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A haze entered his mind. He shook it off. No time for that now.
No rushing fences. Not the time and place.
A part of his mind said, Why not?
He ignored it. “Are you drunk?” he demanded. “Did you fall in the fire?”
Someone beat on the door to the passage. “Madam! Madam!”
She ran to her portmanteau and began rummaging.
Longmore strode to the passage door and yanked it open. An inn servant stood there. “What the devil do you want?”
“Sir—your lordship—I beg your pardon—but someone screamed—and one of the guests smelled smoke.”
Sophy drew on a shawl. “Yes, I screamed,” she said. “I thought I saw a bat.”
“A bat, madam? But the smoke?” The servant sniffed. “I do smell smoke.”
The fellow was trying to peer round Longmore, who advanced to the threshold to block his ogling half-naked females who didn’t belong to him.
“That was the bat,” Longmore said. “I caught it and threw it into the fire. Do you fancy a bite? It’s not quite cooked through, I’m afraid. No? Well, then, off with you.”
He shut the door in the servant’s face.
He turned back to Sophy, whose most interesting parts the shawl now enveloped.
At first, he’d checked mainly to see whether she was on fire. After that he’d discovered how flimsy her nightdress was. Now he noticed that her hair was damp, streaming down her shoulders. It fell over her breasts. It was long and thick. In places, long tendrils had started to dry, and as they did, they were brightening from a pale brown to gold … and they were curling. All by themselves.
His breathing quickened, and that instantly got his breeding organs excited.
Not now.
Why not?
“What the devil happened?” he said. He spotted the wine bottle on the little table near the fire. “How much have you had to drink?”
“I’m not drunk!” she said. “I—I was too agitated to sleep. I had a bath.”
“I heard,” he said.
Her eyes widened.
“I would have looked through the keyhole,” he said, “but that method isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. One can only see a small part of the room, usually, and in my experience, it’s the wrong part. In any event, I was by the fire, drying out, and it seemed a great bother to leave the warmth and the bottle to crouch at a door, all for the chance of not seeing much.”
She looked at the doorway between their rooms, then at the bathtub, then at him.
“You didn’t think it was worth the bother?” she said.
He shrugged. “I don’t know what came over me. And I still don’t know how you proceeded from being wet to being on fire.”
There was a pause, then she said, “I not only bathed, but I washed my hair to get that nasty egg mixture out. It was getting rancid. I was sure if I put my head on the pillow, any vermin in the vicinity would come running to feast on it.”
“It wasn’t that bad,” he said.
“You say so because it wasn’t on your head,” she said. “And so I washed my hair. And then I had to dry it at the fire, didn’t I? Which is what I was doing. But I must have dozed—and when I woke, my dressing gown was burning. I must have slumped in the chair and got too close, and a spark caught it. And then I couldn’t get the stupid ties undone, to get the blasted thing off.” She blinked hard. “Thank you for saving me. I’m sorry I caused so much t-trouble.”
“Well, it was exciting,” he said.
“I don’t like to be exciting in th-that w-way,” she said.
“Good gad, you’re not going to cry, are you?” he said. “You can’t be upset because I ruined your dressing gown?”
“N-no. Of c-course n-not.”
“Because I didn’t look through the keyhole?”
“Don’t be r-ridiculous.”
“Then what are you crying about?”
“I’m not crying!” She blinked again. “I’m perfectly well.”
“No, you’re not.”
“Yes, I am. It’s only … I keep thinking I should have stayed with your sister when she came to the shop last Saturday. I told you we’d deal with Adderley, but I didn’t tell her. I had other things on my mind. Your mother. And Dowdy’s. And now … it seems my priorities were wrong.”
“What rot. You didn’t know Clara was going to act like an idiot.”
“I wasn’t paying attention! And now she’s in danger. She hasn’t the slightest idea how to survive. She wouldn’t know a scoundrel if he wore a badge announcing it. She trusted Adderley, of all men! I should have done something!”
“What are you talking about? What could you have done?”
She waved her arms. “Something. A diversion.”
He stomped back to her, grasped her shoulders, and gave her a little shake. “Stop it,” he said.
“I’m so worried,” she said.
He took her face in his hands and tilted it up so that he could look down into her eyes. They were filling. It was like looking into the Adriatic Sea through a mist. A tiny bead of moisture trickled down the side of her nose. Her lower lip jutted out in a pout. It trembled.
It wasn’t the time and place.
He oughtn’t to rush his fences.
But she’d waved her arms, and that made her womanly parts jiggle and he could only keep one idea in his head at a time, and in any case, oughts never went down smoothly with him.
He was who he was, and that wasn’t a good boy. And so down he went, and crushed her sulky little mouth under his.
He’d never done things by halves. He wasn’t likely to start now.
He kissed her firmly, fearlessly, recklessly, the way he did everything. It never occurred to him to be cautious.
Not much occurred to him, in fact. He simply did it, in the way he did everything, without thinking or worrying.
And then he walked off a cliff.
Down he went, as though there were a sea below, and he was falling straight into it.
