When the Duke Returns(63)

“Ah,” he said hopelessly, falling into that longing state that gripped him around Isidore. She was right in her initial assessment of his sanity. He’d waited too long to sleep with a woman, and now he’d lost his wits.

“My point is that I am not very good at changing my mind,” Isidore said. “I am trying to tell you…”

“How did you get over it?” he asked abruptly. “Was that happening when you were brought here to live, to this house?”

She nodded. “I really was a little crazed. I used to lie in bed and hold my breath, hoping to save enough so that I wouldn’t die before morning.”

He dropped her hand and put an arm around her. “Isidore.”

She sighed and put her head on his shoulder. He smelled flowers and that other thing: Essence of Isidore.

“What did your aunt say?”

“She told me to sing. She said that singing actually created air, that when you filled your lungs and let it out in song, the air in the room expanded.” She looked up at him. “Aren’t you going to tell me that the whole idea is deranged?”

He kissed the end of her nose. It was a small, straight nose. A very beautiful nose. He was aware of a feeling in the back of his head that said that lust for a woman’s nose was probably the beginning of a long list of absurdities. “No.”

She put her head back on his shoulder and he tightened his arm. “I sang and sang. Your mother found it particularly difficult when I sang at the table. But you see, I had to sing because every time that I felt a tightening that meant there wasn’t air enough in a room…” Her voice trailed off. “I know it’s crazy.”

“I never grieved for my father,” Simeon said. “I don’t think I really believed in his death until I came back here, and found the estate as it is.”

“You must be very angry at him.” She said it matter-of-factly.

“I am angry at myself,” he said. “Obviously he was losing his mind, and I never came home to find out. Had I been in England, I would have realized. I would have known.”

“You couldn’t have done anything, though,” Isidore said. “I saw your father at the opera four years ago. He was perfectly sane.”

“To all appearances, perhaps,” Simeon said, rather bitterly.

“And in his own mind. What could you have said to him? Father, I think you’re mad; why don’t I pay the bills?”

Simeon thought about that. Then he thought about how cold his bottom was and pulled Isidore to her feet. She twisted about to look at her backside.

“You’re wet,” he said, and then shocked himself. He put a hand directly on her wet skirts. “And cold.”

She was wearing petticoats under her skirts, of course. And some sort of apparatus that kept her skirts billowing out at the sides. Her skirts were all wet, though, and they collapsed against her skin. He could feel a round, warm curve of flesh under his palm.

With a groan, he put both hands there and pulled him against her, taking her mouth.

“What—” she said, startled, but he took the word away from her, kissed her until she was pressed against him, arms around his neck.

But he didn’t move his hands. He didn’t think he could. She kissed him and talked at the same time. He could hear little bits of words, here and there, his name, a phrase, a little moan. He tried nipping her lip and she pushed against him…she liked it.

Suddenly she put her lips around his tongue and sucked and his blood flared in his body. From some distance he heard the groan in his throat, and ignored it. He was intoxicated by the plump sweetness under his hands. His head was swimming and his blood was on fire. He could take her home now. He could take her to the bedchamber and throw her on the bed. She was his wife, his wife, his—

The word beat sanity into him He forcibly uncurled his fingers and let her dress fall free. She murmured something and pulled him even closer. He waited for one heartbeat and then raised his head.

She looked up at him, her eyes hazy with desire.

“I think you’re right,” he said. “I waited too long.”

She blinked at him. “To bed a woman,” he clarified.

Her arms fell to her sides. A raindrop ran down her cheek. “Why do you say that?”

He answered her honestly. “I don’t feel sane when I’m kissing you.” She liked that. The bleak look went away and her dimple appeared, like a gift. He wanted to kiss it, but stopped himself.

“Perhaps that just makes you one of the family?” she suggested.

He was caught watching her lips and didn’t understand.

“When I was singing all over this house and half the night, I was cracked,” she said, a smile teasing her lips. “When your father was refusing to pay bills, he was cracked.”