The Pleasure of Your Kiss (19 page)

Clarinda swiped at the tip of her nose with the back of her hand, wishing the moonlight streaming down from the loft wasn’t quite so revealing. She must look a fright. She had never been a particularly pretty crier.

It was the first time she and Ash had been alone since his return from Eton. He was still lean, but his shoulders were so much more intimidating now, his chest beneath his striped waistcoat and the starched white frills of his shirt so much broader. It made a girl wonder just how it might feel to rest her cheek against it and listen for the true, steady beat of his …

She jerked her gaze back to his face to find him taking another puff on his cheroot and eyeing her as if she were a puzzle he had yet to solve.

“You should probably go,” she said. “They already think I’m trying to snare your brother, and if they find me here with you, they’ll probably accuse me of trying to trap you into marriage as well.” She smoothed the tattered and mud-stained skirts of her lavish ball gown, wondering how she was going to explain them to her papa. “Or something worse.”

“Don’t worry,” Ash said cheerfully. “If we’re discovered, I’ll just tell them we snuck out here to smoke a cheroot together.”

Clarinda felt her lips curl in a reluctant smile. “Then they’ll know for sure I’m nothing but a bourgeois little hoyden.”

He extinguished the cheroot on a post and flicked the butt away. “I could have told them that a long time ago.”

She wouldn’t have thought it possible but his words stung even more than the slights she had already endured that night. Tossing back her hair, which had spilled halfway out of its pins during her mad dash from the house, she said, “Then why don’t you just leave me be and go back to where you belong?”

“Because I happen to like bourgeois little hoydens.” He came sauntering toward her, his lazy gait belied by the intensity in his golden gaze. “They’re so much more interesting than ladies.”

Since Clarinda had all but given up hoping this moment would ever come, she could only gaze up at him in wide-eyed wonder as he took her into his arms and lowered his head toward hers.

To her surprise, it wasn’t her mouth he sought in that moment but the softness of her cheek. He brushed his lips over each tearstain in turn, soothing away her hurt with an eloquence words could never express.

When his lips finally did close over hers, it seemed the most natural thing in the world. Clarinda had already fended off any number of young men intent upon stealing a kiss or two from her ripe lips. But Ash wasn’t stealing. He was laying claim to what was rightfully his.

His mouth played over hers with an almost reverent tenderness, tasting of tobacco laced with a hint of brandy. Apparently the cheroot wasn’t the only thing he’d pilfered from his father’s study. In that moment it was as if everything about them became one—their mouths, their breaths, the rhythm of their hearts. Her own heart was pounding so loudly in her ears Clarinda barely registered the creak of the stable door swinging open until Ash’s arms tightened around her and he pulled her against the wall and into a pool of shadow.

“Who is it?” she whispered, her arms slipping instinctively around his waist.

Ash scowled. “Probably just one of my father’s grooms.”

“Clarinda? Are you out here, poppet? One of the footmen said they thought they saw you come this way. The Earl of Cheatham’s son has just arrived, and he’s eager for introductions to be made.”

Clarinda buried her groan in the front of Ash’s waistcoat. “Oh, no! It’s Papa! He’s been parading a steady stream of suitors with titles in front of me ever since I returned from Miss Throckmorton’s in the hopes I’ll take a fancy to one of them.”

Ash tipped up her chin with one finger, forcing her to meet his gaze. “You’d still the flapping tongues of those harpies forever if they were forced to address you as ‘Lady Cheatham’ one day.”

She bit her lip before giving him a mischievous smile. “What if I prefer to be addressed as ‘Lady Hoyden’?”

“Then I’ll be only too happy to oblige.” Pressing another brief but fierce kiss to her lips, he seized her hand in his and tugged her toward the rear of the barn.

He held open a loose board on the back wall and urged her through the narrow gap, ripping the hem of her skirt free when it caught on a nail. The next thing she knew, they were racing through the warm, windy night hand in hand, their giddy laughter floating behind them.

