by Kristi Astor
“You gave her five-hundred pounds?”
“If one is very frugal one could live quite a while on five-hundred pounds.”
Max stared at the fire. “Perhaps you would have done better to just shoot me.”
Scully turned slowly and looked anguished. Max felt remorse; he had no right to destroy his friend’s happiness just because he was miserable.
That she had not left completely destitute offered a dram of relief, but where was she hiding? “It seems she would choose anything rather than marry me. I am off to find this Mrs. Porter first light.”
“Mademoiselle, there ez a gentleman below. He will not leave until he speaks to you.”
From where she was using the last of the fading light from the setting sun, Roxana looked up from the worktable. She stitched a ruche on the bodice of a garment ordered by one of Mrs. Porter’s girls. In the end the working girls had driven a hard bargain, but Roxana had agreed to their price if they promised to pay promptly.
Roxana’s first thought was that she wanted to finish the piece before the light was completely gone, but she put down the garment. She often dealt with suppliers and weavers, taking on the ordering of fabric, pins and needles, while Madame Roussard dealt with the clientele. “What gentleman?”
Madame Roussard looked round-eyed. “He say, he ez a duke, mon chere. And he say he knows you are here.”
Roxana’s hands shook, and she could not identify her emotions. Anticipation curled around a feeling suspiciously close to happiness.
She stood and removed the smock that covered her plain green gown and moved closer to her living area. “Send him up, then.”
Max entered the attic and Roxana felt lightheaded. As he cleared the last step, he stooped, missing the sloping roof. His hat in his hand, he walked forward until he could stand upright. Neither she nor any of the women working for her ever needed to bend to clear the eaves. He seemed large and imposing in her female sanctuary.
“Miss Winston,” he said, and she had forgotten how low his voice was and how the timbre vibrated through her.
“Your grace,” she answered as calmly as she could manage. Inside she was in turmoil, but, thankfully, her voice did not betray her.
Madame Roussard hung back on the stairs, waiting.
“Thank you, Madame. You may leave us.”
Madame Roussard nodded and descended the stairs. She would lock up and leave.
Max looked behind him at the empty stairs. “Are you sure that is wise?”
Roxana paused in moving toward the stove. She chose to ignore the jibe. “Would you like tea? I am sorry there is no sugar or milk.”
“Please.”
She could feel his gaze on her, like being watched by a wolf. Max seemed rangier, leaner and harsher. An undercurrent of anger hung in the air and made her jumpy. Had he searched for her only to satisfy his sense of honor? Oh God, she had missed him.
“So you have found me,” she said as she poured water into her teapot and added tea leaves. She also lit the lamp with its precious oil. She could not skimp while he was here.
“Yes,” he answered.
She turned and realized he still wore his caped greatcoat. Was it the same one that he had thrown around her shoulders when she had chased after Breedon in the snow and grown too cold? “May I take your coat and hat?”
He handed her his hat and slid off his greatcoat. He looked around as if he had not even noticed his environment before now. Her heart beat madly as she stood close enough to smell the cold on his skin, the hint of bay rum and just him.
She stood clutching his coat to her, afraid to move yet drawn close as if he were a warm fire in the middle of winter. Her body remembered his touch with every fiber of her being.
His exploration of the room stopped on her iron bed. She had curtained it with heavy velvet to keep the warmth in as she slept, but the curtains were drawn away from the foot to allow the heat from the stove to enter the enclosure.
He turned toward her as if aware of her reluctance to move away. “Roxy?”
She forced herself to draw back and cross the room to one of the work tables, where she laid his greatcoat and placed his hat. “As you can see, this is my workroom. I have four seamstresses who work for me during the day, and of course Madame Roussard provides a face to the world, so no one of consequence knows I am here.”
“I take it you did not want to be found.”
Roxana bit her lip. Did he appreciate anything of her efforts to start her business and make a success of it? She turned and leaned against the work table. “I am glad you found me.”
“I came to take you back home.”
She turned her back to him and leaned her hands on the table. “I am happy here. Well, mostly happy here. I confess to occasional loneliness. I miss my family, but I do not wish to return home.”
“Not there. Not your father’s home. I wanted you to know that my offer is still good.”
He was still talking of marriage? She looked down at the table. “I have no wish to leave here.”
It was a lie, in some ways. At times she wanted to be with him much more than she wanted to be here, struggling to make her business work. But turning over control of her life, mind and body to him, to any man, terrified her.
“Roxana, marry me.”
“I’m a woman in trade, Max. A duke cannot marry a person like me. I won’t give this up. I have worked too hard for it.”
Could they not have closeness without marriage? Many women took lovers and Max was already that in her mind. He was her lover, the man who made her come alive in the night, the man whose touch made her shiver, the man who had woken her to a side of life that offered so much more than she expected.
Max crossed the floor behind her, his footsteps solid thuds on the floor. He reached around her for his coat and hat. “I don’t know why I came here,” he said.
