the next street.”
“It’s raining,” he said.
“It is not…”
She felt a wet plop on her shoulder. Another on her head.
A footman leapt down from the back of the carriage, opened an umbrella, and hurried toward them. By the time he reached them, the occasional plop had already built to a rapid patter. She felt Clevedon’s hand at her back, nudging her under the umbrella, and guiding her to the carriage steps.
It was the touch of his hand, the possessive, protective gesture. That was what undid her.
She told herself she wasn’t made of sugar and wouldn’t melt. She told herself she’d walked in the rain many times. Her self didn’t listen.
Her self was trapped in feelings: the big hand at her back, the big body close by. The night was growing darker and colder while the rain beat down harder. She was strong and independent and she’d lived on the streets, yet she’d always craved, as any animal does, shelter and protection.
She was weak in that way. Self-denial wasn’t instinctive.
She couldn’t break way from him or turn away from the open carriage door where shelter waited. She didn’t want to be cold and wet, walking alone in the dark in Paris.
And so she climbed the steps and sank gratefully onto the well-cushioned seat, and told herself that catching a fatal chill or being attacked and raped in a dirty alley would not do her daughter or her sisters any good.
He sat opposite.
The door closed.
She felt the slight bounce as the footman returned to his perch. She heard his rap on the roof, signaling the coachman to start.
The carriage moved forward gently enough, but the streets here were far from smooth, and despite springs and well-cushioned seats, she felt the motion. The silence within was like the silence before a thunderstorm. She became acutely conscious of the wheels rattling over the stones and the rain drumming on the roof…and, within, the too-fierce pounding of her heart.
“Going to find a fiacre,” he said. “Really, you are ridiculous.”
She was. She should have risked the dark and cold and rain. It would be for only a few minutes. In a fiacre, at least, she might have been able to think.
The night was dark, the sheeting rain blotting out what little light the street and carriage lamps shed. Within the carriage was darker yet. She could barely make out his form on the seat opposite. But she was suffocatingly aware of the long legs stretched out over the space between them. He seemed to have his arm stretched out over the top of the seat cushions, too. The relaxed pose didn’t fool her. He lounged in the seat in the way a panther might lie on its belly in a tree, watching its prey move along the forest floor below. If he’d owned a tail, it would have twitched.
“I was an idiot to attend this event with you,” she said.
“You seemed to be having a fine time. You certainly did not lack for dance partners,” he said.
“Yes, I was doing quite well, thank you, until you had to turn medieval—”
“Medieval?”
“Out of my way, peasants. The wench belongs to me.” She mimicked the Duke of Clevedon at his haughty best. “I thought Monsieur Tournadre would wet himself when you bared your fangs at him.”
“What a grotesque imagination you have.”
“You’re big and arrogant, and I think you know exactly how intimidating you can be.”
“Alas, not to you.”
“Still, perhaps all is not lost,” she said. “That sort of possessive behavior is typical of your kind. Furthermore, I am your pet. You brought me to the party for your amusement. And I did make it abundantly clear to the company that I’d come to drum up business and was using you for that purpose.”
“But that isn’t what happened,” he said.
“That is exactly what happened,” she said.
“What happened was, we waltzed, and it was plain to everyone what we were doing even though we had our clothes on,” he said.
“Oh, that,” she said. “I have the same effect on every man I dance with.”
“Don’t pretend you weren’t affected as well.”
“Of course I was affected,” she said. “I never danced with a duke before. It was the most exciting thing that’s ever happened in my mediocre little bourgeois life.”
“A pity I am not medieval,” he said. “In that case, I shouldn’t hesitate to make your mediocre little life even more exciting, and a good deal littler.”
“Perhaps I ought to put it in an advertisement,” she said. “Ladies of distinction and fashion are invited to the showrooms of Mrs. Noirot, Fleet Street, West Chancery Lane, to inspect an assemblage of such elegant and truly nouvelle articles of dresses, mantles, and millinery, as in point of excellence, taste, and splendor, cannot be matched in any other house whatever. Often imitated but never surpassed, Mrs. Noirot alone can claim the distinction of having danced with a duke.”
The carriage stopped.
“Have we reached the hotel already?” she said. “How quickly the time flies in your company, your grace.” She started to rise.
“We’re nowhere near your hotel,” he said. “We’ve stopped for an accident or a drunk in the street or some such. Everyone’s stopped.”
She leaned forward, to look out of the window. It was hard to make out anything but the sheen of the rain where the lamp lights caught it.
“I don’t see—”
She felt rather than saw him move, but it was so quick and smooth that he took her off guard. At one moment she was leaning forward toward the door’s window. In the next, his hands were under her arms, and he was lifting her, as easily as if she’d been a hatbox, out of her seat and onto his lap.
For an instant, she was too startled to react. It was only the briefest of moments, scarcely the blink of an eye. But when she started to push away from him, he caught one hand in the hair at the back of her head and brought her face close to his.
“Speaking of business, which you do incessantly, we have some of our own,” he said, his voice low and dangerous. “That isn’t finished, madame. It hasn’t even begun.”
“Don’t be stupid,” she said. Her voice was shaky. Her heart pumped wildly, as though she dangled from a ledge over an abyss.
She told herself he was only a man, and she understood men through and through. But her reasoning self hadn’t a prayer of being listened to.
He was strong and solid and warm. His size excited her. His beauty excited her. His power and arrogance excited her. That was the danger. She was weak in this way, her will and mind easily beaten down by the wantonness in
