“Enjoy yourself,” Marianne told Lily. They stood at the entrance to Lily’s favorite book store near the Conciergerie. “The other day when we were out, I spied a milliner’s shoppe whose hats I rather liked.”

“But don’t you want to come inside and browse?” Lily pushed up her fur collar against the chill wind along the Seine. “You’ve finished your latest Trollope. You said so last night.”

“I didn’t care for it as much as his last few.” Marianne made a face, then patted her green plaid toque. “And I do need a new chapeau.”

“All right. But you shouldn’t go alone.” They’d both come out today without their personal ladies’ maids because both servants were ill with coughs and sneezing. Not even the Comtesse de Chaumont was out with them today because she was busy closing up her house in Paris to travel with them soon to London.

This was the perfect time for Marianne to accomplish her objective. “The day is young and the gendarmerie can save me from any person of ill repute.”

“If you’re sure…?” Lily asked, eagerness in her tone.

“I am.” Lily could spend the entire afternoon in the book shop, spending a fortune on novels. Since well before Christmas, Marianne had been hoping for an opportunity to walk in Paris alone. “Take as much time as you wish. Stay and I will come back for you when I finish.”

“Very well.” Lily bid her goodbye and pulled opened the bright blue door to the cozy shop along the river.

Marianne whirled around and made for the Place Dauphine. She’d memorized the address of the exhibit and though she’d never traveled there before, she knew where it was and that it was a fine neighborhood. She could walk there safely, a woman alone in the middle of the afternoon on a crisp winter’s day.

She was grateful for the whip of the wind and the way she had to keep her little wool hat from flying away. Fighting the weather kept her mind from fighting her skepticism—and from giving in to the voices in her head that asked the same alarming questions over and over again.

What if this Remy, the sculptor, is not the same man as the duke she’d met?

Ridiculous. There could not be two dukes of Remy. Plus, the article she’d read in an edition of last week’s Paris Monde had spoken of the “prince du sang” who was “becoming recognized for his nouveau style.” Her subsequent conversation with Chaumont about him revealed that he did work in bronze and marble and worse, that he was renowned in society for keeping one mistress at a time for a very long time.

He had told her nothing of either. Not that he should. Nor even that such were proper topics for polite conversation between acquaintances. But the first omission saddened just as it intrigued her. The latter sparked jealousy. It also infuriated her.

“As if I have the right to be angry with him,” she murmured and walked on.

Still she’d seen the billboard for “Une Exposition pour duc de Remy!” and her curiosity would not die.

She paused. What if I dislike his sculpture?

What if I see someone there whom I’ve met?

What if they require my name and tell Andre I was there?

No matter. Really. Was she a ninny?

She marched onward.

But she fretted. What if Andre is there?

Indeed.

What if he is?

The answers did not kill the hunger that had plagued her since last she’d seen him in September at the opera. To feed her memory, she’d drawn him. Over and over again, she created him. She had sketchbooks full of him. His face, his cheek, his hands, his eyes. His remarkable eyes. In graphite or ink, he lived in her hands, in her mind, in her foolish fantasies. There, he appeared without threat to her equilibrium. There, he became more human than myth. There, he was flesh beneath her fingers and wild emotion for her soul to feed on. Her conclusion was that she could not continue as she had without knowing him better. Because he had taken her order not to call upon her, she was left no other recourse to satisfy herself about him than to view what he loved, what he had created.

She hurried along the boulevard, proud of herself for this necessity to attend his exhibit of his latest works. During the past few months, she’d sometimes thought she might go mad with not being able to admire the symmetry of his form or the drama of emotion in his face. Summoning courage, she’d committed herself to feeding her hunger by drawing him.

Now there was this visit. Pure whimsy. To do it easily. Anonymously. Many weeks ago, she’d seen the billboard near the Louvre advertising the display of his works and she’d lost her breath with the hope it aroused. She’d view his artistry and—she assured herself—feel nothing. She’d recognize no chord in his work that spoke to her. Nothing of the man who had bewitched her. Then, and only then, would she force herself to accept that he was not what she had imagined.

He was not kind or sweet. He was assertive, self-centered, driven. Even arrogant. What artist could become accomplished without such characteristics?

