Lucien's Fall Read online

  Oh, Charles, she thought. I need your help!

  She didn’t know why she was so reluctant to go to Juliette for assistance and advice. How difficult could it be, after all? She’d simply mention she didn’t care for Lord Esher, that she thought him a lecher, and Juliette would send him away.

  And yet, Lord Esher had proved to be a most valuable draw, and the longer they stayed in the country, the longer they could avoid the horrendous expenses of London. Madeline probably owed her stepmother that much; especially as she’d sold so many of her jewels to finance the clothes Madeline wore now, and to have these parties so Madeline might make a good marriage.

  In sudden decision, she stood up, filled with purpose, and nearly slammed into Jonathan. "Oh, I am so sorry," she cried, catching his arm.

  "Quite all right." He looked at her intently, brushing a scattering of fine crumbs from his satin sleeve. "Are you feeling well? You look a bit peaked."

  "I’m fine," Madeline replied, as brightly as she could manage. Unaccountably, she held up her letter from Charles. "I’ve only just heard the marquess will not be returning to Whitethorn as soon as I’d hoped."

  Madeline frowned. "Ah?"

  Jonathan settled himself before he spoke, adjusting lace cuffs just so, crossing his leg—ankle against knee—pursing his lips as if he pondered the wisdom of his words. "None of us have missed the way you look at Lucien, my dear."

  He sounded like a man much older, as if he were gaining wrinkles in his smooth skin, losing the bright wheat color of his hair. Madeline knew he’d like nothing better, but that didn’t mean it was true. He was far closer to her own age than Juliette’s, however he tried to hide it, and she disliked the superior attitude he adopted with her.

  "Is that so?" she said. "If it’s anything more than gratitude you see, Jonathan, I’m afraid your own love has clouded your vision."

  "No, I don’t think so." He paused to eat a strawberry, freshly plucked from the kitchen gardens and dusted with sugar. "It’s nothing to be embarrassed about—I’m afraid the man has had more than his share of women since he returned from Vienna—but you should know he’s quite dangerous when he makes up his mind to have a woman."

  Madeline narrowed her eyes. "What possible motive could you have in telling me this?" she asked. "I should think you a very poor sort of friend."

  "Or perhaps a loyal lover." Carefully, he placed his fork on the china plate and dabbed his lips with a napkin. He looked at her. "A lover who most earnestly requires your help."

  "Mine?" Madeline echoed. "I can’t think what I could offer you."

  "Knowledge." His eyes were almost iridescently green in the bright cloudy light. "I vow I am quite at my wit’s end to convince your stepmother to marry me."

  Taken aback, Madeline said, "Oh, I see."

  Jonathan leaned forward. "I warned you about Lucien with the most noble intentions, you see. He is my dearest friend, but I have seen him ruin many a maid—noble and not. You seem so well matched with the marquess, I dislike to see you spoiled."

  A frisson of irritation swept her nerves, but she stamped it down. "Have you offered for her?" she asked cautiously, knowing Juliette had little use for marriage.

  His smile was self-mocking. "Oh, yes. More times than I care to admit."

  "Well, she certainly can’t think you a fortune hunter."

  "No." He shook his head. "Her only excuse is that she wishes no husband at all."

  Gently, Madeline asked, "Can you blame her?"

  He looked up, a little startled. "I had not thought. I am no man to bully her or make her choose some life she does not like—" He broke off and jumped up to pace. Restlessly, he moved from doors to table and back again. "I cannot find a way to her heart, Madeline, and I am without shame enough to ask you if there are keys I’ve not yet thought to use." With a sigh, he paused at the window, glancing over his shoulder. "Foolish, is it not?"

  Touched, Madeline went to him, earnestly, putting her hand on his arm. "Oh, no. I am quite moved."

  With a rueful smile, he turned to cover her hands with his own. "You’re an extraordinary young woman, Madeline. Do think on it?"

  "Of course."

  From the doorway came a voice, sharply sarcastic. "How quaint," Lord Esher said, coming into the room. "Doing mother and daughter both, Jonathan? No wonder I could make no progress with the girl."

