The Bride Price, page 20
He flipped his tinderbox and exhaled a stream of smoke. Easy enough to pick off the “best” of them. In Town it wouldn’t even have registered as something he needed to do, but here, with her, a barely restrained urge to throttle someone gripped him.
The man in blue would go first. Jelly-filled and weepy-eyed, he’d either bluster or cry. The man in green—
He felt a tug and looked down to see huge glassy eyes staring up.
“Mr. Deville, I’ve lost the steps,” Polly whispered in a tone that was anything but quiet.
Her grubby little hand gripped his expensive coat, watery eyes blinked. Appalling little creatures, children. He should remove his perfectly cut coat from her fingers, in order to salvage as much of the material as he could. The firelight caught her eyes, making them shine blue-gray, much like Caroline’s. A bitty angel in disguise.
He knelt down, which allowed her to grip another part of his coat, infecting it as well. “You’ve forgotten the steps to the dance?” He stubbed the cheroot on the ground, his eyes staying focused on the color of hers, so like another perfect pair.
“Yes.” Her head bowed.
“Well, that won’t do.” He lifted her chin. “Have you asked one of the other girls to help?”
She grimaced. “They said they are too busy. But all they do is giggle after the boys.”
“What about the boys? Have you asked Noah?”
She shook her head miserably. “Too busy giggling after the girls.”
Amusement ran through him. “Only thing for it then.” He stood and offered his hand. “Right, back, left.”
They danced just outside the first ring of columns. Just far enough that no one near the bonfire would see.
Polly stepped on his foot an average of two out of every five steps, so he started to simply spin her around, to her laughing delight. When he finally put her down, she was breathing hard and her color was high.
“I must show Mama before I lose them again.”
“Off with you then.”
She waved and took off down the gentle slope.
A slow clapping brought his attention to the left, a sense telling him who it was before he saw her. Caroline leaned against one of the columns in a mockery of one of his own well-worn poses. “Really, Mr. Deville, a little young for you, isn’t she?”
“How utterly common of you, Caroline, to suggest such a thing. I’m shocked.” He sauntered over and leaned into her, pressing into the same column. He kept his hands in his pockets, using only his shoulders to bring himself nearer to her position. He watched with satisfaction as her eyes darkened and her lips moistened. She darted a glance around, no doubt to check if they were being observed.
The moonlight and firelight glinted and reflected off the columns, pulling and dispelling the shadows in turn.
She tilted her head. “Little can shock you, I think.”
“Much can shock me, just not the types of things that normally shock others.”
“Mmmm. Well, I can’t say the same in this instance. I can’t believe you chose to come.” She looked at him skeptically, then cast the look over the joyously ratty entourage below.
“No?” He touched a curl. “Do you not know that I would do anything for you?”
She gave him a deadpan look. “You will behave if you attend.”
“I will be nothing but the most charming gentleman I can be.” He smiled winningly.
She bit her lip. “I don’t know…”
“Come now, Caroline, where is your sense of comedy now? Didn’t you fancy a scene with the children earlier? Think of what awaits with me in the midst of a mass of dreadful commoners.”
She hesitated.
“Mrs. Martin!” Noah burst into the clearing. “The group dance is set to begin! It’s a good thing I saw the edge of your dress!” He hustled around her, then stopped when he saw Sebastien.
“Oh, good evening, sir.”
Sebastien tilted his head.
“Are you to attend the festivities?”
“I do believe I shall, thank you, Mr. Miller. Shall we see what waits below?”
He strode forth down the hill with Noah, allowing Caroline to nervously catch up.
“Noah, you will help Mr. Deville, won’t you? Introduce him to some of the men?” She tossed Sebastien a warning look edged with challenge before walking toward the matrons and leaving him behind.
