The Secret to Seduction (15 page)

Determinedly, she chose a row of books to examine, and ran her finger over the spines: philosophy, religion, history. All written by great and orderly thinkers, all of them men. Any one of them seemed certain to get her mind moving along a more seemly track, if only because of the effort required to plow through them.

But on the shelf just below, the other gold-embossed titles winked at her like coquettes from across a ballroom: Yeats. Byron. Wordsworth. The Libertine.

The Libertine?

Her breath caught. She knew it hadn’t been there the previous night, or the night before that. And yet there it was now, looking as though it had always been there, bound in green leather, etched in gold, and as somber-looking as its philosopher brethren on the shelf above.

It was a coquette
masquerading
as a philosopher.

Sabrina ignored the winks for as long as she could. And then her hand dropped slowly, stealthily to the row below. She snatched The Libertine volume from the shelf like a dog stealing a scrap from the dinner table and all but darted over to the settee. And there she curled up, her heart thumping, and opened it to the first page.

You are the silk that breathes beneath my hand

I am the pleasure your sighs command

And with breath and lips let our journey begin—

And so her journey began.

The words might well have been his hands. She whipped her head about suddenly, as though she could feel his palms landing on her shoulders.

She knew then she couldn’t read his book here, in the library.

She closed the book over her thumb to keep her place, then made her way up the stairs almost furtively. The sound of low feminine laughter came to her distantly, as impersonal as birdsong heard in a garden.

It was dark in her room apart from the fire, and she curled up on her bed with the book, her face close to the softly glowing lamp. And though with every page her mind told her she should stop reading, her hands, as if of their own accord, turned the next page and the next. Until at last her head swam with the explicit, lush heat of the words.

She knew she ought to stop, and she finally did, because, after all, her will was a strong one. But stopping was like pulling herself up from a deep velvet well. It carried with it the same sort of vertigo.

Gently, she laid the book aside.

Sabrina rubbed her hands over her face as if to reacquaint herself with it, but somehow, even that very act seemed new: she felt as though she were feeling her own skin for the first time. Her hands had become a stranger’s hands, her skin a new skin. A canvas to be painted.

She’d awakened to discover she was wearing…“breathing silk.”

She took a deep breath to steady herself, but the very act of drawing air into her lungs had become a sensual act, and only heightened her awareness.

Oh, Geoffrey was wrong. The poetry wasn’t salacious. The word was far too simple. There was a very focused beauty to it, and a subtlety difficult to describe; one didn’t read so much as
breathe
his words. In they went, like smoke from a hookah, stealing sense and replacing it with sensuality. And in some ways they were reverent, his poems, but they were also shameless and abandoned. They told the story of a man who indeed understood more than was fair about seduction, a man who lived through his senses, reveled in them.

And there hadn’t been a word in the book about love.

At last Sabrina stood and began to undress. She unlaced her gown, slipping out of it. She’d never had a maid to help her with such things, and she didn’t give it a thought. She hung it in the wardrobe next to its country cousins, the small collection of thoroughly worn dresses she’d brought with her to La Montagne.

Once nude, she dimmed the lamps, and reached for her night rail.

But then she paused. And for the first time ever, she stood before the mirror and looked at herself, and tried to imagine how someone else would see her. She saw the gentle, curving whiteness of her body as new terrain—the slopes of her shoulders, the mounds of her breasts, the triangle of hair between her legs—and imagined a man’s hands exploring it, savoring it, taking unique pleasure in it, in something she’d always taken for granted.

And slowly, hardly daring, she did it: her hand rose and cupped her breast gently. And after a moment’s hesitation she traced the same path the earl’s fingers had traced earlier today, on his own breastbone.

She closed her eyes.

She learned that the skin beneath was indeed exquisitely soft. A shock. She’d never known. And, oh, the touch raked awake that fierce, unidentifiable want again.

And now it was everywhere in her.

You are the silk that breathes beneath my hand . . .

She stood for a moment longer, nude, before the mirror, until she became aware that her skin was pricking up in gooseflesh from the cold. She slipped her night rail over her head and reached for a shawl, and stood for a moment indecisively.

The curtains had been pulled closed, but a bit of moonlight was forcing its way through. Sabrina followed the shaft of light with her eyes, and thought of Persephone in the statue gallery, waiting for moonlight to awaken her.

And suddenly Sabrina wanted to see her.

CHAPTER TEN

T
HE WIND HAD ceased for the moment to heap more snow up against the house, and the quiet was so sudden and thorough it very nearly had a texture. Moonlight poured in through the soaring arched windows and washed over the rows of statues.

Sabrina hesitated on the threshold of the room, and this hesitation, as well as the sharp little curl of anticipation in the pit of her stomach, amused her. She approached the statues almost stealthily, until she was a mere few feet away from Persephone.

But it was another few seconds before she mustered the nerve to lift her candle high enough to illuminate Persephone’s face.

Persephone’s smooth marble eyes gazed back at her.

For seconds of silence Sabrina watched the statue. Seconds ticked into a minute, then two minutes.

How long minutes are when you’re waiting,
Sabrina thought idly.

Finally, she grew a bit bored and whimsically decided to rest her candle in Perseus’s outstretched hand. She stepped back toward the wall to admire it. It looked as though he were bearing a torch.

“For a moment I thought you were Persephone come to life, Miss Fairleigh.”

Sabrina’s heart didn’t precisely stop, though it most definitely did stutter. And when it leaped forward again it was much more swiftly than before.

Perhaps she hadn’t jumped out of her skin because she’d almost expected him.

Still, she didn’t dare turn around.

