Chapter Eight
Foye’s arm remained tight around her waist because, well. Because. She pushed against his chest, but he didn’t release her. Good God, but her mouth was lovely. He had an absolutely mad desire to kiss her.
She blinked, and Foye fell into her eyes all over again. Deep. She swallowed hard, and all he could do was watch her mouth.
He let her go. “Better?” he said.
She stepped away, not far since there was quite the crush of people about them. She shook out her skirt, trembling. She pressed a hand to her chest, and he was still lost in her eyes.
“Miss Godard?”
“I’m all right now,” she said. But her voice quavered. Not that he would not have known otherwise that she was lying to him. She wasn’t all right. Patently not. What woman wanted to be crushed by a monstrously large man like him? He looked around for someone he could trust to take her someplace where she could get a breath of fresh air. Someplace far from all these infernal people.
Lucey was nowhere in sight, and the people he saw were sailors and soldiers, none of whom he knew—hardly men to whom he could entrust her. Lieutenant Russell was a few feet away, assisting a fellow soldier to his feet. For the space of half a second he considered calling the officer over. And did not.
Instead, he put a hand to the back of her shoulder and ushered her through an arched doorway. The corridor, at the moment was entirely unoccupied while being in full view of the ballroom. Another archway flanked by two columns led to a semicircular room with an upholstered bench all along the curved interior wall. A carved marble table stood in the center of the domed room. Lamps hung from hooks set in the wall, casting enough light to see.
“You’re not well,” he said. “You’re trembling. Sit down, Miss Godard, before you fall.”
She went still. She looked at the room in which they stood. Quite alone. And he watched while suspicion filled her eyes.
“You’re pale as a ghost and shaking.” He took several steps away from her. “At least stay here until you’ve recovered. Shall I fetch Lieutenant Russell?”
“Lieutenant Russell?” Her eyes snapped to his, questioning.
“Sit down,” he said. “Catch your breath.”
She sat on the padded bench and opened the fan hanging off her wrist. She waved it under her chin and took several deep breaths in a row. “I was certain we were going to be crushed.”
“You mean you feared I would crush you,” he said wryly.
She stopped fanning herself. “No. I don’t mean that at all. I said quite plainly that I feared we would be crushed.”
“At fourteen,” he said in a low voice, “I was six feet tall. Taller than my father and brother. By seventeen I’d grown another three inches taller than that.” He gave a bitter smile that rose up from a dark place inside him he hadn’t realized was so easily accessed. “As tall as the Black Prince and yet I added another three before I was twenty-one. You never saw a more awkward boy than I. Believe me, I am more than aware of my size and its effect on people.”
“I never thought you were going to turn me into a crepe,” she said. “In fact, I knew you would not.” She stared at his hand. “You hurt yourself so that I would not be. Don’t bother denying it. I saw your face when it happened.”
Foye gazed back at her and felt the ground beneath him shift in precisely the wrong direction. Good Lord, what foolishness. He wanted to amuse her, to make her smile and think him a clever man. He’d wanted the same for Rosaline, with disaster the result. “Most women find me beastly.”
She gave him a sharp glance, eyebrows drawn together, but he didn’t give her a chance to interrupt.
“I have few illusions about myself, Miss Godard. I am uncommonly tall and uncommonly large. God forbid I should ever get fat. They could not build a bed to hold me in that case or find a horse capable of carrying me.” He kept his hands behind him. “Combine that with my rough-hewn face, and there you have it. I am ever destined, I fear, to play the beast to feminine beauty.” Some of his anger bled though despite his intentions. There was nothing worse than an attempt at self-deprecation gone flat.
After a silence, she said, “I don’t find you beastly, my lord.” Her hands fell to her lap, her fan still open. “You are a striking man, as I am sure you are well aware.”
The noise of the gathering faded away for him. There was nothing now but her staring at him as if she thought he’d lost his mind. He took a step toward her and ended up wondering how that had happened.
She glanced down and refolded her fan. “I don’t say that to flatter you,” she said. “Not at all. Why would I?”