The idea that he would leave so soon, before she had a chance to tell him that he had changed her, had woken her to the joys of pleasure. That she wanted him to stay. That she thought about him every minute that was not filled with work and many times when she sat sewing or listening to the seamstresses gossip or when she lay alone in bed at night. Especially when alone in bed at night.
She turned, caught between him and the table. Her breasts brushed against his chest and Roxana and Max both went still. Under her bodice her breasts tingled, ached. Her blood rushed to her nether regions.
“I do not want you to leave,” she whispered, breaking the charged silence.
He looked down on her, his brown eyes searching.
She put her hand on his chest, then the other hand, and she slid them up to his neck.
“Roxana.” His voice was anguished.
She pushed closer to him. “I want you to stay,” she said with more surety.
“You don’t know what you are saying,” he said. As he looked down at her his breathing quickened and his nostrils flared. He felt the burst of passion too. She knew he did.
“I am a woman grown now. I know what I am saying.”
He winced as if she had struck him.
“I am not quite as naive as I was at your house,” she said urgently. She had grown up and gained confidence in her ability to make her way in the world.
“And that is my fault.”
She heard the heaviness in his words and did not know how to make him see that she did not regard maturity and knowledge as a burden.
Roxana stretched up on her tiptoes, sliding her breasts against his chest. And he kissed her. He kissed her like he was starving, and she was glad the desperation was not all on her side.
She pushed up into him, relishing the feel of his arms around her, his hands against her back, fingers splayed. He held her tight with hunger, but also with a gentleness, as if he meant to treat her like a precious and rare treasure.
She threaded her hands in his hair, feeling the strands curl around her fingers and holding his head down to hers as their tongues swirled in an age
-old dance.
She could barely think; her thoughts became just a jumble of disordered sensations of his solid strength, his probing kiss, the taste of him and his cradling hold. Her body, so long deprived, came alive, quickening and melting. Heat swirled and simmered below her skin and sparks shimmered along her spine.
She wanted more, and she tugged at the knot of his cravat. He yanked it free and the ends dangled. She eased around toward her living space and, pulling the ends of his neck cloth, she tugged him toward her bed.
As if with great reluctance, he ended the kiss, but then nibbled at her lips. “Roxy, we cannot unless. . .”
“Hush,” she murmured. “I know what I want.”
He dug in his heels, and she let loose of his cravat. Instead she backed toward the bed, pulling out the beaded pins that held her bodice closed. As the material loosened and slipped, Max’s gaze dropped to the falling material. As Roxana remembered how she had felt watching Max undress in front of her, she wondered if she could manage to be that brave.
“Christ, you would be wearing that,” he said as if she had played unfairly.
She glanced down at the red silk of her shift. She had forgotten she had worn the nearly sheer undergarment. But as her clothes wore out and the likelihood of her ever wearing her red silk ballgown again faded, she had begun wearing the two silk shifts in the normal course of the week.
Then he had closed the distance between them and lifted her off her feet. He kissed her again, and she could feel his restraint dissolving.
“Are you certain, Roxana?” he asked.
“I am certain. I have missed you so much more than I ever would have thought.”
“Then you will—”
She cut off his words with a finger across his lips. They would have to settle many things, but she did not want that to intrude now. “Not now, Max. Please, not now.”
She told herself that he understood she wanted him in her bed. That she was no longer the semi-innocent young lady of the ton, but a working woman of a different class and station. “If you must talk, talk to me of Christmas trees and such non-sense.”
“Roxana, that night I wanted to calm you.” He stroked the side of her face.
“I know.” She reached for the buttons of his coat. “You did. I was frightened.”
“Odd—you seem fearless.”
She paused for a moment. “I was afraid you’d stop searching before you found me.” She had not realized how much she hoped and yearned for him to find her. She knew he would eventually succeed. She had been counting on him coming to her. “Will you forgive me for being so foolish as to run away?”
“I would forgive you anything,” he said, but he shook her shoulders back and forth as if he would punish her instead. Then he kissed her.
She pushed her dress down and shivered as the cold air of the room encountered her heated skin. Or she shivered because even though he said he would forgive her anything, he made a mocking gesture of punishment. She was not so certain of his reaction when she stood in the way of what he wanted.
Yet, sometime in the last months, as he searched for her and her family’s sparse letters reported his kindness and offers of support, she realized she had slipped over the edge into a commitment of her heart. She might not be able to tell him, because he would expect her to marry him, but she had fallen in love.
Chapter Seventeen
Of everything Max imagined when he found Roxana again, this was the stuff of dreams, not the small hopes he had held. As her plain green gown slipped to the floor and exposed the bright red of her sheer shift, he wondered if he had died and gone to heaven.
But then, heaven probably wasn’t located in the corner of a cold attic workroom above a dressmaker’s shop. He did not want to let her go, for fear she would evaporate into thin air. Yet she felt real to him. Her skin soft and smooth, her body warm and pliant, her kiss as welcoming as any man could want.
