It left them quivering. Yearning. Curiously breathless, as if they'd been running for hours, curiously weak, as if they'd been battling for too long and nearly lost.
It was an effort to lift his heavy lids. Having done so, Vane watched as Patience, even more slowly, opened her eyes.
Their gazes met; words were superfluous. Their eyes said all they needed to say; reading the message in hers, Vane forced himself to straighten from the doorframe which at some point he'd leaned against. Ruthlessly relocating his impassive mask, he raised one brow. "Tomorrow?" He needed to see her in a suitably formal setting.
Patience lightly grimaced. "That will depend on Minnie."
Vane's lips twisted, but he nodded. And forced himself to step away. "I'll see you at breakfast."
He swung on his heel and walked back up the corridor. Patience stood at her door and watched him leave.
Fifteen minutes later, a woolen shawl wrapped about her shoulders, Patience curled up in the old wing chair by her hearth and stared moodily into the flames. After a moment, she tucked her feet higher, beneath the hem of her nightgown, and, propping one elbow on the chair's arm, sank her chin into her palm.
Myst appeared, and, after surveying the possibilities, jumped up and took possession of her lap. Absentmindedly, Patience stroked her, gaze locked on the flames as her fingers slid over the pert grey ears and down the curving spine.
For long minutes, the only sounds in the room were the soft crackling of the flames and Myst's contented purr. Neither distracted Patience from her thoughts, from the realization she could not escape.
She was twenty-six. She might have lived in Derbyshire, but that wasn't quite the same as a nunnery. She'd met gentlemen aplenty, many of them of similar ilk to Vane Cynster. Many of those gentlemen had had some thoughts of her. She, however, had never had thoughts of them. Never before had she spent hours-not even minutes-thinking about any particular gentleman. One and all, they'd failed to fix her interest.
Vane commanded her attention at all times. When they were in the same room, he commanded her awareness, effortlessly held her senses. Even when apart, he remained the focus of some part of her mind. His face was easy to conjure; he appeared regularly in her dreams.
Patience sighed, and stared at the flames.
She wasn't imagining it-imagining that her reaction to him was different, special, that he engaged her emotions at some deeper level. That wasn't imagination, it was fact.
And there was no point whatever in refusing to face facts-that trait was alien to her character. No point in pretense, in avoiding the thought of what would have occurred if he had not been so honorable and had asked, by word or deed, to enter this room tonight.
She would have welcomed him in, without fluster or hesitation. Her nerves might have turned skittish, but that would have been due to excitement, to anticipation, not uncertainty.
Country-bred, she was fully cognizant of the mechanism of mating; she was not ignorant on that front. But what caught her, held her-commanded her curiosity-was the emotions that, in this case, with Vane, had, in her mind, become entangled with the act. Or was it the act that had become entangled with the emotions?
Whatever, she'd been seduced-entirely and utterly, beyond recall-not by him, but by her desire for him. It was, she knew in her heart, in the depths of her soul, a most pertinent distinction.
This desire had to be what her mother had felt, what had driven her to accept Reginald Debbington in marriage and trapped her in a loveless union for all her days. She had every reason to distrust the emotion-to avoid it, reject it.
She couldn't. Patience knew that for fact, the emotion ran too strong, too compulsively within her, for her to ever be free of it.
But it, of itself, brought no pain, no sadness. Indeed, if she'd been given the choice, even now she would admit that she'd rather have the experience, the excitement, the knowledge, than live the rest of her life in ignorance.
There was, invested within that rogue emotion, power and joy and boundless excitement-all things she craved. She was already addicted; she wouldn't let it go. There was, after all, no need.
She had never truly thought of marriage; she could now face the fact that she had, indeed, been avoiding it. Finding excuse after excuse to put off even considering it. It was marriage-the trap-that had brought her mother undone. Simply loving, even if that love was unrequited, would be sweet-bittersweet maybe, but the experience was not one she would turn down.
Vane wanted her-he had not at any time tried to hide the effect she had on him, tried to screen the potent desire that glowed like hot coals in his eyes. The knowledge that she aroused him was like a grapple about her heart-a facet from some deep, heretofore unacknowledged dream.
He'd asked for tomorrow-that was in the lap of the gods, but when the time came, she would not, she knew, draw back.
She'd meet him-meet his passion, his desire, his need-and in fulfilling and satisfying him, fulfill and satisfy herself. That, she now knew, was the way it could be. It was the way she wanted it to be.
Their liaison would last for however long it might; while she would be sad when it ended, she wouldn't be caught, trapped in never-ending misery like her mother.
Smiling, wistfully wry, Patience looked down and stroked Myst's head. "He might want me, but he's still an elegant gentleman." She might wish that were not so, but it was. "Love is not something he has to give-and I'll never-hear me well-never-marry without that."
That was the crux of it-that was her true fate.
She had no intention of fighting it.
Chapter 12