Iron Lace (25 page)

"I… I wanted to see you," she said simply. "May
I come in?"

Her request seemed to put him into a panic, but he
couldn't leave her standing out there. The dreary gray morning air was
still humid and heavy with the aftermath of the recent storm.

"It… it's not proper for a young lady to be in
a man's bedchamber," he said lamely. "Servants gossip, you know."

"Meggie's out back in the kitchen, and no one else is in
the house right now," she assured him. "I… I thought you'd
want to see me."

He caught her by the hand and drew her quickly into the
room but left the door partially open. The curtains and shutters of the
chamber were still drawn so the daylight wouldn't disturb his sleep.

"My sweet child, it's madness to come here like this.
Things can't be that way between us. Most certainly not while I'm still
your guardian." He was more uneasy than ever.

"You were playing with me, then… mocking me?"

"Of course not! You must believe me. It wasn't my
intention…" He ran his hand through his thick dark hair in
despair. Just the sight of her brought back the agony of that moment
when he had torn himself away from her. He ached to take her in his
arms again and feel her lying beneath him responding to his caresses
once more. "How can I make you understand, my sweet darling?"

He turned aside, trying to veil the desire he was sure
must have been burning in his eyes at that moment.

"That's it, isn't it? You still see me only as a child!"

"A part of you is very much a woman, my dear," he assured
her with a smile, "but the very fact that you don't understand why I
couldn't go on—why I still can't—only proves you're
still very much a child in other ways. You're so young… so
passionate… God forgive me! What was I thinking of? When I
think how I could have taken you… I came so
close…
Qué barbaridad
!"

He cursed his weakness of the night before. He had roused
the woman dormant in her before she was mature enough to handle such
emotions.

"If I'd been Azema Ducole, I wager you wouldn't have
hesitated."

He laughed. "Azema? Why do you persist in talking about
her? What does she have to do with my feelings for you? Believe me, my
dear, I was only thinking of you… I'm still thinking of you.
I couldn't have borne it if I'd taken you and then you'd have regretted
it afterward, perhaps even hated me all the more for having taken
advantage of you like that. Why, only right before the storm you were
eloping with that fellow Foucher and shaking your fist in my face
telling me for the hundredth time how much you hated me. That's why I
think we should wait a little. I want you to be sure of these new
emotions of yours."

Tears were clouding over those enormous gray eyes, turning
them to charcoal gray. He was just saying words, trying to spare her
feelings. All the other men who had wanted to make love to her hadn't
spent their time trying to rationalize why they shouldn't do so. She
had had to fight them off. No, she knew why he'd stopped so abruptly
and hadn't tried to come near her since then… not even now
that she had gone so far as to come to his room and give him every
opportunity to take her in his arms and kiss her again. He had compared
her to his mistress and decided he preferred Azema. She wasn't woman
enough for him. Azema was so much more beautiful than she was as a
woman… and probably more expert as a lover, too.

Monique drew her dressing gown closer about her and her
shoulders sagged as she turned back toward the door.

"I'm sorry to have disturbed you," she said coolly, trying
to keep her voice steady and unemotional. She wondered how she could
ever be nonchalant around him again when the memory of his caresses
were so much a part of her now.

He hesitantly took a step toward her. Suddenly he took her
by those drooping shoulders and turned her around to face him. The
flame of the candle in the dimly lit room awakened gold flecks in the
gray of her eyes, and he remembered how she had looked in that flash of
lightning when her face had been aglow with ecstasy.

Gently he brushed a lock of her pale gold hair back from
where it had fallen over her forehead, his finger trembling as he
touched it.

"Monica—my sweet impatient little child with a
woman's passions… a woman's body!" he murmured. "Please
believe me, I want you so much! It's only because I really love
you—
te quiero tanto—
that I
don't want to hurt you, not now or ever. Everything must be right
between us. Can you understand that?"

