Seven Minutes in Heaven

by Eloisa James

  “I am no man’s,” she said with a shake of her head.

  “You were your husband’s,” he said, absolutely certain of that. He knew without a shadow of a doubt that Eugenia had given herself heart and soul.

  Blasted Snowe.

  He was starting to dislike the fellow, no matter how dead he was.

  “I was his, and he was mine,” she said with a lopsided smile.

  “Just like a fairy tale,” he answered, not even trying to disguise the growl in his voice.

  “Didn’t you mean to offer me a glass of wine from that excellent hamper?” Eugenia asked.

  He bent over and pulled open the hamper. “Tell me about him.” He drew out a bottle of wine. “Was he as pretty as you are?”

  “Far more so,” Eugenia said, her eyes going a bit dreamy. “He was like Adonis. Every debutante longed to catch his eye.”

  “But he chose you?”

  “We danced all night.”

  “That is like a fairy tale.” He handed her a glass of wine.

  She took a sip. “In the fairy stories, the prince doesn’t die saving the princess.”

  Ward choked on his wine. “The boating accident?”

  “I was drowning and he saved me,” she said, lifting her glass in a clear salute to her husband.

  The wine’s flowery fragrance floated into the carriage. Ward watched her throat working as she swallowed. “Can you tell me what happened?”

  She twisted up one shoulder. “The sailboat capsized; I didn’t know how to swim. It was so foolish! We were within sight of the shore, but as it turned out, it is possible to drown very close to land.”

  The only response Ward could think of was a curse, so he kept silent.

  “All these years later, I’ve forgiven myself for surviving, but at the time it was unbearable. I watched him go under and never come up again.”

  “He would never have chosen differently,” Ward said, keeping it matter-of-fact. He finished his wine, took her glass, and placed them both in the basket.

  Her smile was rueful. “I do remind myself of that.”

  The carriage rocked under them, and she shook her head with a sudden impatient gesture. “Why are we discussing such a dismal subject?”

  “We are tracing the steps of a particular dance,” Ward said, standing for a moment in the swaying carriage before he sat down beside her. So closely that his leg touched hers.

  “A dance?” she asked.

  “A dance.” His lips brushed the curl of her ear. She smelled of berries again, not sweet or insipid, but something wilder than flowers, with a bite.

  She drew away, and the coolness in her eyes insisted that she didn’t welcome his kiss or the press of his thigh.

  But he was learning to read her. To understand her.

  When Mrs. Eugenia Snowe felt threatened, she drew her ladylike guise around herself like chain mail.

  “In this particular movement of the dance, I am offering myself,” he said. “A gift, though I will admit to thinking that diamonds would look lovely here.”

  When Ward’s callused finger touched the hollow at the base of Eugenia’s neck, she felt warm all over, as if he radiated heat. The neck . . . such an innocuous place. But when Ward’s fingers slid slowly, slowly under her ear, his eyes intent on her face, she could feel his touch in all her most sensitive places.

  His hand curled around the back of her neck as he watched her for permission. She couldn’t remember desire like this, as if liquid fire ran over her skin. No, that was wrong, she must have felt this with Andrew.

  It was a physical reaction, a mating response . . .

  “I loved my husband,” she heard herself say.

  The caressing fingers paused and Ward nodded, eyes respectful. “I’m certain he was a good man, Eugenia.”

  “He was a great man,” she said fiercely. “He was going to change things in the House of Lords. He was—he would have done so much.”

  Sweet hunger thrummed through her so strongly she could scarcely believe she had waited seven years to feel this again.

  “May I kiss you?” Ward asked.

  “Yes.” Her head turned to the perfect angle for his kiss, making it clear to him, but also to herself. She was going to do this thing, this . . .

  This step away from Andrew. This step away from death and into life. It was only a small step, but she knew that it would change everything.

  She would stop hiding in her office. She would attend balls and the theater—she used to love plays—and someday a man would come along who had Andrew’s elegant charm and joie de vivre.

