Overseas (25 page)

“Sweet Kate.” He smiled, squeezed my hands, kissed each one. “Divine miraculous Kate, I’d like that more than anything in the world.”

We raced back, hand in hand, through the mounting drizzle, to the tall narrow house on rue des Augustins. As Julian fumbled with the latchkey, I thought I saw a dark-coated figure hovering by the street lamp; but then the door thrust open and Julian urged me inside, and the image disappeared.

14.

I knew, even before I became conscious of my own name, that I lay alone in the bed.

“Julian,” I said soundlessly, a breath of air, but no reply came.

I struggled upward. The shades had been drawn down, but I could see from the rampant light spilling around the edges that the morning was already far along. He’d let me sleep in. I turned my head to the clock on the nightstand. My brain felt drowsy, drugged; it took me several seconds to decipher the meaning of the numbers and hands. Ten forty-five? That was late, wasn’t it? Where was Julian?

Julian. I flopped back into the pillows and closed my eyes. The whole of last night began tumbling through my brain, a waterfall of impressions. The thoroughness of it. His hands and lips on my body, everywhere, wondering and worshipful and urgent; mine on his. The soft glow of his skin in the lamplight. Whispers, laughter, cries of delight; my name on his breath, spoken like a benediction. The unbearable sensation of joining, as though I had finally become whole after a lifetime of emptiness.

Julian, my lover now: gentle, fierce, ardent. Where was he?

I forced my legs to swing downward toward the floor. My muscles felt pulverized. I looked at my nakedness in wonder; had it all really happened? To this humble body? I rose upward and walked, unsteadily, to the bathroom, where a few gutted candles still remained from a midnight picnic in the bathtub. Julian must have cleared the rest of it away this morning.

When I returned, I saw the note on the pillow next to mine.
Yours
, it
said simply, in Julian’s beautiful scrawl, a line drawn underneath for emphasis. A single word, expressing everything.

I looked around for a robe of some kind, but saw nothing. My clothes still lay scattered disreputably about the floor, so I pulled one of the sheets free from the disarray on the bed and wrapped it around me, under my arms.

I thought I knew where to find him, and went down the stairs to the library to find I was right: there he sat at the desk, laptop open, Bluetooth in his ear, speaking in a low, decisive voice. He felt the whisper of my entry and looked up.

I smiled shyly.

He held out his arm and I went to him, holding up the sheet with one hand. “Geoff, I’ve got to go,” he said, into the headset. “I’ll call back later.”

“Much later,” I said in his other ear.

He pushed back his chair and tossed the Bluetooth on the desk and eased me into his lap. “There you are, my love. I was afraid you’d sleep all day.” He nuzzled a kiss into my neck. “How do you feel?”

“Mmm. Like I’ve been run through a laundry wringer,” I said, “but otherwise heavenly.”

“A laundry wringer?” He chuckled beneath me. “Aren’t those a bit before your time?”

“You’re sounding smug this morning, for a man who hardly slept at all.”

“Ah, well, that’s precisely why I’m smug, darling. That, and I’ve got the most beautiful woman in the world wrapped in a bedsheet in my arms.” He bent his head and kissed my swollen lips tenderly. “Although I believe I was promised all-night sex, and you were quite finished by three o’clock; is that really fair?”

“We could try again tonight.”

“At least you delivered handily on the mind-bending part,” he continued, sliding downward from my mouth to my throat. “I’m still trying to gather my wits.”

“No regrets, then?”

He laughed against my skin and raised his head. “Do you have to ask?” His thumb brushed the corner of my mouth. “Passionate Kate,” he murmured.

“I missed you, when I woke up.” I covered his thumb with my hand and kissed it. “Did you have to leave?”

He shrugged in the general direction of the laptop. “Things are busy. We’ve been trying to unwind a few positions.”

“Can’t Geoff manage it?”

“It’s my fund. I can’t just abandon things at the moment.”

“What will you do when it’s all finished up?”

“Since you brought it up,” he said, “I was thinking of taking an extended honeymoon.”

“Oh.” I tucked my forehead into the side of his neck.

