The Golden Season (30 page)

He smiled and her heart thundered in response. Foolish, easy heart.

“You are kind, ma’am, to squander your time with me when you might spend your last hours amongst those kings and princes, lords and lordlings who are your equals.”

“Squander? What do you mean?”

“I was here when you were announced as Aurelia
In Transitus
. I assumed that meant you draw near the moment when you are turned entirely to gold and from which there is no turning back. Was I wrong?”

He’d moved closer, far closer than propriety allowed, angling his head as he bent near, his gray eyes glinting like pewter in the half-light, his breath a warm caress on her neck. She couldn’t think. Couldn’t breathe.

“Was I?” he asked again, his whisper stirring the soft tendrils of hair at her temple. He did not recognize her, she was sure of it now. He would never be so forward with her.

“No,” she answered, barely audible.

“How sad,” he murmured, slipping behind her as silently as the night he professed to be. “Will you miss your humanity, do you suppose?”

“I don’t expect I shall be aware of what I have lost,” she said, standing very, very still because she thought she felt a caress, as light as a smoke, drift down the side of her neck.

“How long do you think before the transformation is complete? A week? A day?” His voice dropped to a dark purr. “An hour?”

“I don’t know.”

He stood behind her now, his body looming over her, shielding her from the night air. She felt a slight movement at her side and glanced down to see his left hand cross in front of her and encircle her right wrist, the black of his glove a stark contrast to the gleaming gold foil covering her hand and forearms. He stepped back and tugged so she pirouetted lightly to face him.

“Let us gauge.” From behind the mask, his gray eyes held hers as he lifted her hand to his shoulder and there, carefully, placed it. His velvet-clad fingertips caressed the tender flesh high under her arm and glided to the top of her glove. Slowly, with measured purpose, inch by inch, he worked the fabric down, exposing her skin.

She could not believe this was Ned peeling away her glove with such sensual deliberation. Not this dangerous, lithe, and predatory-looking man. His eyes never left hers, blistering in their intensity. His mouth was taut. A little tic jumped at the corner of his jaw.

She could not move. Her heart drummed so thickly she was certain he must hear it. She grew light- headed as with leisurely deliberation he stripped her glove off, exposing her hand. The shed glove rippled to the ground like a banner of liquid gold, and he raised her hand.

“It still looks like a woman’s flesh,” he mused and brushed his warm lips across her fingertips. She gasped, reflexively jerking back her hand, but he would not let her go. Instead, he opened his mouth against the shallow indentation at the center of her palm and lingered in a carnal kiss.

“It has the warmth and texture of a woman’s skin,” he murmured against her skin.

A shudder ran through her. He could
not
know who she was. He’d mistaken her for someone, and something, else. He must. He would never treat her with such impropriety. Or desire, a cruel inner voice suggested.

She should announce herself, now, before this had gone too far for either of them to forget. She meant forgive. She meant—

He carefully bent her hand back at the wrist and opened his mouth against the pulse beating like a trapped thing there. Her knees went liquid. Slowly, he licked a line across the tender flesh. Her legs buckled.

Carelessly, he swept her from her feet and into his arms.

“You have the taste of a woman,” he said, gazing down at her. “Beneath the gold. What of . . .”

He didn’t finish his statement, instead easing her higher against his chest. His head dipped low and he whispered against her throat, “Do you still own a woman’s heart?” He kissed the base of her throat. “Her response?” He nibbled a slow route along her collarbone.

Behind the gold mask her eyelids fluttered shut, her lips parted as though to drink in the carnal brew with which he flooded her senses and her head fell over his arm, her throat arching like an offering. He took her gift, pressing his mouth beneath her chin and drawing his lips in a heated, openmouthed kiss down the length of her neck to the plump, gold-dusted tops of her breasts. A dark, primal sound rumbled deep in his throat as his tongue tasted her.

She did not protest.

