How delightful it would be to kiss the nape of her neck until her lips parted. Her eyes would close with dreamy pleasure…Carlyle chided himself again for thinking such things about her, innocent that she was.
Susannah picked up a brush and began to run it through her hair, her beautiful breasts moving with every stroke.
He was mesmerized-and he was on fire with lust. Her rounded rump, evident even under several petticoats, shifted on the padded stool as she leaned forward, pouting at her reflection, idly brushing her hair back over her shoulders. The brown waves fell to her slender waist.
Susannah set down the brush and picked up a bottle of eau de cologne, squeezing its tasseled bulb to spray a fine mist over her bosom and neck. Her dampened camisole made her nipples stand out underneath it, as pink and tight as the ribbon rosebuds on her cast-aside corset. She shivered, chilled by the draft from the open window behind her.
Carlyle would have walked through a brick wall at that moment to have her, to claim her body, to hear her whisper words of love in answer to his own…he shut his eyes to regain his equilibrium, breathing deeply.
He opened them. Susannah was reaching out through the open window to close the shutters. Thank God she did not see him, even though he was less than ten feet away. Lit from behind, her upper body was a curving silhouette beneath her camisole. With her hair tumbling around her face, her expression held a mysterious tenderness, as if she expected a lover to come to her that very night.
Then, reaching out with both hands, she pulled the shutters in. He heard her latch them, then close the window.
Carlyle sighed. He would have to be careful to make no sound when he went inside.
Susannah settled herself once more on the padded stool, rubbing her bare arms to warm them. The fragrance of the garden, even filtered through the sooty air of London, had brought to mind a night in India.
She and Carlyle Jameson had been waiting for the moon to rise in an open-air pavilion of pierced stone, looking out over a reflecting pool. A palace musician began an evening raga, whose haunting melody reached its climax just as the moon appeared, casting silvery light over the water.
It had been a magical moment-and she had almost thought then that Carlyle would kiss her. But, watched as they were by her old ayah a few yards away and a couple of miscellaneous aunties pretending not to notice a thing, he had only smiled.
She had been rather put out, although she could not say that Carlyle had refused her, since she hadn’t offered him anything. As she remembered it, she had been explaining the intricacies of the Indian musical scale…and then suddenly she’d thought about being kissed. By him.
She still wanted him to. But he seemed to want to marry her off to the highest bidder in London, something she was not at all sure she desired.
Growing up in a maharajah’s palace in Jaipur, Susannah had enjoyed a great deal of freedom, especially since her mother, a girl of eighteen when she had married Susannah’s father, had died so young. She’d had the benefit of an excellent, if somewhat improvisational education and the run of the maharajah’s library, which boasted innumerable volumes, some quite rare and some quite scandalous, on every subject under the sun, including love.
Love. Had she found a chance to sin-she hadn’t-she would have been only an auntie away from discovery. There was no end of them in India, where families were large and there was no such thing as privacy.
Certainly Carlyle was the only man she had ever wanted to kiss. The feeling was so strong that it had surprised her. They talked freely, spent happy hours in each other’s company, but he kept a courteous distance, perhaps because he was fifteen years older. She had been just twenty-one then, with no experience of life beyond India, save what she could learn from the illustrated London magazines that sometimes reached Jaipur a year or more after the news in them was truly news.
Good or bad, the world beyond the palace walls had seemed too distant to worry about. Her father’s death had changed all that. Her heart had been shattered.
Almost too numb to feel anything, she’d been grateful for Carlyle’s guidance. He’d followed Mr. Fowler’s instructions to the letter and brought them all from India to this bewildering city, where she knew no one well besides Carlyle. He saw to it that she had whatever she needed and her father’s name opened some-but not all- doors. Alfred Fowler had earned a measure of fame dealing in gems, and the maharajah had kept him on retainer for just that reason. He’d made a small fortune that would have lasted a lifetime in India. But not in London. Therefore, she must marry.
Susannah looked at her reflection as she began to brush her hair again, singing under her breath, an Indian melody from long ago. A lonely woman awaited her lover, who did not come to her-oh, how did it go? The words escaped her. After many months in London, she had forgotten a great deal. There was no one to speak Hindi with, and Lakshmi preferred the dialect of her village.
By a happy accident, on one of their recent excursions, her maid had found a few of her Rajasthan countrymen selling carpets in a cluttered shop. Lakshmi had chattered eagerly with the buxom wife of one, promising to return to the unfamiliar lane into which they had ventured, but Susannah could not remember where it was.
She would have to get a street map of London and try to retrace their path. It would do Lakshmi good to be among people who understood her, to eat familiar food, and be made welcome. The maid was gawked at whenever she went out, and she preferred to stay in the house, hovering over Susannah in a way that was not healthy.
Lakshmi was growing thinner and more nervous each day. Susannah suspected that her Indian maid was indeed lonely. But what future was there for her here?
That was a question she might as well ask herself. Susannah put down the brush. She had gone along with Carlyle’s programme, if it could be called that, of social events and introductions to eligible men, realizing without him telling her that her father probably would have brought her back to London eventually and done the same thing.
Her father’s banker controlled the sum that had been left to her, waggling a finger and counseling prudence every time she saw him. Her requests for money had to be made in writing and in person, which was a nuisance. She supposed it was better than having to beg a husband for money, but even so…
She sighed. Susannah had yet to meet a man in London she liked. The raffish Englishmen she’d known in India were very different, adventurous by nature, and not well suited for husbandhood. If pressed, she would have to count Carlyle among them.
She had not been quite sure then what he did to earn his living, and she still wasn’t sure. Her father had mentioned that the young officer had some connection to the East India Company, that he showed great promise, that he had an excellent head for business and was thoroughly trustworthy in all his dealings, but precisely who employed Carlyle Jameson or why was never made clear to her.
The details of the day she had met him-and all the time they had spent together-were still clear in her mind. By contrast, she had very little memory of the months after her father’s death, but perhaps that was to be expected. Yet Susannah knew her father would not have wanted her to mourn overlong-he had loved life and hoped she would find happiness.
Was it wrong to wonder if that might be found with Carlyle? She liked everything about him, including just looking at him. He had dark hair that was almost black and gray-green eyes; and he was strongly built and tall, far taller than many Englishmen in India, who seemed to wilt in the heat upon arrival and never recover. It might be said that he thought a trifle too highly of himself, but a single defeat at chess had curbed that tendency on the day they had met.
He had seemed so startled when she checkmated him. Susannah had explained her strategy, pointing to the chessboard.
“I placed my bishop here-and a knight there-so that you perceived an attack where there was none, Mr. Jameson. You wasted precious time and too many moves on an imaginary enemy. And so I conquered.”
He had given her a wry look that acknowledged as much, but he managed to smile at her. “Well done, Miss Fowler. You are a sly one.”
The remark had piqued her. “That is not a compliment.”
“It is the truth and the mischievous look in your eyes is proof enough.”
“Then I must accept it.” She’d packed away the chessmen in an ivory box, handling each piece with care. She looked up and caught him admiring her.
Carlyle cleared his throat, embarrassed. “Hmm. I would be happy to play once more. I thought I was rather
