“But you never said anything,” he managed. “You seemed…to want me as I wanted you.”
“One often wants what one oughtn’t have,” she answered softly. “You were as beautiful,
caro mio,
as the devil in angel’s wings.”
He had believed her reticence a game. He had believed that she teased and tormented him deliberately. Hadn’t he? With her lush figure and dark, seductive beauty, Viviana had seemed so much older than he. So worldly and sophisticated. He had supposed that she knew what he did not. How to make love instead of just have sex.
Good God, it all seemed unfathomable to him now. Had they both been green as grass? He had been so nervous. So desperate to have her. And he had wondered afterward if she had laughed at him, at his inability to wait. Yes, he had taken her there on the shabby leather divan in her even shabbier dressing room. She had still worn her costume and that hideous wig.
Quin bowed his head and pinched the bridge of his nose until the pain calmed him. “I am sorry, Viviana,” he said quietly. “I was nothing but a green boy just up from the country. It is no excuse, I’ll warrant, but…”
She was looking at him with a worried expression now.
“Non importa,”
she said quietly. “It is just some water under a bridge,
si?”
He laughed, a sharp, pathetic sound. “Yes, my dear, it is just some water under a bridge.”
They remained thus for a time, her hand resting lightly on his arm, his gaze focused blindly through the window. Eventually, he drew in a ragged breath and straightened up. “Well, Viviana, I am sorry it has come to this,” he said, without looking at her. “I am sorry for all the mistakes I made. But they were the mistakes of youth and inexperience, if that matters.”
“I, too, made mistakes,” she admitted.
He let his shoulders fall. “We just need to decide, you and I, what we are going to tell people when they go prying into our business—as my sister is wont to do. So…so tell me what it is you wish me to say, Vivie, and I shall say it.”
“I did not come here to embarrass you, Quinten,” said Viviana. “You have always been free to deny everything if that was your wish.”
At last he turned and looked down at her. “I never imagined, Viviana, that you came to embarrass me,” he answered. “You are a respectable widow. You have three children. I think you have far more to lose than I.”
He meant it, too. What did he have to lose, truly? Esmée had already left him. And sadly, he had scarcely thought of her since. In Town, his reputation was already black as pitch and likely getting worse. He remembered those awful first days following Viviana’s return as if they were some sort of dream. Indeed, he wondered if he’d been a little mad.
In the years since they had parted, the breath of scandal had not touched her, so far as he knew. Why would she wish to throw away her respectability? She did not want revenge. Indeed, she had not even wanted
him.
He would do well to remember that it had been she who had left, and not without reason. Her marriage to Bergonzi ate at him, but it was a pain best kept to himself.
He tried to smile at her but it was a rueful, half smile at best. “We will keep to the story we told at Aunt Charlotte’s,” he said. “We met once or twice, and I tried to court you. You spurned me, and that was the end of it.”
Viviana’s expression was still unreadable.
“It will work,” he said reassuringly. “There is no one who can contradict us, save for Lucy Watson, and she can be trusted.”
At last, she nodded.
“Si,
it will work,” she echoed.
“Grazie,
Quinten. I should go now. It is a long ride back to Chesley’s.”
He stepped away and bowed his head. “Yes, of course.”
She turned as if to go, sweeping the longer hem of her habit over the kitchen threshold. But at the last minute, she turned around, her eyes suddenly wide and sorrowful. “I have often wondered, Quinten,” she said quietly. “After I left, did you…did you miss me? Even a little? Or was I just another whore to you?”
He crossed the little room in two strides and snared her hand in his. “Don’t say that, Vivie,” he growled. “Don’t ever use that word again.”
She blinked as if startled from a dream. “A Cyprian, you called me,” she murmured. “Is that not a whore?”
He bowed his head, and carried her gloved hand to his lips. God help him, but he had said it—and not that long ago. And then he had kissed her, quite rapaciously and cruelly. He was fortunate his mother and his uncle had been able to hush up the worst of the damage.
“Forgive me, Viviana,” he managed. “I did say it, but I was wrong. I was angry. You were never that to me.”
“Why?” Her voice was plaintive now. “Why, Quinten, were you so angry?”