“Indeed,” he said. Why had Rosaline said she loved him up to the very day she eloped with Crosshaven? “Why would you?”
Well. He seemed to have offended her.
“I will not marry, my lord. That was the case before Crosshaven, by the way, and remains the case now. My place is with Godard.” She stood up, lifting a hand to prevent him speaking. “Spare me, my lord. Do not deny you thought I had set my cap for you.”
He waited a bit before he answered. He ought to let that go, but he didn’t. “Haven’t you?” he drawled.
She inhaled deeply. “Oh, you are an infuriating man. I understand you. If I say no, you will say it’s because you are a monstrous man and no pretty woman could want a beast like you.” She walked to him. “If I say yes, you will say that a woman looking to marry so far above her will tell any lie at all.”
He shrugged. “Think what you like. But be warned. I don’t intend to marry, either.”
“Then we are well matched, wouldn’t you say?”
“Two peas in a pod,” he said.
She astonished him by laughing. “Oh, Lord Foye, when we have so much in common, can’t we be friends?”
“I have little interest in being friends, Miss Godard.” They were so close he could smell the attar of roses in her hair. His remark flew right over her head and made him feel a heel. But, really, need she be quite so innocent?
She wasn’t looking at him just then, which gave him a view of her profile that showed the line of her neck and shoulders. He was beastly after all, because all he could think was that he would like very much to see her naked. He had been a long time without a lover, and he was beguiled by everything about her. He shouldn’t be having such thoughts. Not about her. But he was. The inappropriate, ungentlemanly thought remained when she looked at him again.
The stillness deepened and threatened, absurdly, madly, to become too intimate.
“Miss Godard,” he said, trying to put some formality in the utterance of her name. Oh hell. She understood now at least something of what was in his head. She seemed so impossibly young and innocent that his heart broke. He forced himself to stay where he was. He wanted to take her into his arms and slay whatever dragons needed slaying.
“My lord,” she said. Her eyes were wide. Cautious. Curious?
He breached the space between them, tracing a fingertip beneath her mouth. “You know nothing of men and their desires.”
“Untrue.”
Where was all the air in the room? Her mouth parted, and he traced her lower lip a second time. “You don’t know mine, then. Shall I tell you?” She nodded. “Very well, then. You beguile me, Miss Godard. But you’re too young for me. Too pretty. Too sweet. Too innocent for a man like me.”
She cocked her head, studying him. “Are you going to kiss me?”
“No.” Somehow the space between them disappeared, and he was very much afraid that it was his fault, that it was his feet that had closed the gap.
Her eyebrows drew together. “Do you want to?”
“My God, you try me to my soul.” For his life, he could not step away. His body was tense with desire, he was half-erect, and he kept touching her, sweeping his finger beneath her so delectable mouth. And she continued gazing up at him. “If I do,” he said gruffly, “you understand nothing can come of it.”
“Of course.”
“I won’t,” he said. She was innocent and inexperienced, and he shouldn’t. He really shouldn’t. “It’s madness to kiss you.”
She bit her lower lip, and his noble intentions flew off to some other hemisphere of the world. “I understand that, too.”
Foye decided he didn’t mind if he went to hell. He bent his head and she stretched to meet him. Just a brush of his lips over hers, he told himself. Just the sort of kiss any young lady might experience without threatening her virtue. Or his.
Foye’s body clenched when Sabine’s mouth touched his. He didn’t react at first because he wasn’t sure that what was happening between them was real. But it was. He wasn’t imagining this. This was her kissing him, not him losing control. Her choice. Her lips on his.
Had he ever wanted anything as much as he did this? He didn’t care that she was too young for him or that he didn’t want an entanglement. Or that there were a hundred reasons why he shouldn’t be letting this happen, the very least of which was that this was hardly the time and place for kissing any woman.
Except her mouth was so soft, and she was trembling and a little hesitant—that was sweet, so very sweet. He knew what it had cost her to do this because right before she’d closed her eyes, he’d seen she expected him to stop her, and the thought of hurting her like that was a dagger through his heart. He wanted her about as badly as he’d wanted any woman in his life. More.