She lowered her lids to avoid the intensity of his gaze,
despite the fact that he continued to hold her by the shoulders and
look down into her face. "I… I think I do," she replied, but
there was hesitancy in her voice.

"I want you to be sure… as sure as I am," he
continued softly. "Then I promise I'll make love to you with all the
passion of last night and then some. What happened between us has only
convinced me more than ever that you're the woman I want. But I want
you for a lifetime, so it's important that you feel the same way about
me, too. Can you be patient just a little longer, my adorable
chiquilla
?
I'd like to see how you feel in a few months from now… let's
say in January when you turn eighteen. Who knows, you might feel quite
differently toward me by then." He smiled sadly. "The fact is you may
not even feel the same for me by tomorrow," he observed rather bitterly
as he recalled how she had always been so hostile toward him until that
fateful moment in the hallway when the storm had literally thrown them
into each other's arms. "If in the three and a half months lacking from
now to your birthday you can show me that the fact that I'm Spanish and
not French doesn't really matter to you… that
you're no longer a petulant, impulsive child but a warm, loving woman
who knows her own mind and can be steadfast in her
emotions—then you'll make me the happiest man in all the
Louisiana colony. Will you do that, my dear?"

It was she now who looked at him with open scrutiny.
"Perhaps… but three and a half months seems like such a long
time."

He smiled. "You have no idea how long it will be for me,"
he assured her. "So it's a pact, then? Our little secret, if you wish,
so you'll feel no pressure from your family or anyone to do anything
against your will?"

Her eyes were shining now. "Oh, yes, Miguel. You'll see
how grown up I can be. I really don't hate you, you know. You'll never
need Azema or any other woman but me!"

A twinkle glinted in his eye. "I'm sure I'll have my hands
full with just you when the time comes," he conceded solemnly.
"Meanwhile I suggest that we both try to remember I'm still your
guardian and act accordingly."

He gave her as fatherly a kiss on the forehead as he could
manage at that moment and hurried her out of his room before he
wouldn't be able to follow his own advice.

During
the weeks that followed, the change in Monique never
ceased to amaze those around her. Grandmother Chausson reached the
conclusion that it had been well worth the fright the girl's escapade
had given them if the change in her had come about as the result of it.

Gone was the petulance and hostility of yore. Monique went
about now with her luminous gray eyes reflecting an inner joy that
seemed to bathe the world around her in a completely different light.
Whenever her guardian spoke to her, she would lower her eyes and blush
with proper maidenly modesty and submit to whatever he said without any
further argument.

Even Mlle. Baudier was flabbergasted by the zest with
which her charge suddenly attacked her studies, the most noteworthy of
all being her progress in Spanish, which, until then, had been the
girl's worst subject.

Celeste had expected her sister to tear into her for
having violated their sacred oath, but instead Monique had been
surprisingly forgiving about it all.

"It's just as well that Miguel found us," she had replied
with an indifferent toss of her curls as Celeste had meekly tried to
broach the subject the first time they had been alone again. "I realize
now it would have been a mistake. Maurice is still so infantile."

Although her guardian had resumed his more formal attitude
toward her, Monique saw a new tenderness in his eyes or a slight tremor
in his touch that sent a delicious shiver down her spine and left her
tingling with memories of past caresses and anticipation of those yet
to come.

Just the sight of him was enough now to set her insides
trembling. They had been in the darkness that night when he had made
love to her in the hallway, but she had felt the long lean length of
his body as he had molded it hungrily against hers. Now she looked at
him in a new way. Even as she admired how handsome he looked in his
elegant frock coat and breeches, she found herself recalling the hard
firmness of the body she knew lay beneath them. Then the memory of that
night would come flooding back, overwhelming her, and she could feel
her breasts swelling again, their nipples hard and pulsating against
her bodice.

It pleased her to fondle again and again in her mind that
sweet secret they shared. She dreamed of the day when they would stand
before Mémère and confess their love for each other and speak of plans
for their marriage. Her newfound love so filled her heart now that
there was no longer room in it for hatred or politics or old
resentments.

