They went on to talk about the theater, and about the sights of Paris. Before she
knew it, the dinner was over, and Monsieur DuLac, the theater owner, offered to lead
everyone on a backstage tour. The walkways behind the scenery were narrow and dark,
and everyone laughed and
stumbled together, turning one way and then another as if at a carnival.
Once they made their way up into the rafters high above the stage, Sophia found herself
trailing behind the others until she was alone in the silent darkness. It seemed like
something in a storybook, something perfect and strange, and she didn’t want to hurry
to catch up too fast. She didn’t want to lose the enchantment of the theater.
She tilted her head back and stared up into the soaring space above the walkway. The
darkness was criss-crossed by an elaborate web of ropes and pulleys for the scenery,
and they swayed gently in the shadows like ghosts. Far below she could see the stage
set, the shapes of sofas and chairs and false fireplaces, the facade that mimicked
real life. From here she could see how hollow it all was. From here, everything was
dark and half-seen, half-understood.
Just like life itself. Just like Dominic.
Sophia wrapped her fingers around the railing and sighed. She knew she should catch
up to the others. She could hear their voices from somewhere in the wings, a weird,
dreamlike echo. But she didn’t want to be in a crowd again just yet. She moved slowly
along the walkway, the heels of her shoes clicking on the planks. Even that seemed
strangely loud in the soaring, hollow space.
A man suddenly moved out of the shadows, blocking her path into the wings. She gasped
and fell back a step as she felt her heart pound in surprise. For an instant, she
remembered Lord Hammond and how he had reached for her in the casino, his eyes filled
with that burning possession. His threats.
But then she saw it was Dominic, his hair like a golden flame in the shadows, and
she drew in a deep breath. But
Dominic was just as fearsome as Hammond, in his different way. He threatened her in
ways Hammond never could.
“You startled me,” she whispered.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to,” he answered quietly. But Sophia couldn’t hear anything
contrite in his tone. He took a slow step toward her, and she reached out to hold
on to the railing. “Madame Martine was worried you had fallen behind, and I told her
I would find you.”
“I’m fine. I just wanted to explore a bit. I’ve never been backstage at a theater
before.” Sophia glanced over her shoulder at the soaring space beyond them. It felt
as if she and Dominic were suddenly all alone in the darkness, suspended high above
the world where no one could find them. She had the sudden, strongest urge to reach
out for him. She wanted to wrap her arms around his strength and hold on so she would
know there was one real thing in this dream-world.
But she knew if she touched him, that fire inside her would ignite and she couldn’t
hide it again.
She glanced down at the stage below. “It’s amazing up here,” she said.
“Yes. Like a different world,” Dominic said, as if he knew her thoughts. He took another
step until he stood beside her, and he braced his hands on the railing next to hers.
He didn’t touch her, didn’t look at her, but she was very aware of him close to her.
The smell of his skin, the heat of him, made her remember their kiss vividly.
“When I was a boy,” he said as he looked down at the stage, “I used to hide up in
the walkways of the theater all the time. It was my favorite place, for there I could
pretend I was anywhere, anyone. No one could see the real
me. That’s how I learned that the theater meant freedom, the only real freedom I could
find.”
“So you loved acting from the beginning?” Sophia asked softly. She couldn’t look away
from Dominic, from the fascination of this rare glimpse into his thoughts. He drew
her in so easily.
He shot her a quick, flashing smile. “How could I not love the theater? It’s in our
St. Claire blood. We spouted Shakespeare quotations as our first words. Who wouldn’t
want the gift of being someone else, if only for an hour?”
“Yes, indeed.” Sophia murmured. Yet his brother found the theater a trap of family
expectations. How strange clans were; how easily one could be lost in them. She would
love to be someone else for a moment, someone who didn’t have that wild impulse deep
inside that always drove her to trouble even when she only wanted to avoid it. Someone
who had a net to catch her when that recklessness overtook her. Someone whose play
had a happy ending, no matter what chaos ensued in the midst of the action.
