Mary Balogh - Simply Unforgettable

“Now,” he said, “you may no longer say that you did not attend an assembly over the Christmas season or that you did not dance. Or waltz.”

“What?” she said. “I may no longer wallow in self-pity?”

“Not,” he said, “unless I did not measure up to the standard of the dancing master.”

“Oh,” she assured him, “you far surpass Mr. Huckerby.”

“Flattery,” he said, both eyebrows arching upward, “will get you everywhere, Miss Allard. Have you recovered your breath? A set, I believe, consists of more than just one dance. And I did reserve the whole set with you, if you will recall. Something a little slower this time, perhaps?”

She was assaulted suddenly with the realization that this adventure was almost at an end. They would not be here at the inn this time tomorrow. She would probably be back at the school, and he would be . . . wherever he was going. Somewhere in Hampshire, he had said.

She would never see him again.

But they were to waltz together one more time—one last time. She knew then with utter certainty that she would live on the memory of this day and this evening for a long time to come, perhaps even for the rest of her life. She rather believed it might be a painful memory for a time, though surely at some time farther in the future she would remember with pleasure.

She thought of another waltz tune, a slower one, which Mr. Huckerby had used to begin his instructions, though she had not realized until she began first to hum it and then to la-la-la it how poignantly beautiful it was, how haunting, how heartbreakingly romantic.

She was as foolish as any of the schoolgirls under her care, she thought. She was quite in love with him.

She kept her eyes closed as they waltzed this time, their steps slower and longer, their twirls more sweeping, until it felt altogether more natural to feel the fingers of his right hand slide farther up her back to bring her closer to him, to move her own hand farther into his shoulder and then behind his neck. It felt comforting to spread her right hand over the warm fabric of his coat above his heart and to have it held there by his palm and his fingers. It felt wonderful to rest her cheek against his, and to reduce the volume of the music to a soft humming.

Her bosom brushed against his chest and then pressed more firmly against it. With her abdomen she could feel his watch fob and his warmth. Her thighs touched his as they continued to dance.

And then they stopped dancing and she stopped humming.

It felt like the most natural thing in the world. As if yesterday had been meant to happen, as if this had been meant to be. Although she did not actually think such foolish thoughts, she felt them. She felt that she was where she belonged, where she had always belonged, where she always would belong. It did not matter that a saner, more practical part of herself was clamoring to be heard. She simply did not listen. The whole of the rest of her life was for sanity, but for now, for this moment she had found something deeper than sanity. She had found herself. She had found what all her life she had dreamed of and searched for and doubted really existed.

“Frances,” he murmured, his voice low against her ear.

The intimacy of her name on his lips sent a thrill along her spine and warmed her all the way down to her toes.

“Yes.” She drew back her head to smile at him, and she lifted her hand from behind his neck to twine her fingers in his short curly hair. She knew then what the strange, intense light in his eyes was. But of course, she had never not known. It was desire. Raw and naked desire.

And then he moved his head closer to hers and closed his eyes and kissed her.

She had been kissed before. She had been kissed by a man she thought she loved. But it had never been like this. Ah, surely it never had. His arms came about her, the fingers of one hand closing over the knot of hair at her neck, the other spread below her waist, drawing her intimately against him. His mouth opened over hers, teasing her lips apart, inviting further intimacy. When she opened her mouth, his tongue came inside, circled hers, and stroked the roof of her mouth.

She leaned into him, her arms about his hard-muscled frame, her body on fire from the topmost hair on her head to her toenails. If she could have drawn him closer, she would have. She knew beyond any doubt that he would be an expert and experienced lover. Curiously, that knowledge did not alarm her at all. It only thrilled her.

“Lucius.”

He had lowered his head to nuzzle the hollow between her neck and her shoulder. His hands were cupping her breasts through the wool of her dress beneath her shawl, molding them, making them tender with need.

When he lifted his head, his hair looked slightly rumpled, his hazel eyes heavy with passion.

“I want you,” he said against her lips. “I want you in bed. I want to get inside these clothes.”

She was not so far gone into mindlessness that such plain speaking did not jolt her. It was the moment of ultimate decision. She knew that. He would not force her—she knew that too. There were all sorts of dangers and moral concerns to discourage her from proceeding. And he was, when all was said and done, little more than a stranger. She knew almost nothing about him. She would be sure to regret giving in to a temptation that she had been fighting valiantly since last evening.

But she knew too in the few seconds that elapsed before she answered him that she would also and always regret not being bold enough to carry her adventure to its ultimate conclusion. She could spend this one night with Lucius Marshall if she chose. Or she could spend the night virtuously tossing and turning in her own solitary bed and forever regret that she had said no.

Besides, saying no now would make her into a tease. She had come too far—much too far—to pretend that she thought they had been indulging in a mere kiss.

“Yes,” she said, hearing the throaty catch in her voice as if it were someone else’s. “It is what I want too.”

It was a relief to have spoken the words, to have owned her own desire, her own freedom of choice.

Her own madness.

He drew her close again and parted his lips over hers.

“It will be good,” he promised. “This will be a night to remember, Frances.”

She did not doubt it for one moment.

They did not take a candle with them when they went to her room. But Wally must have taken the rare initiative of starting a fire in there unbidden. It burned warmly in the grate, and light from it flickered over the walls and ceiling—and over the bed. But it was only when they stepped inside the room and he shut the door behind them that he realized how very chilly the Assembly Room must have been.

She turned to face him, her very dark eyes heavy with desire, her teeth sinking into her lower lip. She lifted her arms to wrap about his neck, and he set his arms beneath hers and reached up to tackle the prim schoolteacher’s knot at the back of her head. He dipped his head to touch his lips lightly to hers. She released her lower lip and thrust both softly, and parted, against his own.

This was not seduction, he told himself, or even half seduction. She was very willing. And it was not cynical amusement he was taking with a willing partner to while away an idle night. He burned for her, though, if he had been forced to put into words the powerful attraction he felt toward her, he would have been hard-pressed. He did not normally favor either dark women or tall women. He admired small women with blond curls. And he liked them well rounded and softly feminine. He liked English rose complexions. Frances Allard was none of those things.

But he burned for her as he had rarely burned for any other woman before her.