He was falling into her somehow. He tasted the sea—a hint of salt tears—and there was a hint of the wine she’d drunk, too. He breathed in the fresh scent of her. Where he was sinking, the world was warm. Lavender and something else scented the air and the scent brought back a moment: the sun of Tuscany and a villa framed in lavender and jasmine. He felt the same inexplicable, soaring happiness he’d felt a few years ago, far away from England.
He wrapped his arms about her. It was instinctive to hold on to something too wonderful to understand.
And her mouth simply melted under his, so soft and welcoming. Her body melted against him, too, as though it was the most natural thing in the world. Her arms came up and wrapped about his neck. Her breasts pressed against his waistcoat. She was so warm and so softly curved and he was warm and warmer still, his pulse racing while he drank in more deeply: the sweetness of her mouth and the clean scent of her and the way her soft curves fit against him.
He slid his hands down and grasped her bottom and pressed her close—and she made a choked little sound against his mouth—and small as it was, it was a jolt, and all the signal he needed.
He lifted his hands away from her bottom.
He lifted his mouth from hers.
He took one unsteady step back, and another.
Her great blue eyes were dazed, and she swayed a little. The shawl lay in a puddle on the floor.
“My goodness,” she said breathlessly. “My goodness.”
She tipped her head to one side and studied him in the manner of a drunk trying to focus.
Hell.
It was her first time.
She’d never been kissed before.
That was completely impossible.
No, it wasn’t.
Yes, it was.
Never mind. There was nothing for it but to bluster his way out of it, whatever it was.
“Don’t,” he said. “Do. That. Again.”
“Yes,” she said with a dazed little smile.
“I can’t abide hysterics,” he said firmly.
“Yes,” she said.
He was dizzy, too, but he could see her clearly enough. He could see far too much of her … or not nearly enough. He could see the bed as well, only a few steps away, so inviting.
Well, then, why not accept the invitation?
Because … he didn’t know why. Or why not.
He turned his back, on her, on the bed, on everything, and stomped out.
In a kind of haze, Sophy watched him go.
She watched all of him go: his black hair disheveled as though he’d dragged his fingers through it—or had she done that? … the broad shoulders and the motion of his shoulder blades under the waistcoat … the muscles of his arms, tantalizingly visible under the fine linen of his shirt … the back of his waist and the upside down V of the waistcoat where it gathered at the base of his spine … and on down over his hips and the long legs … and all of that big body moving so smoothly and as gracefully as a thoroughbred.
He walked to the door and closed it behind him, with a sharp thud that made her jump, and jolted her out of the daze.
She shook her head. She closed her eyes and opened them. She drew her tongue over her lips … the way he had done.
She moved to the table, refilled her wineglass, and drank it down in a gulp to strengthen her resolve.
She marched to the door connecting their rooms and pushed it open.
He froze, a wineglass halfway to his mouth. That wicked, dangerous mouth.
“No,” she said. “Absolutely not.”
“What are you saying?” he said. “Are you insane?”
“I was for a minute,” she said. “But you can’t do that again. You can’t be such an idiot.”
“Go away,” he said. “Do you know you’ve almost no clothes on?”
“Never mind. I need—”
“Never mind? Listen to me, Miss Innocence. There are many things a man can ‘never mind.’ A nearly naked woman isn’t one of them.”
“Taut pis!” she said. “There wasn’t time to dress. I have to say it while I know why I’m saying it, while I’m still under the influence.”
He dragged his hand through his tangled hair. “You don’t have to say anything. You have to go away.”
“I cannot get involved with customers,” she said. “It’s bad for business.”
“Business!”
“And do not tell me you’re not a customer.”
“I’m not, you nitwit. When was the last time I bought a dress?”
“Any man who has the means to pay our bills is likely to acquire, sooner or later, a woman we want in our dress shop,” she said. “She won’t patronize us if we have a reputation for poaching the men.”
“Business,” he said. “This is about the shop.”
“Yes,” she said. “Which means I couldn’t be more serious. If you kiss me again, I’ll stab you.”
She turned and marched out, slamming the door behind her.
She poured herself another glass of wine, but this one she drank more slowly. Her heart was pounding so hard it hurt. She couldn’t remember when last she’d done something so difficult and terrifying and so completely the opposite of what she wanted to do.
No wonder Marcelline had lost her head over Clevedon.
No wonder she’d insisted on explaining to Sophy, for the hundredth time, how babies were made.
Lust was a dangerous force.
Like any Noirot, Sophy liked danger, risk, a gamble.
But she could not, would not, gamble with Maison Noirot. If she let the dangerous force sweep her away, it would sweep away everything they’d worked and suffered for.
She rose, walked to the bathtub, and took out the dressing gown he’d drowned there. She wrung it out and draped it over the chair—near the fire but not too near. It wasn’t completely unsalvageable. The girls at the Milliners’ Society could take it apart and make something of it.
The dressing gown wasn’t important. It was the shop Sophy needed to save—and that meant saving Lady Clara. That was all she had to do, and it wasn’t going to be easy.
She smiled. But she was a Noirot, after all, and if it were easy, it wouldn’t be much fun.
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