No. He was not for her.

Not her kind of man. Her type of friend. Not at all one whom she could take to her arms and her bed and her care.

Not.

She stood in front of Number 10, her destination. A three-story stone structure with grape leaves carved in relief into the frame, the building had two abnormally large doorways. They appeared to be proportioned to receive a sculptor’s works. The one with a large cut glass window seemed to be the entrance. Inside, the concierge in a somber black suit spied her, hurried out and opened the door for her.

The address was the same as on the billboard. The plaque on the door proclaimed it as the “Gallerie de la Cite.”

“The Duc de Remy’s exhibit is here?”

“Oui, Madame. Through the foyer and up the grand staircase.”

“Merci beaucoup.” She sailed through the lobby and up the steps. Four other patrons casually climbed the broad steps.

At the top, she halted her in her tracks. A man and woman passed around her. But she stared at the sculpture before her. It robbed her of breath.

Here upon a black granite plinth stood a man of white Carrara marble, eight or nine feet tall. All muscle and bone, honed by battle and hewn by strife, massively masculine and robust, he was of such proportions that any other human would fall down in honor of him. He stood in the center of the oval entry to the rest of the exhibit, sunlight from a semicircle of windows shining on him, shadowing the arc of a bicep here and emphasizing the indentation of a deltoid there.

Yet he did not stand tall, but was hunched. His back was curled, bowed in new defeat. His hair long and ragged, etched in the pristine marble to invoke its filth, shrouded him to the waist. Ropes circled his torso and hung from his wrists. His noble head hung lax from his corded neck as he stared at the nothingness before him.

The beauty of this body was nothing to the grand agony of his face. She gasped at the sight and could not look away.

She walked around him and bent to face him. He looked at her, but beyond her. He was blind, in torment. She drew back, aghast once more at the brutal honesty of what she saw.

This was a strong man brought low. By loss. By self-destruction.

She ached with him. Once proud, dynamic. A man others had once envied and emulated. A man so capable, so honored and now, abandoned by others and most tragically, by himself.

She stood for how long she did not know. The power of him infusing her. And the power that he’d lost draining her of envy and inspiring pride at Andre’s talent to portray him so precisely.

Across the room, beyond the giant, a young man in an apprentice’s smock tipped his head in question. Not at her. But someone who stood behind her. He tipped his head and, as if on signal, he departed.

Her skin tingled.

The hunger she’d felt for months dissipated. She’d be sated now.

“Bonjour, ma petite,” Andre said in that bass voice she heard in the bleak hours of her lonely nights. “I dared not hope you would come.”

She closed her eyes, wishing to hang on to this moment when he was happy to see her and she was as delighted to be with him. In this slice of time, there was none of her inner conflict, no yearning to find him, see him, laugh with him. There was just satisfaction. But it could not last.

Why not tell him the truth? He had asked for honesty and he did not deserve duplicity. He had only told her how he admired her and she had rebuffed him out of…what? Not convention, no. But her own fear to allow such a strong man near her heart or body. Perhaps even her own fear of her outrageous ambitions to enjoy him physically? She faced him, and oh, the delight to see him again ran through her like cool water after a drought. He was as tall, as incomparable as she remembered him. Perhaps more so, since she had pined for him so badly.

“Bonjour, Andre.” She gave him that, his given name as he had allowed her use of it. During these past months, she’d thought of him that way, the sound of his name slipping through her lips at night as she attempted to draw him. Andre. “I saw a billboard and I could not stay away.”

He stood against the white marble wall, the gold veins of the stone highlighting the gilded mien of his own long waving hair. He had folded his arms and one leg was casually crossed before the other. He wore a loosely cut black wool suit, a bright vermilion vest, a white linen shirt open to his strong throat and a purple kerchief tied at his neck. Every inch of him denoted the artist at his leisure.

“I’m glad I’ve come. This—” she said and lifted a hand toward the statue, “—this is glorious. I heard others speak of him but they did him no justice.”

He gazed at her with hollow eyes.

“No words can,” she went on, wanting to give him more praise and unequal to the task. “Will you tell me about him?”

“Him?” he asked, as if she had insulted him with the question.

She knew why. He wanted her to ask about himself. And she would. She would.

