Blue Waltz (6 page)

"No matter. Just tell me your name."

Her smile grew soft and dreamy. 'Mmmm. My name. Don't you know my name?"

"Of course I don't know your name," he said. He glanced around again in hopes of finding someone, anyone, to help. But the park was empty. "Tell me your name, madam."

"Blue Belle." She tried to lift her arm from the mire, but it wouldn't let her go.

"Bluebell? Your name is Bluebell?" What kind of a name is Bluebell? he questioned silently, wondering if he should believe her.

"Yes," she said, the simple word slurred. "Blue Belle. That's what my father calls me. Blue Belle Holly. It's a pretty name, don't you think."

He racked his brain, trying to think of any Hollys he knew or had ever heard of. But he neither knew of nor had heard of any. And he knew almost everyone in town.

"Where do you live? Where can I take you?"

"Boston. I'm going to Boston. To the Back Bay." Her eyes rolled back. "Where they have the grandest of ballrooms and tall houses all lined up, playing sentinel to the street." She giggled. "Imagine that. Houses as soldiers. Poetic, don't you think?"

Stephen groaned. If he hadn't sat next to her and seen that she'd had nothing alcoholic to drink, he would have sworn she was drunk. "Where in the Back Bay?" he demanded, his concern growing.

But her giggles had ceased and her mouth had gone slack, her lips much too blue. This time, when he called her name she didn't respond. And no matter how hard he shook her, she failed to stir. He had to get her out of the cold, and quickly. Knowing there was no help for it, he slid his good arm underneath her shoulders. He set his teeth against the sharp stab of pain that ran down his side. A lesser man would have faltered. But Stephen St. James was not a lesser man, hadn't been since he was seventeen years old.

Holding her securely with one arm, he carried the woman the rest of the distance to Arlington Street and up to his house. Only seconds after he kicked the front door with his muddied boot it opened. Instantly, he was relieved of his burden when his butler, Wendell, took the woman in his arms without a word of question, and called out for help. Servants appeared in braided hair and nightcaps, suddenly wide awake with purpose. In spite of himself, Stephen followed as they scurried about, carrying the

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woman upstairs, starting a fire, bringing hot water, saving her from the ravages of cold.

When Wendell tried to entice Stephen away from the scene with a brandy and roaring fire of his own, he shook his head and did nothing more than step out of the room while the maids removed the woman's clothes. Once the servants were through, they dashed out with mumbles of cleaning the clothes, drying them by the huge kitchen fire, then returning them posthaste. After what seemed like hours, though in reality was only a few minutes, Stephen was left alone in the wood-paneled hallway outside one of the many guest bedrooms in his home. Ignoring the persistent ache in his shoulder and side, he stepped back through the doorway to make sure all that needed to be done had been accomplished. If she needed a doctor, he would send for one.

The woman who called herself Bluebell Holly lay in the huge four-poster bed, curled on her side, nearly hidden beneath the sheets and covers. The mud had been washed away and color had returned to her cheeks. Bluebell Holly would be all right. A doctor wouldn't be needed.

The house had grown quiet, only the occasional clang or muted voice from the kitchen wafting up the stairs. Pressing back against the wall, Stephen felt the smooth plane of plaster covered by fine paper solid against his spine. He stood silently, mesmerized. His heart pounded in his chest, hard, and he felt a stab of longing so deep that it took his breath away.

He knew he should leave, seek out the brandy and fire that Wendell had suggested.

Like a thirsty man seeking water, he took a step forward instead.

He was drawn to her in a way he didn't understand. It

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wasn't just her beauty—he had known some of the most beautiful women in the world. And it certainly wasn't her manner—Lord, he had never encountered anyone so outlandish. Then, what was it? he wondered, taking in what he could of her sheet-covered form.

His heart beat oddly as he looked at her—this strange woman who had come into his life so unexpectedly, twice now. He moved slowly, almost reluctantly, as he took the steps that separated them. Closer and closer. Step by step, the movement filling him with something that at any other time he might have termed hope. He nearly laughed out loud at his own melodramatic thoughts. But he didn't want to wake her, so he held his laughter back. He wanted to look at her. Just look, as if by doing so it would give him some clue as to why unwanted thoughts of her circled in his mind.

