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“Did you resent having to resort to such humility to secure the position?”

She chuckled. He’d been too long away from Ancoats. “You must understand, sir, to become the cook at an estate like Fairleigh Park was a tremendous step up in the world for me. I would have a room of my own, far better wages, and a kitchen maid to bring me my breakfast every morning. Bertie could have made a list of my faults twice as long and I’d have gladly nodded to it.”

“And yet you flew into a rage when you thought
I
had insulted your food.”

Ah, he caught her there. She rested her chin on her knee, looked up at him, and allowed her inner coquette to give the answer. “It would seem, sir, that you are destined to provoke a passionate response in me no matter what you do.”

His hand, the one holding the cigarette, tightened into a fist, nearly crushing the cigarette. He looked away, and then back at her. “I’m trying very hard to not join you in that tub, Madame. Please don’t make it any more difficult for me.”

She was hot, so hot. “Why make me sit here in exhibition, then, when you are determined that you cannot, must not, have anything to do with me?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “If I did, I’d have put a stop to it a long time ago.”

She lowered her gaze. “Would you like me to leave?”

“No!”

He said it with such force that it startled both of them. Their eyes met. He laughed without humor. “I like to torture myself, if you can’t tell yet.”

He snubbed out the cigarette and took a step closer to the tub, his eyes obsidian. “Torture me some more, Madame. Do what you did last time.”

Her cheeks were fiery enough to toast bread. But the tease in her would not rest. “Sir, I spent three hours this afternoon stirring a batch of pâté without rest. I can barely lift my arms.”

In his eyes was a lust of biblical proportions, the sort that would call down sulfur and brimstone upon an entire city. “I’m tempted to order you to do it, tired arms or not.”

She raised her hand and, with water dripping from her fingers, smoothed the hair at her temple. “Why don’t you then?” she said softly.

He cast a shadow over her. Despite this, her eyes glittered faintly, their color a mutable sheen like that of dragon scales. When she smiled, as she did now, he could see the lovely curvature of her lower lip, generous and full.

She was beautiful.

“I have a better idea,” Stuart heard himself say. “Let me do it for you.”

Her smile disappeared. “You are mad.”

Vous êtes fou.

“Yes, quite,” he said. “Will you let me?”

She looked away from him. “You know there is nothing I wouldn’t let you do.”

If ever mere words could bring him to his knees, those were the words. He wanted to sink down before the tub, hold her face in his hands, and kiss her, mask and all. He turned around and looked for a towel in the drawers instead.

He opened one and held it out, as he’d seen Durbin do countless times. “Come.”

Slowly she rose, water cascading from her, her skin flushed, her body as beautiful as that of Cabanel’s Venus: dainty breasts, a deep navel, and hips so voluptuous they melted his vision.

She leaned forward to climb out of the tub. He couldn’t look away from her nipples—erect and the most erotic shade of muted pink.

She wrapped the towel around her person. As she dried herself, he retrieved her robe and held it out for her. She turned around and dropped the towel. He had a fleeting view of her back and her round bottom before she shrugged into the robe.

The robe was of a shade too deep to distinguish in the scant illumination, of a material that glistened darkly, the shimmer of new moon on swift water. She pulled the sash tight. No, no nineteen-inch waist here. But she had delicate shoulders and an elegant neck. And there was nothing he wouldn’t do for her.

“Are you cold?”

She shook her head. The bath was small and the radiator large. He himself was far too warm in his clothes.

He blew out the candle. “Take off your mask.”

He’d bought the mask the same day he’d bought the painting—and had nearly given both to her together. Then he’d come to his senses and swore he’d throw the mask away. But he never did.

“What for?” she murmured, even as he heard the soft shush of her sleeves against her hair, her fingers working on the knot behind her head. “You can’t see me.”

He didn’t answer that. He turned her around by her shoulders and cupped her face in his hands. With his fingers, he explored her features, as if she were virgin territory and he a captivated cartographer.

“I don’t need to see you,” he said.

He only wanted to remember the texture of her skin, flaws and all. To know the warmth of her cheek and the pulse at her temple. To etch the topography of her face upon his memory—the sweep of a brow, the softness of an earlobe, the slightly chapped fullness of a lower lip.

“Kiss me,” she murmured.

“Only in my dreams.”

He felt his way to the chair and sat down. “Come here. Sit on me.”

Utter silence greeted his blatant words. Then she let out a slow breath. “You seem to know exactly what you are doing. Have you done this before?”

