“We went up to a street in Westminster, to the location specified in the ad, and found ourselves in due course before a Captain of a marching regiment. He was all for taking likely lads such as ourselves—Paddy in particular caught his eye with his size, but I, being taller than the average for my age, was acceptable too. Fortunately I bethought myself to inquire about the wages His Majesty would pay us for doing his glorious work. Imagine my dismay at being told the pay was but sixpence a day! Paddy, far more than three sheets to windward still from the brandy we had consumed, considered that a great sum, but I, with my wits not quite as befuddled as his, did some calculations and discovered that, in our single night of selling stolen brandy, we had made more blunt than we would have in a year of service with His Majesty’s Marines!
“As Paddy was in no case to be reasoned with, I dragged him out of there on the excuse that we needed to answer nature’s call and would return forthwith. Needless to say, that was the last that Captain saw of us, although the brandy smugglers soon got to know and loathe us, by reputation if not by name, as we began to regularly relieve them of their wares.”
Alec grinned, took another swallow of the liqueur, grimaced, and gestured for a refill. Isabella took a drink from her glass too—quite good, the liqueur was, with a minty taste and smell—and waited for him to continue. When he didn’t, but continued to sip at his liqueur with a reflective smile on his face, as though he was reliving old memories, she prodded him.
“You never did enlist?”
He shook his head. “Sober, I found the notion appalling. Why should I—or Paddy—offer myself up as cannon fodder for King and country when King and country had never done ought for me? Sixpence a day was not near enough of an inducement.”
“So you peddled stolen brandy instead. Is that how you got your start?”
“You mean, was that my introduction to a life of crime? No. I’d always made my way by thievery, stealing whatever I could lay my hands on, and keeping or selling it as the need and mood struck me. But it was that night that I realized just how much money a clever lad could make, And I was right. We never went hungry again after that, nor had to go begging, nor accept handouts from Pearl.”
His careless reference to Pearl was unexpectedly painful to Isabella. Pearl had been there from the beginning, taking care of Alec when he was a ragged, hungry youth, a friend and lover for decades before Alec had ever become aware of Isabella’s existence. Once the novelty of her title wore off, how could she ever compete with a relationship like that? Then, shocked at herself, Isabella wondered that she even thought of competing for Alec.
Her world was not his. Hers was sunshine, his shadow. Like Persephone with Hades, she could not spend all her life in her lover’s underworld Kingdom. Sooner or later, she must once again seek the sun.
Disturbed, she swallowed the contents of her glass with a gulp worthy of Alec, and stood up. The liqueur immediately went to her head, making her sway slightly. Isabella clutched the back of her chair, and stood her ground.
Alec looked up at her, mildly surprised at her abrupt termination of their dinner. But he drained his own glass and rose too, offering her his arm with a courtly bow.
“Shall we repair to the yellow salon, Countess?”
“That’s very well done of you,” she answered admiringly, coming around the table to place her hand on his arm in the correct fashion. “The Prince Regent couldn’t have done it better.”
“But then, Prinny has to contend with a corset, and I do not.” He was smiling as he escorted her into the yellow salon and closed the double doors, after shaking his head negatively to Shelby’s inquiry about whether they would care for coffee to be served. “What shall we do now for after-dinner entertainment? Should you like to play at cards, or shall we discuss improving tomes we have lately read?”
Isabella considered the possibilities he had funningly proposed, then shook her head. A daring idea had come to her, one that, in the cold light of day, she never would have considered. But it was not day, it was night, and she was locked in the Kingdom of her underworld prince, where everything was slightly unreal. The only certainty was that his arm was warm and strong beneath her hand, he was handsome enough to take her breath, his smile dazzled her with its charm—and she greatly feared that she might be falling in love with him. Certainly some intense emotion must account for the dizziness she suddenly felt when looking up into that unfairly handsome face.
“Then what?” Her hand reluctantly left his arm, and he leaned back against the closed doors, watching her.
She took a deep breath. “I propose that we continue our lessons.”
“I’ve no intention of climbing on the back of another bloody horse—and particularly not after dinner.”
