She raised her face. Looking down at her made him feel incredibly strong. He could, he thought, run for hours without stopping, tear trees from the ground and great rocks from deep holes.
“What is it about you that brings me in danger of losing my senses, Meg? Do you feel any of what I feel?”
She passed her pointed tongue over her lips, and her bandaged hand pressed his arm.
“Do you, Meg?”
“Since you don’t know what it is you feel, how am I to know if I have such feelings myself?”
“Don’t toy with me. Give me an answer. Do you feel something for me, something more than casual attraction?”
She bowed her head, then raised her chin. “What I feel for you I have never felt for another, My Lord. I shall never be the same as I was before we met.”
“Tell me you’re glad of this.”
“I’m glad. I’m also fearful, because when we can no longer even see each other, I know my heart will be broken. And I also know that to make such a statement is foolish and puts me in a weak position.”
The piece Sibyl played speeded a little and had a military tone. Jean-Marc brought Meg to a halt, smiled at her and commenced again but with more definite movements. A third piece. And so it went. There was no point in stopping now.
“I could dance with you forever,” he told her. “Holding you causes the muscles in my limbs to burn and my belly to become so tight. There are other feelings I should not mention here and now. But I will say that you have my complete attention.”
She blushed. A bead of perspiration formed at the top of her décolletage and slowly trickled downward. He spun her until her back faced the others, and dipped his left forefinger between her breasts and finally beneath her gown. Her expression was more of arousal than shock. He withdrew his damp finger and slipped his hand inside his shirt, onto his own skin.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
“Pretending your skin touches mine and that I feel you hot and slick. I would much prefer to feel your breasts against my chest. We would lie facing each other and embrace. And the embrace would brush your sensitive parts against me, and I would lay you on your back and take those aching parts into my mouth. And you would pleasure me. You do pleasure me, Meg—I am besotted with you.” He ought to be wary of such comments, but he had no reason to fear that she could use them against him, and he did feel everything he’d told her.
Meg could scarcely bear the tingling that pinched at her nipples, and between her legs. “You dance so well, My Lord.”
“Surely you can call me Jean-Marc in such circumstances. Only you make me feel a complete man. I have asked you to allow me to ensure that I can come back to you. My offer is selfish. I cannot bear to think of being parted from you forever. I would take great care of you and Sibyl, Meg. You should have a pretty little house of your own where I could find peace and pleasure in the only true home I can hope to have. Perhaps near Riverside. Did you like the countryside at Windsor?”
“Very much,” Meg said. He wanted her to be his mistress because she could not make a suitable wife to one of such noble birth—even if he was a by-blow.
She saw him hold his breath, felt his grip tighten on her hand.
“So you will do it? You will stay with me?”
“I will think about it,” she said, and felt close to tears. She had never thought to speak such words. “Please do not press me.”
“I won’t,” he said, but she heard his excitement, his anticipation of triumph. She should be ecstatic that he wanted a simple person such as herself.
“You make me a happy man,” he told her. “Just knowing you would consider going against what you believe in to be with me is…Meg, I need you. Let me do things for you, things you deserve.”
“You said you wouldn’t press me.”
“So I did. Just dance with me, Meg. Forget it all, everything out there that would ruin our dream, and dance with me, Meg.”
What he asked was so simple. A test of restraint, but nevertheless not difficult. Jean-Marc did hold her closer than was probably wise, but she doubted the others would notice. He drew her against him, bowed his head until his jaw almost touched her temple and whirled her around and around. After the scare she’d suffered, she should be tired, yet her feet scarcely touched the floor, and she had no desire to stop. He did what he had done before and splayed his fingers at her side while he rubbed her ribs with his thumb and managed, whenever he knew he would not be seen, to apply a feather stroke to her breast.
At last he said, “No doubt there will already be talk by at least one of the number present. I suppose I must relinquish you. But it cannot be for long, my dearest. Not at all long or I shall have to come for you and bear you away. I think I shall make immediate inquiries about properties at Windsor—and perhaps in one or two choice areas of London itself.”
