Page 7 of Love Unraveled
“Harris, some privacy. We’ll be in the yellow drawing room,” Sophie said regally as she swept by the butler, tugging Gaston along with her.
The entrance was grand, the austerity of white marble and plaster broken by a series of colorful paintings. That was all Gaston could note before Sophie dragged him through a door on the right. She let go of his hand and turned to close the doors. “Yellow” was an appropriate name for the room. Yellow chaises, yellow wall hangings, yellow drapes. It was a field of buttercups.
Sophie returned, standing before him, looking up at his face. She lifted her elegant gloved hands and cupped his cheeks, running her thumbs over the contours of his nose and lips. When she paused on his lips, he kissed her thumb, wishing the silk did not stand between his lips and her flesh. She studied him, her eyes dark with an emotion he could not name. He had so many questions, so many things to say, but he found he wanted only to be in her presence for now.
“Gaston,” she said on a sigh, and his body vibrated at hearing his name whispered invitingly from her lips. Lips he wanted to kiss but was not sure he should. There was too much between them. And, while he could not seem to find his searing anger, it would not do to imagine they could simply pick up where they’d left off.
Still, he let Sophie gently pull his face down to hers and did not resist when she brushed a kiss across his lips. Nor did he stop her when she ran her hand over his cheek and began to kiss in earnest. He was beyond stopping her when her tongue begged entrance. He pulled her close and devoured her as a starving man at a banquet. He tasted and feasted and lost himself in the feel of her. Mon Dieu, she knew what she was doing.
The realization was like throwing a bucket of cold water over two mating dogs. He pulled away abruptly, putting a few feet between them, and swiped at his mouth.She knew what she was doing.Gone was her innocence. Gone was his Sophie. He’d been kissing a mirage. The reality before him was not his young lover. It was Countess Sophia Tessaro—a traitor to his heart.
Chapter Four
Rage and lust pulled her heart, as with two strings, two different ways.
—Henry Fielding,Joseph Andrews
Sophia’s heart poundedso hard she was certain Gaston must hear it from where he stood. Why had he withdrawn so abruptly? She’d wanted to keep hold of him, get lost in him, not let the dream slip away. And she did not mistake his response, his desire, nor could he have possibly misread hers. Yet he wiped at his mouth as though he’d been licked by a dog. Anger quickly replaced longing.
“Was my kiss so repulsive?”
“What?Non, not repulsive. In fact, it was enticing.”
The right words but the wrong expression. Gaston was scowling. What was wrong with him?
“And much different from what I remember. As though you’ve had much practice.”
“Ah,” Sophia said, her anger softening, the problem dawning on her. “Gaston, it has been sixteen years. You could not have expected to find the girl of seventeen again.”
“Non.”
It was clear he was still struggling with it. Well, she was digesting his existence, so surely he could manage her years of experience.
“I suppose you have been a paragon of virtue throughout the years. Is that what you’ve been doing? Where you’ve been? Seeking sainthood at a monastery?” Sophia tugged at the fingers on her gloves, keeping her eyes on the emotions stampeding across Gaston’s face several times in as many seconds. She tossed one glove to the table and yanked off the second. “Sit.”
She did not look to see if he obeyed her command as she strolled to the sideboard, trying to disassemble her thoughts. Gaston had finally come. It had not been her imagination—hewasthe harlequin from the masquerade. Why had he been lurking? Why had he not come to her door and made himself known? Where had he been? Why was he repulsed by her kiss? It surprised and maddened her, but it was an insult she must push beyond if she was to stay calm and make sense of the situation. Her hand shook as she pulled the stopper from the crystal decanter and poured two cognacs. She took a deep breath and turned.
As stubborn as he’d always been, Gaston was still standing where she’d left him. Let him stand. It was all too much, and she was going to sit before her legs gave out on her. She set his cognac on the table beside a chair, then took a seat on the sofa across from it. She cupped the cognac in her hands and rested it on her lap. She did not want him to see her shaking.
At thirty-six, Gaston was still a handsome man. If anything, he was more attractive than ever. Always lanky, he’d filled out. His snug-fitting jacket and trousers outlined his form, and it was clear there was muscle where once he’d been reed thin. She could see no gray in his coal-black hair, and the new lines around his mouth and his eyes drew attention to both of those features—his lips sensually full and, from this distance, his eyes still as dark as midnight. She tamped her body’s response and thrust her chin toward the chair.
“We are not children,” she snapped in French. “Assieds-toi.”
This time he did as she directed, dropping onto the chair with a grunt. He grabbed the cognac and raised it in the air. “Santé.”
Sophia repeated his toast and took a sip. A small sip. She needed to keep her head straight if she was to sort this out. Whateverthiswas. Gaston. Here in her drawing room. She’d start with that.
“What were you doing out there?” She waved her hand toward the window, where the sun was slowly setting.
Gaston brushed at his trousers, eyeing her from under his ridiculously long lashes. “Watching you,” he finally said.
“Yes, but you are stating the obvious, no?” she said, irritated that he was toying with her. “Why were you watching? Why did you not simply call on me?”
Gaston shrugged a shoulder and took another sip. Sophia waited for an answer.
He rested back against the chair, his glass dangling between his fingers. “I was trying to assess the role of the man in your summerhouse.”
“Laurence?”
