Kasey Michaels (29 page)

Sophie tilted her head to one side, looking at him quizzically. “Oh, poor Bramwell. It’s all the old gossip coming back, isn’t it? Because I’ve come to London, yes? Miss Waverley isn’t accustomed to having her good name being spoken of in whispers. You must be suffering horribly, and it’s all my fault.” When he didn’t respond, she prompted him again. “You are unhappy, yes?”

Was that relief he’d heard in her voice, coloring her sympathetic words with hopes of her own, or had he simply heard what he’d wanted to hear, needed to hear? “I don’t know...” he said, hearing his own voice trailing away into nothingness. He lowered his head another fraction, until his lips were only a whisper, a heartbeat from hers. “God, Sophie, I don’t know...”

“Bram, I don’t think this is—”

“Don’t think, Sophie,” he said, nearly moaned.

He watched her eyelids flutter closed as he tentatively touched his lips to hers. Her warm lips, soft, and tasting of wine. Their bodies weren’t touching, not at all. Except for their mouths. And yet he still somehow felt himself being drawn inside of her, felt her falling into him. The heat between them was intense, almost to the point of discomfort, the quick rush of desire nearly causing him to stagger where he stood.

And the sweetness. Oh, God, the nearly unbearable sweetness of her.

This was her first real kiss. He wouldn’t consider the other time, his foolish, impulsive action that night in his study. Because this, for them both, was the first time. For all the practiced coquettishness, all the feminine wiles, the knowing smiles, the extensive education in the more bawdy aspects of life, all that she thought she knew, she remained an innocent. Incredibly innocent. Untutored. Nearly unaware.

He felt that same innocence, that same awakening inside himself that she must be feeling. It was as if he’d never kissed before, never lived before.

Sophie’s lips trembled beneath his, then tightened together, as if returning his kiss meant that she should apply pressure in return to the pressure she felt coming from him. He knew she had no idea that he wanted her mouth open, that he longed to run his tongue over her teeth and tongue, feel the warmth and the moisture, stake his claim more fully. He sensed that her arms had begun to flutter at her sides as she decided if it would be all right to touch him, to put her arms around him.

He also knew, somewhere in the remaining yet now infinitesimally small, sane, sober part of his brain, that if she did touch him, if she did open her mouth to him, they would both be damned. Because he was feeling a sudden urge to dance across rooftops. He longed to make long, leisurely love to Sophie in an open meadow planted in wildflowers, to ride wildly through the streets with this maddening, laughing beauty at his side—to do all the wonderfully silly things he could think of, that his father had ever thought of, and more.

And knowing this, knowing all of this, he touched her just the same.

Perfection met his fingers as he cupped them around her breasts, slid them along the bodice of her gown, dipped them inside to lift, to free, to mold, to feel the burn of her soft, firm flesh against his palms.

Her mouth opened slightly as she moaned in what he prayed was ecstasy, leaned more fully against him in what he told himself had to be surrender. He took full advantage of this small victory. He deepened their kiss for as long as she allowed it, then eased his head back slightly, ending the kiss. He looked at her as she stood before him, her expression unreadable, her mouth warm and trembling.

Somehow he’d never know quite how, his fumbling, worshiping fingers found the buttons holding her gown closed. Opened them. The fabric whispered now as it slid easily from her shoulders, puddled on the floor at her feet, and Sophie stood before him naked to her waist, open to his gaze. She looked at him in return. Waiting. Silent. Condemning.

No woman had ever been more alluring, more physically perfect—compelling in her beauty, irresistible. She was every sin he’d ever imagined, every gift he’d ever dreamed, everything man had been damned to want since the dawn of time. Desire flared in him; lust raged through his body. He wanted her. He had to have her.

He loved her.

And so he withdrew from her, from the sweetest temptation he’d ever known. The pain of that withdrawal began killing him with each inch he moved, the sudden loss of a wild abandon only dreamt of and never realized cutting at him, ripping at him, leaving him bereft. Old, tired. Sober.