His hand began to describe little spirals into the bare skin of my back. “Where would you like to go, my love? Anywhere in the world. Shameless luxury, adoring husband. An offer you can’t refuse. So long, of course, as you haven’t any ambitions to be a viscountess one day; I’m afraid all that belongs to my cousin Humphrey’s miserable heirs now.” He tweaked my nose with his other hand. “Lady Chesterton.”

“Julian, are you
proposing
to me?”

“I’m an honorable chap, Kate. Having thoroughly debauched you last night, from your eyelashes down to your delectable toes, I thought it was the least I could do. Better late than never, as you Americans say.”

“And this is it? No traditional setup? I’m kind of disappointed.” I was still blushing too madly to look him in the face; I started drawing tiny hearts into the hollow of his throat, to distract myself.

“Well, in all candor, sweetheart, I haven’t bought the ring yet. And I thought you’d try to fob me off in a direct approach; the ambush strategy seems to be far more effective with you.”

I made a face. “My parents would freak, you know.”

“And here I had the vanity to consider myself a reasonably eligible match.”

“It’s not that. Mom’s already in love with you.” I let my hand slip down and fingered the edge of the sheet. “It’s just I think they were hoping I would have some sort of career first.” I sighed. “I sure showed them, didn’t I?”

His thumb trickled along the length of my upper arm and back again. “Have you told them yet? About your job?” he asked, more seriously.

“I e-mailed them.” I glanced at the desktop computer, sitting behind his laptop, and frowned. I’d wanted to forget all my real-world troubles for a little longer. “I wonder if they’ve read it yet.” I looked back at Julian. “And don’t think you can just rescue me from the wreckage, Prince Charming, and sweep me away to your fairy castle.”

“Why not? Why bother with that bloody old firm? Or the markets at all? We’ll find something else to do. A world awaits us. Perfect freedom.”

“You were swearing revenge the other day.”

“Oh, I still want revenge,” he said grimly. He nodded at the computer. “Yesterday I instructed Geoff to cut off all our relationships with Sterling Bates—trading, banking, clearing. And I put in a call to my lawyer and explained things briefly; we’re going to conference him at one o’clock, you and I.”

I straightened. “What? I thought I told you not to do that!”

“He won’t initiate anything without your instructions. It’s only to review your options. Lay the case in front of him.” His voice softened. “Darling, you know you won’t be happy until it’s cleared up. And my sole object in life now, Kate, is your happiness.”

“Lawyers are expensive,” I said, trying to ignore the spreading glow those last words gave me.

“Kate, Kate. You have lovely principles, darling, and I admire them extremely. But this is absurd. How can there be any question of financial accounts between us, after last night?”

“
Especially
after last night! It’s like taking your money in exchange for…
that
. As though it gives me some kind of
demand
on you!”

“
Demand
on me?” He looked astonished. “My God, Kate, of course you have a
demand
on me. On all of me. You seem to have some”—he shook his head—“
demented
notion that love exists in some sort of higher plane, free of the muck and mire of human obligation.”

“It does,” I said. “It should.”

“Bollocks. That’s just words, and any man who thinks that, who tells you he loves you with that in mind, is nothing more than a vile seducer.” His voice pitched low and intense. “Darling, look at me. When
I
tell you I love you, it means this: That I am your servant. That these two hands”—he held them up before me, and then cupped my face—“labor for you alone. That you have a
demand
on me, an eternal one, which has everything to do with the incalculable favor, the immeasurable
honor
, you granted me last night, in taking me into your heart and your bed.”

I couldn’t say anything for a moment. His eyes, his wide green-blue eyes, illuminated into brilliancy by the shaft of sunlight tumbling through the window, held me dangling in midair, ready to splinter. “Well, technically,” I whispered at last, “it was
your
bed, you know.”

He shook his head. “
Our
bed. Understand that, Kate. Everything I have, everything I am, is yours. Ah, don’t cry, sweetheart.”

“I’ll try,” I said, but a tear rolled out of each eye anyway, and he brushed them away with his thumbs.

“Happy ones, I hope,” he said.

I nodded. “It frightens me, though. How you can be so certain.”

“Aren’t you?”

“Yes.
Yes!
I wish I knew how to tell you, how to express it.” I reached out and traced the round velvet curve of his bottom lip with my forefinger. “So very, perfectly certain.”

“Then why won’t you allow it of me?”

