“I will, though. I was not in love with the men in Italy. There was a man, though… once.” She flipped closer to the beginning of the book. “Just here.” She pulled another handsome profile from the pages. “The dance instructor my grandfather hired for me. Oh.” Her hand fluttered to her breast. “I did imagine myself in love with him.”
Was this clawing thing jealousy? If so, he’d felt it before. In Manchester, when he’d discovered the letter. The entire ride to Scotland, it had torn him to shreds. No need for it. She was fast becoming his. “What happened?”
“My dance instructions ended.” Her voice rough and silken. “I never told him. Never even hinted. Unlike some young girls, Iwas not terribly romantic. And if he knew I fancied him, he did not encourage it. Wise man.” She replaced the profile.
But also… a part of him more sun-happy house cat than prowling tiger was glad she’d been a girl who’d known love and who’d been wise enough not to let it ruin her. Even then she’d been heart-full Amelia and practical Mrs. Dart.
He rewarded her for it, tracing his palm up and down her thigh, exploring the warm space between her legs that made her eyelids flutter and close. She swallowed, her hand roaming to her neck as she opened her eyes over fire-hot cheeks and tried once more to focus on her book.
“Ev-everyone I’ve met and cared for in some way exists within these pages. So when they are no longer near me, I may visit them now and then.” She closed the book and stroked its cover. “’Tis easy enough.” But it wasn’t enough, that much was clear in the wistfulness of her voice, in her preference for working instead of remaining alone in her castle. “I would ask”—she leaned into the couch back and turned to study him—“if you’ve ever been in love, but I know the answer.”
“You do?” He stroked his thumb up and down, caressing her sweet quim through gown and shift.
She spoke, each word a breathy exhale, a struggle to inhale through slightly parted lips, her shoulders rolling back as if her gown were suddenly too tight. “The answer is… of course not.” Still his thumb stroked and still she struggled to speak, each word a sigh, an almost moan. “There is… no time… for love.”
“Exactly.” What were they speaking of? His every thought was gone. There existed only his hand at the apex of her legs, begging to be allowed closer, screaming to never leave her body. His own body tight as a spring, a mechanism that responded only to her.
She leaned closer, her hand creeping beneath the book and flirting with his wrist. She touched his pulse, oh so gently, and it raced rapidly to life.
The she retreated, stood. She meant to leave. His hand was cold already, pulsing, needing. No glove could warm it, calm it, contain the passion beating in his pulse.
He grasped her wrist, pulled her back down, and when she turned wide eyes to him for an explanation, he said the words he never thought he would have.
“Will you draw my silhouette, Amelia?”
Her mouth parted and something that sounded like a squeak bounced out. When she snapped her mouth shut, she swallowed and shook her head a bit, sent her curls bouncing. “You want me to draw you? You’ll sit for me?”
He nodded. “But not here.” The thought of anyone else studying him as Amelia would do, even if it were just his profile, made him want to run back to Manchester on his own two legs. But if those other men were in Amelia’s book, if she could pull them out and gaze at them as she wished, he wanted to be in there, too.
She wouldn’t need a silhouette of course. She’d not lose him. Their arrangement, after all. But still, the desire to be in that book… it eclipsed every bit of common sense he possessed.
“In your bedchamber,” he said. “Or mine. Doesn’t matter which.”
She nodded. “Yes. Yes.” She grinned, relaxed back onto the couch and opened up the book to show him more shadows of her life.
He glanced at Miss Angleton, and she winked back, and damn everything, the womanknew.Thoughtshe knew because what she thought wasnottrue. Sweet on Amelia? As if Drew waseversweet. He didn’t even eat them. But reality would not change Miss Angleton’s assumptions.
So what would it hurt to do exactly as that impertinent miss thought he would? He slunk an arm around the back of the couch and let it slip around Amelia’s shoulders, then he drew her closer and into the crook of his arm and held her tight to his side. Exactly where she should be.
Seventeen
Amelia should be used to surprises by this point. The first had occurred when Drew had burst through her front door. The second when he’d kissed her. The third when he’d agreed to her arrangement. And fourth, of course, when he’d stormed in shortly after agreeing, bent her over her desk, and taught her the shattering pleasure of passion.
But now this, the surprise she might never recover from. He’d agreed to sit for a silhouette.
She waited in her bedchamber, in the very center of her bed, dressed only in her pale-blue wrapper and shift, her hair braided as neatly as it could be and swinging down the length of her spine. The fireplace was empty, but candles glowed from their spots on the mantel. Waiting. As she was. For him to appear.
He’d agreed to arrive after midnight, after the entire house had retired to bed. Thankfully, Miss Angleton had ascended the stairs when they had and had remained in her room for the night. She’d not, at least, opened the door into the hall. But Amelia would not bat a single eyelash to learn the girl knew how to climb out of her bedroom window and down a stone wall to the ground one story below.
The clock in the hallway tolled twelve times, and with each echoing reminder of the midnight hour, her heartbeat pounded louder. She hugged her knees and curled her toes into the quilt spread wrinkled across her bed. He would be here soon, and she would have to chain up the silly grin she wanted to wear at all hours of the day. What was between them was not love. For him. It was not forever. Not in the way she wanted. But it made her smile. It made her heart flutter, and it made her anxious every minute to be near him. She woke up happy and went to sleep happy, and oh, she was so wondrously happy he would be walking through her door any minute.
Silly her, to be so happy when the dream could not last very long.
What would she do when they returned to Manchester, to London, and things went back to the way they were? Gray gowns and professional distance. No more kisses and touches, no more pleasure and passion. She rested her chin on her knees. Her heart was sore at the thought of the loss. How much more painful would it be when it actually happened?
Sounds outside her door, small bumps and huffs. She jumped from the bed and opened the door wide. Drew stood in the hallway, the frame settled over one shoulder.
“It’s heavier than it looks.” He grunted. “Difficult to maneuver up the stairs.”
