Desire in the Sun (4 page)

III

“B
etsy! Betsy!” Lilah called for her maid even as she hurried through her bedroom door. Of course Betsy was not in the room. Why should she be? She would not be expecting her mistress to come to bed for hours yet. Lilah tugged on the bellpull impatiently. She wanted to get back downstairs as quickly as possible, Jocelyn San Pietro was the most attractive man she had ever met, and she didn’t mean to keep him waiting any longer than she could help. The refrain “Too good to be true, too good to be true. …” kept running through her head.

“What you doin’ upstairs so early, Miss—Miss Lilah! What happened?” Betsy came into the room almost at a run, then stopped short just inside the door to stare at her mistress. Betsy was a slender girl with skin the color of coffee mixed liberally with cream. Her aureole of dark hair—which she wore loose at Heart’s Ease but which Amanda Barton had decreed must be concealed by a kerchief like those other housemaids wore while at Boxhill—had a reddish tinge. She was very pretty, and was Lilah’s friend as well as her personal maid. Betsy was two years older, and had been Lilah’s playmate from birth. Lilah’s father had officially given the girl to Lilah for her eighth birthday, and Betsy had been her maid and confidante ever since.

“I fell off the verandah,” Lilah answered impatiently,
as she had to Beulah. The story was too long and involved to go into. “I’m going back downstairs again, so I’ll need something else to wear. But first get me out of this dress.”

“Yes, Miss Lilah.”

Betsy closed the door behind her, then crossed the high-ceilinged room with its elaborate rice-carved bed to unbutton the back of Lilah’s dress. Lilah had already untied the sash, and in just a matter of moments Betsy was lifting the dress over her head.

“I don’t think it can be mended,” Betsy said doubtfully, examining the ruined silk.

“Oh, it doesn’t matter.” Lilah, clad in petticoat, chemise, and stays, her slippered feet practically soundless on the polished wood floor, crossed to the mahogany wardrobe between the two tall windows and threw open the doors. “Come here, Betsy, and help me pick. Something ravishing!”

Betsy looked at her mistress with a quizzical expression. “You sickening for something? I’ve never known you to worry about being ‘ravishing’ before.”

Lilah smiled tantalizingly, but said nothing.

“It’s a man, isn’t it?
The
man? Oh, Lord-a-mercy, it’s him at last! You can tell me, Miss Lilah, and you know I won’t breathe a word to a soul! Why, I tell you about all my men! And you never tell me a word about yours!”

“ ‘Cause there’s nothing to tell, that’s why, and you know it. What about this blue dimity?” She held the dress out and inspected it with a critical eye. “No, blue doesn’t show up well at night.” She dropped it onto the floor without a second thought and turned back to rummage through the wardrobe again.

“What about the silver faille?” Betsy suggested, reaching around Lilah to find and remove the dress in question. Both girls stared at it with the eyes of connoisseurs.

“It’ll do,” Lilah decided with a nod, turning away from the wardrobe to cross to the dressing table, where she leaned down to examine her face. “I’ll need fresh underclothes, too. Oh, my, I’m a mess!”

As she had feared, her elegant knot was barely anchored over one ear, and the cunning little curls had deteriorated into silvery wisps around her face, A smudge of dirt was on her forehead, and a long scratch marred the creamy skin of one cheek.

“I look dreadful!” she said, appalled.

“No, you don’t. You couldn’t look dreadful if you tried,” Betsy replied placidly, placing the fresh underclothes with the dress on the bed. “You just wash your face, and we’ll have you looking good as new in half an hour,”

“Half an hour!” Lilah almost wailed, bending over the washstand to splash water on her face. The cold water stung the scratch, but she didn’t mind that. She just wanted to hurry downstairs.

“It must be
him
,” Betsy concluded with a chuckle. “I knew Cupid would get you with his arrow one day, Miss Lilah. And from the look of you, you’ve been hit real bad.”

“Don’t be silly, Betsy. I told you I fell off the verandah, and I did. Anyway, I’ve just met the gentleman. I … like him, that’s all.”

“Honey, you like butter on your biscuits. What a girl feels for a certain particular gentleman isn’t called like. It’s called love.”

Betsy began to untie the tapes of Lilah’s stays as she spoke. When they were released, Lilah took a deep breath, the action as automatic as washing her face. She’d been wearing stays for years, and she’d grown accustomed to their strict confinement. Still, it was nice to breathe freely when she could. Next Betsy loosened the ribbons on her petticoat, and lifted the chemise over her bead. In minutes Lilah was as naked as a babe, and
Betsy was dressing her again from the skin out. The silver faille dress would be left until last, after Betsy had done her hair, so that it wouldn’t wrinkle.

“I bet he’s handsome,” Betsy observed as she pulled the pins from Lilah’s hair. Lilah, seated in front of her dressing table, leaned toward the mirror to examine the scratch on her cheek as the silver-blonde strands fell in a shining mass around her face. Her hair reached down past her hips, and although it had to be coaxed to curl with curl papers it was wonderfully thick and shiny.

“I don’t want to talk about him, Betsy! Do you think I’ll have a scar?”

Betsy shook her head as she brushed out the shining strands. “From that little scratch? I can cover that right up with a little rice powder. No one will hardly know it’s there.”

