Between the hiding place for his children, the umbrella, and the Maxim gun, he had prepared for cascading catastrophes—and she could not deem him to be overreacting.
“Well, with this umbrella, you’ll be safe enough walking back home by yourself.” He wrapped an arm around her shoulder and kissed her on the cheek, as if he were her affectionate but not terribly amorous husband. Or, God forbid, her fond brother. “I’m off to bed. Enjoy your studies of Hermetism.”
He was gone the next second, closing the parlor door behind himself and mounting the steps.
Charlotte played with the umbrella some more. Then she sat down and picked up the book again. From upstairs came the soft sounds of someone moving about, opening and shutting a drawer. In the grate, a piece of coal in the fire that had been banked hours ago popped softly. The spine of the book creaked as she flipped the pages from beginning to end.
She returned to the first page, reading more carefully. Six pages in she snapped shut the book, left the parlor, climbed up the steps, and knocked.
He opened the door without too much delay, a quizzical expression on his face. “Yes?”
She walked past him. The room was about the same size as Sherlock Holmes’s and furnished simply, but with extravagant-looking orange-and-gold wallpaper, the gaudiness of which was tempered somewhat by a pair of landscape paintings that consisted largely of sky and meadows.
Her quarry moved to the grate and smoothed the banked coals with a fireplace rake. He had removed his jacket and necktie. His shirt, open at the collar, revealed a lovely triangle of skin.
She licked the back of her teeth. “I forgot to tell you. We had some work done on the house and now there is a properly plumbed commode on this floor. But it’s a little temperamental, you must remember to prime the water tank with two quick pulls. Wait ten seconds or so, and then pull slowly and firmly.”
Alas, her preamble, full of useful information, inspired in him not lust, but a richly layered doubt. His reply was guarded. “I see. Thank you.”
Silence.
And to think she’d left both her tea gown and her new stockings at Mrs. Watson’s, a stone’s throw and half a world away.
“I also have something else to tell you.”
“Yes?”
He didn’t look impatient, merely a little puzzled, as if he absolutely couldn’t fathom what else she could possibly have to tell him. And she, who had cackled with glee as she had penned her faintly smutty scene, and who had propositioned him time after time over the years, almost couldn’t go on.
She pulled a little at her collar. “I’ve decided that you’re right. It’s time for us to go to bed.”
“Ah,” he said.
What did this ah mean?
He set down the fireplace rake, nudged the brass candlestick on the mantel a fraction of an inch to the left, glanced back at her, who stood stock-still in the same spot, and said, “Well, aren’t you going to take off your clothes?”
* * *
Charlotte had the urge to throw something at him. A bag of feathers, perhaps. Or maybe a freshly baked bun. The rascal! She’d been about to doubt herself.
At the same time, she felt a bubble of mirth rise up, threatening to erupt into an unusually wide smile. So he was paying her back for the provocation of her little story, was he? She flattened her lips so she wouldn’t actually smile and said rather severely, “Well, aren’t you going to protest more?”
He raised a brow. “I can hardly protest when you haven’t done anything.”
True. Compared to sending him a mildly—all right, highly—erotic story via the Royal Mail, standing fully dressed in the middle of his room didn’t seem much of a transgression. Still, Ash, whose stick-in-the-mud-ness she had bemoaned for years, beckoning her toward greater transgressions?
True, the tea gown and the stockings had been explicit encouragements. But those had been very recent developments and without quite realizing it, she was still expecting him to restrain her, rather than tempt her to do her worst.
His new attitude was novel, heartening, and a little unnerving.
She unbuttoned and shrugged out of her jacket.
“I’ve seen you quite a few times in a blouse and a skirt,” he said.
His tone remained unmoved, but his gaze slid down the length of her body—and then back up. When their eyes met again, his pupils had become darker.
Her heart beat faster. She discarded her blouse and corset cover. “How about now?”
The column of his throat moved. “I’m beginning to feel my . . . outrage rising.”
Outrage. Hmm, was that what rose on a man these days? She hooked a finger at him. “Don’t just stand there, young man. Come help me with my corset.”
His fingers closed around the candelabra on the mantel. “That is an unspeakable request, young lady. Is there a fainting couch in readiness for me?”
Decorously she tucked a strand of hair behind her ear and patted the bed behind her. “Will this do?”
He left the mantel, his gait slow yet predatory, a panther prowling the jungle at midnight. She held her breath. She loved him in motion, all fluid, kinetic agility. But he stopped halfway across the room. “What if I don’t help you with your corset? Will you stop with this debauchery?”
“Hardly. I don’t need any help to remove my skirt. See?”
She wriggled out of her grey mohair skirt, stepped on the bed stool, and sat down on the edge of the bed. Many yards of fabric remained on her—corset and chemise, two layers of petticoats and a pair of merino cool pantalets—but her reflection in the mirror appeared distinctly disreputable.
He tilted his head up a fraction of an inch. He’d always had dark, Byronic eyes. But in all their years of acquaintance, he had never considered her like this, a slight smile on his lips, and a heavy-lidded regard that was frankly . . . sexual.
“Looks like I may not escape fleshly corruption tonight,” he murmured.
Without meaning to, she licked her lips. “I’ve only fleshly sublimation here. It’s good for you.”
He traced a finger just above the lace top of her corset, much the same way he had traced the ruffles on that blue-and-orange cushion earlier in the evening. “Fleshly sublimation? I like the sound of it.”
Even though her chemise separated his skin from hers, the pressure of his caress still sent a jolt of heat to her abdomen. His attention had been on the bountiful curvature he was touching but now he lifted his gaze. Their eyes met and Charlotte felt another jolt of heat, this one singeing her all the way to the soles of her feet.
“But do you know, Holmes?” He spread open his fingers, his eyes never leaving hers. “Between the two of us, I have far superior self-control. And unless I agree to it, there will be no fleshly sublimation tonight. Or fleshly corruption.”
She exhaled and gripped him by the collar. “What can I do to make you agree to something fleshly?”
He spoke directly into her ear, his breath warm against her skin. “You can take me to the Garden of Hermopolis with you.”
Her fingers on his collar loosened. “Why must you always put so many obstacles in my way?” she whispered.
“A walled compound near Porthangan in Cornwall, how difficult do you think it will be, Holmes, for me to find it?”