“The gallery offers a number of fine works.” His voice still sounded peculiar, but he moved toward the door in easy strides, motioning for her to precede him. “Including several of royals who visited Fellsbourne in one century or another.”
She tried to wet her lips enough to speak. “How interesting.” She stepped from the drawing room into a chamber lined with marble statuary.
“My father did not have a taste for European art,” he said close behind her, sending a skitter of nerves glistening along her spine. “My eldest brother expanded this collection. He was quite fond of classical subjects.”
“I see.” She did not pause to study the pieces, catching only a glimpse of a reclining Gaul, his impressive musculature covered by a minuscule loincloth, and an amorous Cupid and Psyche locked in an embrace in which the god’s hand rested upon his lady’s breast.
Tavy squeezed her eyes shut. This could not be happening. How could she have agreed to this? Any of it?
Cheeks aflame, she strode to the opposite door. It opened onto a ballroom. Pristine white walls rose to the second story, a carved balustrade running its length offering a view from above. A chandelier draped from the whitewashed ceiling, hundreds of tiny crystals reflecting the sunlight filtering through the windows, sparkling upon floorboards like a thousand diamonds. It was a spectacular chamber, but in all its glory, cold as ice.
She turned. He stood at the threshold, watching her.
“I beg your pardon,” she said quickly. “I am sorry to intrude on your party. You did not invite me and I cannot imagine that—”
“You needn’t be sorry.”
“My sister begged me to accompany them. With their son so new, you see, she is quite anxious and requires a great deal of comforting. I could not refuse her.”
“You are welcome here.”
Her throat went dry. “I am?”
He nodded.
Of course. Why would it matter to him whether she was in his house or in Timbuktu? He hadn’t cared for her whereabouts for seven years. He certainly would not care now, as his calm demeanor suggested. The anxious anticipation Tavy had nursed for days abruptly deflated, leaving only the awful, humming awareness of his presence.
He did not advance into the chamber, but his gaze remained steady upon her. Tavy’s heartbeat sped, her hands damp. She should have remained in London. She could not bear this, the memory of wanting him beside the newness of knowing him again so perfunctorily. And he was not making it any easier on her, his black eyes intense and distant at once.
She turned away, searching for words in the heavy swags of white and silver fabric framing the floor-to-ceiling windows. Elegant, all of it. So cold. So English.
“Do you ever miss it?” Her quiet voice echoed across the ballroom. “Home?” Stomach tightening, she glanced over her shoulder.
He shook his head, twin lines appearing between his brows. “No.”
Outside the windows, the park stretched toward a copse of trees, their leaves mottled with the ripening of autumn, so unlike the tropical paradise she had lived in for nearly a decade.
“I do, every day,” she murmured. “It is like an ache.”
“Still in the thrall of the exotic,
shalabha
?”
She pivoted around. He stood very still, the word lingering between them, the nickname he had given her in another lifetime, but said so differently. Not warm and playful as she remembered it, instead now with a sharp edge. His eyes were dark as coal, and wary.
Or perhaps warning.
Tavy steeled herself against the sinuous pressure of unwanted emotion rising in her. She did not want to go back, to remember everything, no matter what the temptation. She wanted to pretend that he was the stranger he seemed now, that she knew no more of him than his reputation and position in society.
She
did not
know him. She never had. She needn’t pretend.
“No.” Her voice cracked, words escaping despite her will. “It was not like that. Perhaps at first. But then I—” Her throat was parched. The empty space between them stretched like layers of mistrust.
He walked toward her.
Fear rushed through her, wholly primal, and she balanced on her toes, ready to flee. He halted within inches and Tavy had to force herself not to retreat, dragging up her gaze to his handsome face. Awareness that he was a stranger flooded her anew, a man, tall and more solid than when she had known him, with tiny lines about the corners of his mouth that had not been there before, his brow severe.
But something shimmered in his eyes behind the shadows shrouding the black. Something she used to see there when he called her by that pet name. Something that now, just as then, made her heart stumble and her knees turn liquid.