“Because… I don’t know… because I didn’t know men thought that
way. Because I can’t imagine myself worthy of you, of that beautiful soul of yours.”

“Hmm,” he said meditatively. His thumbs brushed again along my cheekbones.

“What is it?”

“I am reminded,” he said, “that, in earlier years, my beloved may have met with a dodgy inconstant character or two. Some damned
fools
”—he almost hissed the word—“who didn’t know how to value her. Who perhaps broke that sweet heart I prize so dearly.”

“No.” I aimed my gaze at his chin. “No. Not really. They never… I mean, it was never a question of love or anything. I just… I didn’t read the rulebook before playing the game. My bad.”

“I see.” He tucked my hair behind one ear, laid the waves gently along the line of my back. “Kate.
Please
look at me, sweetheart. Don’t be shy of me. Let me see your eyes.”

I dragged them upward.

“Beautiful,” he said, smiling mildly. “Now, since it apparently falls to me to restore my Kate’s faith in male fidelity, tell me: How would I go about that? How would an old-fashioned chap like me convince a cynical modern girl that he can be trusted with her love?”

“Julian.” I sighed, linked my hands behind his neck. “I can’t even
think
straight when you look at me like that.
Talk
to me like that.”

“Damned filthy blackguards,” he muttered, “treating
my
Kate like…”

“Shh.” I put one finger on his lips. “Okay, I’m going to try to express myself here. Which does not come as easily to me as it does to you, so bear with me.”

He kissed my finger and captured it in his hand. “Take your time.”

I studied the top button of his shirt. “All right. First of all, last night was the most
beautiful
of my life.” I felt my face growing hot, but plunged on anyway, because he deserved whatever eloquence I could muster at the moment. “Also the most pleasurable, by which I mean complete freaking
ecstasy
, as you maybe noticed, so I think we can safely say any lingering bad memories from my past have been thoroughly erased. Truly a blank slate. And finally,” I said, lifting my eyes at last, because he deserved that too, “I have never felt this way about anybody, Julian, not ever. Not even remotely close. You stand so… so
high
above any man I’ve ever met, so honorable and brilliant and charming and… and intense—no, please listen—and funny and
sexy
, oh my God, the most amazing lover, that picnic, how did you
learn
all that… I’ve run out of words, and there’s so much more I adore about you. I can’t… I tried, last night… I hope I
showed
you how much. When… when…” I felt the tears well up again, damn it, at the sight of his earnest enraptured face. “I’m sorry. I’m terrible at this. But I have to say it anyway.” My voice reduced to a sandpaper whisper; I put my hands on his chest, just below his collarbone, securing myself, and pushed out the words in a rush. “When we… that moment, Julian, when we first came together, fitting each other so perfectly… well, that was…”
Say it, trust him
. “… that was
sacred
to me. I want you to know that. And I hope… that maybe… it meant the same to you.”

His glittering eyes studied me for some time, and then with excruciating slowness he brought my face to his and kissed me, each movement of his lips so deliberate it left a wholly separate place in my memory.

I struggled upward, on my knees in the wide deep chair, straddling him; I put my hands around the back of his head and deepened the kiss, frantic for him, for every possible point of physical contact between us. The sheet slipped downward, and suddenly his need was as passionate as mine; we tumbled to the floor, past reason.

“T
ELL ME
,”
HE SAID
, some time later, trailing his fingers through my hair, “about this pill of yours.”

I cleared my throat. “Well, my dear sir, it is ingested orally, once daily, during the four weeks of a human female’s reproductive cycle…”

“Darling, I’m not a complete caveman. I have some idea of how it
works. But would it be too indelicate to ask
why
you were already taking it? When…” He stopped.

“When I wasn’t having any sex?” I twisted in his arms and rested my chin in my hands on the broad plane of his naked chest. We were lying together on the library rug, a plush thick Oriental weave, no doubt priceless. The white sheet coiled around us in an elaborate knot. Julian was staring up at the ceiling, a scarlet blush coloring his cheeks: whether from our recent vigorous exercise or general male embarrassment, I wasn’t quite sure. “Well, without getting into the icky details, it sort of smooths out the rough edges of that part of my life. Especially since I travel a lot for work. Or did.”