They watched each other in silence. Finally Sebastian said, “But you are not saying no to me. You would not have told me your story if you did not want to be closer, would you? And I would not have asked if I did not want to be closer to you.”
Exactly, she thought.
“It’s growing cool here, Isabelle. Come and have some tea or wine.” He started toward the stairs.
“Sebastian, it is hardly ever cool here.”
He looked over his shoulder and showed his dimples. “Pretend, Isabelle.”
When they reached his sitting room, he paused before he opened the door.
“Yes,” Isabelle said, looking at him with her heart in her eyes. “Tea, I think.”
His smile disappeared and he bowed to her as though she had just given him the greatest gift.
Nine
Sebastian could tell by her smile that Isabelle had just given him the greatest gift she could bestow. Not her virginity, but her heart. Her smile said it all. How he loved that smile. Ignoring the dread that came with the word “love,” he bowed to her, following her into his bedroom.
Isabelle ignored the long settee and walked over to the bed. “Tea, later.” She half asked, half suggested, and he knew for a fact she was a mind reader.
Sebastian watched her take off her shoes, brush sand from her feet. Her toes were as sweet as the rest of her, and he realized she did not know the first thing about seduction.
“Isabelle, I’m supposed to help you take your clothes off.”
She wriggled out of her pants and thong and was naked from the waist down. “Oh, no, really?” she said with a tone that told him she knew exactly what she was doing. “Let me help you undress first.”
She climbed up on the bed, giving him an arousing view of her backside, from the waist down, and then turned to face him, kneeling up on her knees, so that they were of the same height.
“I was hoping you would be wearing that Regency costume from the other night. Untangling that cravat would be fun, and we could use it for so many other things.”
She unbuttoned his shirt. The placket ended in the middle, so she pulled it up over his head. When they were face-to-f ace again, she pressed her lips to his.
That kiss was more than Sebastian could stand. He pushed her back on the bed and she let him, laughing and tugging at the fly on the cotton pants he wore. They wrestled like puppies as they undressed, helping, hindering and teasing. They came together as though the other was all the covering they would ever need.
He should go slow, Sebastian reminded himself. She was unschooled, untouched.
When he moved from her lips to kiss her neck and caress her breast, she sighed with such anticipation that he knew slow was not what she wanted. In a wordless communication he had never experienced before, Sebastian knew what she wanted, when, where, how. Her first orgasm came when he touched her between the legs, using his hand to cup and caress her silkiness.
She threw her arms out and then around him, pulling him closer so that his manhood could feel her warmth. “Don’t stop.”
Obeying her, Sebastian pushed himself into her, not as gently as he might have, and she arched up under him. They moved together and when his seed spilled into her, she held herself tight against him as if she needed every bit he had to give.
They played and slept and made love as the moon passed their window and the night waned. When the sun began to lighten the sky, the bed was a tangle of linen, the pillows long gone. Sebastian pulled the curtains around the bed while Isabelle slept, to give them some privacy when the servants brought hot water.
Sebastian watched the dawn and wondered what love meant.
He felt her hand on his back and then her lips where her fingers had touched. “I feel like we are in our own Eden. Come, my Adam”-she held up her arms offering herself to him-“ help your Eve greet the day.”
Lovemaking gave her a glow that made her more womanly than she had been twelve hours before, but Isabelle Reynaud was as fresh and sweet as ever.
His world had not changed either. The battery-operated clock on his nightstand still pointed to midnight as it had for fifty years. If he had harbored the tiniest hope that truly making love with someone so generous and untouched would change his life, then he was disappointed. He did not dare hope that Isabelle would spend her life with him. There were too many forces who would not allow him that kind of happiness, that “living life to the fullest,” as she said.
As he leaned down to kiss her, Sebastian wondered if he was Adam to her Eve, who was going to play the serpent?
When Sebastian invited her to share breakfast with him, Isabelle accepted, hoping, praying that this was the beginning of a lifetime of days and nights together, but first she had to tell him the truth.
“Sebastian, I know about the curse. Esmé gave me the details weeks ago.”
He answered with no more than a slow, considering nod as he poured her coffee. Isabelle could not tell how he felt about her announcement.
She tasted her coffee and found the brew too strong for her taste. After adding enough milk to temper the flavor, the coffee was more white than brown.
“Angelique drank hers the same way.” Sebastian’s eyes burned into her as he spoke. “But that is the only way the two of you are alike.”
“Good,” Isabelle said, “because I do not believe in reincarnation.”
“Angelique was tall and I guess you would say buxom, but in 1810, her size meant she was healthy and well-to-do. Her skin was a creamy brown and she was beautiful in that way that mixed-race children can be. Her blue eyes were startling and her teeth so white and healthy they did not look real. She was perfect.”
“You have no portrait of her?” Isabelle reminded herself that Angelique was a memory two hundred years old and did her best to ignore the sting of jealousy.
“No, I have no painting.” His voice was filled with regret. “The artists here were not very skilled. I did not want to waste my money on a second-rate image when I had the real woman beside me all the time.”
They sipped more coffee, and Isabelle ate some of the bread if only to pretend that everything was all right.
“What version of the story did Esmé tell you?”
Isabelle recounted the conversation as accurately as she could recall.
“Esmé is honest; I will give her that. It’s the truth or as close as makes no difference.” He shrugged, not very successful in hiding the misery the story recalled. “To this day I can dream of Angelique drowning, her heavy cloak and skirts dragging her down, fighting, fighting to stay afloat, to stay alive.”
“Stop. Stop it, Sebastian. It does you no good to relive something that you had no control over.” What kind of love had they shared that he could still feel this pain two hundred years later?
“You think I had no control? I could have told her to wait until the storm season was ended. I could have tried harder to control my lust. I could have prayed instead of cursed when she told me she wanted to stay longer.”
“You missed her.” She swallowed hard. “You loved her. It is perfectly understandable.”
“I do not know if it is. I didn’t miss her so much as I missed the comfort of her body, the way she worshipped me and everything I did. Does that sound like love to you?”
Isabelle didn’t answer.
“No, Isabelle, it was no more love than what you feel for me.”
“And how would you define that?”
“Curiosity. You are a normal, healthy woman and much too old to be a virgin. You are a generous woman and think that if you share yourself with me enough, then all my problems will be solved. You are wrong.”
“No,” she said slowly, “what I think is that if you love me enough, then all your problems will be solved.”