He stared at her. “You know who he is.”

She did. “Who could not? To view him was to know. No pamphlet or placard need declare it.”

A light glimmered in Andre’s blue eyes. “What do you see?”

“A man torn by his own desires and ruined by his own misjudgments.”

His marvelous mouth firmed. Pride lit his face. “And?”

“He will never see himself again.”

“He did not truly see himself before he was blinded.”

“A punishment,” she acknowledged, “to fit his crime.”

Andre shifted, peering at her with narrowed eyes. “There is another he will not see.”

Oh, yes. “He will never see her again.”

“The one who betrayed him.”

She nodded. “The one whose beauty he believed was soul deep.”

Andre pushed away from the wall and approached the statue. “He must pay for his own failure to perceive her true nature.”

“She was not equal to him.”

He whirled to face her. “That’s not what he believed. He thought she was the most beautiful creature he’d ever seen.”

“The beauty was outside. Her core was hollow.”

“He pays for his miscalculation,” he said.

She dropped her gaze to the floor, anxiety eating her that they spoke of more than the statue or the Biblical story of the blind man and the woman he had loved so unwisely.

“Do you think she pays?” he asked, his deep voice wistful.

She raised her face to consider the statue’s tortured expression. “Delilah?”

He waited.

“Oh, yes. She forevermore will hate herself for her own failures and unworthiness.”

Andre took her by the wrist. “Come with me.”

Her pulse jumped.

He led her down a hallway toward a room where he shut the heavy wooden door and drew her into an atelier crowded with bronzes and plasters, scattered about on tables and shelves. Two ivory overstuffed chairs stood in one sunlit corner near a sumptuous black velvet chaise longue.

She had not expected a private audience. Whatever he wished to discuss in private summoned her defenses. To examine his works would help soothe her. “May I…may I see these?”

Hands on his hips, he glared at her. Silent, he tipped his head as if to give her permission.

Before her was a glazed multi-colored china bowl, large as a Virginia farmer’s whiskey vat. The huge green and blue base was balanced by the figures of four muscular men who held it on their shoulders. Their strength reminded her of the Samson in the entry, but she knew these were Titans holding up the world. On another table stood three plasters in various stages of completion. All were of the same figure, a lithe woman rising from a frigid white foaming sea. The model’s facial features reminded her of herself. Alarmed, she shrank backward and wondered why the model was incomplete. “Why is she unfinished?”

“I thought I knew her, but I was wrong.”

She inhaled sharply. His words reminiscent of their conversation about Samson and Delilah seared her—and compelled her to look again at the woman. Indeed, it was an attempt to recreate her. “This is not Delilah.”

“Perceptive of you,” he said and strode away from her toward the window. “She was to be Diana. I miscalculated.”

Unable to stare into her own face again, Marianne moved on to the far table where a model of a child stood. Done in bronze, he was a chubby baby holding his toes and giggling. Yet he was not complete for his face was half obscured by one foot. She turned to Andre. “You have not seen him fully yet?”

“No.” Glancing at her over his shoulder, he shook his head. “I allowed the casting and should not have. Next time when I have a half-formed vision, I will know better than to rush to form him before he is truly whole.”

She continued onward to view other pieces in wet clay, all of a woman, nude, arching upward as if in ecstasy or pain.

“How long have you been sculpting?” she asked, facing him. So far across the room, she felt safe from his allure.

“Since I was young. Our chateau in Tours is old and filled with friezes and sculptures. The house needed new plaster on the walls and I amused myself to watch the peasants work. Then I joined with them. When they finished the walls and the painters came to do the murals, I wanted to draw as they did. My mother gave me graphite, pen and ink and parchment. I drew until my fingers ached, filing sketchbooks that I keep in the chateau as a reminder of how I began.”

“I should like to see them.”

His stern demeanor drained to compassion. “Ma petite, to see them you would have to be with me for days.”

She seemed to soar, light as air in her ripe desire to do just that.

“But only just now are you capable of bringing yourself to be with me for minutes.”

She lifted a shoulder in apology. “I go slowly.”

“A creature of your society?” he suggested with a small crooked smile.

“I admit it, yes.”