It was erotic, unimaginably erotic, and wicked, and her whole body quaked in response. He lifted his head and only then did she realize that both her hands were tangled in his thick hair, holding his head.

Abruptly, he dropped her feet to the ground, keeping one arm around her waist as he reached up to pull the ribbon holding her mask in place. Just in time, she realized his intent and grabbed his wrist, pulling his hand away.

“No!” He had mistaken her for one of the lightskirts Eleanor had spoken about, some man’s castoff mistress seeking a new lover. He must have. And certainly she’d given him no reason to suppose otherwise.

He allowed her to lower his hand, though impatience tightened his lips. “Enough of this, my darling. Remove this mask, strip off this hard shell, and be the woman beneath.”

“There is nothing beneath this mask but another,” she said, knowing he would not understand.

He stilled. “Well, if that is true, there is no hope for this, is there?” he said in an odd voice, and she was caught by the certainty that any moment now he would leave her.

No
.

She flung her arms around his neck and reflexively he caught her to him, holding her fiercely.

“Don’t go. Don’t leave me.”

“God,” he said hoarsely. “What would you have me do?”

“Love me.”

His jaw tensed and the muscles in his arms and shoulders went rigid as he gazed down at her. Once more, he raised his hand to take her mask and once more she prevented him. But this time it was not because she feared revealing herself; rather she feared that the revelation of who she was would return to him his formidable self-control.

“Love me,” she whispered.

Her words fell like a scimitar, slicing through the thin hesitation holding him. “Be damned,” he muttered thickly and swung her back up into his arms.

She wrapped her arms around his neck and laid her masked face against his chest. “Love me.”

She did not need to speak again. She felt his answer in the tightening of his arms, the thickening beat of his heart, the rise and fall of his broad chest. Wordlessly, he moved with her farther into the dark, deeper into the umber shadows, where vision failed and other senses awoke.

Within a few strides, the light from the sconces had vanished. The moonless sky provided no illumination, only a different shade of black, and the cobbled darkness did no more than hint at tree and vine and shrub. Soon, she could not make out his features anymore.

Sound and sight and touch took precedence here. She knew when they moved from the footpath, because the crunch of shells disappeared and his steps grew muted. The rich, humid scent of loam and living things rose and filtered around her. Delicate cool tendrils and slick leaves brushed her arms as he turned, backing through invisible undergrowth.

She felt the play of muscles across his chest, the size of the arms supporting her, the velvety touch of his gloved hands on her shoulder, the heat rising from him. He stopped and this time when she felt his hand move behind her head, she did not stop him from removing her mask but kept her arms around his neck, an anchor in this seamless nightscape.

Cool air rushed over her heated face, followed by the silken glide of a velvet-clad hand. He read her features like a blind man, fingertips tracing her eyes and cheeks, skating along her nose and finally across lips. She sighed, canting in to his touch. His finger glided to the back of her head. She felt the warm puff of his breath a moment before his mouth closed hungrily over hers.

Gold had made an excellent mask, but night made an even better one. Where gold allowed a certain license, night encouraged licentiousness. Emboldened by its dark entitlement, she learned the urgency of desire. Her mouth opened beneath his and when his tongue entered her mouth, she opened farther, hungry for more. She arched restlessly against him, raking her fingers through his hair, the locks silky and damp.

He dragged her neckline down and cold air kissed her nipple into a hard tight bud as her breast overflowed the constricting bodice. His mouth scorched a trail down her neck, along her shoulder and lower, stopping at the very crest of her breast. She could hear his labored breathing, feel its heated whoosh against her naked skin. A shudder raked his body and she tugged at his head, willing him to more kisses, bolder kisses, kisses on flesh that had never known a man’s touch but ached to do so now. He made a dark sound of capitulation and hunger, and then opened his mouth over her and drew her nipple deep into his mouth.

She pulsed with fundamental knowledge, wanting more, her breath drawn in on a gasp of exquisite torment.

And her gasp broke the spell.

