Improper Pleasure. Charlotte Featherstone
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of her, so that we may take the time to know her as something more than a physical beauty. What do you see in her?”
“Sadness. Loneliness. Need.” He was not looking at the statue, but at Emmy, her shrouded face showing those very same things. “She needs to be understood and loved by a man who would protect her. A man who could pleasure her. A man who would guard her secrets and not allow her to crumble to dust.”
A faint smile broke from her lips and she lowered her head to study her hands which were clasped before her. He tipped her chin up once again, wishing he could lift the veil from her face to see just how beautiful Emmy truly was. For he knew she was. She had eyes a man could drown in. Lips made to be kissed for hours and designed to provide immense pleasure to a man. Her skin was the sort men wanted to touch over and over, and each time he would marvel at the softness, the suppleness, the astonishing purity of it.
She looked at the statue once again. “Because thou has the power and own’st the grace to look through and behind this mask of me, and behold my soul’s true face. The words of Elizabeth Barrett Browning. They’re beautiful, aren’t they?”
He pressed closer, felt her sway ever so slightly into him. He wanted to touch her. To feel her beneath his hands before she melted into the gray fog, leaving him alone, frustrated, yearning to see her once again.
“Emmy, you cannot know what you do to me with your honesty. It empowers me,” he said, unable to control his thoughts. “I can’t explain it. You give me such strength. Somehow you have been able to reach deep within me and touch the man. It is more than a physical attraction between us. It is something I have never before experienced. Something powerful and beautiful—”
“Sssh, don’t say it,” she begged, pressing her cold fingertips atop his lips. “Words are so very difficult to take back and forget. Memories fade with time, but words never do. They linger in our minds, our hearts, haunting us. Right now, silence and memories would serve us much better.”
“What I feel right now defies words, Emmy. I have never felt so vehemently about anything, as I do about you.” She swayed again and he gripped her arms, holding her tight.
“You must release me,” she said in a breathless sob. “You must. You don’t understand. I am not who you think I am.”
“Are you a widow, lonely for your husband? A scorned woman, searching for a man to make it right? Tell me who you are, Emmy. I want to know. I must know.”
“I am nobody.”
“No, you are not. When I close my eyes all I can see is you. Even now I can smell you, almost taste you…Christ, how I want you, Emmy.”
Amelia allowed herself to sag against the hard breadth of Adrian’s chest. The inner struggling, the war waging so deep inside her was almost over. Today she would go against everything she had ever believed—would toss aside every fear she had ever clung to. Today, she would allow Adrian to take her on a journey he had begun and only he could complete.
Only Adrian made her feel this way; like a woman in every sense of the word. In this little copse she was nearly his equal in mind and beauty. In station and wealth. Here in this little spot she was simply Emmy, and he Adrian. Nothing of their lives outside of this spot intruded.
Droplets of cold rain began to fall from the sky and Adrian reached for her hand, pulling her so that she was running behind him as he steered them toward the secluded alcove, where there was a roof of carved stones and pillars that resembled obelisks. They would be dry. It would be dark. And they would be utterly alone as the rain fell down around them.
Chapter Three
Catching her around the waist, Adrian pressed her against the stone wall as another echo of thunder rumbled across the sky. The scent of cool, spring rain and fresh churned soil saturated the air. She could also smell him—Adrian—the scent a mixture of spice and wool and a hint of tobacco. She could feel him, the heat radiating off his broad, tall body as he stood before her.
His head was bent to hers and his breath ruffled the tendrils of hair that had escaped from beneath her bonnet. “Let me see you,” he asked in a whisper as the pad of his thumb caressed her lips that lay hidden beneath her veil.
Fear and pride ate away at her confidence and Amelia struggled to hold on to the only shield that prevented him from seeing how very ordinary she truly was. And even if she were a beautiful woman, she couldn’t remove the veil. Her face, her name, must forever remain a mystery to him.
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