“Nonetheless,” he said now with the first sign of warm welcome, “I’m glad you’ve come.”

“So am I.” She let her gaze travel the array of his creations. There were dozens here. She yearned to touch each one, learn their contours, their secrets. “You are prolific.”

He grinned. “One must work every day to improve one’s skill. Not every object is superb.”

She knew that herself. How many times had she witnessed her own inadequacies in her sketches and paintings? “I have proof of that.”

“How so?”

Well, she had led him to this juncture. She would confess her actions. “I draw you.”

Humor fled his features. Raw desire supplanted it. “Since when?”

“The night I first saw you in the Rue des Abbesses.”

He stared at her and seemed to fail to breathe. “Are your sketches any good?”

She gave a small laugh. “I get better. The more I see you, the more I draw you—”

His blue eyes flamed.

She gathered her courage. “The more I try, the better the portrait.”

“Are your drawings substitute for the man?” he asked, a note of ruefulness in his tone.

Safer, but not as fulfilling. She shook her head, less afraid now that she saw him in the flesh. Pulled by his charm, she took a step forward. “I didn’t expect to see you here. In fact, I hoped not.”

“Well, then,” he said with dark impatience, “why are you here?”

She moved about in a circle, extending a gloved hand to his works. “I thought I could interpret who you are, what you admire, what you yearn for if I could see what you create. Then perhaps I could draw you more accurately.”

“Why is that important?”

She frowned at him.

He strolled toward her casually but his face held harsh intent. “Why must you draw me repeatedly? Why must you assure yourself you know me? Is it artistry? Do you not recall the exact arch of my nose?”

A hard question, but here with him she suddenly knew the answer. “I don’t want to be wrong about what I perceive in you. Who I think you are.”

“Which is what?”

“Sweet. Lovable. Unapologetic for your raw ambition. Even aggressive.”

He grimaced. “Ah, well.”

She smiled at him, his modesty surprising and refreshing.

“You like me?” His question was as whimsical as the light in his eyes.

“I do,” she said with relief at speaking the truth.

“I’m pleased.”

Relief flooded her. “Oh, so am I. I want to sleep more easily.”

His face fell. “You do not sleep?”

She wanted to shake her head but she could not take her eyes from his. “I walk the floor.”

“Is that normal for you?”

“Only since I first saw you.”

“What must you have to sleep?” he asked, his voice hoarse.

“Peace,” she told him with certainty. “I draw you to…to draw you near to me.”

He inhaled. “Is my visage so scary that I keep you awake?”

“So elusive that I yearn to see you more,” she admitted, pleased at her own veracity. She would have him for her lover if he agreed.

His hands flexing, he strolled away. When he faced her again he said, “You’ve asked others who I am, what I am?”

“I have.” Uncle Killian, Lily and she had been invited to soirees and dinner parties in Paris. She’d met a few French aristocrats who’d casually mentioned Andre and his ancestry. He was thirty-six, immensely wealthy, a blue blood. He was indeed descended from the dethroned Bourbon kings and the rascally Bonapartes. He was a welcome guest, a superb horseman, an expert at cards and a leader of Parisian society as was his mother. To top it off, she recently confirmed among her acquaintances that he was a burgeoning sculptor and painter whose works gained critics’ praise. He was a friend of the impressionist painters DeGas and Renoir who lived up on the Butte in Montmartre. For his ancient name, his money, especially for his male magnetism, he was a prime catch for any young woman. Dozens—young, virginal, widowed and jaded—had him in their sites. She was no competition to any of them. Nor did she wish to be. “You’ve become increasingly popular.”

“Fame is not my intent.”

“I never assumed it. But fame comes with artistic acceptance.”

“I’ve always had friends. Money, land. My work allows me unbridled private indulgence. An exploration of the mind.”

Exactly the exuberance she felt when she drew women, children, babies. Him.

“You understand that?” he asked her.

“I’d like to think so.”

He arched a brow, appearing nonchalant. “Meanwhile, you are a mystery to me.”

“I’m no one you would notice.”

“Oh, but I have Madame Roland. I have.” He took a step nearer.

She could not move, did not wish to. Part of her mourned that he had not called her by her given name. Was she to him once more the removed, the polite, Madame Roland?