“You should not be in any hurry to do so.”
“Ah, but I am. If not for you, then for me. Yes, I think I should enjoy a small hideaway, a comfortable hideaway, where I could go to be alone—preferably with you.”
“Jean-Marc.”
“I know, I know. Surely you—” His abrupt pause jolted her. “You don’t know, do you? I am pressed on all sides. The decisions I must make, and make soon, will change my life forever. Regardless, I shall lose something or someone I love. How cruel if I should also have to lose you. But enough of that for today. I must allow you an opportunity to consider carefully.”
“Thank you.”
“I should attend to your every wish, my sweet. You should never want for anything. Meg, more than anything I need to kiss you.”
She shook her head and would not look at him. “We must bring this dancing to a close.” Although she did not want to.
“I can make an excuse to have you accompany me when I leave the ballroom.”
“No.” But oh, how she longed to say yes.
“Come with me, Meg. I will do nothing more than kiss you and hold you.”
To look at his mouth was a mistake. Her lips parted of their own volition.
“You want it, too,” he said. “I see that you do. We could lie in the darkness and watch the firelight. You wouldn’t have to if you didn’t want to, but what I should like most of all is for us to be naked together. The sight of your body—”
“And the sight of your body inflames me,” she told him. “But we both know such a thing is so very dangerous.”
“Look at me,” he told her.
Meg turned her face from him.
“I told you to look at me. Please?”
She did so, and he looked first into her eyes, then at her mouth, then lower to the level of her breasts. When his gaze returned to her mouth, his lips parted. Slowly, he passed his tongue over his upper lip, and what she felt resembled a blow to her stomach. Her mouth opened. He contrived to spread a hand over one of her breasts and to squeeze gently.
For seconds they looked only at each other, and they swayed back and forth without moving their feet.
“You torture me,” he murmured.
“It is you who torture me, Jean-Marc.” She stepped deliberately away from him and dropped into a curtsey. “Time to see what the Princess has learned from us,” she said in her steadiest voice.
Jean-Marc put one hand behind his back and made a formal bow. She gave him a last, long look and hurried toward the piano, where Sibyl watched her approach with the oddest of expressions.
“Now you will dance with me, Désirée,” the Count said.
Princess Désirée said, “I should like that,” but there was no doubt that her attention switched rapidly between her brother and Meg. “You two dance beautifully together. It is as if you become one, move as one. And you look ecstatic with the whole affair. I should like to try a little faster piece, please, Sibyl.”
Jean-Marc swung his sister into position and swept her away to the sound of Sibyl’s beautiful music.
Meg glanced at her sister’s tensed features and slid onto
the piano bench beside her. “That was fun,” she said lightly. “I have danced so little, yet I was completely at home dancing with the Count. What is Ash doing? She’s fallen asleep, I do believe.”
“I have no interest in Ash,” Sibyl said. Her voice was strained and very small.
“Meg,” Princess Désirée called over her shoulder, “my life is become so interesting. I declare there is the most delicious air of intrigue about everything.”
“Concentrate on your dance,” Meg told her. In fact, the girl danced beautifully and was obviously what Jean-Marc called a natural. Her posture was straight, and the small amount of paint Meg had started using on the Princess’s face gave enough color to make her bright-eyed and pretty.
“Meg,” Sibyl said in a suspiciously trembling voice. She leaned over the keys as she played. “Events are becoming disconcerting here. Too much is happening to us. I should like to give all this up and return to our quiet life.”
Aghast, Meg wiped her good palm on her skirt. The wound on her other hand stung, but she didn’t care. “What can you be thinking?” she said. “Our routine is different, it’s true. But the work we do here will undoubtedly assure us of similar work elsewhere. We should never want for money again. And I have not given up hope that one or the other of us will marry and that will be the end of all our troubles.”
