Last Night's Scandal (The Dressmakers 5)

The writing he’d refused to help her decipher.

Because he was an ass. He’d already worked that out. And he’d worked out the simple fact that he had a great deal to make up for, and he might have very little time in which to do it.

He moved nearer to the window and studied the paper through the magnifying glass. “They look like numbers,” he said after a moment.

He gave her the glass and paper. “What do you think?”

“Numbers,” she said. “But not all of them. I don’t know what the other things are meant to be. Flowers? Sun? Stars? Some sort of symbol? Did you find any engravings in the walls when you were measuring?”

“The usual decorations,” he said. “Ornamental work around doorways and such. Nothing on the stones of the wall, though. Nothing corresponding to these marks.” He held up the paper and compared it to the walls about him. “Except for the little numbers and symbols, this drawing looks rather like this wall.”

She stared at the paper. “It could be any wall,” she said, “if it is a wall. But it does seem like one. Is that meant to be a window, do you think?”

“Hard to say. Do you have my plans?”

“I gave them to Herrick—but no, wait. He was done with them.” She pulled open the drawer of the table and took out the plans. “We thought it best to keep them where we could find them easily.”

She took them out. His gaze slid to the ring again.

He brought his attention to the plans. He stared at them until his mind fixed there, too. “If that number measures the bottom of the wall,” he said, pointing to the drawing, “it’s too wide for the room we’re in. The long side of this room isn’t quite nine feet. The number on the drawing is twelve. That could be approximate. How many rooms measure about twelve feet on one side? Most of the south tower rooms are about that. Herrick’s rooms, too.”

“What about the height?” she said. “If that number is the height of the wall, it narrows things down. It eliminates most of the main-floor rooms.”

“Herrick’s quarters don’t match, either.”

“There,” she said. “Next to the broken stairway to the basement. The entresol over the well room. That’s it.”

He turned his head to look at her.

Her cheeks were flushed. Her shimmering blue gaze met his. His gaze slid down to her mouth, a breath away.

“That’s it,” he said. “That’s it. I can’t do this.”

“What?” she said softly. “Do what?”

“Pretend,” he said. “I’m no good at pretending.”

And he lifted her straight off the floor and kissed her.

It was hard and uncompromising, the determined way he did everything he determined to do. She kissed him back, with everything she had in her, and her legs simply wrapped themselves around his hips. His hands slid down to grasp her bottom.

He set her on the table and broke the kiss and drew her hands away from his neck, and she thought, If you stop, I’ll strangle you.

He turned away and walked to the door to the stairway, and she thought, You’re a dead man.

He latched the door.

Then he picked up the chair and carried it to the other door, and jammed it under the handle.

He came back to stand in front of her.

He said, “Here, let me get you out of those wet clothes.”

She looked down at herself and said, “I’m not wet.”

He said, his voice very low, “Then make believe.”

She could feel his voice shivering down the back of her neck all the way down her spine. “Very well,” she said.

He brought his hands up to her shoulders. He drew away her shawl and tossed it aside. Then he slid his hands to the back of her neck. He unfastened the first hook of her dress. Then the second. Then the third.

They were tiny hooks, yet he undid them, one by one; all the while his gaze never left her face, and she couldn’t take hers from his, from the silver of his eyes.

He undid the larger hooks at her waist. She felt the back of the dress fall open. He slid the neckline down and untied the tapes to the sleeve puffs. He bent his head and unbuttoned the tiny pearl buttons at her wrist. Right hand. Left hand.

She stared like one mesmerized at the top of his head, the silken gold hair. Later, she’d drag her hands through it. Later, she’d run her hands all over him. For now, she’d let him have his way with her.

He drew the top of the dress down to her waist. He tugged. She lifted her hips and he pulled the dress down and let it drop to the floor.

He said nothing.

She didn’t, either. Silence was perfect. No words between them. That was perfect. Only the sounds of their breathing and the sounds his hands made on her clothes and skin.

He was so intent. Methodical. He untied the tapes of her petticoat and tugged it down and let it slide to the floor. He kicked it aside. He bent over her shoulder and loosened the ties of her corset.

Her breath came and faster. So did his. She heard it. But no words. They didn’t need words, not now.

He drew the corset away. Her chemise, released, slid down her shoulders, exposing one breast. She didn’t try to cover herself. He didn’t try to cover her. He left the chemise as it was, and started on her drawers.

Shivery feelings, racing over her skin.

He untied the tapes and pulled the drawers off her. They ended up on top of the other things. Her garters went next. Then her stockings. Then he pulled the chemise over her head.

Then she was naked, sitting on the table, every inch of her body quivering.

He had on all his clothes.

In the pit of her belly, sensations skipped and squeezed. She kept very, very still.

He looked at her, the silver gaze sliding over her skin like a caress. She felt it under her skin, skittering down to the place between her legs.

Then he leaned toward her. She thought he would kiss her, and she put her mouth up. But he kissed her cheek. Then he licked it lightly.

She shivered.

Not with cold. Her skin was on fire. Inside was hot and restless.

He licked her. Everywhere. A flick of his tongue. The touch of his lips. Her ear. Her throat. Her breasts. Her arms. Her hands. He knelt and trailed his mouth and tongue over her legs. He kissed her feet, toe by toe. Methodically. With complete and utter attention.

Low down in her belly was a maddening restlessness, an itch she couldn’t scratch.

And good God, all the gods, Zeus and the rest and the angels and saints and martyrs and crocodiles and ibis-headed gods, too, he kissed up her leg again all the way to her quim.

Then she shrieked—or it seemed so to her, a scream echoing in the small room.

His hand came up to her belly and pushed, and down she went on the table, obediently, writhing and making mad little sounds, and words that made no sense and Oh my God oh my God oh my God.

Little volcanoes erupted inside her, and she shuddered, and then it happened, the fierce, fiery wave that carried her up and up, and threw her up into the sky, then threw her down, shattered.

“Oh my God oh my God oh my God.”

His voice, then, low and thick. “You’re shivering. I’ll have to warm you from the inside.”

“For God’s sake, Lisle, hurry!”

She heard his short, choked laugh, and the rustling of clothing. Then he pushed into her. She jerked upward, eyes wide, catching hold of his arms.

He stilled, his eyes wide, too. “Hurts?”

“No, oh no. Opposite . . . of hurts. Oh, Lisle. My God.”

It had hurt last night, and she’d felt a sting, even during the good part. But this time it was altogether different. He filled her and it was hot and—and wonderful. She reached for his shoulders, to get closer, to get mor

e of him. She moved her hips. “Oh, yes,” she said. “Like this.”

She had not a stitch on and the only naked part of him was the throbbing shaft inside her, and it was wonderful. Wonderful to be naked. Wonderful to have him inside her.

“This is so wrong,” she said.

“Yes,” he said.

“It’s perfect,” she said.

“Oh, Olivia.”

That was the end of conversation. He kissed her, an endless clinging kiss while their bodies rocked together, faster and fiercer. Then the wave came and carried her up again, and again, higher and higher. It flung her up against the sky, and she saw stars, and laughed, and on a laugh said, “How I love you.”

Then the wave came and gently took her down again. And she kissed his cheek and his neck and his lips. And, “Love you, love you,” she breathed.

She fainted.

Chapter 17

Lisle felt her slump in his arms.

Stunned, he looked down at her. She blinked and looked up at him, blue eyes wide and wondering.

His heart lurched with relief. “I hope you swooned with ecstasy,” he said gruffly.

“Yes,” she said dazedly. “My goodness.”

She’d said I love you.

He took her hand, the one wearing the single ring.