“I—” She struggled for breath, but he seemed not to breathe at all, his body a rigid wall.
“You?”
“I miss—”
His hands came up to either side of her face but not touching, as though he did not wish to do it, his arms locked and jaw hard. Like a silent dance he shaped the air around her, spreading warmth upon her skin that penetrated then stole beneath. His gaze scanned her features, fraught and fast. His chest rose hard.
With every mote of skin and blood sparking and alive from his nearness, Tavy panicked. She stepped back.
Ben grasped her wrist, pulled her forward, and joined their mouths.
WIND. As the sun, in moving from east to west, heats the air more immediately under him, the air to the eastward is constantly rushing towards the west to restore the equilibrium.
—Falconer’s
Dictionary of the Marine
H
e held her so firmly Tavy could not resist. But she had no will to. There was nothing hesitant in their meeting, nothing shy or uncertain. He pressed his mouth against hers and she met him eagerly. Firm commanding lips, hot mouth, and strong hands controlled her and she let it happen, let the heat of his skin and the taste of him sink into her. He felt wonderful, hard and male and beautiful. And familiar.
Him
.
He lifted his head. His mouth hovered above hers, his black eyes seeking.
As though in a dream, Tavy laid her palm upon his chest and leaned forward.
He tilted her head back, slid his thumb along her jaw, and pressed her mouth open. She gulped in a breath and he covered her gasp. She melted, lost to his tongue tracing her tender flesh and tasting her lips, caressing, coaxing her to respond. She pushed up onto her toes to meet him more fully. His hand tightened at the nape of her neck, holding her close, and she drank in the taut texture of his skin, the flavor of his mouth, ripe apples, rich wine and desire. The delicious, warm scent of him she had buried so deep enveloped her now like a fantasy.
His hands slid down the sides of her neck to her shoulders, covering her in a sweet blanket of sensation, and she spread her fingers on his shirtfront. His body was firm muscle under the linen. Not a dream but flesh and blood—warm, real man beneath her hands. Heat tangled between her legs. Without allowing herself to think, she pressed her sensitive breasts to his chest.
A shudder seemed to pass through him. He pulled her close and heaven descended, his body against hers, his mouth governing the parting of her lips, the cadence of her very breaths. He paused, then took her lower lip between his and lightly sucked. She sighed, a breathy sound of pleasure she could not withhold. His tongue dipped inside her, then again, twining delicious satisfaction and need together. As though he had a world of time, he played with her ache gently, teasing her soft dampness, mounting her need until she clung to him, fingers digging into his ribs. In the haze of desire, she imagined he wanted this, to make her want him, that he was kissing her this way to force her need. He swept her tongue and lips, giving her just enough of what she craved until she was breathless for more of him, more of his touch and his hands upon her. Her skin was alive, her breasts tight, her breaths short.
Then, for a moment, he fit his lips to hers and kissed her fully, sealing their mouths in pleasure, making them one. Time, pain, hurt fell away. No man except Ben had ever kissed her this way, as though giving her pleasure and slaking his thirst were one in the same. As though he could not stop.
He strafed the corner of her mouth, her jaw, and the tender skin beneath her ear. Tavy’s legs barely held her up. Ben gripped her arms tight, pressed his cheek to hers, and his voice came deep and rough.
“Why are you here?”
She drew away, struggling to order her thoughts amidst the tangle of emotion.
“I told you, my sister—”
He dragged her back against him and whispered over her mouth, “In England.” He kissed her again, as though he must, as though he had to touch her as much as she needed to fill herself with the sensation of him after so long.
He broke away abruptly. “Why did you return?” The words were a condemnation.
Tavy’s chest constricted. She pulled from his grasp and stumbled back, pressing her hand across her mouth. His breaths came unevenly like hers, but the muscles in his jaw looked hard, his eyes wells of blackness.
“I did not wish to.” Her voice cracked. “I would never have left India if my family had not.”
Footsteps sounded at the door. Tavy whirled around. A footman stood upon the threshold.
“My lord, more guests have arrived,” he said hurriedly as a gentleman came into view behind him.