But that was the theater, not real life. In real life there was nothing to catch her,
or anyone else. “What is your favorite role?” she asked. “Romeo? Hamlet? Some dashing,
romantic rake?”
“Iago,” Dominic answered.
Sophia gave him a startled glance. She wouldn’t have expected him to choose a villain,
a man tormented and driven to incite another to murder by blackest jealousy. “Iago?
But he is so…”
“Scheming? Evil? Cruel?” Dominic said with a laugh. “Yes, all those things. His demons
eat him up inside until he has no choice but to destroy everything around him, even
when that thing is the personification of sweetness
and light. It’s better to let such things out on the stage, wouldn’t you say—Lady
Sophia?”
Somehow he put a world of hidden meaning into those two words. Sophia studied him
in the faint, murky light. His handsome face looked harsh, his cheekbones sharp enough
to cut. His eyes darkened as he looked down at her. She could see him as a villain,
so beautiful he drew people closer and closer before he destroyed them because he
could not help it. Because he was driven on by demons, just as she was.
She thought about Jane Grant, the lost fiancée, and wondered if she was something
of sweetness and light. If he still mourned for her and what she had meant in his
life. She wondered what had driven him to hide in the theater rafters as a boy, what
drove him to the million deceptions of the stage and the card table.
But she couldn’t ask him. She didn’t have the words, and she suspected he would never
share his secrets, his deepest self. Perhaps, like her, he didn’t even know.
“That sounds strange to me,” she said. “I haven’t been Lady Sophia in a long time.”
“Have you not?” he said, a touch of some dark amusement in his voice. “But it suits
you. Mrs. Westman sounds too prosaic for such an exotic princess.”
Sophia laughed. “A penniless princess, cast away from the palace. Yet I wouldn’t trade
what I have now for an ivory tower. Nor do I think you would trade the theater for
the grandest of castles.”
“You’re right. Only the theater suits me, I fear. I’m no good at anything else.” Suddenly,
he turned to her in one quick, lithe movement. He drew her close, the soft curves
of her body molded to the hardness of his. And she knew
his words weren’t true—there was surely at least one other thing he was very good
at indeed.
She grasped at his shoulders to keep from falling and his arm tightened around her.
His head bent down to hers, his kiss brushing against her brow. “It was you, wasn’t
it?” he said, his voice low and rough.
For a moment she was confused; all she could make sense of was his touch around her.
“What was me?”
“That night at the Devil’s Fancy,” he said, and she felt his lips curve in a smile
against her temple. “You kicked me in the balls. I was furious about that for weeks
after.”
“Were you really?” Sophia laughed at the memory, a memory that had haunted her as
well. “It
was
rather clever of me, though I had never tried such a thing before. My old nanny told
me to do that if any man ever grew overly bold with me.”
“Was I too bold with you? You seemed to like it—at least until you ran off and left
me in agony.”
“I did rather like it,” she admitted reluctantly. She could hardly deny it after what
had happened between them in her bedchamber. The sparks that crackled between them
were too bright to be dismissed. “But it frightened me as well.”
“I frightened you?” he said tightly, and she wished she could see his face and read
what was in his eyes.
“I—well, I think I frightened myself,” she said. “I was a silly, naive girl back then,
but I thought myself so bold and brave to be sneaking into your club. I was in over
my head.”
“And now?”
“Now I am not so naive any longer. I have traveled a great deal and met many men.”
Men like Lord Hammond, who were angry when they were denied, and men like
Jack, handsome and foolish. Men weak, and men so strong they ran over everyone in
their path. But she still felt just as silly as ever when it came to Dominic. “You
should stay away from me.”
He shook his head, and his lips brushed softly over her skin. “What role do you play
now, Sophia?” he whispered against her hair. “What secrets do you keep?”
“I—I am only myself,” she answered, even though she often had no idea what that meant.
“I am no Desdemona, no Ophelia.”
“You definitely are not. You’re the enchantress in her dark palace, concocting spells,
mixing up your potions and poisons.” His mouth trailed a light path over her temple
and the curve of her cheek, the merest, softest brush. Her eyes drifted closed, and
she shivered.
