“You would do better to marry someone along the lines of young Skevington,” Mayne said. “Or Tallboys.”
If she allowed Mayne to slip away tonight, he would never be hers. The truth of it was in her heart, along with a deeper truth about the way she felt, a truth that she refused to examine at the moment.
It would have been horribly unnerving, in the darkness of a bedchamber, to think of exposing herself in such a way. But in the warm evening air, her body felt sleek and beautiful, curved in a dangerous, potent way. And Mayne’s eyes seemed to make a promise to her again and again.
“How warm it is tonight,” she said, and undid another button on her nightgown.
Mayne’s eyes fell to her hands and then moved back to her face. There was a look in his eyes, a very small smile, that made her remember for one second how much experience he had with seducing and being seduced, and how little experience she had in the same arena.
But it was as if Dionysus himself were whispering in her ear. She uncurled herself and stood up, walking over to the low wall. Then she turned.
Mayne had risen to his feet, of course. He would never stay seated in the presence of a woman. But he didn’t follow her. He stayed where he was, leaning against the dolphin. His black curls were falling over his eyes like rumpled silk. His eyelashes shadowed his eyes so that she couldn’t see anything but the long clean lines of his cheeks, the restless aristocratic beauty of him. Somehow even that wasn’t terrifying, just entrancing.
Josie felt as if she were wearing nothing more than gossamer cobwebs.
“You resemble a maenad more by the moment,” Mayne said. And yet he made no move in her direction.
The key, Josie thought to herself, would be to say something that would make it absolutely clear that if he wished to seduce her, perhaps now would be the time.
“If you felt inclined to make an advance to me,” she told him, “you could do so.”
Definitely that look in his eyes was laughter.
“But Madame Countess, if I made an advance to you, and if that advance were successful, we would no longer be able to annul our marriage,” he pointed out.
Josie was gaining more courage every moment, from the look in Mayne’s eyes, from the stillness around them, from the oddly curious sense of power she felt. “I would not wish you to feel obliged to do anything to which you were not naturally inclined,” she said, allowing laughter to steal into her voice. For in truth, she felt like laughing. Laughing and…something else. She felt fluid and seductive, as unlike her normal self as possible.
She walked back to him, feeling her hair on her shoulders. Feeling the sway of her hips and the tilt in her lips. Knowing that she was walking toward him with precisely the kind of promise that he had taught her.
He didn’t say anything, just looked at her, all shadowed eyes and secret smile, and it was as if the whole world held its breath.
Josie reached up and pulled his mouth down to hers.
One had to suppose that kissing Mayne was like drinking aged brandy, that golden liquor Rafe used to be so fond of. After all, he was older than she, and more knowledgeable, and surely he knew everything about kissing?
But somehow she felt as if she were the one with experience. He tasted startled and uncertain, whereas she was absolutely confident. She poured herself into that kiss, winding her arms around his neck and rejoicing in the feeling of her breasts against him. She was a pagan goddess, curved, beautiful, a perfect shape in every way.
He groaned against her lips.
“Garret,” she whispered, feeling as if small sparks might be flying in all directions. “That small building in the corner was your aunt’s, was it not?”
“Josie, are you absolutely certain that you wish to seduce me?” he said, sounding drunk and responsible at the same time. “Skevington is planning to ask for your hand in marriage. My uncle can wipe the record of our marriage from his books as if it never happened. You do not have to marry a man like me.”
“What do you mean by a man like you?” she asked, genuinely curious.
He pulled back and looked at her. “A man of thirty-four. A man who has slept with many, many women. I don’t have any diseases, Josie, but that’s by the grace of God. I do nothing and I am nothing, Josie. You must understand that. I lost my way, a few years ago, and I haven’t found it. If there is a way to find.”
“Not to deflate your tale of woe, but I can find your way for you.”
He raised an eyebrow.
“All you have to do is worship at my feet,” she said smugly, trying to choke back her giggle.
“I gather you think I’m bleating like a sheep?” Mayne said, a little smile playing around the corner of his mouth.
“You’re a born horseman,” she told him. “You have stables, and horses, and more than enough money. Of course I think you’re being a fool.” Then she added: “Not to be harsh.”
“Skevington will worship at your feet,” Mayne said.
“Actually, I don’t want to be worshipped.”
He waited.
“Do you know what I want most, Garret?” She pulled his shirt free from his trousers. “I want to be desired.”
“You are that.” He said it a bit hoarsely.
“You often look bored,” Josie told him. “You drift about, looking discontented and bored with life. But then, one day, you looked at me. As if I really were me.”
“And?”
“You suddenly looked like a wolf,” she whispered. His shirt felt like warm velvet under her fingertips. She wanted to run her hands under it. “You flared into life, and it was me who made you feel that way.”
“It’s foolish, grotesque in a man my age,” he said. But he wasn’t pushing away her hands.
“Stop being a fool and talking of your age,” Josie said. “I’m tired of that and it has no place between us, don’t you see? What’s between us made me follow you to Cecily’s turret, had you wearing my dress and kissing me when you were engaged to another woman, made me marry you, though I knew full well that I wasn’t ravished. I took you.”
Something was changing in his eyes. She shivered like an aspen in a storm as he touched her. “You took me,” he stated.
“You thought you were rescuing me, but that was just your man’s foolishness.”
He was a stubborn one, this husband of hers. She could see him steeling himself to make one more attempt. So she contented herself with stepping even closer, so that she could smell the clean male scent of him.
“I’m not going to fall in love.” He said it desperately, with the fervor of a man who knows he’s lost a battle but won’t quite give up. “We have to be honest with each other, Josie. I was in love with Sylvie. I don’t believe I have more of the emotion in me.”
A whisper of chill wind touched Josie’s back. “You were in love…or you still are? Would you prefer to win her back, Garret? Because if you have that hope in your heart, we should not continue.” And she looked at the ground, because she couldn’t bear to see love for another woman in his eyes.
“Sylvie and I have no future together,” he said.
So he was still in love with her. But Josie took the pain of that and pushed it away. She, Josie, wasn’t in love with him, so why should she care?