Marcus paused in the doorway then strode forward.
“Ah, there you are, my dear. Good day, Doreé. Your housekeeper sent me looking for you. She said you were giving my fiancée a tour of your impressive castle. What an attractive chamber.” He glanced around, bowed to his host, and grasped Tavy’s hands. “You suit it beautifully, my lady.” He lifted her fingers and kissed them.
Ice lodged in the pit of Tavy’s belly, spreading like frost into her hot cheeks and trembling hands. She drew out of his grasp, heart pounding, and sought Ben’s gaze.
His languid eyes were cold, his beautiful mouth a line. He met her regard like a stranger, and the binding around Tavy’s heart that she had tied there so carefully seven years ago seemed to tear apart.
No.
God, no
. Not again.
She grabbed onto speech, forming words from desperation.
“How was your journey, Lord Crispin?”
Marcus seemed not to note anything amiss. “Swift. I am sorry I could not travel with you. I had a business matter to see to this morning.” He turned to the marquess and smiled conspiratorially. “Don’t be cagey about it, Doreé. You have business in mind this week, I suspect. I saw Nathans in the parlor, and Gosworth’s carriage pulled up a minute ago. Having the Bengal Club out as well, I daresay?”
“I haven’t any such august plans, my lord. Merely a bit of shooting,” Ben said with casual ease. “But perhaps we should postpone discussion of that until later. I am certain your fiancée hasn’t the least interest in weapons and birds. Now, if you will excuse me, I must be off to change before more of my guests arrive.”
He bent and retrieved his gloves from the floor, Marcus’s gaze following the action carefully.
Ben bowed. “Madam.” Without a flicker of his dark gaze, he strode from the ballroom.
“What were you doing with that fellow, Octavia?” Behind her, Marcus’s voice had lost its friendly animation.
Her throat and stomach burned, melting the ice in a flash. Hands gripped into fists, she turned to him on leaden limbs.
“He is our host, Marcus, not a fellow.”
He seemed to study her cheeks, then her mouth. “You should not have been alone in his company.”
Her insides hurt. No, she should not have been alone with him. No.
“He offered a tour of his house. It is impressive.” Her tone splintered. “But that is hardly at issue here. Marcus, I am not your fiancée. I believe I made that clear the other day. Why did you say what you did, and call me that?”
“You will be my lady soon enough.” He reached for her hands, his smile reappearing. Tavy backed away, her body shaking, shock and anger running in tandem through her.
“I have not yet given you my reply.”
“Doreé is not to be trusted.” His grin disappeared again and something unsettling lit his gaze. Something that looked peculiarly like the panic she had felt earlier. “You are a beautiful woman and—”
“No.” She thrust up a palm. “I cannot hear this.” She hurried toward the door, heat prickling behind her eyes. Dear God, she didn’t even know where her bedchamber was in this vast place. Pressing back on tears, she hurried toward the entrance hall.
“Octavia, wait. I do not wish to distress you, but you must know the way of it.”
The butler stood in the foyer.
“Sir, could you direct me to my quarters?”
The servant glanced over her shoulder at the baron approaching, and gestured her toward the stairs. She barely saw the corridors he led her through. Inside her bedchamber, she snapped the bolt across the door and moved to the elegant dressing table.
She met her reflection in the glass then dropped her face into her hands. A shuddering breath escaped her. But the tears, so hot behind her eyes minutes earlier, would not come. Instead, memory did, hard and fast with a welling up of thick heat in her chest, as she had not allowed for years. Now, with the sensation of his touch so fresh, the feeling of his body against hers, his hands and mouth upon her skin, she could no longer resist.
Marcus called her beautiful, but on the cusp of her eighteenth birthday she had not been anything of the sort. An awkward girl, too lanky and uncomfortable in her new woman’s shape, still she hadn’t much cared about that, only about being released from the cage of proper English girlhood to explore the world she had lived in for nearly two years yet had not been allowed to experience.