Vidal, however, found the waiting almost more than he
could bear. He cursed his lack of control that had prompted him to
unleash the more passionate facets of his love for his young cousin
that night of the hurricane, for those moments of intimacy with her had
only fanned his desire to even greater heights. Yet he didn't
completely regret what had happened. A powerful charge surged through
his veins every time he remembered how she had responded to his
caresses. All the ruffles and fichus in the world couldn't erase the
impression of those full young breasts now from his mind…
how they had felt cupped in his hand, palpitating to his caresses,
swelling between his lips. Sometimes just the sight of them so
perfectly molded by the tightness of her bodice was enough to set the
knot in his loins pulsating again.

He knew that she remembered, too, just by the way she'd
suddenly flush and steal a discreet glance in his direction whenever he
was in the room and she thought no one was looking. He wondered whether
she might also be lying awake at night, even as he was, wishing they
could be together at that very moment. That bewitching little doll was
every bit as passionate as Azema, but there was no calculation behind
it. His little Monique was pure passion— ready to surrender
completely with that innocent abandon of hers, so characteristic of
everything she did.

Since their return to New Orleans, he had deliberately
avoided being alone with that delectable little ward of his, for he
felt he could no longer trust himself with her anymore. When he was
near her, he couldn't be rational, and he didn't want a repetition of
that episode in the hall. Delightful as it had been, that should not be
the order of things where Monica was concerned. It would never do to
seduce his ward and then ask for her hand in marriage. Grandmother
Chausson had entrusted her to him, and it would be like betraying that
trust if he protected Monique from everyone in the colony except
himself!

Even little Celeste had been casting her lovely fawnlike
eyes in his direction lately. The dear child was obviously having her
first romantic fantasies, with him as her phantom hero. That role
didn't especially disturb him, however, for it was one he knew he could
handle with no harm done to anyone. After all, he was certain he would
dissolve from those childish dreams the moment a flesh-and-blood beau
entered the young girl's life, as was bound to happen before too long.
But meanwhile, it was one more reason for him to be on tenterhooks and
keep a short rein on that easily roused nature of his.

Unfortunately, he had never been in such a situation
before. In that carefree existence as a bachelor that he had led until
now, there had never been any need for him to hold his emotions in
check. If he wanted a woman and she was willing, he took her. This
holding back was a new and frustrating experience for him, especially
since he had never desired any woman the way he desired Monique.
Perhaps it was because he wanted so much more from her than just that
voluptuous little body of hers.

On several occasions he'd been tempted not to wait a day
longer and simply go to Grandmother Chausson, ask for the girl's hand
in marriage, and be done with it. But in his heart he knew that the
brief waiting period he had imposed upon himself and Monique was for
the best. Marriage was for life, and he had to be sure that her
feelings for him went beyond those of just a young girl's response to
her first brush with the more pleasant sensations involved in making
love.

Even if he spoke to Aimee Chausson about his
tendre
for his ward, Miguel was almost certain the latter would also insist
that they wait a few months in order to give the girl time to be sure
of her emotions. If he had been from any other country except Spain,
perhaps it wouldn't be so necessary, but Monique's hostility toward
anything and anybody Spanish seemed so ingrained in her that it would
probably be better to proceed cautiously and not risk repenting a hasty
marriage later. At Monique's age, a few months could make a great deal
of difference…

Of course, Grandmother Chausson would probably approve of
the match, but Miguel preferred not to say anything to her about such a
possibility yet, since he didn't want her or anyone else pressuring the
girl and influencing her decision. He wanted Monique, but not in a
marriage of convenience. A pox on those "arrangements"! He knew such
matrimonies abounded, but he hadn't waited until he'd reached his
twenty-seventh year to marry simply to enter that purgatory in which he
had seen so many of his friends writhing. After all, he knew something
better was possible between a man and a woman. Hadn't his father found
it with his stepmother?