all, at least, none in his dealings with females. There were, she understood, a great many gentlemen who didn’t consider females as quite human, and servants, of course, as not even precisely animate beings.
