Last Night's Scandal (The Dressmakers 5)

She looked away.

It was true. She was his friend but she was like the simoom: a sudden, immense whirlwind racing across the desert and sucking up the sand into a great tidal wave and sending everyone running for cover. It tore up tents and scattered belongings and flung people and animals about as though they were toys. It was beautiful and dramatic and it rarely killed, but it left so much damage in its wake.

She was a human simoom, and he couldn’t deny that she was one of the reasons he stayed away, but he’d cut his tongue out rather than tell that truth again.

He bent to peer at her face. “You’re not really crying, are you?”

She turned her head further away, toward the fire. The firelight danced on her hair, striking coppery sparks in the wayward curls.

If she had truly been his sister, he might have stroked her hair. If she had been his lover . . . but they couldn’t be lovers. Ever. He couldn’t dishonor her and he couldn’t marry a simoom, and it was as simple and irrevocable as that.

“Why should I waste tears on a heartless brute like you?” she said. “Why should I allow myself to be cut to the quick by the fiendish injustice of your remarks?”

Fiendish injustice.

Drama. That was good. True, too. The weight on his chest began to ease. If she was trying on the guilt technique, forgiveness was forthcoming—though it would take a while and involve stunning verbal abuse, which he fully deserved.

“Why, indeed,” he said. “I’ve never minced words with you, and I should be sorry to start. Though I will, if that’s what you want. I’ve had practice enough. But I must tell you, that will be more depressing to my spirits than Scotland’s infernal climate and my infernal parents and their accursed castle. If we’re to be together for who knows how long, in that wilderness, with those two beldams, and I can’t speak my mind to you—”

“Don’t try that with me,” she said. “Don’t pretend I’m your confidante when you’ve done and said everything to assure me I’m not. If your idea of speaking your mind means abusing me in that despicable way—”

“Despicable!” Excellent. And quite right, too.

“I’m not a dog you can kick when you’re in a foul mood,” she said.

“You could kick me back,” he said. “You usually do.”

“I wish I could,” she said. “But as you see, I’m temporarily disabled.”

He looked at her feet, naked in the water. He remembered the feel of her foot against his bare leg. Pandora’s Box. He slammed the lid shut. “Is it still very bad?” he said.

“No,” she said. “I merely turned my ankle. But Bailey imagined it was swelling, and made me soak it. I must do as she says or she’ll leave me, and if she leaves me, you know I’ll go all to pieces.”

“She won’t leave you,” he said. “And neither will I, until this idiotish Noble Quest is accomplished. You’ve dragged me into it and now you must live with the consequences. Like it or lump it, Olivia. You brought this on yourself.”

He told himself that was as good an exit line as any. He told himself an exit was the intelligent move. He’d been forgiven, more or less, and he no longer wanted to hang himself.

. . . but her foot.

Bailey believed it was swelling.

Not a good sign. He knew a great deal about such things. He’d learned from Daphne Carsington how to tend to the servants’ and crew’s frequent illnesses and injuries.

Perhaps Olivia hadn’t merely turned her ankle. She might have sprained it, or fractured one of those scores of tiny bones.

He knelt before the basin. He blocked out the feminine garments and the firelit curls and all the rest of the fragrant womanliness and focused on her right foot as though it were a separate object altogether. “It doesn’t look swollen to me,” he said. “But it’s hard to be sure while it’s under water.”

Gently he grasped her foot and lifted it from the basin.

He heard her suck in air.

Something was trembling, either his hand or her foot.

“Does it hurt?” he said.

“No,” she said.

“It looks all right,” he said. Carefully he turned the foot this way and that. A slender foot, elegantly proportioned, the toes in gracefully descending size, like the feet of Egyptian statues. The wet skin was so smooth under his hand.

“I think you’ve looked at it long enough,” she said in a choked voice. “It’s getting cold.”

Yes. Long enough. Too long.

“Time to stop soaking it, in any case,” he said briskly. He heard the catch in his voice. He hoped she didn’t. “It’s getting wrinkly.” He reached for the folded towel placed near the basin, set it over his thigh, and put her foot on his thigh. He gently massaged her foot with the towel, working his way from ankle to toes. And back again. And up her calf to her knee. And back again.

She remained perfectly still.

He set the injured foot down on another towel, and attended to the left foot in the same way.

He was careful to keep the towel between his fingers and her skin. All the same, he felt every graceful contour of her foot: the fine bones, the turn of arch and ankle, the delicate line of her toes.

“If you’re kneeling at my feet,” she said unsteadily, “this must be an apology.”

“Yes, perhaps,” he said.

This was the selfsame foot she’d slid up his bare leg the other night.

He raised the foot, as though to set it on the towel, as he’d done with the other. He hesitated. It was only for an instant, and it was a lifetime. A wave of longing rushed through him, unbearable.

He bent and kissed the front of her lower leg.

He heard her sharp inhalation. He could scarcely breathe for the furious pounding of his heart, the heat racing downward.

Carefully he set her foot down. Smoothly he rose.

Wrong. Wrong. So wrong. Unfair to him, to her, to everybody. But it was done, and he’d stopped, and his frock coat concealed what she’d done to him—or he’d done to himself.

“Or maybe I’m getting even,” he said.

Out of the room he sauntered, his gait cool and casual, while the simoom roared across his inner self.

As soon as the door closed behind Lisle, the one to the adjoining room opened, and Bailey came in.

“Miss, I’m sorry,” she said, “but I didn’t think I ought to—”

Olivia held up her hand. “Never mind,” she said. She barely recognized her own voice. Breathless. Because her heart still beat so painfully hard, so fast. “He . . .” She trailed off.

What the devil was he thinking? They’d agreed, had they not, that the Episode in Stamford was a Terrible Mistake. But they’d crossed a line . . . and he was a man, and once a man got those ideas in his head—oh, what nonsense! Men always had those ideas. But he was supposed to keep his distance from her.

He was not supposed to seduce her, the great idiot!

Whether it was meant to be an apology or revenge, he was taking a suicidal risk—with her future! With his!

“Men,” she said.

“Yes, miss,” Bailey said.

“It was my own fault, I suppose.”

“I don’t know, miss.”

“I was furious, you know.”

“Yes, miss.”

“The things he said.” It still hurt to recall them.

“Yes, miss.”

“I should have covered my feet when he came in, or at least drawn down my skirts.”

“Yes, miss, but I could have done that, and I did desert you.”

“Not your fault, Bailey. I’m a DeLucey. It doesn’t matter that I’m other things as well. The DeLucey always takes over. He hurt my feelings, and I had to get even by being provocative. Could I have been more foolish? Did

I not size him up at Great-Grandmama’s party? Wasn’t it clear enough, the invisible sign over his head? Danger. Don’t play with this fire. Any DeLucey would have seen it. The trouble is, any DeLucey would do it anyway.”

“Yes, miss.”

“It’s so hard to resist a risk.”

“Yes, miss.”

“But he’s too risky.”

His too-clever hands and their touch, unbearably intimate. So patient and methodical. If he set out to seduce a woman, that was how he’d do it. Patiently. Methodically. The way he’d kissed her the other night: absolutely focused attention. No quarter given.

If any other man had touched her in that way, kissed her in that way, her morals would have disintegrated, and she’d have let them, happily.