She did blush, a rosy flush that swept from her jawline to the brim of her bonnet. “If you set up every lady of intimate acquaintance in a house with a budget and instructions to rescue other unfortunates, it is no wonder you are short of funds.”
He wanted to laugh. He wanted to kiss her. He wanted to do any number of inappropriate things.
Because he could not, he glowered at her instead. “I am not intimately acquainted with any other woman.”
She tilted her head. “Only the one? Miss Grinton.”
What was she getting at?
“Yes,” he snapped.
“Did you . . . Do you love her?”
The wistfulness of the question caught him off guard.
“No. It was a transaction,” he said curtly. “It meant nothing.”
Something that Aimée, in her goodness and innocence, could never understand.
“And yet you felt guilty enough afterward not only to rescue Miss Grinton from her situation but to save others as well.”
He was furious. Found out. He had never put it in those words, even to himself. Perhaps Aimée understood more than he thought.
“Amherst thinks I am running a brothel.” Now why the devil had he told her that?
“The situation is unusual,” Aimée acknowledged. “But surely he should understand that you are only trying to help these poor women.”
“I didn’t tell him,” Lucien admitted.
He had resented being forced to justify himself. At the time his reticence had been a point of pride. Now, however . . .
“Amherst has other concerns,” Lucien said. “He would say Fanny and the others are not our kind.”
Not Nephilim.
“You do him an injustice,” Aimée said. “He obviously cares about you more than he does for the world’s opinion. Why else would he have brought eleven out-of-wedlock children to be raised at Fair Hill? You should not let your pride come between you.”
“I’m not currying favor with the old man for money.”
Aimée widened those blue eyes at him. “It is not his wealth you should worry about losing. It is his regard. He is your father. Your family. It would be a great sorrow for you to lose him.”
As she had lost her family.
Remorse seized Lucien. “I’m sorry, I’m a brute. I didn’t think . . . I didn’t realize . . .”
Aimée shook her head. “No brute. Perhaps no angel, either. But I think you are a very good man.” Standing on tiptoe, she brushed her lips against his cheek. “Thank you for helping Finch.”
He was not good.
But he felt, at that moment, very much a man. God help them both.
He stopped in the snow and placed his hands on her shoulders, turning her to face him. She stared gravely up at him, her eyes clear and unafraid.
With a groan of longing and surrender, he covered her mouth with his.
Lucien’s kiss was warm and firm and seeking, his lips parted. Aimée could feel the heat and moisture of his mouth, and an answering heat and moisture rose in her, in her stomach and br**sts and between her thighs. He pressed against the seam of her lips and then he . . . Yes, he did, he put his tongue right in her mouth, shocking and delicious.
Her toes curled in pleasure.
She ought to stop him. She knew the dangers of indulging in desire. She had too much sense to throw away her heart on an inappropriate liaison.
But what had her good sense ever gotten her but alone? For years, she had been starved of affection, of connection, of simple human touch. She was hungry for life.
For Lucien.
The branch she was holding slithered to the ground. He licked into her mouth, coaxing, exploring, and she grabbed the lapels of his coat and sucked eagerly at his tongue.
Heaven.
His tongue stroked, dabbled, thrust. Against her stomach she could feel that part of him, the part she had glimpsed when he rose from his bath. A picture of him formed in her mind, large, dark, exciting. She squirmed against him, trying to get a better fit between their two bodies. His hands slid from her shoulders to her upper arms, lifting her, aiding her.
There. She shivered in delight.
He raised his head, his eyes dark and penetrating. A flush stained his cheekbones. “You are cold.”
She was tingling. Melting. “No.”
Don’t stop.
His hands tightened again on her upper arms before he put her gently from him. “We have been gone too long already.”
Disappointment speared her. Disappointment and desire. “There is a gamekeeper’s cottage close by.” Her heart beat faster at her own daring. Her knees trembled. “We could shelter there.”
His muscles were rigid. He did not move. Indeed, she almost fancied he did not breathe.
He exhaled. “I will not risk your reputation more than I have already.”
She honored him for his concern. How could she not? But she also saw her opportunity to know passion, to feel close and loved and alive, slipping away. She had no illusions. Lucien had made her no promises. But she was terribly afraid that if she did not grasp at life now, she would regret it all the long and empty years to come.
“It is my reputation,” she said. “My risk. My choice.”
Lucien stared down at her, an arrested expression on his face.
For a moment her words seemed to echo between them. My life. My choice.
For no reason at all, her heart stood still.
“Sometimes our choices have consquences beyond what we can imagine,” he said at last. His face was flat, unreadable. “Let me take you back.”
He was rejecting her.
Aimée recoiled as if she’d been slapped. She supposed she should be grateful to be rescued from a fate like poor Finch’s. Perhaps by tomorrow she would even appreciate Lucien’s restraint.
Right now, though, she was mortified. Her face, her chest, her whole body burned with humiliation and frustrated desire.
She bent to hide her face, retrieving the branch from the ground, ignoring the barbs that pricked through her gloves. “You go back if you want to,” she said coolly. “I have work to do.”
Clutching her bouquet of holly, she left him there alone under the trees, leaving behind her a trail of berries like heart’s blood on the snow.
Chapter Seven
The following afternoon was Christmas Eve. Julia sat in front of her mirror as Aimée coaxed another blond ringlet around the brush handle.