“I knew it,” Sibyl said in broken tones, “you are changed. And you frighten me.”
For some time Meg didn’t know what to do. She observed how Sibyl’s fingers ran over the keys—and she couldn’t help but note that tears fell onto those keys and onto her sister’s hands.
“Well,” Jean-Marc called from the far side of the room. “Our debutante is bound to be a huge success. She dances like an angel. I must leave you now. Miss Smiles, are you sure we can’t deal with that matter?”
She turned on the bench and even at a distance saw hope in his eyes. “I’m sure,” she said. “We still have a good deal to do this afternoon if we are to go shopping in the morning.”
He punched one fist into the opposite palm and seemed about to say more. Instead he nodded and strode from the ballroom. Désirée continued to whirl about all on her own.
“What is it, Sibyl?” Meg asked her quietly. “What has upset you?”
“Dear Meggie,” Sibyl replied, “I am so afraid for you. He wants you as I have seen other men want women. You know he could never make you his wife, yet he behaved like that with you. As he did while you danced. He desired to do with you what men and women should only do if they are married.”
“Hush,” Meg told her. “You are overwrought. I will not deny that the Count shows me more than the expected amount of attention. You have nothing to fear, because I am not a simpleton.”
Sibyl faced her on the bench. “You are not a simpleton. You are a girl of tender but powerful passions. And…Oh, Meg, you have fallen in love with him.”
16
An audience, Désirée thought, her half brother had taken to demanding an audience. He was most overbearing. True, she had spent very little time with him prior to their coming to London, but until then she had thought him removed from the behavior he had displayed in the past few weeks.
Meg had refused to sit down, and stood as far from Jean-Marc’s desk as possible. In fact, Désirée had to turn in her chair to see her at all, where she stood in a shaded corner wearing her black lace mantilla. “Please, Meg, sit,” she asked her. “Jean-Marc is late, I know, and you are irritated, but he will come soon. Do you think you might be more comfortable without your mantilla?” There, she could not be more plain than that.
“I am not irritated,” Meg said. But she most certainly was agitated. “I am very comfortable in my mantilla, thank you. I have moved into a phase that requires ever more frequent withdrawal into meditation. This will help me do my very best for you. What can the Count want now? We are barely started on our day and already he is angered by something.”
“Angered?” Désirée considered the term an odd choice. “Why should you think him angered? You have not even seen him yet, although you may be right. Did you know La Upworth arrived yesterday? Apparently she came quite early in the day while we were all otherwise occupied. I heard one of the servants talking about her insisting on waiting in Jean-Marc’s rooms but not letting him know she was there. No doubt she wished to surprise him, but I don’t think Jean-Marc likes surprises, do you?”
“I wouldn’t know.” And her heaviness of heart at the thought of Lady Upworth being here, and being with Jean-Marc, was more evidence of how dangerous her feelings for him had become. “Forgive me, Your Highness, but I should prefer to be silent now.”
Désirée wondered how to approach what had been so evident when her brother danced with Meg. She had already had her suspicions that Jean-Marc had noticed Meg. Now she was certain they were attracted to each other.
“Oh, do come on, Jean-Marc,” Désirée cried loudly.
The man came through the door as if in answer to her call. He slammed the door shut and went to his desk without looking at either of his visitors. He said, “Kindly refrain from shouting, Désirée. It is unattractive in a young woman—or in any woman.”
“Oh, la,” the Princess said, “but not in a young man—or any man?”
“Enough.” Jean-Marc’s voice thundered. “Look at this—this heap of frivolous nonsense. We did not make sufficient allowance for the high excitement that was bound to sweep London while everyone anticipates King George’s Coronation. Even those who rarely come to Town for the Season have made an exception this year. I am assured that it will not do for me to pass these invitations to you, Miss Smiles.”
Meg jumped at the sound of her name. He had shown no sign of even noticing her.
