The panic rushed, the nerves recoiled, but something lay atop the sensation: a warmth, a lithe softness, a curving femininity.
Emily's body against his.
She lay there only an instant. Almost before Ashland understood the comfort of her, she pulled away and put her hands to her blindfold. "I beg your pardon!"
His left hand still grasped her arm. "The fault is mine."
She went still. She wore a plain but well-tailored dress of some rich midnight blue; the bodice fitted her waist and chest without a wrinkle, buttoning up the front to the middle of her neck. Underneath that bodice, her lungs heaved for air, the only perceptible motion in all her body. "Sir," she whispered, "your hand."
Ashland was seething with lust, pounding with it; his single eye blurred with it. He forced his offending fingers to drop away from her arm. "You are free to go, of course," he said. "But I ask you . . . madam . . . Emily . . ."
"Sir."
"I beg you to stay."
He knew his voice, dark and rough-edged, did not match his words. He knew his plea sounded more like a command, but he could not speak tenderly. He was too full of need, this unexpected cataclysm of sexual desire, and in twelve long years he had forgotten what tenderness sounded like.
What was Emily thinking? The black blindfold, which kept her from seeing what a monster stood before her, also kept him from reading her expression. She hadn't moved away; surely that was promising. The curve of her well-covered bosom still rose and sank deeply under the pressure of her breathing. Her chin tilted upward, as if she were trying to peer at his face through the blackness before her eyes.
"Madam?" he said, and this time, thank God, the word came out gently.
Her hand made some movement at her side: lifting a few inches, then falling back. She wetted her lips again.
Ashland closed his eye. He was going to perish.
"I think . . ."-a long pause, during which Ashland could count the seconds snicking away on the nearby clock, could hear a faint note of laughter ascend and fall from some distant room-". . . I think I will stay."
He caught her fingers just before they reached his chest. "Remember the rules."
"The rules?"
"You are not to touch me. You are not to lift the blindfold."
Relief was running through his body in a flood, mingling with the renewed surge of lust. A stout and long-suffering dam seemed to crack apart inside him.
God, who was she? What was she doing to him?
Emily.
"Not touch you?" she whispered. "But how . . . how are we to . . ."
He released her hand and touched the topmost button of her bodice. "Let me."
A sigh slipped between her lips.
He could not quite steady the trembling of his fingers as he undid the first button, and then the next. He could only hope she was as unsettled as he was, that her own nervousness concealed his yearning. Her throat, uncovered, glowed like new cream in the lamplight.
Another button, another, and his knuckles were brushing against the warm cloth that covered her breasts. She stood obediently before him, her hands concealed in the folds of her skirt; a scent drifted across the air between them, a hint of soap, mixed with something else: lavender, perhaps, from the sachet in her drawer. She did not wear perfume. She smelled only of herself, of cleanliness and female skin. He wanted to bury his nose in the hollow of her throat and fill his lungs with her.
Another button, and the bodice gave way from her breasts. She made another of her sharp intakes of breath, and her hands lifted again, as if by instinct.
"Shh," he said. "It's all right."
Her hands dropped, fisting around fabric, and her lips parted. Ashland undid the last button on her bodice and worked it carefully over one shoulder and then the other, until she stood before him with her arms bare, with only her corset and chemise to shield her bosom from his gaze. He folded the bodice and placed it on the chair, and as he rose again he passed by the gleaming curves of her breasts, the fine lace trimming of her chemise, and his heart nearly stopped in his chest. She was breathing in quick little pants; he wanted to soothe and excite her all at once, to hold her in comfort and to take violent possession of her.
What was happening to him? He had only just met her, and it was as if a field of electricity crackled between them.
"It's all right," he said again, because that was all his dizzy brain could manage. He found the fastenings of her skirt and removed it, concentrating on his awkward one-handed task to keep his lust under control. She was not wearing one of those odd and abominable bustles, thank God. He reached for the tapes of her petticoat, and she moved at last, stumbling back against the chair.
"Oh! You don't mean to . . . Is it necessary . . ." She was blushing furiously now, an eager pink, and she crossed her arms over her chest.
"Shh," he said. "Let me. I want to see you, Emily."
He tugged gently at one of her bare arms, until both fell back away and opened her to him once more. He removed her petticoats, and this time he didn't bother to fold them; he almost kicked them aside in their frothy whiteness.
"Turn around," he whispered, and miraculously she turned, exposing her bare neck with its golden chignon, her smooth white flesh. He examined her corset, but he could not quite figure out how it went: Where were the laces? "Your stays," he said.
"They fasten in front," she said, a faint whisper, "so I can dress without a maid."
He stepped closer, until his belly and his straining erection nearly brushed the elegant curve of her backside, and he looked over her shoulder. "Ah, I see. Very clever."
"Can you manage it?" she asked, in the same faint whisper.
"I believe so." He brought his left arm around and plucked awkwardly at the grommets, until at last the stays fell away to the floor and her breasts sprang free.
For a long moment he simply breathed into her hair, not quite touching her, studying the curves of her body through the translucent veil of her chemise. Her nipples stood erect, two alluring pink nubs beneath the muslin; her waist and hips and legs flowed in elegant lines beneath. A faint shadow nestled at the juncture of her legs, almost hidden by a trick of the cloth.
You're beautiful, you're perfect, he wanted to say. His hand ached to cup her breast. She would fit him exactly, a ripe and flawless palmful of Emily. He imagined his finger running along her skin, his thumb caressing the very tip of her nipple.
"Sir." Her voice was low, almost a growl.
He turned his lips to her golden hair and held them there, exerting not a single ounce of pressure.
The clock chimed, six delicate notes into the stillness.
He stepped away, and the agony of separation rent through the length of his body. He picked up the bodice and skirt from the chair, picked up the petticoats and the stays, and laid them all across the back of the sofa.
"Sir?" she asked, a little forlorn.
"Sit." He positioned the chair just so and urged her downward. From his pocket he drew a small volume, the copy of Jane Eyre that Mr. Grimsby had brought out of the library cobwebs nearly a month ago. "Here you are, my dear. I will let you know when to lift the blindfold."
"What's this?" she asked.
"Remember, you are not to look back. You know the story of Lot's wife, of course?"
Emily swallowed. Her fingers curled around the book. "She looked back and was turned into a pillar of salt."
"Exactly. You are Lot's wife, Emily." He turned and began to walk across the room, to the armchair in the corner behind her, cast in deep shadow.
"But . . ." Her voice was bewildered, bereft, the way his own body felt in the absence of her warmth. "But I don't understand."
"Did your Mrs. Plimpton not explain everything clearly?" He lifted his tails and settled into the armchair. The back of Emily's body glowed before him, prim and upright in the ladder-backed chair, unbearably seductive beneath the sheerness of her chemise. Her neck was long and sinuous, curving like a swan's into the trim line of her collar. One sleeve of her chemise had fallen to expose her round shoulder.
"No, she . . . she did not."
The Duke of Ashland took in a long breath and leaned his head back against the upholstery. Above him, the ceiling coffers sat in their orderly squares, their white paint turned to pale gold in the lamplight. Inch by inch, nerve by tortured nerve, he brought his seething body under control.