When the Duke Returns(44)

“Honeydew and I investigated the pipes today,” Simeon said, looking up. “They are completely rotted. If you can believe it, the original piping was done in wood. Naturally the water rotted them through within the year.”

“Your father must have been one of the first to install a water closet at all,” Isidore said. “That was rather progressive of him.”

“It appears from the correspondence I found that he was offered the water closets for a pittance,” Simeon said bluntly. “He was supposed to allow the fabricators to use his name and express his approval. I think they probably discarded this idea when he refused to pay that pittance, saying that the pipes didn’t work sufficiently. After that, the pipes rotted and there was no one to fix them.”

Isidore finished her bite. “It must be quite difficult to be in a position to judge one’s parents as an adult,” she offered. “Since mine died when I was very young, I knew them only as parents, never as people.”

“Were they good to you?”

“Oh yes. They were Italian, you know, so they had a different idea of family life than do many English parents. There were nursemaids, of course, but both of my parents visited the nursery every day. I spent a great deal of time with my mother, in particular.”

“And when they died, you were sent here, to my mother?”

“Until my aunt took me away again.”

“Probably even if your aunt had been busking at the side of the road, it would have been the right thing to do,” he said, putting down his fork and knife.

“The wife of a future duke playing for pennies along with Mr. McGurdy?” she said, laughing a bit.

“My mother has a difficult character,” Simeon said. “Your aunt was right. I had no right to criticize her earlier. It is no one’s business how you spent your time with your aunt, and certainly not mine, given my lengthy absence.”

Isidore was conscious of a warm glow under her breastbone. It wasn’t a seductive glow, though, and some time later her so-called husband began making his way out of the cottage without taking even the smallest liberty. In fact, without a single flirtatious comment.

“Wait!” she said, when he had a hand on the door.

He turned.

She walked toward him, not with her signature sleepy look, nor with a little smile of interest, none of the tricks she had used to reduce men to their knees in the past. Instead she just walked to him and looked up, assessing the strong line of his jaw, the slightly wild cut of his hair, the breadth of his shoulders. He looked like a man, an adult. A grown man.

It gave her a little pulse of anxiety, as if she’d been playing with boys up until now. There was something different about the intensity and the fire inside Simeon.

“Will you kiss me good-night, please?” she said.

“Kiss you?”

“Yes. It’s customary for married couples.”

She thought he would say they weren’t married, but he didn’t. Instead, he just moved forward and lowered his head, kissed her.

It was over in a second. She had a fleeting sensation of firm lips, a tiny scent of something…him…male, slightly spicy. And he moved back.

She blinked at him, thinking that kissing wasn’t what she expected; it wasn’t as good.

“Damn.” His voice was quiet, but the night was quiet too.

“What?”

“That wasn’t your first kiss, was it?”

“Actually, it was,” she said. “Though—” She caught the words back. Why had she waited, evaded so many lips, never allowed herself to be kissed? It was nothing. Nothing special.

But then he moved closer again. “It’s all right,” she said hastily, sensing that he meant to kiss her again.

This time his arms came around her slowly, and she had time to see the planes of his face, the way he looked straight into her eyes, the way his body loomed over hers…This time when his lips touched hers, they didn’t slide away immediately.

She had seen kissing. She knew that it was done with open mouths, that it made women cling to their lovers, as if their knees were failing them.

She knew that, all that, and yet—

He kissed her hard this time, not a fleeting caress, but a command. His arms slipped past her, braced against the wall, and his body came against hers. She gasped at the strength of it, the heat, and then their mouths were open together. It was like an open flame that rushed through Isidore’s body—the taste of him, the feeling of it, the kiss, his body.

She shivered, made an inarticulate murmur, a noise, a cry. Their tongues met and sang together. Her mind reeled and she wound her arms around his neck. Gone were all her thoughts of seduction, of fragile English brides.