Inexplicably, he wanted to tell her. To unshackle himself from the awful truth. “Because, Viviana, when you left me, I did miss you,” he answered. “Very much.”
“In what way?” she asked. “How? I need to know. I need to know that that part of my life was not entirely wasted. That it meant…something. To someone.”
He dropped her hand, his smile bitter. “It probably was wasted, Vivie,” he said. “But it meant something to me, if that helps. I don’t think I ever deserved you. And when you left, it was as if someone had stripped my very soul away.”
She started to reply, but he set a finger to her lips. “You were never a whore, Vivie. Never a Cyprian. You were my light and my life.”
Gently, she pushed his hand away. “Oh, Quinten, would it have been better for the both of us if we had never met at all?” she asked, her voice suddenly unsteady. “Would our lives have been easier? Our hearts less damaged?”
He shook his head. “You cannot look back, Vivie,” he answered.
She surprised him then by lifting her hands to his face. “I know,” she whispered. “I don’t look back. I cannot let myself. I cannot bear to question the choices I have made. But today, I—I just don’t know.”
He closed his eyes and turned his face into the palm of her glove. He could feel her ever-comforting warmth beneath the supple leather. “Your touch is like a dream to me,” he whispered, almost unaware he spoke the words aloud. “So many times I have awakened to this, only to find…that it was not this at all.”
“Quin, I—” She stopped, and shook her head. “I never meant to hurt you. I never even knew that I had. I am sorry. I regret we could not part as friends.”
“It would not have been possible then, Viviana.” He set his hands on her shoulders and tried to resist the urge to pull her into his arms. “My feelings for you were not so simple.”
“Is it too late now?” she asked. “Oh, Quin, I don’t want to be like this. I don’t want to die old and bitter. I want to remember my first lover with happiness and not regret. Is there any little scrap of fondness or friendship that we might salvage from this mess we’ve made?”
He felt a little piece of his heart crumble again. It was not fondness or friendship which he felt for her. It never would be.
Later, he could not have said if Viviana came against him of her own accord, or if he pulled her into his arms. But somehow, his hands were spread wide across her back, and his face was buried in her hair. “I don’t know, Vivie,” he whispered. “I don’t know what is left of my heart. Nothing, I sometimes fear.”
“You hurt me, Quinten,” she whispered. “I will not pretend you did not. But I think I did not comprehend that I had hurt you.”
He drew a deep, unsteady breath. “You spoke of happiness, Viviana, and not regret,” he said. “Perhaps we parted on terms so bitter they poisoned us. Perhaps we will look back on this visit of yours and know that we tried to make peace.”
“I would like to be rid of the bad memories.” Viviana let her eyes drop shut and set her cheek against his chest. “A thousand times, Quinten, I have thought of this. Of what it would be like to have your arms round me again. To feel no anger, but instead, only peace.”
He set his lips against the top of her head, and inhaled the soft scent of her hair. “I wish, Vivie, that I could live that time over again,” he said. “I know we cannot turn back the clock. I know our ways have parted and will likely never merge again. But I cannot say I won’t think of you often.”
She looked up, and he felt her shiver in his embrace. Her eyes softened in that too-familiar way he had once loved. And suddenly, it seemed the most natural thing in the world to lower his lips to hers. This time, however, he was slow and patient. This time, he gave her every opportunity to refuse him. She did not. Instead, she lowered her sweep of long, black lashes, and sucked in her breath on a little gasp. Delicately, his lips brushed the swell of her bottom lip.
“Vivie, let me—” he rasped. “No, let
us,
Vivie—let us wipe away the bad memories with a memory of something sweet and good.”
He felt her hands move uncertainly to his waist, then felt them settle there, pulling him incrementally nearer. His mouth molded fully over hers, and he kissed her deeply as he drew in the scent which had so long haunted him.
Good God, he had thought never to do this again! Perhaps he oughtn’t be doing it now, but Viviana’s mouth was softening beneath his, and her lips were parting in sweet invitation. After a moment’s hesitation, he answered her, stroking his tongue along the seam of her lips, then sliding gently inside. For long moments he held her, thrusting slowly into her mouth, and reveling in the way her breath caught and the way her body came fully against his.