“No, lackwit,” she said, smiling a little. “I meant another kind of lesson. Like—dancing.”
“Dancing?”
“You have heard of it? Ladies and gentlemen do it together—you know, da dum, da dum?”
She swayed and pirouetted in front of him, one hand daintily holding up her daffodil yellow skirt while the other rested on the shoulder of an imaginary partner. The snatch of song she hummed was as light and gay as she was. Her voice had never been known for its musicality, and tonight, under the influence of strong drink and stronger emotion, it was even less on-key than usual. But neither of them noticed, or cared for such a triviality as that.
As he watched her, the light in his eyes flared, then darkened. His arms crossed over his chest. “I do believe you’ve had more wine than is good for you, my girl.”
“Is that what this strange feeling is? If so, then I quite see why gentlemen are so frequently in their cups. It feels quite marvelous. Come, Alec, will you not dance?”
“If you wish.” He smiled suddenly, not proof against her pretty persuasion, came away from the door, and held out his arms. Isabella floated into them as if they were the one place she longed to be—as indeed they were. “But I warn you, I’ve less experience dancing than sitting the back of a bloody horse. I’m likely to trod on your toes, love.”
That homely endearment, accompanied as it was by the feel of his arms about her—a feeling that she had both craved and feared for weeks—completed Isabella’s intoxication. She smiled up at him radiantly, one small hand resting on his broad shoulder, the other clasping his in the correct stance for a waltz.
“It’s easy. Just follow my lead,” she breathed into the warm skin of his neck, tugging him in the direction she wanted him to go. “One-two-three, one-two-three, dip, turn, sway—no, it’s I who am supposed to sway. Oh, dear, I fear I am teaching you the lady’s part.”
“No matter. I quite like dancing.” His voice, so close to her ear, was husky. Isabella discovered as she steered him through another turn, humming tunelessly all the while, that he was holding her rather closer than propriety—or the dance—dictated. She made no effort at all to pull away. Instead she snuggled just the tiniest bit closer, and led him through the movements of the dance. A sense of breathless anticipation bubbled to life inside her. It felt so good to be held by him again, to have his arm about her waist and his head bent over hers, to feel the tingle of her breasts as they brushed his hard chest. She inhaled deeply, closing her eyes as she continued to hum the rhythm and move her feet in the patterns of the dance. He smelled of soap, and cigars—he had had one before dinner—and man. He was warm, and solid, and strong—and hers.
Hers?
Just then his foot made brutal contact with hers as he had prophesied it would. Isabella, wrenched from her imaginings by the shooting discomfort in her toes, made a pained sound, her eyes flying open as a grimace contorted her face. Alec had lifted the offending foot almost as soon as it had crushed down on hers. Now he pulled away from her, shaking his head in apology.
“I did warn you,” he reminded her. “I’m sorry, love. Did that hurt?”
Isabella was surprised to find that, compared to the pain of no longer being held close in his arms, her abused foot hurt not at all.
She shook her head, and held out her arms to him. “It’s all right. You haven’t crippled me. Shall we continue?”
To her dismay, he shook his head. “I think I’ve had enough dancing for one evening, thank you. If I don’t take care, I fear I may find myself as intoxicated on you as you are on the wine. And that would never do, would it, Madame Tutor?”
His voice was thicker than usual. Isabella absorbed that, along with the hard, restless glitter in his eyes. The pupils seemed to contract and then expand with some unknown emotion as they slid from her face down the front of her dress and back again. A quivering excitement sprang to life inside her, a sense of herself as enchantress and him as the enchanted.
“So you’re tired of dancing, are you?” she murmured, stepping closer so that her breasts brushed his chest again. His hands came up to grip her upper arms, bare beneath the puffed sleeves of her gown, and he looked down at her in a considering way that did strange things to her breathing.
“Isabella …”
“I, on the other hand, could dance all night—with you.”
“You’re more than a little tipsy, love.”
“If I’m tipsy, then ’tis a wonderful state.” Her hands came up to rest on his chest, palms flat against the pristine white of his shirtfront, head tilted back as she smiled beguilingly into his eyes.