He peered down at her. “Your hair, your brows, your chin, your very person. I see you and I am enchanted by the ensemble and the façade. Tell me about the woman beneath.”

His praise had her rushing to answer him. “There is not much more to my story than what I told you the night we were at the opera. I am ordinary, Monsieur. Born on a farm near a small town in Virginia. Married to a neighbor I’d known since I was a child. Appalled by how shells and bullets destroy a man. Compelled to nurse the wounded. And widowed now for many years.”

Beyond the walls, the sounds of patrons in the halls swelled. If they intruded, they’d ruin her one chance to talk privately with him. She yearned to remain, talk with him until she emptied herself.

“That is a very long time to be alone,” he said as he examined her closely.

“I wasn’t.” Twirling her Grandfather Duquesne’s gold signet ring on her finger, she set her jaw. She hated talking about the war. “I avoided Confederate renegades and Yankee barricades to cross to the north to get to my uncle and his wife in Baltimore.”

“You are valiant. More than any woman I know.”

“Not valiant at all. I had to leave. The hospital I worked in was bombed by the Yankees. There was no food and I was hungry. Tired. And I wanted family.”

“And they took you in.”

“Yes. Yes, they did. And they were kind to me.”

“I understand,” he said with compassion. “And all these years, you’ve been alone?”

She frowned. “No. With my uncle and my cousins.”

“Forgive me.” He seemed ill at ease.

Why? “Did you want to ask me something else?”

“You are an extraordinarily lovely woman, charming and…”

“And?”

“Have you truly been alone all these years?”

“Ah. You meant to ask if I took lovers?” When he nodded, she said, “No. Never.”

“Why not?”

She lifted her face and examined the ceiling. “Oh, any number of reasons. Perhaps I don’t know how. Or I’m not adventurous. Or that I haven’t found anyone I’d like to take to my bed.”

He was so close now, she noted how the sky blue shards of his eyes darkened to azure. “Would you find peace if I were in your bed?”

Her lips parted. How had he known her temperament so well that he could ask that of her. “I wonder myself. Often.”

“And your answer?”

Truth would help her maintain her freedom. “I’m not certain if you would bring me peace. But I do know one thing. You would remake my life.”

“Ah, Marie, I would not change you.”

She laughed tremulously at his use of her shortened name that her father had preferred. “Not perhaps intentionally.”

“I like you, ma cherie, as you are. Quietly stalwart.”

And I like you. Too much. “You see me as fierce. I’m not so much that. But you would not like my independence.”

“How do you know?”

“Men don’t care for that in any woman.” My husband did not.

Andre chuckled. Crossed his arms. “But I am not any man.”

The truth of that roared through her like a siren call to decadence. “Definitely not.”

He reached out to run a fingertip over the outline of her lips. Where he touched burned. She yearned to bite him, keep him, show him she could be as bold as he. Memories of them on the balcony at the Opera Garnier swamped her. “Are you afraid that you would want your independence less than you would want me inside you?”

She grabbed a breath. “I doubt that.”

He stiffened. “Why?”

“Because our interlude would be short.”

He scowled at her. “How short?”

“I’d want you only for one night.”

Astonishment brought him up short. He blinked. “One?”

“I’d not risk more.”

“Gratifying to learn I am not worthy of more.”

“That’s not the reason,” she blurted.

“No?” He smiled, fiend that he was. “Why not?”

“You’d be difficult.”

“Would I? How so?”

“You’d demand things of me.”

“Such as?”

She frowned at him, but a smile lurked inside her. “Rendezvous.”

His mouth tipped up in a lop-sided grin. “So many.”

“Precisely,” she agreed.

“In secret places, too.” He feigned a grimace. “The challenge would unnerve you.”

“Frankly, that I’d welcome.”

He shot her a look of disbelief. “I shall remember that.”

“No need,” she told him, happy to have the upper hand at the moment. “We’d be discovered.”

“Half the fun…for some.” He ran his gaze over her in appreciation.

How he could melt her with those ravenous looks.

He bent to her as if to share a secret. “I’d want to lock you away with me.”

She threw out a hand. “There you are. You’d want me—”

“As long as I could keep you,” he said.

