the refreshments or after? Relaxing, she decided on after, reasoning she could then instruct the girl to leave them alone for the few moments it would take to conduct her … experiment.
Lord, she hated to call it that, but was at a loss as to what else to name it.
‘I hope London is treating you well …’ As soon as she said it she knew her error.
‘A few cuts and bruises, but what is that between a man and a beautiful city?’
‘Was it a fall?’
He frowned at that and grated out a ‘yes’.
‘I had an accident last year at Fairley, our family seat in Hertfordshire.’
‘Indeed?’ His brows rose significantly.
‘I fell from a horse whilst racing across the park.’
‘I trust nothing was broken?’
‘Only my pride! It was a village fair, you see, and I had entered the race on a whim.’
‘Pride is a fragile thing,’ he returned in his American drawl, and her cheeks reddened. She shifted in her seat, hating the heat that followed and fretful that her letter had indeed told him far too much. Her eyes flickered to the mistletoe she had hung secretly, a sad reminder of a plot that was quickly unravelling, and then back to his hands lying palm up in his lap.
Suddenly she knew just how to handle her request. ‘You told me once of a woman who had read your hand in the town of Richmond?’
She waited till he nodded.
‘You said that she told you life was like a river and that you are taken by it to the place that you were meant to be.’ The tone of her voice rose and she fought to keep it back.
‘The thing is, Mr Clairmont, I would hope at this moment that the place you are meant to be is here in my salon because I am going to ask you a question that might, without some sense of belief in fate, sound strange.’
‘I know very little about the properties of mistletoe or holly,’ he interrupted. ‘If it is botany that you wish to quiz me on?’
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘Your letter. You mention something of particular plants.’
Unexpectedly she began to smile and then caught the mirth back with a strong will as she shook her head.
‘No, it is not that. I had heard from … others that the state of your finances is somewhat precarious and wanted to offer you a boon to alleviate the problem.’ She knew that she had taken the wrong turn as soon as he stood, the polite façade of a moment ago submerged beneath anger.
Panic made her careless. ‘I want to buy a kiss from you.’ Blurted out with all the finesse of a ten-year-old.
‘You what …?’
‘Buy a kiss from you …’ Her hands shook as she rummaged through her bag, trying to extricate the notes she had got from the bank that very morning.
When she finally managed it he swore, and not quietly.
‘Shh, they might hear.’
‘Who might hear? Your father? Your cousin? Someone has already had one go at me this week and I would be loathe to let them have another one.’
‘Someone did that to you?’ Goodness, she had lost hold of the whole conversation and could not even think how to retrieve it.
With honesty!
Taking a breath, she buried vanity. ‘I am a twenty-five-year-old spinster, Mr Clairmont, and a woman who has been kissed only once, yesterday, by Lord Wilcox-Rice. And I need to know if what I felt was … normal.’
‘What the hell did you feel?’
She drew herself up to her tallest height, a feat that was not so intimidating given that she stood at merely five foot two, even in her shoes.
‘I felt nothing!’
The words reverberated in the ensuing silence, his anger evaporating in an instant to be replaced by laughter.
‘I realise to you that the whole thing may seem like a joke, but …’
He breathed out. Hard.
‘Nay, it is not that, Lilly, it is not that.’ She felt his hand against her cheek, a single finger stroking down the bone, a careful feather-touch with all the weight of air.
A touch that made her shiver and want, a touch that made her move towards this thing she wished for, and then vanishing as a sound came from outside in the corridor.
Luc Clairmont moved back too, towards the window, his body faced away from hers and his hand adjusting the fit of his trousers. Perhaps he was angry again? Perhaps on reflection he saw the complete and utter disregard of convention that her request had subjected him to?
She smiled wanly as a young maid entered the room and bade her leave the tea for them to pour. Question shadowed the girl’s eyes and Lillian knew that she was fast running out of minutes. It was simply not done for an unmarried lady to be sequestered alone for any length of time with a man.
At twenty-five some leeway might have been allowed, but she knew that he would need to leave before too many more seconds had passed.
Consequently when the door shut behind the servant she walked across to him.
‘I do not wish to hurry you, but—’
He did not let her finish. The hard ardour of his lips slanted across her own, opening her mouth. Rough hands framed her cheeks as the length of his body pressed against hers, asking, needing, allowing no mealy response, but the one given from the place she had hidden for so, so long.
Feeling exploded, the sharp beat of her heart, the growing warmth in her stomach, the throb of lust that ached in a region lower. As she pressed closer her hands threaded through his hair, and into the nape of his neck, moving without her volition, with a complete lack of control.
He was not gentle, not careful, the feel of his lips on her mouth, on her cheek and on the sensitive skin at her neck unrestrained.
And then stopped!
She tried to keep it going, tipping her mouth to his, but he pulled her head against his chest and held her there, against a heartbeat that sped in heavy rhythm.
‘This is not the place, Lilly …’
Reality returned, the yellow salon once again around her, the sound of servants outside, the tea on the table with its small plume of steam waiting to be drunk.
She pushed away, a new danger now in the room and much more potent than the one that had bothered her before.
Before she had been worried about his actions and now she was worried about her own, for in that kiss something had been unleashed, some wild freedom that could now not be contained.
Lucas