Her mouth was every bit as soft as he’d thought, softer even. His arms snaked around her waist, pulling her closer to him. She was a slight woman, but indisputably a woman. She was awkward at first.
Miss Sabine Godard didn’t know the first thing about kissing. He reached for her arms and put them on his shoulders and just kept kissing her. And then she was not awkward. They were not awkward. She figured out what to do with her hands and when and how to tilt her head, and he bent just enough and she went up on her toes just enough. Matters between them became a good deal more dangerous.
He ought to have known she’d be a quick study. He opened his mouth over hers even as he told himself, Enough. It wasn’t, though. He pulled her hard against him, and she brought his head down to hers. Her fingers brushed his hair, and just bloody, bloody hell, he was in a world of trouble.
While he was wrestling with all the reasons he shouldn’t be kissing Sabine Godard, his body continued to mutiny. He held the back of her head with one hand and set the other between her shoulder blades. She was still tentative, as if she had no idea that he’d capitulated to her. He pulled her close. Her indrawn breath rocketed through him, from the sound of that soft gasp to the change in the pressure of her body against his.
God help him, he wanted more than she could give him. More than he could decently ask of her or any woman of her age and standing in society. Just when he thought he could extract himself from this headlong plunge to disaster, she was kissing him the way he wanted her to, lips parted, tongue playing, touching, meeting his. This time the gasp came from him. Lost. He was lost.
What a bastard he was to let this happen.
He didn’t give a damn.
He took control of the kiss, and still holding her head, he swept his tongue into her so soft and pliant mouth, and she, quick study that she was, returned his boldness. Kissing was harmless enough, he told himself. This didn’t have to go beyond kissing.
The problem, it seemed, was that kissing Miss Godard was not harmless.
Foye lifted his mouth from hers and watched her eyes slowly open. He had his arms around her, one hand cupping the back of her head, the other, well, his other hand seemed to have wandered perilously near her backside while his erection was trapped between them.
“You kiss wonderfully well,” she said in a low, velvet voice. Christ, she sounded as drugged with pleasure as her eyes suggested. He suspected he didn’t look or sound much different. “It’s lovely, kissing you, Lord Foye. It really is.”
“Confess, Miss Godard. You’ve never done that before.”
“You mean kiss a man? No. I confess I haven’t.”
“Mm,” he said. “You were very good at it.”
She smiled. “Why, thank you, my lord.”
He forced himself to bring both hands up to her face while he held her head, using his thumbs to trace a line beneath her eyes. What more might she allow him? Would she, would she, would she?
“Perhaps you ought to kiss me again,” he said, “To be sure you’ve got the hang of it.’
Sabine laughed, and he had his usual reaction to that. “Yes,” she said. His gut clenched at the sight of her smile. “I think I should.”
She slid her arms around his shoulders, and while he was thinking about how wonderful that felt, she buried her fingers in his hair and pulled his head to hers, and hell. Just hell. The difference between this kiss and their first was the difference between hot and searing. He reciprocated wholeheartedly, willingly, greedily. Where she led, he followed.
Somehow, somehow, she was tight against his body, and he couldn’t get enough. Not enough. She arched against him. He wanted a good deal more than kissing from her, and he was fast heading toward the point where his sexual urges would overrun his good sense and decency.
By the time they parted he was panting, and so was she. And she looked liked a woman thoroughly kissed. He stared at the carved wooden ceiling while he fought for control.
She touched his face, following the line of his cheek. “I’m sorry if I’ve upset you.”
Foye stared at her. “Upset? Upset that I’ve been indiscreet and ungentlemanly?”
“You haven’t been.” She drew in a long trembling breath while he scrubbed his hands through his hair. “Well, perhaps a bit indiscreet.”
“Indiscreet. It was a good deal more than that Miss Godard.”
After a bit she said, “I suppose we should find my uncle.”
He agreed and would have told her so, but he looked at her mouth and instead said, “In a moment.”
