“I’ve missed you so much,” he said.
“Good. I’ve been perfectly wretched about you.” She drew back enough to look up into his face. “Ever since you left, I’ve been wishing we’d finished what we started. I’ve wished you hadn’t stopped. I’ve wished you had undone all my buttons and strings and didn’t care about the consequences.”
“You don’t know what you’re saying,” he said. He did, and wished he didn’t. He was not made of iron.
“I’m telling you the truth,” she said. “Why should I pretend? I’m always making excuses, telling myself as well as you tales to protect…” Her voice wavered. “I don’t know what I’m protecting. My vanity. My pride.”
“Your honor,” he said.
“Must I protect it?” she said. “Shall I leave now? Why didn’t you chase me away before I spoke?” She pulled away, her lower lip trembling. “Wretched man.”
“My dear…” Oh, he was lost. He wished she’d simply stick a dagger in his heart and be done with it.
“Your dear,” she said. “Your dear.” She gave a short laugh and wiped her eyes. “Oh, don’t look so—so—Don’t look that way. I shan’t weep. I despise women who use tears to get what they want. I was merely overcome for a moment. With exasperation.”
“I should give anything,” he said, “to have it otherwise.”
There was a long, taut pause. Then she said, “You wish I were not a gently bred maiden, is that it? If I were not an unwed lady, what then?” She pulled off her gloves and dropped them on the floor. Then she began to untie her bonnet ribbons. “What then?” she repeated. “What if I were not quite a lady, after all?”
Alistair stared at the gloves and at her naked hands, swiftly undoing the ribbons. “You cannot be…” He trailed off while his mind struggled with an incredible possibility.
She pulled off the bonnet and tossed it onto a chair.
“No,” he said.
She began unbuttoning her pelisse. “I am one and thirty years old,” she said. “I should like to gather my rosebuds before the petals shrivel up and fall off.”
Twelve
THE expression on his magnificently patrician countenance was priceless. If she hadn’t been so nervous, Mirabel would have laughed. But she was quaking in her boots, and if she paused, even to laugh, she would lose her courage.
“This joke is not amusing,” he said.
“I’ve never been more serious in my life,” she said.
He’d said he missed her. He’d said he had feelings for her. Perhaps those feelings simply added up to lust, but that was all right. What she felt was lust, too.
It had been so long since she’d felt desire, so very long since a man had returned her feelings. She had held back with William and preserved her virtue for honor’s sake. She’d let the man she loved go, for duty’s sake. She would not let honor and duty rule this time, not completely.
She and Mr. Carsington were alone, and this time they were not under her father’s roof or at the hotel. No one had seen her enter his bedroom, and no one need see her leave it. Such an opportunity would never come again.
She didn’t want to die a maiden. She had to know what it was like to experience and express passion. She must experience, once, what it was to be made love to by the man one longed for.
He started toward her. She backed away. “You must do up those buttons,” he said so very sternly, “or I shall do them up for you.” He advanced.
She retreated.
The room was a fraction of the size of his bedchamber at Oldridge Hall. Its furnishings, combined with his belongings, created a course of obstacles and left him little space to maneuver round them. She knew he daren’t chance overturning a chair or table or toppling any of the breakables, which seemed to be everywhere. The noise would bring the staff running.
He limped cautiously after her, and she retreated, while her unsteady fingers moved down the front of the pelisse.
“Miss Oldridge, this is a very dangerous game,” he said. “Someone might hear us.”
“Then lower your voice,” she said.
She leapt up onto the bed, and standing a hairsbreadth out of his reach, quickly shrugged out of the pelisse. She threw it at him, and it caught him in the face. He held it there for a moment, then crushed it against his chest.
“You must not,” he said hoarsely. “It is wicked to do this to me. It holds…” He swallowed. “It holds your warmth, your scent.”
Her heart thumped frantically.
“This is most unwise,” he said. “And unfair.”
“You leave me no choice,” she said. “You and your dratted honor.”
“You must not do this,” he said. “You must not.”
“We’ll never have another chance,” she said.
WE’LL never have another chance.
Alistair tried to tell himself it didn’t matter. He could no more dishonor her here than under her father’s roof.
She was struggling with the fastenings of her dress.
They were at the back. He might have undone them so easily.
He clenched his hands and stood motionless.
Without help, she couldn’t get the dress off. He must not help her.
“I’ve spent my life doing my duty,” she went on while trying to twist her dress about in order to get to the buttons and strings. “I don’t regret it. Not altogether. But I know I’ll regret you.”
“My dear—”
“Don’t say that!”
“You are dear. If you were not—But we cannot—We must talk. I beg you to stop disrobing. It’s impossible to talk rationally while you’re doing that.”
“I’m always so rational,” she said. “Always doing the right thing. Why may I not, once, do the wrong thing?”
“Yes, you may, another time. But not now.”
“You said you missed me, you were wretched without me,” she said. “When you go back to London, you’ll have other ladies to make you forget me. I shan’t have anyone like you. I don’t want to wish I’d taken a chance. I don’t want to regret. Now is all I have. Do you not see? Time is running out for me.”
She gave up fumbling with the dress fastenings and grabbed the bedpost instead. She lifted her right foot, un-fastened her half boot, and after a short struggle and a few stumbles, pulled it off.
He could not let her continue. He started toward the bed.
“Don’t think of it,” she said. “I am very nervous and liable to scream.”
Alistair took a step back. She was nervous already. Very likely her courage would soon fail her altogether—before his resolve failed him, he prayed. Before he forgot what honor was. He must pretend. He was good at that. He must pretend he felt nothing.
He moved away, brushed her ugly bonnet from the chair, sat down, and folded his arms. “Very well,” he said. “Take off all your clothes. Writhe in the bed naked, if you wish. It is nothing I haven’t seen before and won’t again. As you say, there have been and will be other women in my life. Many other women. If I grow very bored, perhaps I shall take another turn about the garden.”
He watched the other boot sail past him. Luckily it was soft, and the carpet was thick. It landed with a faint thud.
Her garters went next.
Alistair stared at his boots.
Something soft and slithery landed on his head. He snatched it off, opening his eyes. It was a stocking, still holding the shape of her leg. He swallowed a groan.
Another stocking landed at his feet. He stared at it, dragging his fingers through his hair.
He heard a faint whoosh, and a pair of silk knit drawers swirled onto his knee and slid to the floor.
He told himself to pretend it was something else, but he couldn’t. In his mind’s eye he saw feathery, pale copper curls in the most secret, most feminine of places. Slowly he looked up toward the bed.
Her fiery hair was tumbling about her shoulders, and her dress was twisted sideways. She had her skirts hiked up to her thighs while she
worked at untying her petticoat. He had already seen her ankles and calves, the first time he’d seen her. He knew they were shapely. But he hadn’t seen nearly so much of them, and he hadn’t seen those sweetly curving limbs bare.
She had a beauty mark near the crook of her left knee.
“Miss Oldridge,” he said thickly. “Mirabel.”