paused.
Arabella held her breath.
And then inch by tiny inch his fingers followed the path down into the valley between her breasts.
Again he halted, but whether it was to torture her, or himself, she did not know. If he continued like this, Arabella did not know if she could bear it. He placed a palm upon her left breast and beneath it she felt her heart jump and race all the harder. Beneath the cover of his hand her nipple was already taut and tender.
Arabella willed herself not to respond. He did not love her. She thought of all he had done six years ago. But when his palm slid away and his fingers teased at her nipple, plucking it, there was nothing she could do to prevent it bead all the harder. Her wantonness appalled her.
She squeezed her eyes closed to prevent the tears, knowing what would follow.
But his hand halted and dropped away, so that he was no longer even touching her.
Each tight line of his body and the bulge in his breeches revealed that he was every bit as aware as she of the tension that hummed between them. Slowly, his gaze raised to meet her own and there was something in his eyes as he stared at her. The strangest expression. Not lust as she had expected. Not victory or even arrogance. Realisation, maybe. And something else that she could not quite define. Something that looked almost haunted.
‘Dominic?’ she whispered.
But Dominic gave no sign of having heard her. He stood there frozen, staring as if he could see into the very depths of her soul.
And then he backed away, raking a hand through his hair as he did so.
‘I cannot …’ he said and his face was white. He turned away, gathered up his waistcoat and tailcoat and made for the door.
‘Dominic!’
He stopped where he was, hesitated with his hand stilled in its grip of the doorknob, but did not turn round.
And then he left, closing the door quietly behind him.
There was the tread of his boots upon the stairs, the murmur of voices in the hallway and, a short while after that, the sound of a carriage and horses outside.
Arabella watched the dark unmarked carriage drive away into the night. She shivered and pulled the shawl tight around her shoulders, not understanding what had just happened between them.
Dominic did not sleep for what remained of the night. He stood by the window of his library and looked out over the sleeping city and watched the dawn break over a charcoal sky.
He had been a fool to think that he could take Arabella as his mistress and use her as a whore, even if she was exactly that. The past was too strong between them. She might have slashed the ties that had bound them and walked away, but Dominic had only just come to see that what had bound them together could never be completely undone. She was his first and only love. And no matter what she had done, or what she had become, he could not forget that. Every time he looked at her it was flaunted before his eyes. Every time he touched her he felt it in his bones.
If he had thought it would be so easy to treat her just as he had treated all the other women who had come after her, without emotional attachment, he was wrong.
She was engrained upon his mind, engraved upon his heart. He had dreamt of nothing else for nigh on six years. He had longed for her and hated her and needed her all at once. It was Arabella whom he thought of constantly. It was Arabella he thought of even when he was bedding another woman.
He could taste her upon his tongue and smell her own scent, sweet and fresh like roses and summer rain. He could still feel the smooth softness of her pale skin, still feel the firm ripeness of her naked breasts. He wanted to possess every inch of her body with his mouth. He wanted to plunge his aching manhood into her silken flesh and take her in every way imaginable until this endless torment ceased.
But he could not.
The grey dress she wore in the bedchamber in Curzon Street was nothing of the courtesan’s guise she had donned before. It was old and shabby and respectable, Arabella’s own, rather than something of Mrs Silver’s. And when she had stripped it off and stood before him, offering what he had thought he had the right to take, he had willed himself to accept it. He had touched her and tried to coax himself, for God only knew how much his body burned to possess her. But beneath his hand he had felt the flutter of her heart and he had known that he could not do it.
Arabella’s words rang through his head. He was a thousand times the man you are! … A harlot’s lie. It is what men want to hear, is it not? And he realised there had been a part of him that had thought that she would have welcomed him, wanted him. That she would have told him that what happened in the past was all a mistake, that she had loved him all along.
He shook his head with disgust at his own absurdity. Nothing had changed. It never would. She still had the power to hurt him … and was wielding it with deliberation.
He had made this arrangement; he would not break it and see her thrown back down into the gutter. But for Dominic there could be no more visits to Curzon Street.
The decision made, Dominic stood back to watch the new day dawn over London.
In the dining room that morning Arabella was watching Archie eating his breakfast. After seeing him brought almost to the point of starvation she could not help but worry whether that last week in Flower and Dean Street had left its mark upon him. But looking at him now, wolfing down his buttered eggs and sausages and excitedly telling his story, she felt a sense of relief at the resilience of children. She smoothed down his hair and concentrated on listening to how he was going to have a whole stable of horses when he was a grown-up man. But she knew Mrs Tatton’s questions would not be deferred for long. Arabella could see from the corner of her eye the way her mother was watching her with concern written all over her face.
She tried to smile and act as if everything was just the same as it had been yesterday, but her heart was filled with humiliation and confusion and embarrassment over what had happened last night. She did not understand what she had done wrong. And she was relieved and angry and ashamed all at once.
Archie helped himself to another two sausages and then climbed down from the table and ran off to play a game of horses.
‘Archie, come back. We do not leave the table until we have finished eating,’ she called after him.
‘Oh, leave him be, Arabella. He will do no harm and has been so well behaved of late despite all of our troubles,’ said Mrs Tatton.
‘You are right, of course,’ Arabella said. ‘It has not been easy for him.’ The weight of guilt was heavy. She doubted that the memory of those awful last days when he had gone hungry would ever leave her.
‘Nor for any of us,’ answered her mother. ‘Now I know it is not my place to ask and that events of the bedchamber between a man and a woman are best kept that way, but …’ Mrs Tatton’s brow furrowed with concern. ‘I do not think that matters went so well for you last night.’
‘Those matters were fine,’ Arabella said quickly and felt her cheeks flush at the memory of Dominic’s rejection. She was his mistress. She was supposed to bed him, to let him take his pleasure. And she had been prepared to do just that, however much she resented it. What she had not been prepared for