Lilah watched in the mirror as Betsy twisted her hair up into an elegant coil at the back of her head. The little curls that had framed her face so charmingly earlier that evening were irredeemably lost for the night. Her hair was as naturally straight as a poker. But the effect of this more severe hairstyle was just as pleasing, she decided, surveying her reflection from first one angle and then another. The cool upsweep of silvery hair enhanced! the high-cheekboned beauty of her face, showing off her shell-like ears and the delicate lines of her features. Except for the angles created by her cheekbones and a certain pointiness to her chin, her face was a perfect oval. Her eyes were large with the faintest tilt at the corners, their soft gray-blue enhanced by the thick black sweep of her lashes (which, if the truth were told, Betsy usually darkened with the end of a burned stick). Her nose was straight and finely shaped, and her lips were full and soft yet delicately made. All in all she was quite happy with the face looking back at her—except for the scratch She hoped Betsy was right about the rice powder.

The silver faille dress was similar in style to the one
she had discarded. Lilah stood before the mirror as Betsy pulled the dress over her head, then buttoned up the back. The long satin sash that passed just beneath her breasts to tie in a bow in the back was of a silver just a shade paler than the dress. The gown was styled in the fashion of the French empire that was so popular, with short puffed sleeves, scooped-out neck and high waist. The skirt was slim and devoid of ornamentation of any kind. It was a simple yet stylish costume that depended for its impact on the beauty of its wearer’s figure. On Lilah, with her slender waist and hips and high, full breasts, it was breathtaking. Betsy smiled as she surveyed her mistress in the mirror.

“He’s gonna think he died and gone to heaven,” she said with satisfaction, reaching for the box of rice powder.

“I told you …” Lilah began severely, only to be interrupted by the hare’s foot whisking over her face and returning to pass more carefully over her cheek.

“I know what you tole me. I also know what I know.”

There was no point in arguing with Betsy, Lilah knew. The maid was exactly as subservient as she wanted to be, and no more. Lilah took one last look at herself in the mirror as Betsy clasped a single strand of pearls around her neck, and then she was ready.

“Oh, Betsy,” she said, as butterflies suddenly started to do cartwheels in the pit of her stomach. “I—I think I’m nervous.”

“It takes us all like that sometimes, Miss Lilah. You’re just later getting to it than most.”

“I am, aren’t I? Well, I must go.” Taking a deep breath, amazed at the quivering anticipation that made her feel as if she were, in truth, sickening for something—she was normally the most serene person in the world—she went back downstairs.

IV

L
ilah still felt absurdly nervous as she walked along the narrow back hall to the out-of-the-way room that her Uncle George used as his office. The door was shut. She hesitated for a moment, then she tapped softly and waited for an answer. When she didn’t hear anything, she opened the door and stepped inside. For a moment she feared that he wasn’t there. Disappointment struck her like a blow. Her eyes swept the candle-lit room with its cluttered bookcases and leather-topped desk. The remains of a meal were on the desk, but Jocelyn San Pietro was nowhere to be seen. Then she saw him as he got to his feet from a deep wing chair, and she felt a rush of relief.

“I didn’t think it would be possible for a woman to look any lovelier than you did earlier. I see I was wrong.” He smiled slowly at her. Lilah returned his smile, feeling the magic spark the air between them again. She hadn’t imagined it, it wasn’t too good to be true. There was an attraction between them so strong that it drew her toward him like a magnetic force.

“You’re very good with compliments, Mr. San Pietro. It almost makes me think that you’ve had a great deal of practice handing them out.” She held on to the knob of the open door to resist the urge to walk toward him. His smile broadened. He had shed his driving coat.

The black swallowtail coat he wore clung to his broad shoulders and followed the line of his body down to his narrow waist. The knit breeches revealed slim hips, a flat belly, and long, muscular thighs. Lilah caught herself looking at him in a way she had no business doing. A blush stained her cheeks, and she jerked her eyes back up to his face again, hoping that her expression was not as self-conscious as it felt.

“Can it be that you are accusing me of being a flirt, Miss Remy?” The easy banter was all on the surface. The real conversation was silent, and was conducted by their eyes.

“I fear it may be so.” Her voice was faintly breathless, despite her best intentions.

He shook his head and came toward her, his walk as lithe as an Indian’s. “I never flirt. I’m much too direct for that. If I see something I want, I do my best to get it.”

He stopped when he was very close to her, and stood looking down into her face. Lilah felt her pulse quicken it the obvious implication: he had seen her, wanted her, and would try his best to get her. She looked up at him, up at that dark handsome face bent toward hers, and had to fight the urge to sway toward him. He was tall and strong and handsome, and she was shocked at the sudden longing she felt to have him take her in his arms.

“We—should go join the others. My great-aunt will be wondering where I am.” That urge to be held by him unnerved her. She had never expected to feel such a thing with a man. Certainly she never had before. Ladies were supposed to be immune to that. Being alone with him was intoxicating, and being intoxicated with him could be dangerous.

“Perhaps we should forgo joining the others.”

“Oh, I can’t.”

“Why not?”

“It—it wouldn’t be proper. Besides …”

“I have to be on a ship that leaves Washington harbor at dawn the day after tomorrow. I’d like to get to know you better, and if we’re surrounded by dozens of people I won’t be able to. I know that your relatives won’t like the idea of you being alone with a man you barely know, but I can assure you that you’ve no reason to fear me. Whatever else I may be, I’m a gentleman—or at least I promise to be with you.”.

“I know that,” she answered, surprised because she did. Being afraid of him hadn’t even occurred to her. He was wildly attractive, with those predatory eyes and that gleaming smile, but she’d sensed from the first that he’d never hurt her. As he’d said, he was a gentleman—at least with her.