A Lady of Persuasion (The Wanton Dairymaid Trilogy #3)(82)

“Are you able to understand the opera?” he asked in a low voice. “I don’t suppose you have any Italian?”

“No,” she whispered back, setting the water glass aside. “But I learned Spanish from my mother. It’s similar enough that I can follow the story.” And what a story it was—the dashing, infamous lothario and the besotted women who would follow him anywhere, even to his grave. Out of blind, unrequited love.

Yes, she’d learned this story from her mother in more ways than one. If her father had had fewer lovers than Don Giovanni’s thousands—it surely was only because their island was so small. And yet, despite the man’s faithless philandering, her mother had loved him with a fierce, loyal passion—even beyond the boundaries of reason and health. The doctors said her mother’s madness was a lingering effect of her brain fever, but her mother had believed otherwise.

She insisted she’d gone mad with love. El amor es locura, she’d said. Love is madness. An all-consuming, feverish passion that robs the mind of sense, that spins a soul toward darkness and despair.

Bel would be a fool to follow that example. Her gloved hands fisted in her lap. She must resist this love. She must break free of the bond he’d somehow tied around her heart. Then the woman on stage began to sing, Toby’s hand covered hers, and she knew. She didn’t truly want to be freed.

“Have you seen this opera before?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“How does it end?” She turned to him. “I need to know how it ends. Happily?”

“No, darling.” He chuckled. “Our hero dies, alone and unrepentant, and the devil takes his soul to hell.”

Oh, God help her.

As she listened to the haunting aria, the hairs rose on Bel’s neck and a familiar, terrible heaviness formed in her chest. She wanted to cry, but the tears wouldn’t come. Until a few weeks ago, she’d believed this to be the sort of tension a woman could only resolve by weeping. Now, thanks to her talented husband, she knew there to be another cure. Her body cried out for the pleasurable release only he could give.

“Remarkable, isn’t she?” Toby’s whispered question mingled with the fading applause.

“Yes,” she whispered back. “The way the note hangs in the air, even after she ceases to sing …

I know I’m not actually hearing it any longer, but I feel it, resonating in the air. In me.”

He was silent. Bel’s cheeks heated. She must sound ridiculous and naïve.

“I understand perfectly,” he finally said. His voice held no trace of amusement—only warmth and tenderness. “I think I feel that way sometimes, when I’m parted from you. Even when you’re not with me, it’s like … there’s an echo of you that settles in my chest.” He lifted her hand from her lap and brought it to his lips, then pressed it to his solar plexus. “Here. I feel you here, always. Sometimes it hurts.”

Bel swallowed hard. “Toby?”

“Yes, love?”

“Would you take me home? I want to go home.”

“Are you certain?” His eyes searched hers in the near dark. “The second act has only just started. Don’t worry about the ending. It’s a comedy, you know.”

“I want to go home. Immediately.” Bel squeezed her eyes shut to gather her strength, then opened them again. “I want you,” she said meaningfully, lifting her free hand to cup his strong, handsome jaw, “to take me home.”

He said nothing. Only sat motionless in the dark, like the chiseled marble likeness of a Roman god. But as she inched closer, Bel thrilled to the evidence that he was very much alive. His breaths came thick and ragged, and his pulse hammered against her hand. Scooting closer, almost into his lap, she craned her neck to kiss him. “I want you,” she murmured against his lips, kissing him again to silence her moan as his free arm lashed about her waist. Oh, how she needed his hands on her. Needed it more than she needed air. She was mad for him, and she didn’t care what price she would pay tomorrow, or for the rest of her life and beyond. Tonight, she just wanted him.

“I want you to take me home,” she whispered, licking lightly against his ear. “Take me home and make love to me, Toby.”

A few minutes later, they were in the carriage.

It really was a remarkable feat. Toby doubted Isabel could appreciate the amount of strategy, charm, and discreetly exchanged silver required to collapse what was normally a twenty-minute process to less than five. Amazing, what a man could accomplish when his lady lit a fire under him.

Lit a fire within him, more like.

Toby was burning for her like he had burned for no woman in his life. The air in the carriage was arid with heat. All his plans for hours of slow, sensual teasing? Evaporated. He wanted her, as soon as he could possibly have her.

And apparently—miraculously—she felt the same.

She gripped his arm, pressing her body to his as the coach lurched into motion. The soft swell of her breast against his biceps was pure, sweet torture.

“How long will it take us to get home?” The throaty pitch of her voice sank straight to his groin.

Toby cleared his throat. “Ten minutes… perhaps fifteen.”

She fell silent, still clutching his arm. He clenched his hands at his sides to keep from mauling her. She had asked him to take her home, after all. Take her home and make love to her properly. Not sweep her off for a crude, sweaty tup in the coach.