“The monkey?” she whispered.
He nodded. They waited, straining to hear. A distant night bird called and another, even more distant, answered. Closer in, the bushes rustled with a furtive sound.
Isadora kept her grip on Ryan’s hand. She liked holding his hand. His bore calluses of hard work and a comfortable dry warmth. She couldn’t help but note the size—she had large hands for a woman but his were much bigger, swallowing hers so her fingers nestled safely inside. Safe. That was the way she felt with Ryan Calhoun. Safe, as if nothing in the world could harm her so long as she kept hold of his hand.
It was a fanciful notion. An un-Isadoralike notion. Yet it rang through her with a strange resonance.
Safe with him. When had she ever been unsafe? Physically—never. She had lived the sheltered life of the daughter of one of Boston’s first families. But in other ways her peril was constant. She could not even walk into her parents’ drawing room without feeling as if she were in danger of drowning.
It occurred to her that she hadn’t experienced the drowning sensation since she had left Boston. Not even in the deadliest moments of the great storm.
“There, see?” Ryan whispered, his lips so close to her ear. She shivered with the warm vibration.
Ye powers. Here she sat in a perfumed garden, holding hands with a man while he whispered in her ear. Her fevered imagination had, of course, conjured this moment many times. But the man in her daydream had always been Chad Easterbrook. And in her daydream, the moment had never, ever felt this delicious.
“I don’t see it,” she whispered back. She told herself no romance heated this moment. They shared only a mutual curiosity in what the exotic night would bring, a mutual anticipation of learning the secrets of the forest.
“A tiny shadow. It’s there.”
He did the most extraordinary thing. With a restrained gentleness so poignant it made her chest ache, he touched her cheek in order to turn her head toward the low shrubbery border. His touch nearly shattered her, for not since Aunt Button had someone caressed her with such tenderness. Yet this surpassed even Aunt Button’s affection, for this sent shivers radiating outward along her limbs and stirring up a strange pool of heat somewhere deep inside her.
“Do you see it now?” he whispered.
She forced herself to concentrate. “Heavens be. I think I do,” she said, mouthing the words, barely speaking them.
A tiny creature, furtive as a thief, darted out of the bushes and snatched up a chunk of papaya.
“He is so little,” she whispered. “Like a wizened old man.”
The monkey crouched over its find, stuffing its mouth greedily until it could hold no more. Then, grasping a piece of plantain in its tiny paw, it made off into the shadowy night forest.
Isadora felt a welling of wonder and joy in her chest. She could not have erased the smile on her face if she’d tried, but she didn’t try. She turned to Ryan, realizing that even though the creature was gone, he still kept his lips close to hers, still cradled her cheek in his large, warm hand.
“How wonderful,” she said. “I can’t believe we saw such an amazing creature.”
“You,” he said with laughter in his voice, “are a very hard woman to impress.”
“What do you mean?” She was amazed she could even get the words out, for his other hand let go of hers and slipped, as furtive as the night creature they had come to see, around her waist, holding her lightly but firmly.
Men had touched her there to dance with her, but they had been different. They’d all had the aspect of wooden soldiers forced in front of a firing squad. But Ryan…dear Lord, she could only think of him as Ryan now…he gave her the impression he actually wanted to be here, wanted to touch her.
He smiled gently, the faint torchlight softening his features. “What I mean is I’ve crossed oceans and battled storms to bring you here, and you’ve taken it all in stride. I haven’t seen you so perfectly enraptured, not once, until you saw the little fellow come stealing out of the forest.”
That’s not what has me so perfectly enraptured. The thought—and the utter truth of it—startled her. She nearly blurted the words aloud.
But at the last moment, she stopped herself. Because she didn’t trust herself, didn’t trust her heart. Didn’t trust Ryan not to break it.
“I suppose,” she said softly, with a touch of irony, “I seem terribly worldly and sophisticated.”
“Far too worldly and sophisticated for the likes of a Virginia farm boy turned sailor,” he said.
Still touching her. Holding her. His gaze a lodestone she could not look away from.
She managed a wobbly smile at his statement. “Farm boy? Judging by what your mother has told me of Albion, you grew up in a world of unimaginable wealth.”
“I never found what I wanted in that world,” he said.
She moistened her lips, tasting the fruit she had eaten earlier and finding herself strangely hungry again, empty and yearning for…“What is it you’re looking for?” she heard herself ask. “What do you want?”
He chuckled low in his throat, and the sound sent a thrill through her. “Those are two different questions, Isadora.” Though she didn’t think it possible, he leaned even closer, so that the warmth of his breath and the fruity scent of the rum drink he’d imbibed mingled with her own shallow inhalations.
He was close. So close. She’d never been this close to a man before.
“Do…you have…two different answers?” she managed to force out.
“Only one at the moment. Only one.”
The hand at her waist tightened. She had the most inexplicable urge to touch him as well, for her hands lay clenched in her lap and she wanted to put them somewhere else. Wanted to put them on him.
Her fingers reached up, lightly coming to rest against the wall of his chest.
His swift intake of breath was a sound of surprise—but not one of outrage.
“Which one?” she asked, still unable to believe that she, Isadora Dudley Peabody, was in the middle of this splendid garden, in the middle of this splendid moment, in the arms of this splendid man.
“What I want,” he said, and the words sounded tense and strained. “Ask me what I want, Isadora.”
“What do you want?”
“I’ll only answer if you promise you’ll believe me.”
“If I—”
“Promise, Isadora. Say you’ll trust my answer.”
“I’ll trust your answer.”
He smiled, and once again she heard that silken chuckle that did such odd and unsettling things to her. “What I want,” he said, “is to kiss you.”
“Liar,” she said automatically.
“You promised you’d believe me.”
“Because I thought for once you’d tell me the truth.”
“You know what your problem is?”
“You?”
“No. It’s that you talk too damned much. I suppose I could swear on King James’s Bible that I want to kiss you, but there’s a better way to convince you.”
The smoldering look in his eyes astonished her, held her mesmerized. “How is that?”
“Like this, love. Like this.”
And then it happened. Slowly. Each passing second an endless heartbeat of time, and she experienced it all,