They came apart breathing rapidly, both of them thinking the same thing, he would have sworn. “Oh, we should not,” she whispered, her eyes holding his quite unflinchingly. “Quin, you know where this is going. We never possessed an ounce of restraint between the two of us.”
“No, not an ounce,” he whispered, pulling her back, and tucking her head beneath his chin. “Is that so bad, Vivie?”
She set her lips against his throat. “Oh, Quin! Oh, God, is this…is this wise?”
He felt his own hands begin to shake. “Vivie, I don’t know,” he admitted. “But who will ever know? How can it be wrong if we agree to it? Just once more, and then perhaps we will…we will be able to part in peace. Perhaps we will be erasing the bad with the good—and bringing back the memories of a time that was so fleetingly sweet.”
Viviana’s mouth opened against his throat, then skimmed along his collar. He felt her whole body shudder against his. She knew what he was offering, then. What he wanted. And dear God, she was going to do it. Relief and joy and desire ran through him like a lightning strike. She returned her mouth to his and kissed him hungrily—the kiss of his dreams. His heart literally skipped a beat.
“Then do it, Quin,” she said when she tore her mouth from his. “Leave me with a good memory and wipe away the bad.”
His hands went to her shoulders, and he squeezed them gently. “Vivie, are you sure?” he choked. “Be sure. I have to know it is something you want.”
She shook her head and pressed her eyes tighter still. “It is something I want,” she whispered.
And then, somehow, Quin had her in his arms, her long skirts draped across his coat sleeve, and he was carrying her back through the little parlor. The fire was blazing there, radiating warmth into the room. He swept past and into the dark, narrow bedchamber. He laid her down and set one knee to the mattress, making the bed creak beneath his weight.
Viviana reached up, and lightly embraced his face with her hands. Her gloves, he realized, were gone. “We will not regret this,
amore mio?”
“We won’t let ourselves regret it,” he answered. He shucked off both his coats, and let them slither to the floor. His boots followed, then he sat back down on the bed.
“Vivie, we will tell ourselves this is just for old times’ sake,” he said, sliding the backs of his fingers across the infinitesimal softness of her cheek. “That we left something undone all those years ago.”
She reached up, and he felt her fingers run through his hair, gently stroking him from his temples, all the way back. It was one of his favorite touches, one which left him shivering with delight. This afternoon was no exception.
“Just for old times’ sake, then,” she whispered. “Just once more. To make good memories instead of bad.”
Viviana’s heavy cloak had fallen away and slithered half-off the bed. His hands went to the throat of her habit, and slowly he began to undress her. Not once did she hesitate, or move to stop him. Every button, every hook, revealed something indescribably sweet. An inch of lace. A patch of creamy skin. A scent. A gasp. Like tiny drops of water in a drought, they quenched an emotional thirst, as though he were parched to his very soul.
She watched him through eyes half-closed as her body was unveiled. Her throat, so long and so perfect. The neat, round turn of each shoulder, and her still slender arms. Her heavy skirts. Her boots so small they fit across the length of his hand. Even her drawers, which she untied herself, almost bashfully. All of it fell away until she lay stretched out before him in her thin chemise of fine lawn and lace. So fine he could see her dusky aerolas, and her nipples already hard—though whether from the cold or from desire, he could not say.
Lightly, he brushed one finger over the peaked fabric. Viviana’s eyes closed fully, and her head went back into the softness of the old feather bolster. “Quin.” She paused to swallow hard. “Quin, don’t…don’t torture me. Not this time.”
He smiled, and remembered how it used to be; how, after those first few weeks of uncontrolled lust had been sated, he had learned to go slow. So slow he could make Viviana writhe and beg. What a feeling of power that had been; a feeling he had not enjoyed—or even tried to enjoy—with any woman since. Then, there had been no mistaking Viviana’s desire for him. He took comfort in that now and lowered his mouth to her breast.
Viviana gasped, her hips surging upward and he sucked the hard, perfect tip of her breast between his lips. He listened in satisfaction as her breath ratcheted slowly upward. She shifted one leg restlessly, and Quin set his palm against the inside of her calf and began slowly to push the fine lawn chemise higher and higher, until he reached the tender flesh of her inner thigh. For long moments, he simply caressed her there, suckling her gently with his mouth as his palm circled and stroked.