  In a blind flash of rage, Madeline crossed the small space to him and slapped his face. "How dare you!"

  Lucien touched his face, his mouth hard, his eyes averted. Madeline saw fleetingly that he’d shaved properly and he smelled of fresh bathing instead of rain and port, as he had last night.

  "Forgive me," he said in a low voice.

  "He’s only jealous, Madeline. Not such a pleasant emotion is it, my friend?" With a quirk of his brow, Jonathan nodded at Madeline. "Excuse me." He left them.

  Madeline waited, aware that her breath came too fast, that her cheeks were hot. And Lucien did nothing for interminable moments.

  At last, he lifted his head and looked at her. "I deserved that, as much for last night as this morning. I’ve forgotten how to behave like a man instead of some wild dog." He reached for and captured her fingers. "Forgive me."

  Before he could press his full, rich lips against her flesh, Madeline pulled her hand away. "It was nothing," she said. She gripped her hands together, tightly, and backed away, noticing with one tiny part of her mind that her finger marks burned red against his freshly shaved cheek. She hadn’t intended to hit him quite so hard.

  But he had deserved it.

  Only now did she realize how intently he gazed at her, how the dangerous light had brightened in his eyes. "I think," he said quietly, taking a slow step forward, "that you’d like better some other things than hitting me, wouldn’t you?"

  Madeline panicked. Before he could take one more step, she bolted, running through the French doors and down the steps to her garden, heading for the maze. In her clumsy skirts and wretched corsets and panniers, she was hobbled. On a good day, in the right clothes, she might have outrun him in a footrace. Not today.

  And it was a race. He loped behind her, as graceful as a tiger, confident of his conquest, noiseless but for the faint clink of coins in his coat pocket hitting against his thigh. He didn’t call out, and Madeline had no idea what he would do when he caught her—. or what she would do.

  She ducked into the maze.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Kiss me, dear, before my dying,

  Kiss me once, and ease my pain.

  ~ John Dryden

  The day was warm and overcast. When Madeline turned into the maze, its silence engulfed her, and for one instant, she paused to catch her breath. A pain filled her chest, part feat, part exhilaration—she was on her own ground now. In the maze, she could outsmart him.

  She took the left side, for it was more complicated, and Lucien could not know it well enough to find her if she chose her hiding place well. She’d find a place and wait him out. Soon or late, he’d tire of this strange chase, and she would sneak back to the house and hide in her room.

  And pray Charles would soon return to Whitethorn.

  Lifting her skirts, she kicked out of her slippers and started off at a quick run once again. She realized very quickly how loud the sound of her clothing was, brushing here and there against the shrubbery, the panniers rattling in their wooden harness; even her jewelry jingled on her arms. She halted, and began to move very silently through the narrow paths. Behind her, she heard Lucien call out her name, teasing and assured. He thought he had her trapped.

  At the first claire-voie, she eased up to it and peeked around the edge—and a sword went through her heart, for there he was, waiting, as if he’d known she’d look for him. A cunning smile curled his beautiful mouth, giving his eyes an exaggerated slant like a big cat. He simply stood there, three small turns of the maze from her, watching her.

  She ducked down and passed below the claire-voie, and lifted her skirts
to run again. Lucien began to whistle, and the easy sound twisted and floated and broke eerily as she turned this way and that, deliberately taking a wrong turn into a dead end with a hidden bench and small garden of herbs. Ducking behind the wall, she pulled her skirts in tight and sat on the ground, forcing herself to breathe as silently as possible.

  He would not find this place, she was sure. Not even Juliette knew how to find it consistently. It was Madeline’s own, hidden and cool, down a singularly slim path.

  In a singsong voice, still teasing, Lucien called, "Oh, Madeline, where are you, love?" His voice carried easily, and it was impossible to tell by the sound of it just where he was. Not far away, but not very close yet either. "Come out, come out where ever you are!"

  She hugged her knees. And waited.

  Lucien circled through and through, wandering clear to the center the first time before he doubled back and more carefully sought Madeline’s secret spots. He followed the intricate turns in and back, whistling, calling out, teasing her. There was no response.

  He had not really expected one.