He turned his back and walked a good ten feet away as she stooped to retrieve her gown, to slip the front-closing buttons back into their moorings.

“Bastard,” she said quietly, so quietly he barely heard her.

He whirled around to face her, knowing why she’d said what she’d said. “No, Sophie,” he told her, taking a single step forward, reaching out a hand, then letting his arm drop to his side, remaining where he stood. “Yes,” he corrected in a raw, tortured whisper. “Yes. I’m a bastard. I am, if you believe that I’m like the uncles. Do you really believe that?”

She shook her head, her curls tumbling around her face. “No, I don’t believe that, Bram. I believe you’re worse than the uncles. A thousand times
worse
. Why, you’re probably going to tell me you love me now, aren’t you? Go ahead, admit it! You’re about to say you love me. And you don’t. You
want
me. But you’ll call it anything you want, just to
get
anything you want. Did you like what I gave you, Bramwell? Did it give you
pleasure
?”

“Yes!
No
!” He stabbed his fingers , through his hair, knowing himself to be on the very edge of losing all control. “Sweet Jesus, Sophie—you’re such a child! A child who’d allow herself to be stripped just to prove a man to be the most base creature in nature. A child whose mind is filled with knowledge but no experience, with misconceptions taken as gospel from a whore.”

“Which whore, Bramwell?” she shouted at him even as he cursed his own tongue, cursed his unforgivable outburst. “Desiree? Or
Maman
?
Which
whore? The one who sees life as it is, men as they are? Or the woman who wouldn’t listen, who insisted on believing in love?”

“Sophie—” he began, trying desperately to assemble something resembling coherent speech in his mind. “There’s lust, yes. There’s desire. But there’s also love. To love a woman is to desire her, to want to kiss her, hold her, make love to her. You can’t separate the two, it’s impossible. You’ve just got to learn to trust yourself, trust your heart. Trust the person you love to love you in return. Believe me, please believe me.”

“Believe you?
Believe you?
” She whirled about, spying a candy dish on the table, lifting it, aiming it straight at his head. He didn’t take evasive action, deciding he’d merited any punishment, even if he were to be knocked unconscious by the heavy dish. Hell, he deserved it—that, and a lot more. A second later the dish shattered against the wall, having missed him by a good three feet.

“Damn you, stand still!” she cried out, picking up the teapot that had been brought into the room earlier, throwing that at him as well, missing him yet again.

She’d picked up the sugar server before he reached her, grabbed hold of her forearm, forced her to hand the server over to him, then pulled her close against his chest. “Tell me, Sophie,” he whispered against her ear even as she struggled to be free. “Tell me what you felt when we kissed, when I touched you, when I looked at your body. Desire? Lust? Love? Could you separate the feelings? Did you even want to? Or is it impossible to separate them? Are they all part and parcel of each other? Is the answer to disbelieve everything—or to learn to trust your own heart?”

He felt the tip of her slipper make sharp contact with his shin and released her in reaction. She moved a few feet away from him, glaring at him across the distance of those few feet, a chasm of more than a thousand miles. “Damn you, Bramwell Seaton! Don’t confuse me!” she nearly screamed.

His shin would be black-and-blue for a month. He’d probably limp for a week. Bramwell summoned a smile from deep inside the hell he’d dropped into, knowing the pain in his shin was nothing compared to that in his heart. “Oh, God, no. Don’t confuse the girl,” he said bitterly. “Raise her to drive a man wild, let her know—hell,
teach
her—how to inflame a man past all sanity, then tell her all a man can feel is lust. Tell her that’s all we’re capable of, raw, uncivilized bastards that we are. Don’t give a man a drop of credit, don’t believe a word that comes out of his mouth. And, most of all, don’t believe in your
own
feelings, Sophie. Just lump yourself and your
wants
, your
needs
, in with those of the men you’ve been taught to despise. Or are you going to tell me you don’t want me as much as I want you?”