“Forgive me for dashing your hopes.” She was proud of her voice, even, cool as marble. The voice a statue would have used, she liked to think. Though her heart was now beating so rapidly she wondered it didn’t echo in the gallery.

“Given that I came here hoping to be surprised, and perhaps even…awed…I cannot in all honesty say my hopes have been dashed.” Drawled irony in his soft, soft voice.

It washed over her the way the moonlight did. It changed the very room. And her mind knew he was an expert at choosing clever words and imbuing them with innuendo, at all the little things that added up to seduction. In this, he’d proven himself an artist.

Oh, yes, her mind knew it. Still, it was not her mind that surged in response to his voice, or set the hair on the back of her neck standing.

And in that moment, she didn’t dare speak.

She remained quiet; and now she began to feel the warmth of him behind her, as surely as though he were a fire burning low; she wondered, absurdly, if he was clothed for day or night. Perhaps he wore a dressing gown and a cap, had come creeping down from his chambers dressed for sleep. It would certainly de-fang him, somewhat. She’d seen her father, Vicar Fairleigh, in his dressing gown and cap. She had difficulty imagining that any man so dressed would pose any sort of sensual danger.

And then it occurred to her to wonder what the wan moonlight was doing to her dressing gown, and heat rushed into her cheeks.

She fought a maidenly impulse to pull the shawl more tightly around her shoulders, but she sensed the gesture would amuse him and confirm for him everything he believed about her. For some reason, at the moment, the thought of this was intolerable. She restrained herself.

“What…what would you have done if you’d seen her?” she found herself asking instead. She was genuinely curious. “Persephone?”

“Take her to Hades with me at once, of course.” He sounded surprised that she needed to ask.

This startled a short laugh from her. “Or to London, at the very least.”

“Is there a difference?” He made it sound like a serious question.

“I wouldn’t know. Is the entrance to London guarded by a dog with three heads?”

She thought he might laugh.

Instead, it was quiet again. The candle flame snapped upward, tugged by a draft.

“You’ve never been to London?” He said it softly, but he sounded so thoroughly, genuinely astonished—as if she’d admitted she’d never learned to read, or to eat with a fork, something
just
that fundamental—that she couldn’t resist smiling.

And she finally turned, slowly, to face him.

Which of course required looking up a significant distance.

No dressing gown and whimsical cap. White shirt, open at the throat—it took a moment to get beyond those few open buttons—and those blue eyes fixed upon her.

His expression disconcerted her. He didn’t seem inclined to blink, for one thing; his gaze on her face was nearly as steady as the statue’s…if considerably more warm. The warmth she could see even by the combined light of moon and candle. But she would also have called it…bemused. It was as if two very different notions were warring inside him, and he was puzzled by at least one of them.

“I’ve never longed to see London.” She heard the prim note in her own voice. Perhaps it was for the best.

He simply continued gazing. She refused to be the first to look away, and so an absurd moment passed during which they merely gazed.

When he spoke, she almost started.

“Miss Fairleigh, do you have a mirror in your chambers?”

“A mirror?” She was puzzled.

He didn’t clarify the question for her; he smiled faintly as if at some private joke, and gave his head a slow shake, to and fro. And then absently, almost affectionately, he reached out and gently tugged the ends of her shawl more snugly around her. As though tucking a child into bed.

Just as her own hand had gone up to do the same.

A shock: the backs of his fingers touching hers. His skin against her skin. He was startlingly warm, flame-warm. And this simple touch sent a buzz through her blood and flashed like lightning in her mind, obliterating thought. She went motionless, astonished, and looked up at him, absorbing the sensation. Confusion shredded her thoughts, and a tide of heat rose toward the surface of her skin.

Rhys knew an opportunity when he saw one, and he’d brilliantly orchestrated this one. Those lovely full lips were parted just a little; her muslin wrapper fell softly over the slim lines of her body, hinting at lithe bareness beneath. Her dark hair should have been twined in a missish braid to keep it from tangling as she slept, and instead it spilled in dark silken handfuls over her shoulders. Her eyes were wide and soft, stunned at the contact of his hand, lulled by the moonlight.

He’d kissed myriad other women for much less provocation.

And so he swiftly calculated his angle of approach, and did it.

He’d meant it to be a swift touch of the lips, just enough to scandalize her and to satisfy his own half-whimsical impulse, to prove to himself that he had won: he had lured her here, and his reward was to be a kiss.

But when his lips met hers, something went terribly wrong.

Or perhaps it was just that something went too terribly right.

Because…oh, God. Her mouth was a dream beneath his. So softly, surprisingly welcoming, it was as though she’d been anticipating this kiss her entire life.

Pragmatically, he thought it more likely it was because she
hadn’t
expected to be kissed, and therefore hadn’t had time to do the sensible thing…which would be to stiffen and slap him in indignation. He knew he had an instant’s worth of advantage, and regardless of whether it was sensible, he wasn’t about to relinquish it. His arms went around her loosely but decisively and he pulled her into his chest before she could do something silly, like stop him.

Her forearms folded up, her hands bunched softly near his collarbone, her head tipped back. And now that she was gently trapped, he lowered his head. And he kissed her, not as though she was a virgin, or the vicar’s daughter, or the almost fiancée of his resentful cousin. He kissed her the way a woman ought to be kissed: with absolutely no quarter.

His mouth played insistently over the vulnerable softness of hers, helping her to discover the exquisite sensitivity of her own lips, to sense the universe of possibilities in a simple kiss. And when her lips parted—and they did, because his own determined lips had given her no choice in the matter—he breached them with his tongue, tasted without preamble the velvety heat of her mouth, and plundered.