“Very well.” They locked gazes, and the heat started up again to the point where he wondered which was worse, staying in here or letting her leave looking the way she did, with her so very kissed mouth.
He sighed. “Shall we find your uncle?”
She nodded. At the exit to the ballroom, he sent Sabine on ahead and lingered for several minutes in the dim corridor, listening to a gavotte. How in God’s name had he allowed that encounter to spin so horribly out of control? And part of him wondered how soon he could do it again. He wouldn’t. They couldn’t.
When he returned to the ballroom, there she was, not far away, with several officers gathered around her, Lieutenant Russell among them. She looked too solemn for a pretty woman at a ball, surrounded by admirers whom she did not admire.
In a way, she was as isolated as he was.
She looked relieved when he appeared. “Lord Foye,” she called out. “There you are.”
He joined her. “Miss Godard,” he said. He nodded to the lieutenant and got a sullen, suspicious nod in return.
“Godard still wishes to see you, my lord.” She smiled at the officers. “Good evening, gentlemen.”
“But Miss Godard,” the lieutenant called out.
She tilted her head. “Yes?”
The lieutenant’s heated gaze flicked to Foye for a moment before returning to Miss Godard. “You’ve not promised me a dance.”
“I do not dance,” she said with a curt nod. “Good evening.”
Well. Thank God for that, Foye thought.
They reached her uncle at last. “Godard,” she said. “I have brought you Lord Foye.”
“Come sit by me and say something intelligent,” Sir Henry said to him. The music stopped, but not because a set of dances had come to an end. The violin halted mid-crescendo. Conversation ceased in a wave from the front of the room to the back. “What is it?” Sir Henry asked. He grabbed his cane and struggled to his feet. Sir Henry’s servant Asif came around from behind the chair to stand at Godard’s side. The fellow was almost as tall as Foye. “Somebody tell me what the devil is going on.”
There was an advantage to Foye’s height, namely, that he could see over everyone’s head. A Turkish gentleman, very splendidly dressed, had walked into the room, accompanied by at least a dozen servants. The Turk wore a traditional robe but a singularly gorgeous one: silk embroidered with gold thread and decorated with pearls and gems. His skin was swarthy, his nose regally hooked, his mustache and beard full and luxurious. “I believe,” Foye said to Sir Henry, “that Nazim Pasha is paying a call.”
Miss Godard said something to the servant that Foye did not understand. The reply was brief and, it appeared, in the affirmative.
“What are you and that devil Asif talking about?” Sir Henry asked.
“Lord Foye is correct,” she said, turning to her uncle. “It is Nazim Pasha.”
Foye watched Anthony Lucey cross the now cleared ballroom floor to greet the pasha. The pasha wore a diamond-encrusted sword at his side and a pair of enameled, gem-encrusted pistols tucked into the sash around his waist. His retinue was armed with a less decorative and far more utilitarian assortment of pistols and muskets. The crowd melted away around him and before long, even the two Godards had a view of Nazim Pasha and his men, with Anthony Lucey walking at his side. Foye glanced at Miss Godard. “Is this usual?” he asked in a low voice. “For a pasha to appear among so many infidels?”
She shook her head. “No. But he and Godard got on quite well when they met before, and Mr. Lucey has had several years’ acquaintance with him. Perhaps he’s curious about us.”
Nazim Pasha came to a stop in front of Sir Henry, bowed, and greeted him in perfect French. Sir Henry returned the greeting in kind.
In the exchange that followed, one thing became perfectly clear to Foye: Nazim Pasha was quite taken with Miss Godard.
He had been jealous of Lieutenant Russell. The soldier was young and handsome and sickeningly in love but, ultimately, no real threat. Miss Godard had no interest in him. The pasha was another matter altogether. He was no puppy, for one thing. Here was a man for whom, by reputation at least, robbery, fraud, murder, and even rape were merely the means by which he obtained whatever it was he desired. Without compunction or remorse.
If Nazim Pasha acted on his attraction to Miss Godard, Foye was quite certain she would vanish, never to be seen again.
He was surprised to discover he had a very personal intention to see that did not happen.