That memory of perfect freedom only made the tower feel more like a cage. Clarinda could just make out the indigo shadow of the sea over the tops of the swaying palms, its serene swells brushed with silvery fronds of moonlight. How could Fate have been so cruel as to have carried her all the way across that sea only to deliver her right back into the arms of Ashton Burke?

She rested her brow against the latticework. She’d do well to remember it was only in her dreams that she was likely to find herself in those arms. It wasn’t the first time she had visited that sunlit meadow in the dark and lonely watches of the night, and she feared it wouldn’t be the last.

Her willful imagination always seemed to forget the cold, the damp, the clammy fingers of mist that had enveloped them as Ash had borne her back into the folds of her cloak that long-ago morning. Perhaps it was simply too painful to remember the way his hands had trembled with raw emotion everywhere they touched her. How she had bitten his shoulder to keep from crying out when he had breached her maidenhead and filled her with his thickness. His inexpressible tenderness as he had used his monogrammed handkerchief to mop up the mess they’d made.

She had known even then that she was supposed to feel shame at what they’d done, but any shame she might have felt had been eclipsed by the wonder of what they had shared. The shame had come later, after he was gone and she was left all alone to face the consequences of that all-too-brief idyll.

As the weeks had passed without so much as a letter from him, it had almost given her aching heart comfort to imagine him dead or imprisoned in some foreign cell where he spent his days dreaming of sunlight and his nights dreaming of her. She had still been young and naïve enough to believe that surely only chains or death could have kept him from her arms.

But as the weeks had turned into months and word of his daring exploits with the East India Company had begun to pop up in both the reputable newspapers and the scandal sheets, she had realized he had no intention of returning to her.

And perhaps he never had.

For all she knew, she had never been anything more to him than some foolish girl he had once seduced—the first in a long line of conquests to come. And now she was simply a job—a business transaction conducted between two men that would end with her being exchanged for a large sum of money, like some sort of thoroughbred filly.

She supposed she ought to be grateful to Maximillian for finally disabusing her of any lingering notion that Ash was going to come charging up on a white horse someday and declare his undying love for her. Max might be more likely to have a coachman drive him around in a sensible barouche than to ride a white horse, but he had proved himself to be her hero in every way that mattered. He deserved better than to have his bride-to-be pining over another man.

She was turning away from the window to return to the dubious comfort of her sleeping couch when a flash of movement in the gardens below caught her eye. At first she thought it was just the shadow of a cloud flitting across the moon. But as she squinted into the darkness, her eyes picked out the shape of a man restlessly prowling the winding garden paths below. As she watched, the tip of his thin cigar flared, illuminating the lean planes of his face.

She had to admit it gave her a perverse pleasure to see Ash stalking through the garden, deprived of sleep just as she was. Perhaps he had been driven from his own couch by some equally vexing dream, his body aching for a fulfillment that would never come.

Her smile abruptly vanished when he stopped at the mouth of the path directly below her and lifted his gaze to the tower, homing in on the window as if he knew exactly where to find her.

She took a hasty step backward, seeking shelter in the shadows. Although it should have been impossible, she could not shake the sensation that he could still see her. That he was aware of the hungry look in her eye, the ragged rise and fall of her breasts, even the way her nipples tightened to rosy little buds beneath the smoldering heat of his gaze.

It wasn’t until he leaned one shoulder against the scaly trunk of a palm tree and took a long drag on the cigar that she realized he wasn’t going anywhere.

She slowly backed away from the window, a treacherous flush of triumph coursing through her. Ash’s mouth might lie, but his eyes never could.

He might not love her, but he still wanted her.

Oddly enough, Clarinda slept deeply and dreamlessly for the rest of the night. Somehow knowing Ash was watching over her made her feel more protected than being guarded by an entire army of scimitar-wielding eunuchs.

As she emerged from her sleeping alcove and descended the stairs the next morning, her step was lighter than it had been in a long time. She even caught herself humming a lively tune under her breath.

She had exchanged her multilayered skirts for a pair of the exotic trousers worn by so many of the women in the palace. They hugged the ripe curve of her derriere, then ballooned out to flow over her long legs, only to be gathered once more at the ankle. The gauzy silk had been dyed in sumptuous hues of coral and sapphire. It was a bit like strutting about in one’s pantaloons, but there was no denying how comfortable they were.

