As he looked down at her, her eyelids rose to reveal eyes dark and unfocused with arousal. Ridiculously grateful that he had not frightened her, he lowered his mouth to hers again.
She waited for the passion to blaze again, but she found that everything had changed. The fire and flash of a moment ago were gone and in their place was a steady, bright flame. Where he had plundered, he caressed. Where he had demanded before, he offered. Where he had taken before, he gave.
Minutes passed that seemed like hours as they feasted on each other, breaking away only because their breath had become as ragged as if they had run for miles.
As Chris lifted his head, the stunned look in his eyes matched hers. He had not expected such hunger, such need. Nor had he expected a pleasure so sweet, so sharp.
They stared at each other, trying to come to terms with their feelings. If they heard the opening and closing of the door, neither one gave a sign. Even when the indignant voice sounded, they moved apart slowly, choppily, like windup dolls whose mechanisms had begun to run down.
“Monsieur!” The voice sounded again.
Only then did Ariane recognize her father’s voice.
As Ariane turned around to face her father, the warmth and pleasure that were drifting through her began to fade. With something resembling panic she struggled to hold on to these sensations that she had never experienced before.
“Monsieur, unhand my daughter.” Pierre de Val-mont’s voice quivered.
Ariane saw the telltale glazing of his eyes that preceded one of his rages. “Papa. please—” Moving forward, she stretched her hand out to him. She was not afraid of his rage, but she was afraid of ruining the last of the pleasure that was still drifting through her like the echo of a lovely melody. “Please.”
His daughter’s plea penetrated that place inside his head that sometimes seemed to take over. Her voice was soft and submissive as it should be. He focused his eyes on her face and the fear he saw there soothed him.
“You will come with me now.” He strode toward her and held out his arm.
Ariane obeyed him, grateful for the support of his arm and hating herself for needing it.
“You will stay away from my daughter, monsieur,” he said. “Stay away.”
When they reached the ballroom door, Ariane stopped and turned to look over her shoulder.
Chris was standing there as she had left him—his hands by his sides, his eyes still stunned. Perhaps, she thought, the odds were not against her after all.
Ariane took a deep breath the moment they were seated in their carriage. There was no sense in prolonging it, she thought. If he was going to fly into a rage, he would do it whether they were in a carriage or in their apartments.
“Papa—” she began.
He interrupted her. “Your conduct was inexcusable, Ariane. You made a spectacle of yourself.” He leaned forward. “But that isn’t the worst of it”.
“What do you mean?” She flinched back from the smell of alcohol on his breath.
“Do you know who this man is?”
She shook her head and lifted her shoulders in a shrug. “I know as much as you do.”
“What?” he screamed. “You know?”
“Pierre, chéri—” Marguerite de Valmont’s hands fluttered ineffectually. “Please.” She touched her husband’s arm, but he shoved her roughly into the corner of the carriage. Softly, she began to cry.
“What are you talking about, papa?” Ariane demanded loudly, knowing that it was important that she keep her father’s attention focused on her. “Know what?”
“That he’s a bastard,” Valmont shouted. “He’s Charles de Blanchard’s bastard.”
Ariane stared uncomprehendingly at her father for a moment before she made the connection.
“The Charles de Blanc hard who was married to Cousin Odile?”
“Yes. Don’t you understand?” He gestured with his fist. “He left her for another woman and this man is their child.”
He was still glaring at her, but she saw that the unreasoning rage had passed.
“But, papa,” she said, “that was at least thirty years ago.”
“So?” he growled. “Odile still remembers very well that she and her children were abandoned. And we cannot afford to insult her. She will be invaluable in introducing us to the right people.”
“Papa—”
He silenced her with a gesture. “All that aside, someone of his parentage would not be a suitable husband.”
“Papa—”
“The discussion is over, Ariane.” Valmont subsided against the cushions of the carriage and, forgetting his daughter’s presence, tugged his wife out of the corner where she was still sniffling and put his arm around her shoulders.
Ariane watched her mother smile tremulously and go into her husband’s arms with no hesitation, his roughness of a few moments before already forgotten.
Her stomach twisting, she looked away. She would never allow herself to love a man, she thought. Never.
Chris swore under his breath as he nicked his chin. Reaching blindly for the soapstone to stop the small trickle of blood, he managed to send a glass tumbling into the washbowl. The sound of breaking glass had him swearing again. Damnation, he seemed to have two left hands today—both apparently equipped with five thumbs.
Sam, who after twenty years was more companion than servant, looked up from brushing a suit, his thick black eyebrows raised in surprise.
Chris met Sam’s gaze in the mirror and suppressed the urge to growl. He was in a foul, edgy mood after a restless night full of dreams. Shadowy dreams that he could barely remember and explicit dreams that even now had his body stirring.
She was crowding him. Not a moment seemed to go by that he did not find himself remembering something about her. Her lovely face. The texture of her skin. The look in her extraordinary eyes when she had suggested her outrageous bargain. And then there was the taste of her mouth.
Suddenly he snapped back to reality and found Sam’s fingers circling his wrist.
“What the hell are you doing?” he demanded.
“Your eyes got all dreamy like. Wouldn’t want you to cut up that pretty face of yours.” Sam grinned. “Why don’t you let me finish doin’ that?”
Chris frowned, but did not protest as Sam took the razor.
“You sure did a lot of dreamin’ last night,” Sam said conversationally, bending his knees to accommodate the difference in their height. “Lot of talkin’, too.”
Chris slanted a look up at Sam, a glimmer of humor entering his eyes for the first time that day. “Are you trying to tell me something, Sam, or ask me something?”
“Both, I guess.” Sam grinned again. “You took to speakin’ Frenchie half ways through the night.” Adroitly he scraped away the last of Chris’s beard. “She must be somethin’, this Areeann, huh?”
“Something,” Chris agreed, deciding that this was possibly more apt than any description