Aunt Imene took her to tea amongst the English ladies, always making certain to comment on her poor looks, pointing out how lovely Alethea had been at that age and tut-tutting Tavy’s lack of grace and fashion. Going mad with confinement, Tavy mostly ignored her gaoler. Instead she begged her uncle to take her along when he did errands about town. He complied, but he never allowed her out of the carriage. Enveloped in humid heat, she stared through windows at the world just beyond her reach, the color and beauty she had dreamt of for so many years but was not permitted to touch.
Then Aunt Imene suffered a fever. During her lengthy recovery, with help from discreet servants with whom Tavy had made friends in her two years of incarceration, finally she escaped to the market. Always she stole away at the hottest part of the day when the English and high-caste Indians all reclined upon their fanned verandas.
Lingering over a shopkeeper’s wares on one of those escapes, drawing the scents of spiced fruit into her nostrils and shaded by her parasol, she met him for the second time.
“No longer in need of rescuing,
shalabha
?”
Warmth shivered along Tavy’s shoulders. She turned and her gaze traveled up a perfectly proportioned male chest encased in a bright blue and gold waistcoat of the finest silk only an Indian prince would wear.
But Lord Benjirou Doreé was exactly that now, a mercantile prince. His uncle had died of fever months earlier, and when his heir returned to India from university in England, Tavy heard news from the servants. She had wondered whether the English were discussing it too, the spectacular funeral that filled the streets, the blazing white procession through Madras to mourn its lost son, friend to peasants, princes, Mughals, soldiers, and Company officials alike. There must be talk. After all, the Indian manufacturer’s heir was an English nobleman, the son of a peer.
His black eyes glinted with gentle pleasure as he gazed down at her, one hand slung casually over the edge of the shop awning beneath which she stood. He was twenty-two, with the sleek grace of a tiger and the confident carriage of a young lord.
“Oh, no,” she said breezily, brushing an errant wisp of hair from her brow with quivering fingers. “Now I am the one who does the rescuing.”
His mouth curved into a slow smile. “Do you often find the need?”
“All the time, I daresay.” She waved her hand about. “Why, just the other day Mrs. Fletcher tripped over a stack of tea bricks and fell flat upon her face on the baker’s stoop. I was obliged to pass smelling salts beneath her nose at least thrice before she revived.”
“How unfortunate for her,” he said solemnly, but a small crescent-shaped dent appeared in his cheek. He had beautiful skin, the color of firelight glinting off teakwood, or polished bronze. His features were neither English nor Indian, but a melding of both only a master artist could have invented—lean cheeks that lent him the air of an aesthete, square jaw, aristocratically straight nose, and ink-black hair worn considerably too long for a student at Cambridge. Tavy had never seen the Marquess of Doreé and rarely his second wife, who was always thoroughly wrapped in sumptuous saris and flowing veils when she left her villa next door. She supposed they both must be quite handsome to have produced such a son.
She nodded gravely. “It was dreadful. But she recovered remarkably well when Mr. Fletcher threatened to hire a pair of sepoys to carry her back to the house hammock-style.”
He cocked a single brow, its abrupt downward angle accentuating the wonderfully languid dip of his eyes.
“Sounds like a beastly fellow.”
“Would you have treated her better?”
“With the respect a lady always deserves.” His tone seemed so sincere. And oddly caressing. Tavy’s knees felt gelatinous.
Everyone in the port town knew Benjirou Doreé was a wild young man, keeping late nights near the docks with his childhood friends even now after his uncle’s death. Rumors of his reputation at university back in England, all revolving around fighting and women, filtered to her through the servants who overheard much because, like she, they were invisible even while standing right beside an Englishman.
This wild young Englishman, however, was still technically a stranger.
Foolish propriety
. What was the use in living four thousand miles from London if one could not occasionally break the rules? She sucked in breath and extended a gloved hand for him to shake.
“I am Octavia Pierce.”
The corner of his beautiful mouth lifted again. He bent, curled her fingers around his, and raised them to his lips, his gaze never leaving hers.
“I know who you are,
shalabha
.” He brushed a kiss upon her knuckles and released her hand.