He caught his breath. She heard it quite distinctly.
“You’re going to regret this, Isabella.” The warning was laced with a note of wry humor, but underneath it lay a hard foundation of gathering passion, of need that burned at least as hotly as hers.
“If I do, it’ll be too late, won’t it? We’ll already have had tonight.”
Emboldened by the strength of her desire for him, or the spirits she had consumed—she couldn’t say which and didn’t much care—she slid her hands up his shirtfront, over the broad, tensed shoulders, to link behind his neck. With her arms around his neck she pressed herself against him, smiling, her head tilted back and her lips slightly parted.
“You’re right, of course.” He smiled down at her then with devastating effect, the hard restlessness in his eyes flaring into something far hotter and brighter. “Whatever fireworks tomorrow may bring, we’ll have tonight.”
XLIX
B
ut when he would have kissed her, she shook her head and, with a flickering smile, placed her hand over his mouth to restrain him.
“Dance with me,” she whispered as those golden eyes blazed down at her, and began to hum the lilting strain of the waltz once more.
With a laugh and a shake of his head to free it from her hand, he obliged her, his long body moving gracefully in the rhythms she suddenly was certain he’d learned long before this night, twirling and dipping her as he held her far closer than any dance had ever been designed for, so close that she could feel every hard muscle and sinew in his body as it moved against hers. He began to hum the melody too, his voice far more melodic than hers.
“You humbug, you! You waltz like you were born doing it! Why did you not tell me you could dance?” Mildly indignant, she pushed against his shoulder in a vain attempt to take herself out of his arms.
“And spoil your fun? Not I,” he responded with a devilish smile, twirling her so quickly that her head spun and much of her indignation was lost in laughing protest. Her hair, insecure in its pins, loosened in the mad whirl and formed a soft halo about her face. With her cheeks rosy from exertion and her blue eyes sparkling with laughter, she was radiantly lovely as she leaned back against his arms to shake her head at him in mock reproach. Before she could give further voice to her sense of ill usage, he swung her about in a series of fast turns that left her breathless.
“Where did you learn?” This as she came up gasping for air.
“Remember Cecily?”
The woman who had taught him to read. Isabella remembered, and nodded. “Yes.”
“Besides her many other accomplishments, she was a great devotee of … dancing.”
Alec pulled her even tighter against him as he said the last word, his hand sliding down from its proper grip on her waist to very improperly explore the curve of her buttocks through her dress.
“Was … was she?” That bold caress so unnerved Isabella that she could barely think. Her insides turned to jelly. Her lips parted.
“Mmmhmm. Just as she did with her passion for reading, she passed her passion for … dancing … on to the lad I was then. I’ve had more than a passing fondness for it ever since.”
He was waltzing her about the room, the steps perfectly proper as his hands explored her body in a way that was anything but. He caressed her buttocks and spine and waist, stroking and squeezing and pressing her ever more intimately against him. Head spinning from a combination of the dance, the wine and the man, Isabella quivered in his arms, pliant and responsive to anything he might ask of her. The hard, sinewy muscles of his body enticed her. Then a movement of the dance brought her in contact with a more intimate hardness, and her knees turned to butter. If it had not been for the support of his arms close about her, she feared she would not have been able to stand. But stand she did, and dance too, because all the while he was conducting the delicious assault on her senses, he never faltered in the steps. He twirled her about like a child’s top, humming the haunting refrain in her ear. It was wildly erotic, this waltz that could never be performed on any dance floor. Increasingly helpless in the face of a burgeoning passion the heat of which threatened to incinerate the last remaining shreds of her inhibitions, Isabella could only cling to his shoulders and move as he willed her.
“I really think I must kiss you now, Madame Tutor. You’re so very kissable, you see.”
“Alec …”
“Shhh.”
The hand that was not clasping her waist slid up over her bare upper arm, over the silk of her sleeve, over the slight protrusion of her collarbone to cup her neck. Isabella trembled at the trail of fire his hand left in its wake, and when he tilted her chin up with his thumb she made no further demur.