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He had ascribed
his
hunger and
his
covetousness to her. Had imagined that she’d be in the tub because
he
wanted her to be in it. Had berated himself entirely for show—his self-reproach as ritualistic and useless as the search for Guy Fawkes before the State Opening of Parliament.

And now he was exposed for the fraud that he was. Because he wasn’t relieved by her absence. Not at all. In fact, he couldn’t remember being so disappointed since the first anniversary of that night, when he’d stayed up ’til dawn, convinced that Cinderella would return.

He didn’t know why—perhaps because he couldn’t stand the emptiness of the tub—he reached out and turned on the faucets. The pipes moaned and trembled. Water came, first a trickle, then a gush that shook the plumbing even harder. He plugged the tub and watched it fill. He should be using cold water—wasn’t that the traditional prescription for overamorous men? But steam undulated from the rising water. He dipped his fingertips in the water and it was hot, as hot as he imagined she must be, in places he longed to touch.

He remembered the kitchen light he’d seen from the street. She was home—close at hand and accessible. He wanted to see her. He needed to see her.

He would see her.

Verity slapped sugar paste into the mold, thankful for the mindless work, for she certainly could not concentrate on any subtle, delicate cooking now, not with the pipes groaning and the boiler in the room down the corridor rasping and rattling.

The plumbing had made just such noises last week, when she’d filled the tub for her use.

She closed the mold for the centerpiece, turned around, and saw that the little window on the dumbwaiter showed red: It was needed upstairs. What did
he
want with the dumbwaiter?

She dispatched the dumbwaiter upward and it came down with a note.

Madame, your bath awaits.

She flushed. Underneath the note was a piece of black cloth. When she picked it up, the cloth resolved itself to be a soft mask that would cover her from her brows to just above her upper lip.

This was unlike him. He was as reckless as she had been the other night, when she’d kissed him under his jaw and got herself tossed across the corridor for her trouble.

It was wrong—and they both knew it. To happen upon each other by chance was one thing, to intentionally orchestrate a tryst quite another. And for him to run a bath for her, and for her to accept—they might as well meet unclothed in his bedchamber instead.

But try as she did, she could not find dishonor enough in his invitation to refuse. Because she would agree to meet unclothed in his bedchamber too. Because there was nothing he wanted that she didn’t also want.

She felt for the stubby pencil she always carried in her pocket, wrote her reply on the note, and sent it to him.

In the dining room two floors above, the dumbwaiter clicked into place. At first Stuart thought she’d returned his note as a refusal, then he saw her swiftly penciled response.

Merci. Je viens.

She was on her way.

He folded the note and put it in the inside pocket of his waistcoat. Later he’d place it in a locked drawer of the desk in his study, along with other notes she’d directed his way. Not that he needed anything by which to remember her—he remembered every word, every touch, every tear. No, they were merely to reassure him that it had really happened, that there had been such a woman, and that with her, he had been that man.

Chapter Sixteen

S
he knocked on the door to the bath. Absolute silence. Then,
“Entrez.”

She entered, a candlestick in hand. The candlestick was his. He’d left it behind in the basement the other night, and she’d picked it up and carefully concealed it: Trust a gentleman to never wonder what his servants would think to find his source of illumination lying drunkenly across the basement floor, the taper broken in several pieces.

Her back to him, she set the candlestick atop the chest of drawers. Then she turned off the gas flame in the sconce affixed to the wall. The candlestick held only the stub end of a taper, its wick trimmed almost bare. The bath dimmed. Her own shadow loomed large. A tracery of fire gilded the curves of the tub. The water inside took on a glow like that of the final throes of a sunset.

“Will I ever see you in good light?” he asked, his voice too serious to be teasing, too wistful to be entirely serious.

She had to resist the urge to tug at her mask—it was quite secure already, tight and snug against her features. In her mirror she had looked rather dashing, as if at any moment she might pull out a rapier and execute a fancy flourish à la
Three Musketeers.

“And what purpose would it accomplish for you to see me in good light, sir?” she countered.

She turned toward him—and realized that it was the first time she’d seen
him
in any kind of light since Fairleigh Park. She’d forgotten how strikingly handsome he was, his hair inky, his irises as dark as mine shafts.