  By the third time through, there was a kind of madness in his blood. His frustration grew. He started back in and suddenly realized he would not find her by making noise.

  He fell silent. This time he turned at each opening, following it clear to its dead end each time, peeking behind the false walls to the benches behind, taking care to keep his step light. Again, he wandered to the center of the maze without finding her, and with a curse, he slapped his thigh. Where the devil had she gone?

  Faintly, he heard a meow, and lifted his head to listen. It came again, a faint, demanding cry. He smiled. Moving back the way he’d come, he stopped periodically to listen for the meow. It got louder, closer, the plaintive, chatty tomcat making conversation with the woman who cared for him.

  At last, behind an illusory wall, he found an opening he’d never before seen. Stepping as lightly as he was able, he moved down the path. The meow, satisfied now, rattled out. And at the end of the path, Lucien spied a swatch of pale blue fabric—her skirt.

  In the path, he stopped, then doubled back the way he’d come and edged along the parallel way until he could hear her breath on the other side of the living green wall. Through dense leaves he could see tiny swaths of her dress, a blur of darkness that he knew to be her hair.

  Quietly, firmly, he quoted,

  "’As the empty bee, that lately bore

  Into the common treasure all her store

  Deflowering the fresh virgins of the spring,

  So will I rifle all the sweets that dwell

  In my delicious paradise, and swell

  My bag with honey, drawn forth by the power

  Of fervent kisses.’"

  He heard her quick, sobbing breath—a sharp intake of panic. But to her credit, she didn’t speak. He smiled, opening his hands to touch the leaves that separated them. Quickly, for he wished to take her by surprise, he ran to the end, and down the short path to the hidden bench. Deliberately, he put his foot on her hem, and spoke from behind her,

  "I’ll seize the rosebuds in their perfumed bed,

  The violet knots, like curious mazes spread

  O’er all the garden, taste the ripened cherry,

  The warm, firm apple, tipped with coral berry."

  A soft, tiny cry sounded in the stillness behind his low recitation. Lucien peeked around the wall. Madeline clutched her skirts in her fists, and her eyes were closed, her head thrown back so that the whole of her white, smooth throat showed. Her breast rose and fell quickly, and he knew she was as aroused as he.

  With a deft, practiced movement, he captured her in his arms, finding only token protest. He pulled her into his lap, against that roused and aching place, and she molded to him as if she were made to his specifications. "I’ve come for my kiss, Madeline," and opened his mouth over the sweet plumpness of her innocent lips.

  She gave a low cry, the sound deep in her throat, and her mouth opened to his, hot and fluid, her tongue seeking his. Lucien pulled her closer and groaned.

  He held her, his hands open against her long, slim back, and kissed her. Kissed her as he’d been dreaming of kissing, wet and sliding kisses, deft and nibbling, slow and twirling kisses. His head was filled with music, clear and distinct, as it never was unless he was drunk. But perhaps he was drunk now on Madeline, on the nectar of her flesh, on the smell of her hair, on the tiny aroused sounds that fell from her lips. He felt swept from himself, and he spoke her name, and the word was ragged. He kissed her collarbone and the upper swell of her creamy breasts. He opened his eyes.

  She looked at him with the dazed hunger of a woman at her limit. His breath was unsteady and he found he could speak no more but only gaze up at her face, and slowly he opened his hands and touched her breasts lightly, curling his fingers over the cool flesh above her bodice. They gasped together, surprised at the sensation. Lucien didn’t move for fear she’d bolt, only touched her there and looked at her. He told himself it was so that the passion would grow in her until she could not leave here without fulfillment, so it would seem to her her own choice, but the weighty hunger in his groin, his belly, trebled at the feeling of her supple flesh against his fingers.

  In his imagination, this had gone this way, just this way, until the next moment, when Madeline braced her body against his and lifted her hands to his face. She smoothed her fingers over his cheekbones, his jaw, his nose and lips and eyes, touching him the way she touched her flowers, as if his face were a precious thing, as if she had never explored anything so wondrous. Her lips parted a little, and pressing into him tightly, she bent and kissed him.