“No, don’t protest or offer to help me. Keep silent in your corner. Ignore my trials and allow me to suffer when I have other, more critical affairs to conduct.”
“No doubt,” Princess Désirée said in a supposed whisper that was loud enough for all to hear. “Much more critical affairs. How is Lady Upworth today?”
Jean-Marc scowled at his sister. “How do you know of her presence?”
“Someone mentioned her.” Her Highness was serene. “And that she had been hiding in your rooms most of yesterday. To surprise you. Wasn’t that a sweet thing to do?”
Meg smiled.
Jean-Marc took a breath and let it out. He relaxed visibly, and also smiled. “My sister is determined to annoy me, you see, Miss Smiles. It is past time for her to become another man’s responsibility, one who will either be soft enough not to care if she is a meddlesome witch, or one who will be strong enough to keep her in her place. These—” he lifted a pile of envelopes and let them slip through his fingers and cascade onto the desk “—are invitations for you, witch. It appears that word of your unpleasant nature has not reached the ears of the many, many people who would consider themselves failures if they did not capture Princess Désirée of Mont Nuages for their soirees, and musicales, and routs, and balls, and salons, and so on. No doubt the very thought excites you beyond belief. For myself, I am cast into a desperate place because I shall, at the very least, have to make brief appearances at these events. Miss Smiles will accompany you to all of them and remain there for your support, of course.”
Meg was grateful for her black lace. Undoubtedly she was making a name for herself in the household as an eccentric, but so much the better. Others would keep some distance from her, and she would be more serene, and have a way to hide, at least to some degree—and a disguise for what she should have expected. Her hair was fading.
“Peaceful, are we, Miss Smiles?” Jean-Marc asked. “Do warn us if you plan to crumple to the carpet and go into a trance.”
She ignored his sarcasm. “You have nothing to fear, My Lord. I should be delighted to deal with the Princess’s invitations. I have a great deal of time on my hands at night.”
“Do you?”
His look was direct, and she blushed. Meg didn’t
miss his meaning. “Yes, I do. Of course I shall ensure that your own calendar is kept up to date and I presume Verbeux can inform me of what would or would not conflict with your appointments. There is no need for you to concern yourself.”
He rocked back in his chair and clasped his hands behind his head. “I do believe you and Verbeux would enjoy running my life. An opportunity he has always seemed determined to obtain. Very well, run my life, Miss Smiles. I shall endeavor to enjoy the event. Do ensure that I know when I am to be dressed for a ball, or to ride, or to impress a gaggle of simpering females with my grasp of their beloved romantic poets. Why, I shall even read this Mrs. Radcliffe, if necessary. All I ask is that you guide me well.”
Meg left her comforting corner and went to his desk. She bent to gather what must be a hundred envelopes, all of thick and creamy paper and elaborately lettered.
Jean-Marc righted his chair, and one of his hands came down atop hers. “How is the wound?” he murmured. “Is it painful?”
“It is sore,” she said, remaining still, her eyes downcast. “But it is bound to be. However, Verbeux changed the dressing for me, and the wound appears clean. Sibyl will be able to help me with it until it is healed.”
“Good,” he murmured and leaned closer until she felt his breath through the lace mantilla. “I hope you are thinking about our discussion. How you do inflame me. You are an original, my dear. There cannot be another like you. And I will make you mine. Do not forget that. I have to make you mine.”
“Surely Lady Upworth will have something to say about that.”
He chuckled softly. “You’re jealous? I like that, but Lady Upworth is not an issue here. I choose to be kind to her because—because I have known her for some time. I believe it will cause me little effort to allow her to remain here for the Season. And I shall hope she will meet some suitable man to fill the emptiness she clearly feels.”
Meg said nothing. The thought of Lady Upworth being in this house throughout the Season cast her very low.
He ducked his head and, with a finger and thumb, raised her veil until he could see beneath. “She is nothing to me,” he whispered. “Only you are of interest to me.”
All Smiles Page 19