He braced his feet apart. “No. But I’ve imagined it.”

And imagined it. And imagined it.

She emitted a faint, strained sound. He heard her move in the dark. As she groped for the chair, her hand landed on his forearm. She immediately let go. She turned around and sat down on the edge of the chair, between his legs, almost not touching him at all except for one hip at his right knee.

“Move back until you are against me.”

She complied. He ground his teeth at the sensation of her barely clad backside pressing into him—he was as hard as a bludgeon.

“I won’t touch you anywhere else,” he said, less a promise to her than a reminder to himself.

“I wish you would,” she said.

“Shhh. Not another word out of you.” Or he’d lose his mind.

He parted her robe. His fingers encountered soft, still-damp curls. She obligingly opened her thighs. His heart pounded like a caught thief’s. His hand reached farther.

She was damp there too—but not from the bath. He expelled a shaky breath. So soft, silky, and sleek. So impossibly arousing.
I wish you would.
He could. There was nothing to stop him.

He closed his eyes. No, he’d made a deal with his conscience. He would touch her only to pleasure her, not himself.

Gingerly he caressed her where she was most moist. She sighed, a sound that made his ears burn.

“Show me what to do,” he said. Or perhaps he begged.

She pressed her hand over his and guided his fingers, sliding his index and middle fingers around plump, lovely flesh. She leaned back and rested her head on his shoulder. The sensation of her hair brushing his jaw and cheek was almost more than he could stand. He was in Heaven. He was in Hell. He was hot and hard and dying for relief, and she, without a care in the world, whimpered and moaned, her breath fluttering against his earlobe.

“Harder,” she said. “Do it harder.”

“I don’t want to hurt you,” he said. He sounded desperate.

“You won’t. Do it harder.”

He did it harder. Her hips tilted up to meet the motion of his hand. Up, lowered, up, lowered—impossibly exquisite friction against his erection. Her other hand clamped over his forearm. She turned her face and kissed him just above his collar—wet, hungry kisses that shot straight to his testes.

All her muscles tensed. She cried out. He felt the tremors beneath his fingers. It was too much. He dipped his head and bit into her shoulders—no, he would allow nothing for himself. The pressure of his teeth only made her climax more violent. He almost wept, in awe of the beauty of her pleasure, in pity for himself.

Her tremors subsided. His near-crisis faded into the usual insistent, painful need she aroused. Then she kissed him again above the collar, and parts of him leapt in response.

“Don’t,” he said.

“Let me return the favor for you,” she said earnestly.

It was a marvel he didn’t ejaculate upon those words. “No.”

“Why not?”

“Because that would be wrong.”

“More wrong than what we just did?”

“That wasn’t wrong. That was…” Sublime, breathtaking, and so intense it would monopolize his dreams for years. He could only repeat himself. “That wasn’t wrong.”

She exhaled, a sigh of Shakespearean complexity. Her arm lifted and hooked behind his neck. She snuggled closer to him, her cheek against his jaw. He banded his arms about her middle, unwilling—and unable—to let go.

“Thank you,” she said. Her breath was sweet, sweeter than apples—she’d eaten a perfectly ripe medlar.

For the pleasure, he supposed. “No, thank
you,
” he said.

“What for?”

For this wordless embrace. For the warmth, comfort, and substance of it.

“For all the memories, old and new. For the madeleines. For having loved Bertie. For—”

She twisted in his arms. Suddenly her lips were upon his and he was too weak and too glad to resist. She kissed him solemnly, urgently, deeply, as if he were a sweetheart at last returned from a long, long war, and she’d waited until her youth had fled and her hair turned white.

When they finally pulled apart, her cheeks were wet. And so were his, he realized with a jolt.

“I love you,” she said. “Always.”

After she left—Mrs. Abercromby would return early today, she’d explained, because of the dinner on the morrow—Stuart remained a long time in the bath, in the dark, thinking of her.

There were ways he could hold on to her, and still remain faithful to Lizzy. As much as he burned for it, he would survive not making love to her—as long as he could have her in his arms once in a while.

It wasn’t enough, of course. In their predicament, they could never have enough, only bits and scraps, stolen encounters of powerful pleasure and equally powerful anguish.

But to give her up altogether now was unthinkable. He would keep her close, for as long as she would let him, and live as did those natives of rainy climes who spent the vast majority of their days under an overcast sky and made the most of their rare, glorious glimpses of the sun.

Chapter Seventeen