Her breathing was shallow and steady as she drifted in that place she was seemingly reluctant to leave, as if that place, that dark and obscure haven, gave her respite.

A red brocade, high-backed chair with a gilded frame stood to the side. He pulled it close. Too close. But he wanted to see. Had to see. Before she woke, before she left, and he never saw her again.

Never saw her again.

The thought was reassuring. He wouldn't see her again. He would discover what about this outrageous woman had so intrigued him. Then he would learn her address and send her home. Mystery solved. Case closed. All loose ends tied up neatly. Yes, that was reassuring.

Her breathing was even, and her lips were no longer blue. Her eyes remained shut as she murmured and stirred. And when she turned, the bed sheets shifted, not much, but enough to provide him with a glimpse of skin as white as froth on a turbulent sea.

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He knew he should adjust the covers then leave, and he started to do just that. But when he went to move the sheets, up over her shoulders, she moved again, and the sheets fell further away.

He sucked in his ragged breath. Her breasts were full with rosebud nipples, soft and pliant. Unexpectedly, his fingers longed to make them rise and harden. To caress. To cup, gently. The desire was intense as something he could only call reverence or awe wrapped around him.

He should have left immediately and called a maid. But he didn't. It was wrong, he knew it. He had never done anything like it in his life. He could have almost any woman for the asking, but just then, and never again, he thought fleetingly, he didn't want any other woman, couldn't think of any other woman. His mind was filled with her.

If another man had done such a thing, he would have shown no mercy. But another man hadn't done it. He had. As he knew he shouldn't. But something in him, something deep and primal, something foreign in his well-ordered world, caused him to stay.

She murmured and stirred, the sheets falling lower, revealing a curve of hip as gentle as a still night in spring. He desperately wanted to touch, to feel, the satiny smoothness of perfect skin. To nip. To taste.

He reached out slowly, almost timidly, as if he were no more than a schoolboy, knowing he was breaking every gentlemanly rule he lived by, his hard-carved hand suspended mere inches above her skin, not touching, only desiring. But then she turned, rolling over onto her back, her eyes pressed closed in delirium, or perhaps just sleep, leaving his hand suspended not over satiny skin but the triangle of dark hair between her legs.

Sensation radiated through his body. He felt his

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body's instant, nearly painful, response. Never had a woman, any woman, affected him so. Everything else in his life paled, grew distant and hazy in the face of this woman, this strange woman with her alternately laughing then haunted blue eyes.

Images of raising her knees and spreading her gently washed over him. His tongue longed to lathe her secret core, to taste her on his lips. His jaw tightened with the restraint he placed on himself. The urge to ease his need, to impale her sweet body, again and again, until he felt the hidden recesses of her womb, nearly overwhelmed him. He wanted her. Badly. He wanted to wake her. Look into her perfectly blue eyes and make her want him, too.

But then the sheets fell even further away, falling to a pile of white linen and woolen snow beside the bed.

"No," he breathed, emotion flashing in his normally fathomless eyes.

She was laid out before him, as if sculpted from marble, breathtaking, perfect—except for her leg.

His mind reeled. An unfamiliar tightness pulled at his throat, stung at his eyes. And where he hadn't touched her before, he touched her now, on the leg so obviously and brutally broken, then clearly never repaired.

Intense, biting sorrow washed over him. Barely, carefully, he ran his palm over the uneven surface, so unlike its twin, which was shapely and perfect. His fingertips drifted up her leg and over to her hand, so fragile as it lay against the bed sheet, curved in sleep, trusting—of him— as he sat beside her naked body.

Guilt and shame pushed the sorrow away. He looked around, suddenly startled to find himself there, to find her there. To find the perfection of her body. No, he amended, the near perfection. And he wished as he had

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never wished for anything before that he could make it right, set it straight, make her whole.

The thought startled him, as much as finding her there had startled him. He didn't even know her, didn't even know from where she came. She was no business of his, whoever she was. He would do well to remember that fact.

