she was tugging on the rather faded rose-pink gown.
But that was hardly any better at concealing her charms either, thought Alec, cursing under his breath as he picked up pieces of the broken cup, because the soft fabric had moulded itself tightly to her small but rounded breasts. Earlier she must have tied back her hair, but now some blonde tendrils had escaped to cling enchantingly round her face. And as she gazed up at him with those defiant turquoise-blue eyes, he saw that they were shadowed with fear.
He sighed. He poured her some tea. ‘Please sit down again. How are you feeling? I see you were looking at one of my books.’
The big book still lay outspread by her pillow. She struggled to fasten the last button and sat on the edge of the bed because her legs were suddenly unsteady again. ‘I’m feeling a good deal better, thank you. I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have looked at them without your permission …’
‘Permission? Don’t be ridiculous! What were you looking at?’ He’d pulled up a stool by the bed and was reaching to examine the open pages. ‘These paintings are French, aren’t they? By François Boucher. You told me about Boucher at the Temple of Beauty, remember?’
Rosalie swallowed. Be prim. Be polite. But as she watched his lean brown hand gently lifting and turning the corners of the pages, some sort of inner turmoil set her blood racing.
‘I remember,’ she said as steadily as she could. Oh, Lord, how could she forget? Just before that kiss. ‘And they’re in Boucher’s early style,’ she went on, pointing. ‘In fact, he served his apprenticeship as an engraver, but moved on to historical paintings and portraits—’ She broke off. ‘I’m sorry, I sound as if I’m giving a lecture.’
‘You’re knowledgeable.’
‘Only because my father was an artist. He painted watercolours and studied the French artists of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.’
‘Why French artists?’
‘Because he lived for some years in Paris and married my mother there.’
‘She was French?’
‘Yes. My father died when I was seven.’
There is no hope. No hope at all, I’m afraid, madame …
Memories. The doctor, talking to her mother in Paris, at her father’s sickbed. Her father, holding Rosalie close with what little strength he had. ‘Be a brave, good girl, my Rosalie. Look after your mother and your little sister for me …’
Alec said, ‘Was that when you came to England?’
‘Yes. My father had told my mother, often, about a cottage he owned in Oxfordshire.’
‘And is your mother still there?’
She gazed up at him, her blue eyes wide with loss. ‘She is dead, too.’
Alec tried not to look at the slenderness of her neck. The faint pulse beating there. What had happened to her life next? he wondered. An impulsive early marriage, he supposed, and pregnancy followed by her husband’s early demise, leaving her penniless with a child to support. So she’d decided to come to London to seek her fortune—as a writer? As a courtesan? Whatever, somehow she’d made bad enemies.
Yet he found it so damned hard to believe she was capable of selling herself. She’d looked so innocent when he’d come in just now, wearing that pure white bit of nothingness and intently poring over that book …
He forced himself to remember how she’d been parading on stage at Dr Barnard’s—for sale, or as good as. Unfortunately, the memory did nothing to quell the nagging of harsh desire between his thighs. A French mother—perhaps that explained her grace, her allure, her beauty, damn it all.
‘Being left alone with a child to take care of can’t be easy,’ he said. ‘But you must admit you’ve made some rash decisions.’
She closed the book rather abruptly. ‘I have always paid my own way, I assure you, Captain Stewart. And I have never before been forced to stay in a place like this!’
He was angry now. ‘No one is forcing you. And considering you were dragging a small child round London with nowhere to go except Lord Maybury’s on the night I found you, you can hardly claim to be a model parent!’
She’d risen shakily to her feet, her colour high. ‘I’ve done what I could for Katy. How dare you criticise, when you’ve no idea!’
He stood up, too, to make her sit down again. ‘Hush. Hush, I’m sorry. Everyone can see that you adore her.’
‘Everyone can …?’ His warm hands on her shoulders made her fury melt into something far more disturbing. She was struggling for breath.
‘Of course.’ His eyes, she saw, were concerned, Almost—tender.
‘I’m sorry,’ she whispered, ‘it’s just …’ she swallowed and rubbed her hand across her eyes ‘… it’s just that sometimes I think I will go mad if I have to stay trapped in here another day!’
‘You have been ill. Don’t be so hard on yourself, Mrs Rowland.’ He sat next to her and smiled quizzically down at her. ‘Now, I’m going to tell you a secret. Actually, I used to rather enjoy your Ro Rowland articles.’
‘You—you did?’
‘Yes. You have talent and wit. You have—courage.’
‘No. No. I’ve been stupid, I’ve made a mess of everything!’ Bitterly she looked up at him. ‘Oh, if only I had not been ill.’
‘Poor Rosalie. Taking the whole world on your shoulders.’
‘I can look after myself!’ she flared. ‘I—I am in temporary difficulties, that is all.’
He tilted her chin up with his fingers, frowning. Temporary difficulties? The sight of her struggling defiantly against the troubles that life had thrown her way had touched some part of him that he’d long buried. That belonged to a better part of him, perhaps.
But it wasn’t the better part of him that made him ache to kiss her. To feel the softness of her tender body in his arms …
‘Stop fighting the whole world,’ he said quietly. ‘Stop fighting me.’
And he kissed her. My God, he knew he’d regret it, but—he kissed her.
Rosalie went very still at the first brush of his lips against hers. But as his warm mouth cherished hers, her lips parted instinctively, her heart thudded and she felt that in the whole world there was only this man. Only the heady, floating sensation of his slow, deliberate kiss. Only the need to feel his hands, his lips, caressing her body, arousing, promising …
It was as if he cared. ‘Forget it, gal,’ Sal would warn bitterly, ‘forget them all. Once a feller’s got what he wants, he’ll throw you away like rubbish.’
But Rosalie was beginning not to care what Sal had said. This was where she wanted to be, in his arms. It was so good to breathe