She looked at him, gave a small anguished cry, turned, and ran to the doors, only to find them locked. “Bastard!” she flung at him again, her eyes wild with pain. “Let me out of here. Let me out of here now!”

Bramwell removed the key from his pocket, seeing the obstinate child, the hurt orphan, the desirable woman—all the many parts of Sophie Winstead come together before his eyes for the first time. “Well, hasn’t this been enlightening, if somewhat loud and expensive—that was a very good teapot, you know, and it’s probably now dented beyond repair. But look what we’ve learned. You’re not perfect, Sophie. You’d like to be, you’ve been raised to be, trained to be—but you’re not. And you know what else I’ve learned? I like you better imperfect. I like you willful, even throwing things. And I still want you. I’m not sure, but I may even love you. But you don’t believe me, do you? You can’t, not yet. You still don’t understand a word I’m trying to say.”

“
I
don’t understand?” she spat back at him. “No, Bramwell—it’s
you
who doesn’t understand. You say you like me better imperfect. Well, of course you do. But you like me best for who I am, the Widow Winstead’s daughter. The daughter of a whore. How comforting it must be for you to desire me—to lust after me—knowing that Society wouldn’t so much as blink if you were to take me as your mistress.”

“Not just a child, but an ignorant child! Is that all our kiss meant to you—all you think it meant to me?” Bramwell replaced the key in his pocket, grabbing on to Sophie’s arm and dragging her back toward the couch, all but pushing her down onto the cushions. “Now sit here, young lady, and shut up. Listen to me. You’re a person in your own right, much as you refuse to see yourself as more than a reflection of your mother, as Desiree’s perfect little creation. And it’s damn well time you began to value yourself.”

“Oh, would you just look who’s giving out advice? Are you going to be presenting me with clay tablets soon, brought down from your mountaintop?” she spat, hopping to her feet once more, glaring at him. “And who are
you
, Bramwell Seaton? Do you know? Can you tell me? Do you value who
you
are? Making yourself into the opposite of your father in every way you can doesn’t make you anything less of a
creation
, any more real.”

Bramwell looked at her for a long moment, saw her stripped of all her studiously crafted artifice, all the charm she’d learned, the lessons she’d absorbed. And he saw the hurt there, the tears, the fears she usually hid behind a smile but now tried to disguise with her temper, with harsh words, unpalatable truths. Hiding, always hiding. But not from him. Not anymore. “You’ve got quite a way with a sharp knife, don’t you, Sophie?” he asked gently. “And much better aim than you have with crockery.”

Her eyes clouded for a moment, then flashed with new fire. “It—was meant to, Bramwell,” she declared, lifting her chin.

“Why? So that you can protect yourself?” he asked, cupping that defiant chin in his fingers. “Are you that afraid of me? That afraid of what you feel for me, what I feel for you?”

“I—I have to go now. Please,” she said, her voice breaking as she let the fullness of her pain show at last, that pain slicing his own heart to ribbons.

He watched as she fled the room, ran up the staircase, her hands pressed to her mouth.

Bramwell closed the doors once more and leaned against them. “Ah, Sophie,” he said as he then walked aimlessly about the room, picking up bits and pieces of the evidence of Sophie’s explosive temper, the “flaw” she tried so desperately to hide, the flaw he loved so well, that made her real to him at last. “Ah, Sophie, Sophie, what can you be thinking?”

“Sophie loves you!” Ignatius screeched in a very good imitation of his mistress’s voice. “
Squawk!
Squawk!
Sophie loves you!”

Bramwell picked up the cushion lying closest to him on the couch, meaning to toss it at the mocking, laughing bird, then sat down, the pillow still in his hand, and smiled.

It wasn’t until later that he began to kick himself mentally, realizing he might have been too rash, might have made more mistakes than he had progress in his attempt to understand Sophie... and himself.

If there were dreams to sell,

What would you buy?

– Thomas Lovell Beddoes

Chapter Eleven

“W
hy didn’t you tell me?”