Page 58 of Seductive Reprise
He wandered along, hands clasped behind his back, something clouding his face.
“I see you’ve shaved,” she teased. She hadn’t liked the look of his mustache last winter. His face was too gorgeous to cover any of his features. Especially not his lips, which had become a focal point of her fantasies. Nowadays she fell asleep nearly every night wondering just what Joseph’s mouth might feel like on various parts of her body.
“Hmm,” Joseph acknowledged, absentmindedly running a finger over said mouth before changing the subject. “I trust you had a pleasant journey over?”
“Oh, yes. I thought it would be terribly awkward, riding with the earl and his mother. But she’s… well. We had a pleasant enough conversation.” She grinned, stopping at one of the low couches in the center of the room in a pose of contented laziness, walking her fingers along the couch’s back. “Which is more than I can say for the present company.”
Joseph strode past her, ignoring her flirtatiousness, his mind somewhere else. “You mean the dowager countess.”
Rose blew out a frustrated sigh. This wasnothow she’d anticipated this party going. “Yes,” she said, hurrying along to catch up with him.Egad, was this gallery massive. “The dowager—”
She gasped, stumbling on the hem of her best dress, and crashed toward the floor.
But she never made it there.
Joseph had caught her, and continued holding her as she stared at him, entranced. He was beautiful. The line of his jaw, the dark intensity of his eyes, the warm glow of his skin. And God, those lips.
Rose swallowed.
She wanted nothing more than for him to kiss her again. They’d kissed last winter. But now?
She had arrived that morning with the earl and his mother, the dowager countess. They had settled into their gracious apartment; Rose even had her own room. Thrilling as it was, she couldn’t wait for the evening—for the ball, when she might see Joseph. When they’d descended downstairs, though, and seen the partygoers dancing, Rose blanched. Dancing in front of all the fine toffs in the ballroom, as clumsy as she was? She’d sooner die. But when he’d found her, he asked her to accompany him to the gallery—for nostalgia’s sake, perhaps, and to see the fine Marbury paintings. She’d felt immediate relief. And then hope, for something more than a bit of fresh air.
But had her hopes been misplaced? She wondered, watching his stern face and weighing his level of detachment, whether her fears had perhaps been well-founded. That he’d merely been toying with her last winter. That someone like him couldn’t care for, well,her.
Just as her hopes were waning, though, something in his face broke. He suddenly pulled her against him and clutched her in a desperate embrace.
“Rose,” he whispered into her hair. He sighed, a mysterious emotion roughening his voice. Confusion? Exasperation?
She considered asking when he pulled back to look at her. His expression was neither confused nor exasperated. No, he wore a look of naked want. Her stomach leapt.
“I’m glad you came,” he rasped.
And then he kissed her.
Warmth flooded her face, then her entire body, and she responded in kind, clutching at his firm shoulders and bending at the knees so she might feel the tiniest bit shorter.
Joseph slowed his lips, concluding their embrace with one more soft, sensuous kiss before pulling away.
Rose was forced to straighten up. Standing a few inches taller than him, she bemoaned her ungainly height. Heaven knew where it came from; her father was small in stature even for a Frenchman, and her mother had been of a normal height. She was struck by a pang of sadness at the thought of her mother, who’d faded away that June, along with the spring blossoms she loved so much.
As if he could read her thoughts, Joseph took her hand. “How have you fared?” he asked as he led her to the next couch, a twin of the first, and guided her gently down, so they might sit alongside one another.
His face was free of its prior apprehension and foreboding, and he seemed more himself, calm and austere. Rose took comfort from his thumb rubbing soothing circles into her hand. She leaned back against the upholstery; it felt cool and slippery against her shoulders.
“Much better, these past months. It helps to have something I can apply myself to.” Everything had been so different in London. Having so much to learn about her craft, such as the subtleties of the human form and how to use gouache, and adjusting to the differences between Worcestershire and London—the labyrinth of streets and the grammar of city life—had fully occupied her mind. She’d no time to consider that she’d lost her mother to illness only six months prior.
Joseph shut his eyes briefly, and placed his other hand atop the one that clasped hers.
“As they say in Islam:Inna Lillahi wa inna ilayhi raji’un.Indeed, we belong to God, and indeed, to Him we shall return.”
Tears filled her eyes. She did not want to cry, so she squeezed his hand as hard as she possibly could. But her resolve was nothing against the pain of loss. Soon her cheeks were wet. She sniffed.
Joseph produced a handkerchief and offered it to her.
“Th-thank you,” she said as she wiped her eyes in between sobs. It was too much to bear, this sudden flood of emotion. So she scrambled for something to say, anything that might shift the discourse away from death and longing for a feeling that would never return.
“But I thought—” she started, then paused to dab at her nose, praying it was not as red as it usually turned when she cried. “You never said you were… of the Islamic faith,” she eventually choked out, now staring at the handkerchief in her hands. It boasted a beautifully embroidered letterPunder a duke’s coronet. She ran her thumb over it, marveling at the skill required in its creation. Never in her life would she produce such neat, tiny stitches.