He lifted his head and she panted in protest. She wanted and he was not giving. She tried to pull his head down to kiss her again, but he resisted. She searched the darkness above her, but could not make out his expression, only a sense of tension so palpable the very air seemed charged. Somewhere, at some point, his own mask had been lost.

She heard him drag in a shaky breath, felt a light tremble begin in his broad shoulders and travel through his long body. “No. No. This is wrong.”

Damn his right and wrong! Her body hummed with need and frustration, like a starved prisoner held within steps of a feast. She shook her head violently.

“You would regret this.”

“No.”

“Yes. I—Yes, you would. I . . . Forgive me.”

Forgive him
? It was back, his masterful, pitiless self-control. Why was it so easy for him to assume when every one of her nerves felt raw and abraded by an acid of yearning only his kisses, his touch, could assuage? Yet he would not act and she was supposed to
forgive
him.

Well, she would not. She would not forgive him for unleashing desires that had only teased her before but now clawed at her with agonizing urgency. He must not understand how cruel he was being because he did not share her torment. If he did, he would act.

She heard her breath break on a sob. “You do not even know who I am. How can you say what I would and would not regret?”

He stilled. “Ma’am?”

She was too humiliated to hear the shock in his voice. Too overset to hear the disbelief. She should be thanking him for finding his self-control, but all she could think was that he hadn’t wanted her either as Lady Lydia or as a woman of the night.

“Put me down.” Her voice quavered.

When he didn’t react at once, she pushed at his chest, struggling. “Please. Put me down.” There was a note of desperation in her voice and at once he lowered her to the ground. She dropped to her knees, tugging her bodice back into place and then searching the ground at his feet for her mask.

“You do not believe I—” he began to ask in an incredulous tone, but she cut him off ruthlessly. She knew what he was going to say.

“No, I do not believe you would have been so carried away you would have forgotten yourself.”
He does not want me.
Her hand closed around the cold metal mask.

He was silent while she scrambled to her feet and cast about, looking for some light in the dark, some glimmer of where she was.

“I am not sure I take your meaning,” he said in an odd voice.

She found a subtle glow above the dark treetops and at the same time heard the distant hum of voice and music.

“My meaning is clear. You recalled yourself, sir, in time to keep from tarnishing your honor.”

“
My
honor?” He sounded stunned.

She did not wait for a reply. She started forward, a hand outstretched to guide her.

“Let me take you back,” he said quietly.

Take her back and risk having Eleanor or Emily see them and give her away? She would rather die. “No. As you are a gentleman I ask you to allow me to keep what dignity I have left by not trying to discover my identity. You do not know me.” He did not argue. “I would as soon keep it that way.”

“I will not speak to you,” he promised stiffly. “But you must let me at least see you to the footpath. Once there, I promise not to importune you any further.”

She wanted to refuse, to tell him he had never importuned her, that clearly she had importuned him. She had invited all his attentions and then begged for more. But he’d refused. Mortification burned in her face and she opened her mouth to refuse, but reason reasserted itself. She might stumble through the shrubs for half an hour and when she finally did find her way clear, her gown and slippers, hair and arms would bear testimony to a story that she did not want known. She’d had enough humiliation for one evening. “Very well.”

She felt his hand at her elbow, a touch so different from the one just moments earlier, so impersonal and proper, she wanted to sob. Instead, she walked stiffly a few feet behind him as he used his body and arm to lift branches out of her way and make a path. It took only a short time to find their way back to the terrace. But by then her mask, both her masks, were firmly in place.

True to his word, Ned did not attempt to follow her once they reached the footpath but instead stepped solemnly aside. His face, though no longer hidden behind the bauta mask, revealed nothing. He caught his hands behind his back and bowed sharply. “Ma’am.”

She did not reply.

 

Ned watched Lydia’s flight with narrowed eyes. He had promised he would not pursue her and he was a man of his word, but every primal instinct—and there were many primal instincts clamoring to be acted on this evening—urged him to go after her. But he was also a man of rare self-restraint.