“I have no magic spells,” she said shakily. If she did, she wouldn’t be where she
was, alone in the world. Unsure of what to do next.
“That’s where you are wrong,” he said. His mouth trailed down to her throat, open
and hungry as her head fell back, and he traced a ribbon of burning kisses over her
skin. “You have a spell that makes me keep coming back to your side even when I know
very well I should not. That Huntingtons are always trouble.”
Sophia gasped as his tongue tasted the pulse that beat frantically at the base of
her throat. She held on tighter to his shoulders, her nails digging into him through
the fabric of his velvet coat. She wished it was his bare skin, hot and damp under
her hands. She wanted to feel him, all of him, as he rose above her and filled the
whole world with only him, only that moment between them.
“No, you shouldn’t,” she whispered. His mouth trailed
over the curve of her bare shoulder as his strong hand held her hard around the waist.
“But I do like it when you do…”
“You taste like sunshine,” he said hoarsely against her skin. “Do you want me to stop?”
Sophia shook her head. Then she forgot everything completely when his other hand slid
up her waist and cupped her breast through the satin of her gown.
His fingers curled around her, and she felt his thumb trace lightly over her nipple.
It hardened under his touch, and her head fell back as she let the sensations rush
over her. The hot pleasure of his touch was delicious, and she craved more and more
of it. What would it feel like if his mouth closed over her bare breast? If he touched
her with nothing between them?
His thumb and forefinger closed over her nipple and plucked at it lightly, and she
whispered his name. His teeth set to her shoulder and she felt him smile against her.
“Sophia,” he said, his voice so rough she could barely recognize it. “You are so beautiful.”
So are you
, she thought as she looked down at his golden head against her. He was like a bright
god. She twined her fingers in his hair and felt its silk shift through her touch.
She tugged at it as he plucked at her nipple again, pulling his hair hard enough to
hurt, but he said nothing. He just scraped his teeth against her and drew her even
tighter to his body. His palm slid under the curve of her buttocks, and she felt the
press of his erection against her through their clothes.
She had never wanted anything like she wanted Dominic now. It was a dark abyss that
would consume her, yet she couldn’t help but leap into it head-first.
As Sophia watched in dazed shock, he fell to his knees
in front of her and her skirts fell back over him. She tried to kick him away, but
his hands closed hard over the soft, bare skin of her thighs above her stockings.
His fingertips caressed her there, feather-light just on the tender crease at the
top of her leg, and he pressed her legs apart.
She felt the hot touch of his breath on her most intimate place, light as a sigh,
just before his tongue plunged deep inside.
Damn it all!
Her eyes fluttered shut, and she held tight to the railing as a trembling, burning
rush of pure sensation shot through her body. He seemed to know instinctively just
how she liked to be kissed, how she liked to be touched—just
there.
He licked one slow, languid stroke then another, before he flicked at that tiny, sensitive
spot with the tip of his tongue. She felt herself contract at that touch, felt a rush
of wetness trickle onto her inner thigh, and he groaned at the taste.
How savagely she wanted him! How she had missed this feeling of being so vitally alive,
so aware of her body. For just an instant, she let herself feel it, let him pleasure
her.
A sudden burst of raucous laughter broke into her sensual dream. Her eyes flew open,
and she found that they had not actually jumped together into some new world. They
were still on the theater walkway, and there were other people nearby. Including his
family.
Oh, damn it all
, she thought again in a hot rush of panic. She had been reckless before in her life,
but never quite like this. Dominic let her go and rose to his feet, and she backed
away from him as she tried to draw in a breath. Her skirts fell around her again,
and she pulled
up the cap sleeve of her bodice. Her hand trembled on the slippery fabric.
Dominic leaned toward her as if he would reach for her again. His face was taut with
lust, his eyes hooded, but then he turned away. As Sophia watched, confused, he crossed
his arms over his chest, and his shoulders rose with a deep breath.