by Mia Marlowe
Westfall took one of the rear chairs in His Grace’s box where he could sit in darkness and watch Lady Nora the entire time with no one the wiser. As lively as quicksilver, her expressions mirrored the frequently changing mood of the music.
He’d hoped that his memory of her was exaggerated, that he’d somehow inflated the lady’s charms. Now that he saw her again, he realized the image he carried in his head of Nora Claremont was woefully inadequate.
He was captivated afresh.
Each time she leaned to whisper to her patron, Westfall’s chest heated. He crossed his arms over it to keep his heart from boiling out.
While he writhed in hopeless longing for Lady Nora, he also wallowed in self-loathing. He’d never thought himself the shallow sort who’d be so undone by a woman’s face and figure. If he kept this up, he’d be no earthly good to anyone.
But when he’d invaded her mind briefly and heard her heart’s cry, he had been touched by her raw pain. He’d known his own share of that emotion after his family had abandoned him to Bedlam. It made him tender toward others who hurt in silence. Nora clasped her grief so firmly that no one could slip so much as a piece of parchment between her and her sorrow. So powerful it was, he was amazed that she was a good enough actress not to let a bit of it out where the world could see it.
But equally surprising, the name he’d heard in her mind wasn’t her husband’s. And it wasn’t the father who’d turned her out. It was this mysterious Emilia.
There was more to La Nora than anyone suspected. When Westfall had glimpsed into her mind, a connection between them had been formed, the likes of which he’d never experienced before. He was broadsided by the force of these unexpected feelings. He could either retreat from them in disgrace or forge ahead and try to make sense of them.
At least, that’s what his daft lovesick side tried to tell himself.
His stern side, the part of him that struggled to present a sane face to the world, reminded him that she was little better than a trollop who sold herself to the highest bidder. A man who had doings with such had best look to his wallet, never mind the havoc she’d wreak in his heart.
But when she rose toward the end of the first act and left Lord Albemarle’s box, Westfall followed suit. He told himself he was just on the Order’s business, but that was a lie.
He ached to speak with her again.
He waited at the head of the stairs on his side of the auditorium until he saw her on the landing below. Then he hurried down the steps, tracking her movement as she glided through the grand foyer and into one of the chambers along the side of the room.
Without slowing his pace, he followed her in.
He found her standing before a looking glass, dabbing her eyes with a handkerchief. Her nose was slightly red, as if she’d been crying or at least fighting tears. Part of him wanted to comfort her and the other part remembered he was there on the Order’s business. He ought to lower his shield now while she was vulnerable, but he couldn’t make himself do it.
It smacked too much of a violation to invade her mind when she wasn’t aware he was even there. Then she saw him behind her in the mirror’s reflection.
“Oh! Lord Westfall,” she exclaimed. “You startled me. You must be lost. This is the ladies’ retiring room.”
“I’m not lost.” He knew exactly where he was. He was with her and for reasons he couldn’t fathom, very little else mattered.
“It won’t do for you to be found in here. You should leave quickly, before the end of the act. The stampede of ladies will begin then and if you’re caught alone with me, Lord Albemarle won’t like it one bit.”
Westfall could not have cared less what Albemarle liked, but he wondered if she was afraid of her patron’s wrath. He was not by nature a violent man, but if the baron threatened her in any way, he’d be pleased to do the man some serious damage.
“I checked the program. There are two more musical numbers before the end of the act,” he said. “The way Herr Beethoven can stretch a few phrases into thirty minutes, we aren’t in danger of being interrupted soon.”
“Well, I’d better get back in any case. Lord Albemarle will be wondering where I am.”
“Why did you leave in the first place?”
“I don’t know.” Her eyes swam as she dabbed at them with her handkerchief. “I suppose it’s because the story of Fidelio is so sad. I mean, the heroine isn’t even sure her husband is still alive, but she won’t give up. Not until she exhausts every possibility. And a woman would have to be more than a little desperate to pose as a man so she could search that horrible prison for her lost husband.”
“But you would do the same if it would return your husband to you,” he said quietly. He sensed love for the dead man, still simmering inside her. She might be a courtesan, but she knew what real love was. That much was certain. “Wouldn’t you?”
She blinked at him in surprise and frowned. “That is none of your business.” Then she composed her features, offering him a mask-like smile. It was as if she were a marionette whose job was to please, and her puppet master had just jerked her strings. He hated that she felt she had to smile at him when he knew she was still sad inside.
“Forgive me, Lord Westfall. Sometimes music…strikes me in a place where I have no protection, and I have to go away and weep for a bit.”
“And I interrupted your weeping. I am the one who should ask forgiveness.” He took a step back and folded his hands before him. “Pray, do not mind me. I will be happy to wait until you are finished crying.”
She made a noise that sounded suspiciously like a cross between a snort and laugh. “I fear the moment for weeping is past. I cannot call back my tears simply to oblige you. They wouldn’t be real.”
“Why not weep in any case, if it will help? After all, you fawn on Albemarle and pretend to be amused by him when it’s not real.”
Her frown was back with a vengeance. “What I do with his lordship is no concern of yours.”