Noah looked uncertain, but then motioned toward the fire, to the glowing shapes and happy faces. Hands covered mouths and eyes darted toward Sebastien as the mass of the hoi polloi whispered and ogled. He pulled forth his most disarming smile and began to chat with the more stringent-looking women and men. He could play the game if he so chose, and the only way to get Caroline was to play it tonight. She would little thank him if he threatened her reputation.
No, he thought, as her erstwhile suitors shook his hand, he didn’t think that he would let anyone else discover what she tried so hard to hide beneath her magnificently competent facade. He smiled charmingly and joined in a discussion on crops, all the while watching her work her magic.
She handled the children. She handled the bullies. She handled the matrons and the upright prigs. She handled the men who had tipped the bottle a little too heavily and were apt to grope a little in their quest for the physical support of a helping shoulder. More than a few sported bruised ribs after being “handled” by her, he was sure.
She had never elbowed him in the ribs, not even when he had been his most annoying. Not that he ever expected to be elbowed, but now he wondered at the lack. She was obviously quite capable.
“Mr. Deville, is it?”
A severely dressed man stood in front of him, brown hair lightening to silver at the temples. His back straight as if the pole up his backside had been in place since birth.
“Yes. I don’t believe I’ve had the pleasure.” Eh. He only needed to make a good impression on most of them. For some reason this one raised his hackles.
“Mr. Wallace.”
Ah, so this was the man who sought Caroline’s hand and whom the matrons were pushing her toward. He looked the man over more fully. No, he wouldn’t do at all.
He was trying to decide whether to simply ignore him or to break the man when Wallace spoke first.
“How do you know Mrs. Martin?”
Sebastien considered the man. “We met at the manor. She is helping with the games.”
“So you are a competitor?” He said it in the same vein one would define a cockroach.
“No, I am the competitor.”
The man’s back snapped even more rigid. Not dim-witted, then, this one. He understood exactly what Sebastien was saying.
“The games will be over in a few weeks and you will be naught but a distant memory, Mr. Deville. I wouldn’t presume anything.”
That strange twinge gripped him again, but he shoved it aside. He might one day be a distant memory, but this rigid man would snuff out the last carefree light in a pair of beautiful blue eyes, were he able. And that, Sebastien wasn’t going to let happen.
“But you presume, don’t you?” He smiled and rolled an unlit cheroot between his fingers. “Hasn’t gotten you very far, and I daresay that it won’t get you further in the future. Perhaps you should take the hint from the lady herself? Look to less fair pastures that encourage your attentions?”
The man’s color went high and his mouth opened, but a tug on Sebastien’s sleeve had him looking down.
“Will you dance with me again?”
Sebastien smirked at Wallace, then extended a low arm to Polly. “Of course, sweet girl.”
They left the man fuming in their wake.
The music filled and surrounded her as she watched Sebastien dance with Polly, and Noah dance with a pretty villager whom he had been making cow eyes at all night. Everyone paired together and enjoying themselves. Even Mr. Wallace was leaving her alone for once. She hadn’t seen him in a good ten minutes, and he was usually relied upon to hover at her side and chide all manner of her decisions. The matrons had even loosened up a bit under the wild midsummer moon. Free to show some affect in the midst of the festivities.
She wanted to move, to be free too. To feel the music and passion, the release. But she couldn’t afford to do so yet. She had just gained the matron’s respect. She needed a place…
The perfect spot blinked in the moonlight, and she felt the pull. Breaking away from curious eyes and reminders of bad choices past, she disappeared into the night, the itch needing fulfillment, her body needing to be free.
He had seen her tapping on the sidelines, trying to ignore the music and dancing. Trying to stay aloof and restrained. He had danced with Polly, and when he had turned she had disappeared.
He excused himself from the group and headed toward the edges of the festivities, hoping that everyone would think he was simply going to relieve himself.
Skirting around the edges, he kept eyes focused on finding her. She wouldn’t have left yet. Not her celebration. Not after the preparations and effort. She was the hostess, the queen, the general of the assembled troops. Not able to share in the celebration because of her need to maintain dignity in public at all times.