  Not quite yet, though. She would enjoy herself first, learning to live in the world and not in the cloister that was Snowe’s Registry.

  As Ward’s lips touched hers, her body shuddered, as if she were waking from a seven-year sleep. She raised her arms and slid them around his neck.

  She was no longer married. Or a virgin. Or young. Perhaps she should be clear about the future, though. She didn’t want to hurt him, because Edward Reeve may be one of the strongest, toughest men she’d ever met, but she had the idea he was capable of being hurt.

  She drew back just as he was about to deepen the kiss and cradled the strong planes of his face with her hands. “Ward,” she whispered.

  Intelligent eyes, ferocious and desirous. “Eugenia,” he replied. Her voice throbbed with desire, but his was calm.

  She took a deep breath. She had learned while running Snowe’s that clarity was important. “I may always be in love with Andrew. I am not ready to marry again and I wouldn’t want you to think of me in that light.”

  “I understand,” Ward said. He put a hand over hers, braced on the seat between them. “We are considering courtesies that can be exchanged between friends, Eugenia.”

  Her gaze darted down to their ungloved hands. His hand dwarfed her slim fingers.

  “Friends,” she said, amused by that evasion.

  “Between good friends, any number of intimacies might take place, never to be mentioned in public or in company.”

  Her hand moved under his like a rescued baby robin fallen from a nest. Even so, he bent toward her slowly, allowing her to turn away if she wished.

  She did not wish. In fact, Eugenia held her breath until Ward’s lips brushed hers, and her mouth slipped open on a sigh. For a moment, they merely breathed each other’s air, and then his hand curled around her fingers and the other pulled her toward him, and his tongue slid into her mouth.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Eugenia Snowe was not a reckless woman. She had always lived within clearly defined boundaries, relishing rather than rebelling against the rules of society her father chose to ignore.

  But now, in a dark carriage with a man who had abducted her, a rash sense of abandonment welled up in her, spilling to the ends of her fingers.

  She wanted Ward Reeve with every fiber of her being. She wanted his burly body, and the burning hunger in his eyes, and the lock of untidy hair that had fallen over his eyes.

  He was kissing her with a primal hunger that brought her body to life. And yet she felt like laughing.

  That was new; she didn’t remember laughing when Andrew kissed her. Even as she leaned closer, melting against Ward, curling an arm around his neck, she realized why.

  This was not making love.

  This was making fun.

  The delight, exhilaration, whatever it was, went straight to her head. She opened her mouth wider and forgot everything except for the sensual touch of Ward’s tongue, the firm clasp of his hand at the back of her head.

  Desire was rougher than she remembered, and yet that unfamiliar joy kept bubbling up along with it.

  At length, she couldn’t suppress it any longer, and a gasp of laughter broke from her. He murmured something that she didn’t understand.

  She tilted her head so that she could lick the pulsing vein of his neck as her hands moved to his powerful shoulders. “Did you just lick me?” His voice was a surprised growl.
<
br />   “Mmmm,” she said, licking him again. “I should think that licking is a greeting in some part of the world . . . China, perhaps?”

  A warm tongue ran over the curve of her ear. “In a distant part of the world, two people meet each other by . . . this?” His touch sent a wave of heat straight between her legs.

  “Perhaps it isn’t all that common,” she murmured.

  The carriage swayed and the impetus drove his body against hers. He ran his fingers through her curls and gently tugged her head back. “I reckon kisses are greetings in some part of the world . . . Russia, perhaps.”

  She brushed his lips with hers. “This sort of kiss?”

  He shook his head. “Deeper, wench.”

  “I’m not a wen—” But he crushed her lips between his, raw desire stealing away her words and giving her something else in return.

  They kissed until her head was spinning, a warning that her common sense was losing a battle with longing.

  “Ward.” It was a gasp, a song, a prayer.

  He hummed deep in his throat, and his lips slid across her cheekbone. Under his caress, the planes and angles of her face felt new, as if they were being remade by his touch. By the very way he was exploring her, memorizing her.