The trousers were complemented by a fitted bodice cut low enough on the top to reveal a healthy portion of cleavage and high enough at the bottom to expose a narrow strip of her abdomen. Clarinda smiled to imagine the hackney wrecks she would cause if she paraded down any street in London wearing such outrageous garb.

It was early enough that most of the women of the harem were still sprawled on their sleeping couches in the main hall. Clarinda picked her way through them, stealing a few fresh dates and a handful of nuts from a tray as she passed. She was relieved not to find Poppy among their ranks. Given her friend’s propensity for blurting out the first thing that came into her head, Clarinda didn’t dare mention Ash’s sneaking into the harem yesterday or reveal so much as a word of their exchange. When the time came for them to make their escape, she would have no choice but to take Poppy into her confidence. Until that day, Clarinda wasn’t going to give her any secrets to keep.

What she was going to do was seek out Farouk so she could charm an invitation to supper out of him. She didn’t think she would survive another restless night of pacing her alcove while she trusted her fate to the fickle hands of men.

She was relieved to discover Solomon was one of the eunuchs guarding the main door of the harem. When she explained that she wished to have a word with the sultan, he simply nodded and swung the door open for her.

She was strolling down a long, arched corridor that was open to the spectacular vista of the gardens on one side when Yasmin came barreling toward her from the opposite direction, her arms piled high with towels. Clarinda wanted to groan, but she lifted her chin a notch instead, determined not to let a contemptuous glance or a spiteful remark daunt her high spirits.

Yasmin did not disappoint. “Out of my way, you clumsy cow,” she snapped when they were almost upon each other.

Clarinda was opening her mouth to form a retort when she noticed that beneath Yasmin’s sheer purple veil, the woman’s usual sneer had been replaced by a smug smile. The hair on the back of Clarinda’s neck prickled with unease. “What are you doing up and out of the harem at this hour? The eunuchs usually have to drag you out of the bed by your hair.”

Yasmin neatly sidestepped her without even slowing. “Solomon has ordered me to tend the Englishman in his bath.”

Clarinda froze in her tracks, paralyzed by an unwelcome image of Yasmin all but swallowing the cucumber whole. She spun around and set off after the woman, doubling the pace of her steps so she could intercept Yasmin before Yasmin reached the door that led to the baths.

“I’m afraid there’s been a change of plans,” she said, forcing Yasmin to stop by darting in front of her and blocking her path. “
I’ll
be the one attending Captain Burke in his bath this morning.”

Beneath the veil, Yasmin’s smile vanished. “I do not believe you. If this were so, Solomon would have told me.”

“Solomon was not made aware of the change.” Well, that much at least was true. “It was the sultan who decided the captain might take comfort in being tended by someone from his homeland.”

Yasmin’s eyes narrowed to glittering slits. “I do not believe you. His Majesty would never send a
virgin
to tend a man in his bath.” She spat the word
virgin
the way some women might say
whore
. “I am going to request an audience with him right now, and then I will prove you are nothing but a miserable, lying little—”

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you.” Although it made her wince inwardly, Clarinda knew she had no choice but to channel every ruthless skill required to survive seven years living among adolescent girls in an English boarding school. “
You
are a concubine.
I
am the one who will be Farouk’s wife very soon. And once I am, I will also be the one who decides which concubines will continue to enjoy his favor.” Praying Yasmin wouldn’t call her bluff, Clarinda leaned closer to the woman. “And which ones are to be banished from his presence forever.”

Yasmin continued to glare daggers at her, but when her tongue darted out to moisten her rouged lips, Clarinda knew she had won. Biting off a guttural Arabic curse, Yasmin shoved the towels at her and spun around to stalk off into the gardens, where she would no doubt spend the rest of the morning looking for a poisonous asp to put in Clarinda’s bed.

Clarinda gazed stupidly down at the towels in her arms, wondering what she was supposed to do now. But then she remembered just how smug Ash had looked when she had sprang up off the couch after he had allowed her to believe he was Solomon.