He surveyed the grounds. Where would she go?
His eyes went to the ruins, and he instinctively headed toward the columns, the broken hall perched along the slope. They were shadowed and dark, haunted if one believed the tales Caroline spun.
He heard a soft swish as he rounded the path into the still-standing entry room of what was once a great hall. He could almost believe in spirits as he watched her move.
She swayed in the shadows, dancing, her body bending and twirling, hidden from the view of the celebration, yet close enough to hear the music, the laughter, the people singing. The atmosphere was alive between the cold stones, the vibrations clinking within, the sound echoing in an eerie, hypnotic way, wrapping around limbs and pulling to the melody and beat. She swayed like some earthen fairy, unable to come out during the day, only caught at night by the diligent or lucky man who fell upon her path.
Sebastien felt himself pulled toward her across the turned stones and moon-shadowed path. And when she made a gentle turn into his arms, they both froze, the laughter from outside washing over them, the voices and fiddles, the chatter and merrymaking, seeping in and around with the strike of the perfect moment and the triviality of the banal.
He slowly lifted her hand, pressed his lips to her knuckles, eyes never leaving hers, lips straying across perfect skin, fingers wrapping together. He twirled her and she gasped, her eyes bright in the moonlight, startled, then heavy with some emotion that went beyond want and into pure need. Erotic, wanting and sure, her eyes held his, only breaking as he spun her again, then reconnected, the deep need within sending pure heat straight down his spine.
He twirled her into his chest, and her fingers rose to curl into his hair, her breath heavy against his throat, lips gasping against his chin as he led them in some strange dance he had never done. Never attempted. A writhing need, expressed to music that beat in his blood rather than whispered in his ears. Caught up in some spell she had cast, had become ensnared in herself in the midst of a temple of ancient stone.
Forbidden longing to bind himself to the siren’s song rose within him, and he turned them in a writhing circle, pushing her against one broken wall, grinding into her and capturing her lips as she tried to climb him, to seat herself on him and fulfill the spell. Desperate movements, mewing whimpers, forbidden promises.
Something about completing the ritual in the stone said that it would be forever, and he resisted the pull, the longing that rose in him for home and desire-struck love and Caroline. He tugged the hair at her nape, bending her back, and captured her breast between his lips, fingers sliding up her thigh, smoothing glossy curls aside, reaching into honeyed depths. He cupped her in his hand, seating her on his fingers, his thumb free to rub the prize nestled within. Her fingers gripped the back of his hair more fiercely, and it only made him pull harder at the perfect nipple, delve more deeply and stroke more firmly.
She shuddered against him, arching farther into him, pulling harder at his hair, and kneading the back of his neck. “Sebastien.” His name was a breath on her lips and he pressed against her, all of a sudden out of control with want and need and desire.
He tugged the buttons on his trousers, freeing himself. The whispers of the stone circle taunting him to give in. He pulled hard against her nipple, causing her to give a cry. He pulled her head forward and captured her lips, kissing her as wildly as she was kissing him back, feeling the threads of the spell winding and writhing around and between them. He gripped himself and pulled, one, two, three times, releasing at the same time she moaned uncontrollably into his mouth, her shudders and clenching making him more determined to be inside her.
The threads of the spell slid down, the cries of distant peacocks echoing through the merrymaking, the sounds of which pushed back into his consciousness with a bang.
He gently removed his hand and stepped away, righting himself. Her hair was a riotous mass, her lips swollen and delectable, her eyes heavy and beautiful. Blue-gray eyes grew wide, and a hand reached to smooth her hair, the other trying the same motion on her dress.
The music curled around the stones again, and she froze, mid-smooth. He touched her hand, wrapping their fingers together, and pulled her into an easy dance, swaying to the music, holding her close. “Why do you not dance in the clearing with the others?”
He didn’t think she was going to answer for a moment. The hitch in her shoulders loosened as she swayed with him. “I get lost in the music.”