Roxana had changed into a woman in the time they had been apart, and the thought broke his heart, yet he knew it only made him want her more. He could make love to her without restraint. Before, he had been constrained by her innocence and the fact that she needed instruction. Still, his thought was to treat her with reverence. And this time, they would be married. He could not bear the thought of it any other way. If she had any fears that what had gone on in the last year deterred him in any way, he would set her mind at ease. They were meant to be together, even if she had not realized it. But she must know it now.
He kissed her and allowed his emotions free rein. His heart galloped and his blood coursed through his body, journeying to his lower half. He leaned down and caught her legs under her knees, lifted her and carried her across the room to the bed.
The cold sheets jarred him as he placed her on the bed. He would take her out of this place and show her that she deserved to be pampered and surrounded by comforts. He only stripped off his coat and waistcoat and dumped his Hussar boots before he slid in beside her. She caught him to her, and he found her lips again.
As he ran his hand over her ribs, he suspected she might have lost weight, weight she did not have to lose.
“Have you been eating?” he asked.
“Hush,” she said with a slight laugh. She trailed her hand down his front to find the buttons of his falls.
His heart pounded and he slid his hands over her curves. For the next few minutes he was lost in the feel of her, and their clothes were pushed off in frenzied haste. He tried to pause to be certain, but she writhed under him, urging him with her kisses and eager touches.
He had so much to say to her and so much they needed to settle, but he had wanted her too long, wanted her with an aching hollowness since the morning after she had crawled into his bed. In the back of his mind was the fear that he would be cut off before he could complete this union with her. When he tried to speak, she would press her mouth to his, touch her tongue to his lips, sigh into him.
And he had one burning thing he needed to tell her, that she needed to know as he nestled between her legs, prodding her woman’s core with his male member. She needed to know how he felt before he made them one in body, because for him it would be more than just a physical union.
He held the reins of his urgency. He needed to make her understand. He cupped her face and stroked her hair back, holding her down, impeding her efforts to keep their mouths locked together in one endless kiss. “Roxana.”
Her blue eyes opened and she looked sultry and dazed all together. She made a slight moan of protest and shifted against him. The rush of heat nearly overwhelmed him. His hips rocked forward, probing that warm wet entrance to heaven.
For a second all he could think of was the feel of her skin against his, the taste of her, her scent. “I love you,” he whispered, and then again louder. “I love you more than anything.”
He eased his hips forward and encountered the resistance of her body.
He reached to check his position, not fully comprehending the impediment.
A look of determination crossed her face. Roxana slid her legs up and folded them across his hips and added pressure. Then with a jerk, as if he had broken through a barrier, he slid inside her. Her body gloved him like a tight sheath. She whimpered and shuttered her eyes.
That he had hurt her tore at his heart. He had thought she had gained experience to match her confidence. He had accepted that she was no longer chaste in his mind, had thought that was one reason she did not want to talk, but his every thought was shouting that she had been a virgin. “Sweetheart, look to me.”
She blinked her eyes open. They were glassy and tear filled.
He shuddered. Holding his desire in check made him quake. “I’m sorry. I’ve hurt you.” His voice broke. He kissed her cheek. “I’ll stop.”
He said the words, but he did not know where he would find the strength to withdraw, and she needed to loosen her legs. His mind swirled in confusion. He reached up to pull her leg away from his backside.
Instead she slowly rotated her hips and a rush of heat burned through him. She held his gaze. Her eyes were like sapphires, glittering in the low light from the single lamp.
“I am given to understand that it won’t hurt again.” Her voice was breathy, yet sure. “Please, I want you. I have wanted you forever.”
He heard “forever,” and that was all he needed. He loved her forever too. And she was his in every possible way. He began that slow slide in and out, watching her for any indication that she was in pain. When she met his thrusts with eager moans, the thread of his control snapped. Then he was lost in the blue of her eyes, the warm heat of her compliant body, the magic of her sighs.
The butler leaned in the London drawing-room door way. “Should I hold dinner longer, your grace?”
“You have not heard from the duke?” asked Fanny.
“No, your grace,” answered the butler.
“This is not like him,” she muttered. “Very well, serve dinner. If the duke returns please inform me at once.”
“Very good, madam,” said the butler, closing the drawing-room door.
Fanny turned to Scully. “I’m worried about Max. He always sends word if he does not plan to eat dinner here.”
Scully stood and offered her his arm. “He is out looking for Miss Winston. Perhaps he has found her.”
“He would have sent word about dinner. He is always proper when it comes to these things.”
“When it comes to Miss Winston, all bets are off.”
In spite of his nonchalance, Fanny knew Scully was worried about Max too. He had insisted they accompany him to London to be there at the town house with him. He had confided that he had seen Max behave in unexpected ways that were quite alarming.
“I never should have let him take responsibility for her well-being. He feels he has failed and must make amends.”
“Ah, well, if he brings back Miss Winston as his bride, you shall have to marry me, you know. I want to take you home with me. I have to go home sooner or later.”
Fanny had resisted Scully’s repeated requests for marriage. She was worried about Max. He had changed so much from the time the caskets came home. It was as if the tight control he kept on his emotions had broken. Then the whole affair with Miss Winston shattered him, turning him sullen and angry, snappish, unlike the Max she had known.