He sat in the oval-backed chair, his posture beautifully upright, his hands loosely braced under his chin. He looked a little tired, a little melancholy, like a man at the end of a long revelry who did not want to go home yet. But as he leaned back and regarded her, she caught a glimpse of the coiled vitality and undisguised desire in his eyes—

Be still my heart.

“You speak as if there is still good sense to be had here,” he said.

“I haven’t let go of mine,” she said. It wasn’t completely a lie, only largely one.

“Then I shall rely on you. I left mine at the office. Perhaps at Fairleigh Park itself.”

She ducked her head. The bath was small, and they were close. She couldn’t be sure the light was quite as muted as it needed to be.

“Well, Madame, your bath awaits,” he said, without further preliminary.

She swallowed. She’d gone back to her room, used the water with which she was about to make tea to quickly sponge herself, and then, in a decision that no doubt revealed the full extent of her amorality, slipped on only her dressing robe. Now her hand closed around the ends of the robe’s sash. She dipped a finger in the water—it was hot, just the way she liked it. She swallowed again, opened the robe, and let it drop.

The breath he sucked in reverberated in the steam. She leaned forward, braced her hands on the edge of the tub, raised one foot, and stepped into the water. She had her side to him, but she was quite aware that he still saw everything: her breasts, her buttocks, her sex.

Once both of her feet were inside the tub, she sat down and stared at the wall, not quite bold or wicked enough to look at him.

“You overwhelm me,” he mumbled.

A small smile relaxed her tense lips. “You certainly know how to make a middle-aged woman feel appealing.”

“How middle-aged are you?” he asked, after a few seconds.

“Thirty-three.”

“Not that old.”

“Not at all young.”

“Your body is beautiful.”

She suppressed the leap of her heart and turned her face toward him. “Only because you haven’t slept with a nineteen-year-old woman in a while.”

For a moment he seemed shocked at her forwardness, then he laughed softly. “No, not in a while. Perhaps not ever.”

Then the laughter disappeared from his eyes. “Let me see your face.”

“No,” she said.

A look of bittersweet longing came over him. He quickly looked away, but the damage—to her—was done.

She’d come to realize that the man in her heart had become less Stuart Somerset than an ideal man she’d invented and reinvented over the years. The real Stuart Somerset was a mystery to her and, more than once, a disappointment: He was nothing of the fearless lover she remembered, but a man very much ruled by—and in thrall to—the conventions of Society.

Sometimes she wondered whether she still gravitated toward him simply because she could not face the fact that her faithful love might have been a mistake—a beautiful mistake, but a mistake enormous and pervasive all the same.

But now as she gazed upon him, her heart did something strange, a twist, a clench, a fracture—she didn’t know what precisely, but yes, the damage was done. She was falling in love with
this
man, this man who wouldn’t touch her, kiss her, or marry her.

“Do you mind if I smoke?” he asked.

She shook her head.

He rose, and lit his cigarette on the taper. Their eyes met. He was much closer to her now and could probably see most of her, despite the dusky air and the ripples of reflected candlelight on the water. She drew her knees in and circled her arms about her shins. His reaction was a smile as knowing as it was resigned.

He knocked the cigarette against the bowl of the candlestick, using it for an ashtray. “Where did you learn to cook as you do?”

“At the Marquess of Londonderry’s household,” she said—and instantly realized her mistake.

He caught it. “Not in a Parisian establishment?”

She might as well go with the truth now. “No, in the Londonderry kitchen, under a great, but unsung, chef named Monsieur Algernon David.”

He nodded. “How did you come to work for Bertie?”

“Monsieur David had worked for Bertie for some years, until the Marchioness of Londonderry poached him away—at least that was how Bertie told it. He recommended me for Fairleigh Park.”

“And Bertie took you on this recommendation?”

“No. Bertie was quite convinced that while women might make adequate farmhouse cooks, only men could be acolytes in the temple of cuisine. Finally I bought a train ticket, went up to Fairleigh Park, and insisted that he gave me a fighting chance: I would cook a meal for him, and if he rejected me after that, I’d leave.”

Mr. Somerset exhaled a cloud of smoke. “And he couldn’t say no afterward?”

“I suspect he could have said no. He compiled a long list of my shortcomings as a cook—he was knowledgeable and critical about his food. Most French cooks do not care to be told by an Englishman how to cook, but I was quite humble and said that I valued his opinions.”

He smiled. “Did you?”

“No. I thought then that he was unbearably fussy, but I wanted the position.”