She swallowed hard. This kind of possession was dangerous. “That’s scandalous. I could never do it.”

He hooted in laughter. “Nonetheless, you’d test my resolve and chance to come to my bed for one night.”

She stood her ground. “Yes.”

He tilted his head to one side. All humor fled his visage. “Very well. I accept. One night. Beginning at what time?”

“What? Well…um…. Six.”

“Six o’clock, I see. Until when?”

“Six the next morning.”

“You’d rise early, I suppose?” he asked with measured reason.

“I would.”

“Before the shops are open?”

“Correct. And so that—”

He smirked. “You could arrive home before your Uncle Killian knew you were gone.”

“Exactly.”

“And before he took one of his pistols and came to my home to kill me.”

“No, of course not. He’d never do that. I’d tell him of my plan.”

“Would you? Oh, mon dieu, I must definitely put final touches to my last will.”

“Uncle Killian understands passion,” she said, not believing but hoping that the rebel blockade runner knew how to temper his emotions.

Andre lowered his chin and stared at her. “My darling, you understand nothing about men. Your uncle would challenge me on the matter of honor.”

“Not if I told him we were intimate just once.”

Andre winced. “Once, mon dieu.”

“What’s wrong with once?”

“It sounds as if we were blasé about our affections. I assure you, my pet, with you, nothing about our affair would be light or easy.”

“It could be,” she pressed him.

He chuckled. “You stand before me, breathing heavily, your cheeks pink, your lips parted. If you come to me for an affair, it is for days or weeks or months.”

She shook her head. “I wouldn’t. I promised my uncle one year.”

“One year of what?” He froze, anger slashing his features in harsh lines.

“One year to aid Lily. The rest to launch her sister, Ada.”

“You are their guardian? Their governess?”

“No. Their older cousin. A chaperone of sorts.”

“Your gratitude to him demands that you do as he wishes?”

She wrung her hands. “That I help his daughters enter society easily and marry well, if they like. And that I behave responsibly.”

His brows rose. “Are you prone not to?”

“No! But he has set aside a dowry for me. And I want it.”

“Do you? A dowry.” He crossed his arms, anger staining his cheeks red. “Do you plan to buy a husband then?”

“Oh, no.” There’ll be no husbands for me. “Listen to me.”

He spread his arms. “I am.”

“I’ve never had money. Not a lot. Not any to speak of. I was a child, and then I was a child bride. And then I was…”

He focused on her, his blue eyes hot. “You were what, ma cherie?”

“I was a wife.” And I hated it. Him.

Andre waited.

“And I—was obedient. Quiet and hard-working in the house and attentive to the slaves.”

“Slaves?” This shocked him.

“We had them. Four in the house. Forty-two for the fields.”

Andre cursed roundly in French.

“They left, all of them, during the war. Thank god they did. And I—I’m old enough that I do want my own home, my own life, my own—”

“Your own what?”

“Affair. If I wanted it.”

“Do you?”

“I’ve never considered it…until lately. Until you.”

“You want a man in your bed simply for the fun of it?” His eyes danced in merriment.

“Well, yes! You make it sound awful. I’m not. You’re not and you’ve had mistresses! For the fun of it, I would guess.”

“Fun, oui. There is much to say for fun.”

“Oh!” He infuriated her. “It doesn’t matter. I came to see your work. I have. So I’ll go.” She whirled for the door.

He caught her by the wrist. “Stay.”

She wanted to. His arms came around her waist and his big warm body pressed against her back.

“Marianne, stay and talk to me.” His words were whispers on her skin. “Stay.”

She turned to face him.

He gave her a small smile and pushed hair from her cheek. “I thought you said you valued your independence.”

“I do.” What was he talking about now? He befuddled her.

“An independent woman makes her own rules.”

“I did. I do. I’ve wanted that since I was young and…”

“And now?”

“I still need to, but frankly—”

He arched an inquisitive brow.

”At the moment, it pales. And the only thing I want is you.”

He crushed her against his strong hot body. Deliciously hard in all the right places, his body enflamed her. “Oh, ma cherie.”

She pushed away. “But it cannot easily happen. Not even for one night.”

“What? Why not?”

