“Yes, and there we were, meeting in secret in an illicit affair, with your having to sneak in and out of that little house in St. John’s Wood.” As she spoke of their arrangement, she tried to sound dismissive, but with his heated gaze roaming over her, her words came out in a breathless rush. Mortified, afraid he might guess what she was feeling, she forced a little laugh, hoping to make light of it all. “We were trying so hard to be discreet. I can’t think why we bothered since everyone in society already knew all about us.”
“And you say we’ve spent no time together? We spent nearly every afternoon in that house, Lola.” He stirred, moving a bit closer. “Alone, together.”
“Yes, but . . .” She paused, her face growing hot, but it wasn’t the close, stuffy confines of the storage room that made her feel as if she were melting into a puddle. It was his heated, knowing gaze. “If you’ll recall, we didn’t spend much of our time there engaged in conversation.”
He gave a caustic chuckle, acknowledging the truth of that. “No,” he murmured, his gaze pausing at her mouth, his amusement fading. “I suppose not.”
The gong sounded, indicating that intermission was nearly over, but neither of them moved.
Their gaze met, and locked, and suddenly, the past six years seemed to vanish as if they’d never existed, and the erotic summer afternoons they’d spent together were as vivid in her mind as they’d ever been.
He was standing a foot away, not touching her at all, and yet, in her imagination she could feel his hands on her, untying laces and unfastening buttons, gliding down her bare arms and over her hips, pulling her closer. She could feel his arms, wrapping around her and holding her fast. She could taste his mouth, opening over hers, arousing her.
Lola jerked back, flattening her back against the door, fighting desires that were supposed to be long gone, desires that had almost been the ruin of both of them.
But here, now, with him standing right in front of her and all the raw passion of the old days suddenly in his eyes, those desires seemed impossible to suppress. She did it, though, by using other, more ruthless memories, memories of what their affair had cost them both and the wreckage it had wrought. Her dreams and his finances in ruins, her heart and his pride in pieces, her self-respect shredded, and his, too. And all for what?
He eased closer. “Lola,” he began, but she interrupted, for she knew whatever he’d been about to say wouldn’t be good for either of them.
“We’d better go back, or our companions will think we’ve vanished off the face of the earth. And God knows what people will say if they notice we’ve both been missing during the entire intermission.”
Her words seemed like the fall of a stage curtain. The desire in his face vanished, and yet, she knew it was still there, concealed by the polite demeanor of a gentleman.
“It’s probably too late to worry about that,” he said, sounding resigned to the fact. “I have no doubt our mutual absence has already been noted, and stories about us are probably being invented as we speak. It’s my fault,” he added. “I cornered you back here. I wasn’t . . . thinking.”
“Don’t apologize, not on my account. My reputation’s long gone, so gossip about us wouldn’t affect me. It’s different for you.” She hesitated a moment, wavering, then she said, “You should tell Lady Georgiana about this conversation before she hears gossip about our mutual absence from others. If you care how she feels, and what she thinks of you, and if you . . . if you . . .” Her voice failed suddenly, but she took a breath and forced herself to say the rest. “If you intend to marry her, you don’t want her hearing malicious rumors about us and thinking the worst. Ours is a business partnership and nothing more. Make sure she understands that.”
As she spoke, Lola felt leaden. Doing the right thing was supposed to make one feel good, wasn’t it? So why did she feel so awful?
Desperate to leave and end this conversation, she turned her back. “As for Mr. Dawson,” she added over her shoulder as she reached for the door handle, “you’re quite right that it’s inappropriate. I won’t see him again.”
An easy promise to keep, she knew. With her body on fire because of Denys, any notions of another man’s easy, friendly companionship had already burned to dust and ashes.
She opened the door, but Denys’s voice stopped her before she could get away.
“You’re wrong, you know.”
She stilled, her fingers on the handle. “About what?”
“I did love you.”
Her heart twisted in her chest, joy and pain and overwhelming sorrow. She squeezed her eyes shut. A sob rose in her throat, but she caught it back before he could hear it, thinking of the girl who’d taken off her dresses and pranced around in a corset and netted stockings for the men in a Brooklyn saloon. In Paris, she’d actually worn a dress, and the men had been wealthier, and the drinks wine and absinthe instead of Irish whiskey and rye, and all the songs sung in French instead of English, but the woman had been the same: a bold-as-brass femme fatale with a kissable pout, a sultry voice, and great legs, who tucked money into her garter with a wink and a smile. Denys believed what he said, she knew, and yet, she also knew he believed in a lie. Slowly, she opened her eyes and turned her head to look at him over her shoulder
“What you loved was the illusion of me, an illusion I invented years before I ever met you. The real me, however, is someone you don’t know at all. Hell, Denys,” she added with a brittle laugh as she opened the door and walked out, “you don’t even know my name.”
Chapter 14
In the days that followed, Lola spent a great deal of time reflecting on her conversation with Denys at the opera, but no matter how many times she considered it, she still couldn’t fathom her own sudden burst of frankness. In returning to London, she’d known she would have to explain to Denys why she’d left, but she certainly hadn’t intended to tell him anything about the life she’d had before they met.
You don’t even know my name.
What on earth had impelled her to point that out? Doing so had probably piqued his curiosity, and she feared she may have kicked over a hornet’s nest. Now, he’d keep asking questions, delving into her background, perhaps discovering the girl underneath Lola Valentine’s bold and brassy façade. Lola didn’t want him to find that girl. In fact, there were times when she didn’t even want to remember that that girl had existed.
During the next few days, she spent a lot of time wishing she’d just kept her mouth shut, and it was a good thing her first rehearsal came on Monday, for it provided an excellent distraction. Even if she did have to put up with Arabella Danvers.
“Really, Jacob, is it necessary for Miss Valentine to be quite so zealous in her reading?”
The actress’s voice from the other side of the table yet again overrode Lola’s reading of her part, and she stopped, managing to stifle an exasperated sigh as she lowered the script in her hands.
“I appreciate that in light of past events, Miss Valentine wants to offer us some reassurance regarding her abilities,” the other actress went on, and Lola didn’t know which she found more irritating—Arabella’s tendency to talk about her as if she weren’t in the room, or these continual reminders to her peers of her inexperience. “But we’ve already had a full day, and if she insists on speaking her lines with such painstaking histrionics, her small part may keep us here all night as well.”