Silk and Secrets(26)

Slowly Ross expelled the breath he had been holding. There was some truth in Juliet's words, though he doubted that it was either simple or unvarnished. But it was clear that she had said as much as she was going to.

While she had given him an answer of sorts, there was another issue that must be addressed before he could undertake a difficult, dangerous journey with her. Ross moved across the room until he was standing only an arm's length away from her, so close that he felt the warmth of Juliet's body radiating through the cool evening air.

She was a tall, graceful shape in the dim light, an image from a dream. From ten thousand dreams. He murmured, "There is one more thing I must know before declaring a truce."

Her shawl had slipped down, revealing the Celtic paleness of her skin. As the faint erotic scent of lavender twined around them, he placed his hands on her shoulders and drew her to him, his thumbs sliding under the intricate Turkoman necklace to caress the smooth bare hollows below her collarbones.

Juliet did not try to avoid the kiss. With a long, shuddering sigh, her mouth welcomed his. She was so tall that he had to incline his head only a little, and her supple body molded effortlessly to him as his arms went around her.

A dozen years dissolved in the space of a heartbeat, and what had been a tentative, questioning kiss became a whole universe of sensation. The taste and feel of Juliet were as familiar as his own body, more desirable than life eternal.

His hands glided over the well-remembered curves of her back and hips, and through the silk gown he felt the flex of her taut muscles as she pressed against him. She did more than accept the embrace passively. She responded with fierce longing, her hands and mouth reckless and demanding, as if this was the only moment they would ever have.

All too soon the moment was over. Abruptly she pulled away from him, body trembling and eyes dazed as she whispered, "No, Ross. Not this. Never again."

"Why not? Our marriage was not all bad." Ross lifted his hand to her cheek, his fingertips tracing the subtle planes and curves. "Don't you remember?"

"I remember," she said, her voice breaking. "I wish that I didn't."

His hand dropped away. For an instant Juliet stood statue-still. Then, freed of the spell that had briefly bound them together, she turned and lifted one of the lamps. Movements taut, she left the room without looking back.

For a moment Ross closed his eyes, telling himself that he would not die of sexual frustration, even if he might briefly wish to. And he had learned over the last dozen years that rejection wasn't lethal either.

Deliberately he focused on the scrapes and bruises he had suffered earlier, knowing that physical pain would be an improvement over what he was feeling now. Yet though every muscle, bone, and tendon hurt, he still looked on the encounter with the Turkomans as pure pleasure compared to dining with his long-lost wife. It seemed impossible that only a few hours had passed since he had met her again, for he felt as if he had aged half a century in half a day.

With immense effort he began the process of detachment that would enable him to function again. He was very skilled at mentally separating himself from his emotions, and soon he had distanced himself far enough to feel a wry admiration for Juliet's thoroughness. In a mere handful of words she had not only rejected him in the present but also denied the past they had shared. An efficient woman, Juliet.

Mechanically he extinguished all but one of the lamps, then took the last light and left the study. It took time to find the way back. As he made his way through the long blank corridors of the old palace, the scholarly, organized part of his mind busily analyzed what had happened.

While his passion for distant places was quite genuine, Ross had always known that one reason for his restless traveling was a vague hope that someday, somewhere, he would find Juliet again. Not precisely for love, and certainly not for hate, but because of the aching sense of incompleteness that she had left behind.

Today, by pure chance, he had found her, and as a result, the door to the past had irrevocably closed. On some dim level he had thought that Juliet might have run away on a rash impulse, then not known how to come home again. And if they met once more, there might be a chance to start over.

Now that faint, never admitted possibility had died. By the time he reached his room, Ross was wrestling with an agonizing suspicion that he would like to deny but couldn't: that he lacked the ability to inspire or hold a woman's romantic love. He could love and be loved by family and friends, but whatever it took to build and preserve a deep man-woman relationship was beyond him.

Given his birth and fortune, it would not have been hard for Ross to find and keep a wife who was a boring social sparrow, but he had wanted more than that. He had wanted a wife who was his equal, a companion in all things. His parents had had such a partnership, and he had considered that usual until he began to see more of the world and realized how many kinds of marriage there were. Most of them did not appeal to him.