“Yes, it is. I don’t want it to be, but it is very much my concern. In fact, I’m quite concerned about it.” Without realizing he did so, Westfall moved toward her. She matched him step for step, only going backward, until she was stopped by the mirror at her spine. He surprised himself by lifting a hand and stroking her cheek.
He feared her skin wouldn’t be as soft as he’d imagined, but he was wrong. She was like silk, the most supple kind. He had no words to describe how her skin felt or how he felt while he stroked her, only that it was a moment bathed in magic. Nora was beyond anything in his experience. She trembled under his touch, but she didn’t seem afraid.
Westfall lowered his shield a bit to make sure. If he were scaring her, he’d back away immediately. But as soon as her mind invaded his, he realized she was trembling because she wanted him to touch her.
Her disjointed thoughts and feelings washed over him. She was curious, and about him, no less. Needy and, at the same time, puzzled by her need. Trying to hide, always trying to hide her deeper self, but he caught glimpses of it between the other random ideas zipping through her brain. Her lively intellect spawned them so quickly, he was hard pressed to get a net around one.
Then finally one coherent thought smacked him between the eyes.
Why doesn’t he kiss me?
“To be honest, I’m not sure how,” he blurted out before he remembered that other people didn’t enjoy having him continue a conversation that they had started in their thoughts. He raised his mental shield and hunkered behind it.
“Not sure how to do what? What are you talking about?”
“I’ve never kissed a woman. Never let myself get close enough to be tempted.” Before he’d learned to shield his mind, the things rolling about in a woman’s head had been enough to warn him away. He always knew exactly what they thought of the men in their lives. His Aunt Beatrice, for example, had nothing kind to think about his Uncle Horace and yet she had turned a pleasant face to him every day.
Smiling on
the outside, despising on the inside. Westfall couldn’t bear for a woman to do that to him.
Nora tipped her head to one side. “How did we get on the subject of kissing?”
“You brought it up.”
“I most certainly did not,” she said indignantly.
Oh. Right. She’d only thought it. His lack of experience with women, coupled with his inconvenient psychic gift, left him hopelessly adrift. “Well, I suppose you’re correct. Talking about kissing is not what you had in mind in any case.”
“I beg your pardon.”
“Why? You’ve done nothing that requires apology.”
“No, I mean… I’m not…oh, botheration,” she said with a shake of her head that made the gems tucked into her coiffure catch the candlelight and send tiny prisms dancing around her. “You are a very confusing man, Lord Westfall.”
“Pierce. My name is Pierce.”
He didn’t know why he said that. It always made him feel odd when Vesta LaMotte called him Pierce. He didn’t think he was close enough to anyone for them to use his given name.
But to his surprise, he wished Nora would call him Pierce instead of his title. If she did, it might mean that she knew who he really was—his faults, his struggles, his weakness—and in spite of everything, could still bear his company.
“No, I’m not confusing,” he corrected. “I’m confused. A very confused man most of the time, but not at this moment. I know exactly what I want.”
He wanted to kiss her. More than he wanted to serve the Order. More than he wished the voices in his head could be permanently silenced. More than he wanted to keep breathing. More than—
To hell with wishing or wanting, he needed to kiss this woman.
So he leaned in, meaning to brush his lips on hers, but something stopped him halfway to his goal. His gaze swept over her exquisite face.
She was beyond beautiful. She was perfect. He was an unworthy pilgrim about to touch his lips to a shrine.
So instead of kissing her lips, he pressed his mouth to her cheek. Well, he missed a little. It was more the corner of her mouth actually, in that sweet place where her soft skin gave way to the moist intimacy of her lips.
She tasted of mint and lavender with a hint of apple-ish tartness. It was as if those flavors and scents had become ingrained on her skin and were a part of her uniqueness.
He pulled back to look down at her. She did not run from the retiring room screaming. In fact, her eyelids fluttered closed, her dark lashes resting on those lovely cheekbones. She raised herself a little on tiptoe.
My God, she wants me to kiss her. Really kiss her.
Even more surprisingly, he’d been able to divine that amazing piece of intelligence without lowering his shield and letting her thoughts swamp him again. He bent to cover her mouth with his.
The kiss began as a gentle exploration. An acknowledgment.
I am I and you are you and we are moving tentatively toward us.
Then it turned into a quest. His mental shield melted away.
Yes, you are Other and yet I allow you in.
Know me. I need you to.
Discover me. No one else has.
Find yourself in me. I will never let you be lost again.
Were those his thoughts or hers? He always told himself so long as he could distinguish between his own ideas and the ones rattling around in the heads of others, he was sane. Now he wasn’t quite sure.
Surprisingly enough, with his lips on hers, it didn’t matter so much if he couldn’t tell whose thoughts he was thinking. And it didn’t matter that Nora belonged to another man. For this glorious slice of a moment, she was his.
What was life but a string of moments, in any case, some shining more than others? For these glittering heartbeats, he held the incomparable La Nora and—wonder of wonders!—she held him.
The whole world went wet and pliant and liquid while he heated and hardened and gathered her closer than his next breath.
Kissing was really quite something once one got the hang of it.