  Eugenia pulled back; it was that or slide down on the seat and offer her breasts to Ward’s mouth. His face was defined by a strong jaw and eyebrows that peaked in just the right spot to emphasize his cheekbones.

  In short, he was devastatingly beautiful. Masculine, but beautiful.

  “What may be decent in China or in Russia is not decent in a carriage traveling to Oxfordshire,” she managed. Had she just promised to be indecent with him at a later time . . . out of the carriage?

  His wanton grin confirmed that she had.

  “Just a minute,” she said hastily.

  “I would wait a lifetime for you, Eugenia.”

  She rolled her eyes. “Whatever happens between us, I would rather be spared a flood of empty gallantry.”

  “Disturbingly, I didn’t mean it as an empty compliment.”

  She put a hand to his chest and gently pushed him away. Her hair had fallen over her shoulders and her lips felt bee-stung. She began bundling up her hair and sticking hairpins in at random.

  She didn’t dare look at his face because if that vivid hunger was still in his eyes, she would succumb. Again.

  When her hair was more or less secured and her heart had settled back to its normal rhythm, she said, still not meeting his eyes, “Before we reach Fawkes House, I would like to hear how the children are. Were they affected by Miss Midge’s departure?”

  Ward’s voice was deep and rough, but he answered. “Otis showed no sign of noticing. He has spent most of the week working on his mousetrap.”

  “Is your house infested by mice?”

  “I expect so. It’s an old house, after all.”

  “You would know. Mice are not silent companions,” Eugenia said. “They chatter and run in the walls; they endlessly plague the kitchen staff; they will eat the candles if they’re left out.”

  “A mouse will eat a candle?”

  She nodded. “As will a rat.”

  “The only rat in our house is Jarvis, Otis’s pet.”

  Eugenia gave a shudder. “I hate rats.”

  “It’s hard to believe, but I have grown inordinately fond of Jarvis.”

  “You haven’t!”

  “I have,” Ward said, the corner of his mouth kicking up.

  Eugenia shuddered again, involuntarily.

  “I understand a lady’s hesitation to be around small beasties, but you seem particularly vehement.”

  “I grew up in a house infested by rats.”

  Ward absorbed that statement with shock. He had pictured Eugenia as a little girl with rosy curls and porcelain skin and a few freckles on the end of her nose. That child . . . grew up in a house with rats?

  He kept forgetting that she wasn’t born into the gentry. Still, he’d assumed she’d grown up on the outskirts of society. The daughter of a vicar, perhaps.

  A rat infestation implied a household fallen far below the gentry.

  He suddenly realized he was scowling ferociously. “I don’t like to think of you in such conditions.” Had she ever been hungry? The thought bit into his gut like acid.

  “I prefer not to remember the details myself.” Her voice had the perfect cadence of a lady’s, but that was part of her mask, the role she had assumed. “I was bitten at the age of eight.”

  The acid spread through his veins. “Did you contact rat-bite fever?”

  She nodded.

  “It’s often fatal.” He was starting to understand her. As a child, all her energy, fierce intelligence, pure joy for life must have focused on escaping her circumstances. No wonder she hungered for the life of a lady.

  “I came very close to dying,” Eugenia said. “My stepmother—whom I adore—later told me that she learned how to pray during my illness.”

  Ward raked his fingers through his hair. Many houses in England were infested with rats. It was a fact of life.

  The little whiskered face of Otis’s best friend leapt into Ward’s mind. Whether she wanted to or not, Eugenia was about to meet a rat.

  “How far is it to your house?” she asked.

  “Approximately four hours. We’ll be pulling into an inn to change horses in half that time.”

  “Would you mind if I took a nap? This wine has made me terribly sleepy.”

  She was clearly avoiding further intimacies, but he rejected the impulse to persuade her otherwise. He didn’t want to make love to Eugenia Snowe for the first time in a carriage.