“For a lot of reasons. The most important is that it may take awhile, even years for Lily and Ada to find men they’d marry. I cannot act in such a way that damages their prospects. That’s no way to pay back my uncle for his generosity to me.”

“That’s a lot of work and a long time to wait for only one night of bliss.” In his eyes, hope and humor mingled.

She had to make him smile. “Ah, but then you may not like me once you’ve seen me for hours on end.”

He arched his brows. “I could say the same.”

“We could prepare so that neither of us is disillusioned.” Horrid thought that he might take her, she might adore him and afterward, he might not care a bit about her.

He lifted her chin with two fingers. “Ah. You have an idea how that is done?”

She gave in to the joy of possibility, the daydream he might desire her. “First?”

“Yes?”

“I thought we’d see if we truly liked each other.”

“How?”

She filled her sight with his magnificence. “We’d start with a kiss.”

He smirked. “Prudent. When?”

“No time like the present, don’t you think?”

He grinned at her.

With a smile, she rose on her toes and put her lips to his. His flesh was cool, firm. He tasted of mint. She wanted more of him and brushed her mouth on his.

He did not move.

Bracing herself by cupping his shoulders, she leaned into him and kissed him once and then again.

He wrapped his arms around her, a cocoon of rapture, and he kissed her in one long dive into deep enchantment. His lips claimed hers in a hot river. His tongue explored the caverns of her mouth and she gave the same ardor back to him. Moaning, he pulled away and skimmed his lips over her cheek to her temple. “That was too many kisses.”

“Are we rationing them?”

He set her away from him. “We are. Too dangerous to continue until you are fully ready.”

“Are you?”

“You, my darling, may be thirty but you are naive about men.”

“About you, oui, certainement,” she corrected him.

Both his brows arched high as he considered every inch of her before him. “Then hear this. I’ve been mad to hear each sigh of yours since first I saw you in the Rue des Abbesses. With us? Speed is not wise.”

Disappointment rang through her.

“You must come to Montmartre. To my studio. There you will see more of me. More you need. Now you must go. I’ll send an invitation to my studio. Bring your cousin if you must.” He strode to the door and put one hand to the knob.

She did not follow. “I cannot. There is another problem.”

He stared at her. “Tell me.”

“My uncle, Lily and I close up the house in the Rue Haussmann and leave for London in a few weeks for the start of the Season.”

“How long do you remain?”

“Perhaps only during the spring for my cousin Lily to begin her introduction to English society.”

“After that where do you go?”

“My younger cousins, Lily’s sister Ada and her older brother Pierce arrive in London in June, but we’re to come here for Ada to go to Worth’s to have her wardrobe designed for next year.” She smiled at him and the opportunity that might give her to see him again. “That may mean we arrive here in July.”

“And if I came to London, would you receive me?”

That she hadn’t expected of him. He had a life of his own long before he’d met her. He was a prince, a man of means and, by the crowds here and stories about him in the newspapers, he was becoming a sought-after artist. “I would.”

Frowning, he thought for a minute. “I will follow you when I can.”

She’d never had a man take extraordinary measures to please her. Hope blossomed like a rose.

“But I have one matter that may deter me.”

She held her breath.

“My mother is frail.”

Marianne was taken aback. “I’m sorry. I did not know.”

“Nor would you. She gives the cut direct to anyone who sends tales of her to gossip sheets. But you must know that she is the light of my life. If I am to visit in London, away from her, I must arrange that someone is with her every hour. I’ll write to my cousin who lives in Tours and who, I hope, can come to Paris to stay with her. She herself needs companionship in her older age.”

“Andre,” she said as she approached him, “I do not mean to change your life—”

“Not if our affair is to last for only one night?” He was teasing her.

“Yes, it must be.” She lifted her chin, valiant and sad that she’d ever stipulated such restriction.

He eyed her critically. “My darling, one night, be damned.” He looped an arm around her waist and brought her with one mighty pull up against his massive chest. He took her mouth in a searing kiss that branded her and left her light-headed with soaring satisfaction. Then with a sigh, he put her to her feet.

“We will drink from each other all there is to give, ma cherie. Now, go, please, before I take you to the chaise longue and your visit here becomes the one night you wish for.”