In some ways, a kiss is far more intimate than the ultimate act of love. It is a shared breath. We inhabit each other’s bodies. Taking another’s essence in with each breath, letting your own go with each exhale. It means trusting someone enough to allow them to carry a bit of you inside them. It is a joining of souls.
Why does it not break our hearts to take such chances?
~from the secret journal of Lady Nora Claremont
Chapter Six
He missed.
Lord Westfall hadn’t kissed her full on the mouth. Then, when she looked up into his steely gray eyes, she realized he’d done exactly as he’d intended.
He wanted to give her a kiss, not take one from her. It was a fine distinction, but it meant something to Nora.
She hadn’t met a man like that in years.
Not since Lewis…
She tried to shove the memory of her dead husband away but, wavering and indistinct, he appeared at the edge of her vision. If she looked in that direction, she knew from sad experience that he’d only vanish. She closed her eyes so she wouldn’t be tempted.
Westfall seemed to take it as an invitation and covered her mouth with his warm lips.
That was fine with her. She hadn’t been well and truly kissed in ages. Of course, if this was really Lord Westfall’s first kiss, she wasn’t likely to be well kissed. Besides, no man ever kissed a courtesan truly. There were always layers of deception on both sides.
Let Lewis’s ghost watch if he liked. It would serve him right for leaving her.
She knew it wasn’t logical to blame her husband for being killed in the king’s service. Most widows honored the memory of their fallen heroes. If anyone mentioned Lewis to her, and that happened very rarely nowadays, she would claim she was proud of his sacrifice.
The more often a lie was repeated, the more easily it dropped from one’s lips.
It had been more than five years, and she was still furious with him for dying and leaving her desolate. She’d given up everything for him—her home, her family, her place in the world. She’d lavished all she was on him. How could he die and make her go on breathing without him?
She knew it was petty and irrational of her to feel that way. Lewis hadn’t intended to leave her in order to be of service to the Crown and he certainly hadn’t meant to die. But her feelings on the subject resisted all efforts to mold them into something society would accept.
Not that they accepted anything about her.
To top it off, she also felt guilty about being angry with Lewis. So she shoved those emotions down into a tight little part of her heart where no one ever ventured. Then she poked and prodded at her shadowy husband until he disappeared from the edge of her mind.
Lord Westfall was quickly filling up the rest of the available space. He made her breath hitch and her chest tighten.
Nora was a connoisseur of the kiss. An expert, even though it had been a long while since she’d done it. Yet this man’s halting attempts at kissing plucked at a deep place inside her. His mouth on hers was gentle. Sweet.
He gave her a long kiss of unhurried adoration.
That’s ridiculous. He doesn’t adore me. It’s the aura of La Nora that draws men in. The mystique of the courtesan. I know what they are and what they want. I’m safe in a way the respectable women in their lives aren’t.
Then Westfall’s kiss suddenly turned decidedly unsafe. His tongue swept in with full assurance that she wanted him to, and surprisingly enough, she did. It was as if he sensed what she needed before she had the chance to know herself.
Bruise me. I don’t care. I don’t deserve easy.
He brutalized her mouth for a moment with just enough raw aggression to make a drumbeat begin between her thighs. She ached over her emptiness.
Then his kiss turned suddenly soft. Unbearably gentle. Tears pressed the backs of her eyes, but she kept them squeezed shut.
Oh, God, his kiss is like grace drippin
g from heaven.
Everything she needed and shouldn’t have. Didn’t merit. Unqualified favor. She was coated with it. His mouth caressed her, beguiled her. Little by little, the wall she’d erected around herself began to crumble.
He was seeking the deep Nora, the one she kept hidden. Looking for a way inside her secret self, a place she never allowed anyone to roam.
If this is truly the man’s first kiss, I’m lost.
Nora wedged her arms between them and flattened both palms on his chest. He broke off their kiss before she could give him a push. Again, he’d anticipated her need.
Lord Westfall touched her cheek. It was wet.
“If you’re ready to weep now, I can wait until you’re finished to kiss you again.”
Nora pulled away from him and swiped her eyes. She was probably smearing the paint she’d used to enhance them, but she didn’t care. Westfall’s kiss had made her cry. No one had ever done that to her. Not even Lewis.
Who was this man?
“You will not be kissing me again,” Nora said firmly. The last thing she needed was someone who made her cry. She went to great pains not to feel that much. She pushed past him to leave just as Lady Waldgren was entering, followed by her circle of cronies and sycophants. The despicable old gossip gave Nora the fisheye, then her mouth fell open when she discovered Westfall, standing bold as brass in the midst of the feminine retreat.
“Lord Westfall! What on earth are you doing here?” she screeched. “If you insist on invading the ladies’ retiring room that may be all it takes to convince your poor family to have you committed again.”
Committed?
The word rolled around Nora’s brain as she threaded her way through the milling crowd in the theater’s grand foyer. Albemarle was holding court in one corner of the great room, surrounded by an assemblage of gentlemen who were listening to him with avid attention. When he set himself to charm, no one was better than Benedick. Whatever he wanted from this group, she was sure he would get.
