He was balanced on the knife-edge of propriety.
He never equivocated. He either did things or he didn’t do things, as his moral compass dictated. He never wasted time on sexual reveries. He knew how to get satisfaction when he needed it.
For the first time in his life, he was conscious of rationalization. Of searching out a reason he could live with for what he wanted to do. Because the only compelling reason to break the rules here at The Grand Palace on the Thames with a notorious soprano was that he wanted to, and it was a weak man’s reason.
Even as the stack of mail upstairs congratulated him, in part, for being the inspiration that kept the young men of the ton out of the clutches of women like her, he knew it was less about wanting to fuck someone than it was about looking down into Mariana’s face and watching how her eyes changed when the pleasure he gave her became too much to bear.
He—they—had set this thing in motion. He knew full well that every avalanche began with a few pebbles. But that didn’t seem to be a compelling reason to stop it, either.
Mariana, imagine how it will be. You know how it will be with us.
Come to me.
He could see her now in profile.
She turned slightly. Met his eyes.
She turned away, with obvious difficulty.
Mariana, don’t come to me. I’m not the sort of man who has sex with notorious opera singers just because he can.
I’m not the type of man who takes advantage of a young woman’s sensuality and fascination for me to get her into bed.
I do not ever want to hurt you.
But if you come to me . . .
She might not come.
And if she didn’t, he would not seduce. He would not coerce. He would not beg. He would, and could, pretend as though nothing had ever happened between them, and he would protect her decision, and her, from his desire as if it was his sacred duty.
But he would take note of every minute between now and ten o’clock as if they were punishing lashes.
She’d dressed in her green silk, the one that made her eyes “bewitching,” or so Lord Revell had said, before she’d broken with him. Before all of this.
And then she’d put on her fur-lined pelisse that Revell had given her, as a gift. Not a payment.
She sat on the edge of her bed for a long time, in the dark. She took long, deep breaths. And with each one, instead of feeling steadier, she felt weaker. She hadn’t the duke’s chessboard, whip-crack mind. She couldn’t reason through this.
She glanced over at that unwritten letter on the desk, and imagined writing:
Dear Mama,
I hope this finds you well.
I want him.
That’s all she could think. Three mundane words when taken separately. Rather drab to look at, when written. But: lo voglio. She knew just how she’d sing them. She would tear the hearts out of her listeners with a howl of equal parts anguish and ecstasy, a cry for help.
Her breath seemed uncommonly loud in the dark of her room.
No one could save her but herself.
As it turned out, she wasn’t up to the job.
Ten minutes later she stood in front of the door with a lit candle in her hand. For a time, she did nothing but experience the bass drum thud of her heart. It seemed to vibrate her entire body and send her blood whooshing like waves in her ears. Surely it would wake the house.
She passed rows of doused sconces (and all the maids were in bed), and the floor upon which Mr. Delacorte snored (all the guests were sleeping). She crept down the stairs, skipping the creaky ones (surely it was the first thing any person who was not a saint sussed out upon moving into a house). Then through the passage, which was chilly at night and dark. The great, sturdy door with the peep window was barred and locked for the evening. The shutters were latched and the heavy curtains drawn against the night chill. The chandelier scattered only one or two amber twinkles on the marble floor, as the fires in the parlor were allowed to die and the crystals only shone by virtue of its light.
If anyone should come along, there was no way this could be construed as an innocent visit. She, and her trunk, would be thrown bodily out of the building.
The door swung open so abruptly, she gasped like the heroine in The Ghost in the Attic.
The duke filled the doorway.
He was in shirtsleeves, cravat-less, rolled up, bootless, and the firelight cast the V of visible skin at his throat in copper. Dark hair curled up from it.
Her head went light.
“Miss Wylde.” He managed not to inflect the words with anything other than conviction: she was indeed Miss Wylde.
She did not reply, because she couldn’t. She could not move her eyes from his bare throat. She thought if she touched her tongue to the bones at the base of his throat, his skin would taste like toasted bread coated in honey.
Her skin was everywhere warm suddenly, like the pelt of an animal. It remembered how it had felt to be crushed up against his body, and every inch of her wanted that again.
“My apologies for startling you.” This was how he interpreted her speechless stare. “I saw the toes of your slippers flash in the crack beneath the door.”
She looked down. “Oh. I suppose they are shiny by candlelight.” She was mildly pleased by this.
She looked up again to find a slow smile spreading across his lips. As if no one had ever said anything more charming or absurd in a doorway of a boardinghouse.
Which made her realize: he’d likely known precisely how long she’d been standing here.
Her cheeks went hot. She hadn’t realized it was possible to simultaneously feel like a virgin and a whore.
And then it occurred to her: he might have been waiting by the door, too.
Nothing about him betrayed impatience. But his silence was unlike him. Perhaps he was mesmerized by her in candlelight.
But his silence made her wonder if he had rifled through a rash of reservations between this afternoon and this moment.
She cleared her throat. “I . . . I brought the letter I told you about.” She brandished it. If she clutched it for one second longer, the ink would transfer to her damp palms. “I’ve come to believe the other pages are a libretto or lyrics.”
“Ah. Very good,” he said. There was a pause. “Shall we read it together?”
He slowly turned like a drawbridge lifting, and the room behind him was revealed in flickering gold firelight and dense velvety shadow. The lamp next to the dark contours of a roomy bed put out a hazy nimbus of light. The light picked glints off a decanter of brandy, a snifter, a vase next to the bed.
Tomorrow. During the daylight. That’s when they should read the letter. That’s what she should have said.
She looked up at him, mutely.
He gently, chivalrously took her candle from her.
He closed the door behind them and slid the bolt once she was inside.
“I was sitting on the settee and reading and having a brandy. May I offer you a . . . or would you rather . . .”
He didn’t know the protocol for whatever this was, either, clearly.
“Brandy would be lovely.” Did ladies drink brandy? Did it matter? She was hardly a lady at this point. It needed to be something. Sherry seemed far too tea-with-the-ladies for the occasion.
She stood just inside the room, rule breaker that she was.
The room smelled of him. Manly, expensive, perhaps a little sweaty. Excellent soap and the best tobacco and a little of the citrus, woody scent that had haunted her since she’d kissed him. He didn’t baptize himself in scent the way Giancarlo did.