On a gasp, he pulled back, drew back. Waiting for the drumming in his veins to subside, he watched her face as her senses, her wits, now that he’d freed them, returned.
Her lashes fluttered, then rose. She regarded him evenly through crystal-clear eyes. Puzzlement, and the fact that she was not yet sure of him, were easy to read.
Then she blinked; her gaze lowered.
His hand still lay beneath her chin; he tipped her face back up so he could see it.
Her eyes had dimmed. Even though she met his gaze calmly, the clouds had returned. With a gentle smile, she lifted her chin from his hand, then brushed a kiss across his fingers.
“Come.” She drew back from his embrace. “We had better join the others.”
He let her go. She turned to the door—he swallowed an urge to call her back—to ask outright what was troubling her. After an instant’s hesitation he followed her.
He wanted her trust, wanted her to confide in him; he couldn’t force either. And when all was said and done, while she might not yet be sure of him, he was even less sure of her.
n many ways Helena’s visit was proceeding better than he’d hoped. Thierry and Louis were both keen shooters; at this season his coverts were teeming—there was plenty to keep them amused and out of his way. Marjorie and Clara had struck up a friendship; happily distracted by their own entertainments, they were very ready to leave Helena’s entertainment up to him.
All of which should have been perfect. Unfortunately, the one person not falling in with his plans was Helena herself.
He wasn’t sure she was going to accept him—and he was at a loss to understand why.
But it had something to do with those damn letters.
“Do you spend most of your days here, then?”
He lifted his gaze from the page he’d supposedly been deciphering, looked at her as she idly wandered the room. The “here” was his study; she’d eschewed joining Marjorie and Clara in a comfortable coze by the drawing room fire in favor of distracting him while he tried to work. “Usually. It’s big enough, comfortable enough—and anything I’d want is generally to hand.”
“Indeed?” She glanced at the ledger he was holding.
Surrendering, he shut it, pushed it aside. It was nothing crucial. Not compared with her.
She smiled and glided around the desk, leaned back against it as he eased his chair back.
“You asked me why I was in the garden at the convent all those years ago, yet you never told me what you were doing there.”
“Falling from the wall.”
“After leaving Collette Marchand’s chamber.”
“Ah, yes—the inestimable Collette.” He smiled in reminiscence.
One black brow haughtily rose. “Well?”
“It was a wager,mignonne .”
“A wager?”
“You will remember that in the days I haunted Paris, I was much younger, and rather wilder.”
“The younger I will allow, but what was the subject of this wager that you needed to brave the convent’s walls?”
“I had to procure a particular earring, one of some uniqueness, from Mlle Marchand by the end of that week.”
“But she was due to leave two days later—in fact, she left the next day itself, after your visit.”
“Indeed—that was part of the challenge.”
“So you won?”
“Of course.”
“And what did you gain by winning?”
He smiled. “What else but a triumph? And, even better, one over a French noble.”
She humphed dismissively, yet her gaze was strangely distant. “Did you spend many years haunting Paris?”
“Eight, nine—all while you still wore pigtails.”
Hmm.She didn’t say it, but she thought it—he could see it in her face, could see the clouds gathering, darkening her eyes.
Did the letters have something to do with his past exploits in France? He couldn’t remember crossing swords with any of the Daurents.
He watched her for a moment longer, watched her struggle with her demon. She’d grown so used to being in his presence that when she wasn’t focused on him, aware of him, her mask slipped and he saw more. Saw enough to make him reach for her hand.“Mignonne—”
She started; she’d forgotten he was there. For a fleeting instant he glimpsed . . . horror, terror, but hanging over all a profound and pervasive sadness. Before he could react, she reassembled her mask and smiled—too brightly, too brittlely.
He tightened his grip on her hand, expecting her to rise and try to flee.
With barely a pause for thought, she trumped his ace. Pushing away from the desk, she slid onto his lap. “Eh, bien—if you have finished your work . . .”
His body reacted instantly; the soft, warm, distinctly feminine weight settling so trustingly, so confidently, had his demons slavering. While he struggled to rein them in, she freed her hand, turned his face to hers.
Set her lips to his.
She kissed him longingly, lingeringly—with a deep yearning that he knew was unfeigned because he felt it, too.
He’d given his word he would not manipulate her; as she drew him deeper into the kiss, into the pleasure of her mouth, he realized he would have been wise to demand a corresponding reassurance.
His arms closed around her; moments later his hand sought her breast.
He could reassure her, pleasure her, let her distract him. But he knew what he had seen and he wouldn’t forget.
ittersweet. For Helena the days that followed were the definition of that. Bitter whenever she thought of Ariele, of Fabien, of the dagger she had to steal. Of the betrayal she had to practice. Sweet in the hours she spent with Sebastian; in his arms, for those fleeting moments, she felt safe, secure, free of Fabien’s black spell.
But as soon as she left Sebastian’s embrace, reality closed darkly about her. It took an ever-increasing effort to mask her leaden heart.
Sebastian had invited them for a week, but the week passed and no one cared or spoke of a departure. Winter tightened its grip on the fields and lanes, but at Somersham there were roaring fires and cozy rooms, and distractions aplenty to keep them amused.
Outside, the year died; inside, the great house seemed to stretch and come alive. Even though she wasn’t directly involved, Helena could not miss the building excitement, that anticipation of joy that flowed from the myriad preparations for the Yuletide celebrations and the consequent family gathering.
Clara rarely stopped smiling, eager to point out this custom or that, to explain where the boughs and holly decorating the rooms were grown, what the secret ingredients of her Christmas punch were.
Again and again Helena found herself outwardly expressing an expectation of joy while inwardly experiencing the certainty of despair.
To her surprise, after that unnerving moment in his study when she’d become so engrossed in wondering how and when he’d met Fabien and won the dagger—considering them both, that was the most likely avenue by which Sebastian had come to possess it—that he’d startled her to the point she’d nearly told him all, since that time Sebastian had set himself to entertain her with stories of his ancestors, of his family, of his childhood—of his personal life.
Tales she knew he had told no one else.
Like the time he’d got stuck in the huge oak by the stables and had had to fall to get down. How frightened he’d been. Like how much he’d loved his first pony, how distraught he’d been when it died.
Not that he’d told her of that last, not in words. Instead, he’d stopped and abruptly changed the subject.
If he hadn’t been trying so transparently hard to be transparent, she might have wondered if, despite his vow and even his intention not to manipulate her feelings, he simply couldn’t help himself. Instead, all he said he said directly, even sometimes reluctantly, as if he were laying all that he was, all his past and by inference his future, at her feet. The less-than-complimentary as well as the laudable, exposing all without restriction, trusting her to understand and judge him kindly.