  “A good idea,” he said with a nod. “I shall sleep as well.” After all, he didn’t mean to sleep at night.

  Though it wouldn’t be appropriate to leap on his guest the moment he had her over the threshold. He ought to ply her with . . . with flowers or something. He’d be damned if he treated her like a courtesan or a merry widow.

  Her virtue was as spotless as any lady’s; he’d bet his honor on it. Still, she wanted him.

  That was enough to stake his happiness on.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Some two hours later, the carriage drew into the courtyard of the Holy Cheese. He touched Eugenia’s shoulder to wake her. When she sat up, rosy and blinking from her nap, he had to swallow a groan.

  Her hair had fallen from its pins again and her dress was on the verge of displaying her breasts to the open air. She would look like this after making love.

  “Oh,” she said in a sleepy purr. “Have we arrived at the inn?” She pulled her thick hair over one shoulder and started twisting it, the way he imagined women did flax at a spinning wheel.

  “Yes, we need to change the horses,” Ward explained. “I thought you might like to refresh yourself inside. We’ll still be in good time for dinner. And it will give the second carriage a chance to catch up with us.”

  “Where are we?”

  “The Holy Cheese.”

  “The Holy Cheese? ‘Holy’ as in sacred, or ‘holey’ as in full of holes?” Her hands flew around her head until her hair was pinned in place as firmly as shingles to a roof. After her nap, she looked more relaxed, which he liked. Very much.

  “Both,” Ward answered. “They take cheese very seriously in these parts.”

  He pushed open the door and helped her down before the groom could take out that ridiculous mounting block. It was coming on twilight, and the air was fresh and clean as it never was in London.

  “Do you enjoy living in the city year-round?” he asked, taking Eugenia’s arm.

  “I grew up in the country, and I do miss it,” she said. “But Snowe’s is in London, and I find it hard to escape.”

  As soon as they were seated in a snug private parlor, the innkeeper entered, accompanied by a serving man carrying a bowl of fruit and a platter of cheese. “Good evening, madam, sir.”

  Before his eyes, Eugenia, who had been smiling in a
fashion that made Ward want to snatch her into his lap, straightened her back and transformed into a perfect impersonation of a lady.

  The innkeeper responded to her airs and graces as if she were an actual duchess, bowing and scraping and generally making an obsequious ass of himself as Ward looked on.

  Eugenia’s uncle was with the Thames River Police; she could not have come from the gentry, let alone the aristocracy. And yet she would effortlessly fit into one of his father’s dinner parties.

  “Governesses teach their charges far more than letters and sums, don’t they?” Ward asked, following his train of thought after the innkeeper left. “After all, children come into the world as little savages. I know I did.”

  “Left to their own devices, yes,” Eugenia agreed. “Lizzie and Otis seem to be in a class of their own.” She twinkled at him. “Perhaps naughtiness runs in the family.”

  “Among other crimes, I refused to sleep the night in my own bed—as do my siblings, by the way. Apparently, I told endless stories and bored everyone around me. I also sucked my thumb, or so my stepmother tells me; I don’t remember that.”

  She laughed. “There’s nothing unusual about that.”

  Their eyes caught and his head swam. She was so damn beautiful, and so intoxicating. He wanted to kiss her again.

  He cast around for another subject. “Do you see your family often?”

  Despite himself, his voice was hard. If he ever met her father, he would have words with him about those rats. What kind of man raises a daughter in those conditions?

  “Not often enough,” Eugenia said with a warm smile. “But in fact this unplanned journey has caused me to make up my mind to travel from your house to my father’s and to take at least a week away from Snowe’s. Perhaps longer.” She fiddled with her knife. “Do you know, I had the oddest idea this morning.”

  “What was that?”

  “I might hand over the registry to my assistant, Miss Lloyd-Fantil.”

  Ward looked up from the apple he was peeling. “You would give up control of Snowe’s?”

  “I would like a new challenge,” she said, looking as unruffled as a lady talking of learning a new dance step.