A riotous mass of cheering rose in the distance. “There were plenty of people lost in the music earlier. There still are if the shouts are any indication.”
“And did you not observe the looks they were given?”
“Envious looks. Were you to dance like you were when I found you, no one would be able to focus on anything else. Wild and free.”
Her expression disappeared from view as her head tipped down. “Most people prefer domesticated and tamed.”
He smoothed a finger down her cheek and lifted her chin so she was looking back up at him. His finger continued its circuit down her neck, over her bodice. Her heart beat erratically beneath her skin, writhing and alive. The flush on her cheeks and across her chest and throat was the loveliest thing he had seen.
“Tame is boring. Wildness speaks of life.”
The wistful lines of her face deepened. “It speaks of a complete lack of discipline.”
His fingers moved beneath hers, lifting her hand and grazing her pulse point. “It speaks of passion.”
“Passion leads to sorrow.”
“Sorrow is a state without passion.”
“But one that first bespeaks deeper emotion. You seek passion without deeper emotion.”
He pulled her hand to his lips. “There are plenty of profound emotions in passion.”
She peered up at him, her eyes more open than usual. “Don’t you wish, just once, to have the promise of something richer? Something that surrounds you, that crushes you at the same time it sets you free?”
A violent twinge clenched his stomach, and he shoved the tendrils of emotion twining up, threatening to cling to his throat beneath the glass barrier. He continued to kiss her fingers, her wrist, shielding himself from view. “You speak from experience, yet the experience wasn’t a happy one.”
Her head tipped down again, shadows shifting over her eyes as they lowered. “No, but I have been running for so long from fear of repeating my mistake. Letting that dictate my actions. There was something missing with Patrick. Something that I thought was there, but with hindsight I can see only a gaping hole. I did love him. But it was the love of a silly girl overcome by circumstance.”
“And now? You want to experience a deep love?” He thought about how easy it would be to escape from the stone structure, which was getting smaller and smaller by the second.
She smiled somewhat sadly. “No, I just don’t want to be scared anymore. Of my own judgment, of men like you.”
The relief mixed with something else. “I think I should be feeling affront.”
“Men like you don’t feel affront.” Her tone was almost affectionate. He wasn’t sure which irritated him more—that he was lumped into a group or that she accepted his rakish status so totally as to be amused by it.
He could picture her face, younger, but still lovely and wanting, excited and glowing, as she looked upon the faceless Patrick. Tender and full of crazy ideas and overwhelming emotions. He had seen that expression on each new crop of debutantes when their eyes met his. The picture of Caroline mooning over some faceless man irritated him more than he was willing to admit.
Shadows shifted over her eyes again as she pulled away from the darkness and stepped into the moonlight, a glow illuminating her skin and hair. A wild night fairy who had just garnered her wings.
A smile tugged her lips, and a heavy lidded promise lit her eyes. She took his hand and walked backward a few steps before dropping his hand, turning, and running from the stone-columned room, laughter trailing behind her.
She was transformed into a different person, pulling stunned villagers into the dancing circle, sharing her light and mirth. No, that wasn’t right, he thought, as he was tugged into moving with the crowd. She was the same person; this was another side of the real Caroline.
It was late when the festivities wound down, everyone looked pleased as they stumbled from the clearing. Even the matrons had been seduced into joining the swaying crowds, as Caroline had encouraged the children to pull them into the dancing. They too had gotten caught in the grip of the night’s spell.
All in all, she had to consider the night an unqualified success. In every way, she thought, still light and breathless.
Sebastien walked her to the door and she fumbled with the lock for a second, her hands uncharacteristically shaking. He took the key from her, fit it into the slot, and smoothly turned it.
“Would you like a cup of tea?” she blurted, staring at his fingers as they fell from the key. Silence greeted her, and it wasn’t until she gripped the knob and opened the door that she dared to look up.