  It was an inexpert kiss, a little awkwardly fit at first until she thought to shift a little and slant their mouths tightly together. Lucien felt the kiss from his forehead to his knees, her simple soft movements, her tongue darting out to seek his own, her full, hot mouth open and hungry—

  He groaned, and pulled her tight, shifting their bodies so that Madeline lay in the thick, cool grass, her skirts scattering over the lawn. He kissed her in return, teasing and showing her how to move, how to join, to dart and retreat, to play. Kissing her was a thing unto itself, and he had not ever known that it could be such a big thing, so satisfying, so arousing all by itself.

  Violins and flutes and cellos rang in his mind; the colors danced and threaded together, and Lucien was suddenly afraid. What if he could not escape the music any longer? What if he could never sleep again for it? What if all he could do was write it and burn it and write it and burn it, forever?

  In anger and fear, he grew rough. This little innocent had so overridden his senses that he could not even properly ravish her. Not that he made a habit of ravishment, but this moment seemed to call for it. Harshly, he yanked her dress from her shoulder, pushing at the fabric to expose her breasts.

  She cried out, "No!" and grasped at the fabric in a rush.

  He paused and held her, kissed her again, leaving her breast uncovered but touched only by the naked air as it never had been, left it open to the kiss of his gaze. He lifted his head, his arousal almost painfully acute now, and looked at her—a full round plumpness tipped with coral, like a flower—hearing the swirl of violins swell in his head.

  He touched the point with one finger only. Her breath caught. The flesh beaded tightly and he gently moved to take the dress from her, so her shoulders and breasts were bare and open to his eyes and his touch and the sensual caress of wind.

  Looking at her, Lucien touched her nipples with his thumbs, then bent and suckled her, deep and hard. She cried out—a bright cry that burst into the day with surprising and erotic force. Her fingers clutched his arms. "I want to touch you."

  He turned her and unlaced the dress and pushed the fabric off her arms, so she was naked to the waist in the thick green grass, and he wore all his clothes, and that didn’t seem fair. She sat up, purpose in her eyes, and reached for the ribbon in his hair, and plunged her hands into it. She str
addled him boldly and bent her head to his, and kissed him. Lucien groaned and touched the long smooth stretch of her back, her sides, her waist. He squeezed gently at her buttocks, and bit her mouth with light nips.

  Her movements were restless, her fingers combing through his hair, over his face, down his back. She pressed closer and closer to him, as if she didn’t know...

  Of course she didn’t know. With a great burst of joy and arousal, Lucien realized he would enjoy the pleasure of teaching her for the first time all the secrets of her responsive body.

  He broke away from her lips and kissed a path down her chin, over her throat, slowly, slowly, all the while stroking the sides of her soft—oh, soft!— breasts. When he kissed the high round swell of flesh, she pushed at his shoulder again, only a little, her protest dying in the space of a breath, for he knew what she would like, and he did it—he opened his mouth and covered her nipple, and suckled lovingly until she near melted, a sound like pain coming from her throat.

  Lost in his own passion, Lucien reached for her skirts, and pulled them up and touched her leg, just above the knees, and skimmed his hand upward to her hip. He ached for her, and a hard ragged sigh came from him at the tenderness of that hidden skin. He moved his fingers on her—

  Madeline bolted. "No!" she cried, shoving at him with impossible strength. "No."

  He captured her once more. "Shhh," he said, and kissed her—or tried. She fought hard, pushing against him, her clothes askew. Her work had made her incredibly strong, and he could not keep hold of her long enough to coax her back to softness.

  "I love you, Madeline!" he blurted out in desperation. "Don’t go!"

  It startled her, he could see that, but not for long. She pushed away, pulling her clothes around her. She stumbled to her feet. Her hair had come loose and a lock of darkness fell down to touch one white breast.

  A blaze of need bolted through him at the sight, and he jumped up. "Madeline," he said roughly, bending to capture her mouth, holding her face in his hands. Against his sleeves, he felt her breasts, against the sides of his wrists, but he did not touch her again, not like that. He held her face as lightly as he could and kissed her, letting himself fall adrift on the taste of her tongue and the fullness of her lips and the softness of her hair.