He started to go then, to escape the unfamiliar things she made him feel—things he didn't want to feel. But unexpectedly her fingers curled around his. When he looked back, her eyes fluttered opened. "Don't leave me," she whispered, with a look he couldn't define. Fiercely happy? Infinitely sad? Deeply afraid? He wasn't sure.

"Please don't go," she said.

He glanced down at their fingers, entwined like lovers, hers nearly lost in his. At length, in the quietness of the elaborately appointed room, the fire casting luminous shadows against the walls, he eased back into the chair.

She didn't let go. With effort, he pulled his hand free so he could cover her body with the bed sheets from the floor, no easy task one-handed. But when he finished, she still moaned quietly in distress. He stared at her for one long moment before he sighed in resignation, or perhaps in fear—what if he could never let her go? But that was foolishness, he told himself firmly as he took her hand again, lacing her fingers with his.

Her grip was surprisingly strong, as if she held on for dear life. And as he gazed down on her, he wondered if perhaps that wasn't exactly what she was doing.

Not until he leaned back in the chair, his head resting against the cushioned back, her hand secure in his, did she seem to ease.

Who was this woman, this Bluebell Holly? With the face of an angel and a leg so badly damaged that it was easy to believe the gods, jealous of what they had created, had dashed her against the rocks to even things out. How had it happened? he wondered. A spill from a horse? A tumble in the woods? A fall from a tree? No, he whispered to the red and orange flames that leaped and swayed in the fireplace, it had been nothing so simple, of that he was certain.

CHAPTER 5

Belle woke with a start. She was cold, very cold as she became aware of a clock tolling the hour. Midnight.

Her brow furrowed, and when she looked around she realized she had no idea where she was. Where were her paintings of flowers and sketches of trees? Where, for heaven's sake, was her favorite overstuffed chair?

With a sudden, quick movement, she turned her head in the opposite direction, and what she saw made her mouth drop open in a silent gasp. A man, sound asleep, sat in the chair next to the bed. On closer inspection she realized it was the same man she had spoken to at the Bulfinch House—though, unlike then, now his hair was disheveled; his hard, relentless mouth was soft, even approachable; his penetrating eyes were obscured by sleep.

She rolled back against the pillow and pressed her eyes closed. Dear God, she pleaded silently, say it isn't so. But when she looked again, she found the man was still there, sound asleep, comfortable as you please.

She dropped back again and pressed her eyes closed, tightly, trying to think. To remember. Bits and pieces came back to her. Running. Cold. Very cold. But why, she couldn't remember. And then the man, the pirate-man, leaning over her, making her warm. She groaned when she realized she remembered nothing else. But her groan turned into a squeak of distress when she became aware of the state of her dress—state of undress, she amended. She was as naked as the day she was born. Good heavens, what had she done? What had transpired in this strange room with this virtually unknown man?

But then she calmed, if only somewhat. Surely if anything had transpired of a nature she was disinclined to name, she would have remembered. How could a person ... do those unforgivable types of things and not remember? They couldn't, she reasoned, they couldn't at all. She might be there for reasons that were not altogether proper—the fact that a man was sitting next to her while she wore not a stitch of clothing was certainly improper—but she hadn't been there doing . . . having . . . making . . . uhh—Good Lord, you're a grown woman, Belle Braxton, just use the word—she had not been copulating! Surely!

But then she wondered about something else, something in her mind that was a great deal worse than having . . . mated. What if he had seen her leg? Her head swam. Maybe that was why she was so certain nothing improper had happened. They might have been well on their way to the heights of sinful ecstacy, writhing with wicked pleasures, moaning in immoral delight, until he would have undoubtedly caught sight of her leg, bringing . . . things to an abrupt halt. The end. Finished. Fini. She knew firsthand how such a sight could dampen the mood, snuff out the candles of desire so quickly and thoroughly that one would be disinclined to believe that any had ever been lighted at all.

But then Belle looked back at the man, remembering as she did the very stiff and proper way he had acted at the public house. He appeared to have had his sensibilities abused by her merely asking to share his bread. Good heavens, she couldn't imagine what he would have done had she asked to share his bed! She giggled at the