Timeless Desire (9 page)

God, where was she?
Let’s say forty-eight, forty-nine, fifty . . .

She looked down at the surveying seat, visible through the next window, and a wicked tingle went through her.
No, I bet Bridgewater would have no trouble at all making good use of those five minutes.

She imagined him freeing a handful of her hair and bringing it to his nose.

“Lilacs,” he would say. “You have come to seek a donation, have you not?”

“Yes,” she’d reply. “For my library.”

Ah, if only real fund-raising were like this.

He would pour a brandy and hand it to her. Some of that impeccable Don Alfonso vintage that even now was making her head spin. His eyes would play an enigmatic game with hers.

“I am willing to make the donation you seek.”

“Excellent.”

“And in exchange, I should very much like to bed you.”

She would feel a peremptory shock. “Here?”

“Aye. Now.”

“Are you not worried about your servants?” she would ask lightly, trying to quell her quaking nerves.

“Reeves has his orders for this evening.”

A premeditated act. Yes, that would be Bridgewater.

Her legs would turn to jelly. “Have you considered simply seducing me?”

“I have. Though I doubt it would be simple.”

He was right. It wouldn’t be. Not with Charlie standing in the shadows. And that’s what she liked about Bridgewater. He saw her complexity and wasn’t put off by it.

He would take a deep draft of the brandy and gaze longingly at her. “Sometimes a man just wants to feel he has purchased his pleasure.”

“Sometimes,” she would say, “a woman just wants to feel she has been purchased.”

“Then it is settled?”

“Everything but the price.”

God, this was better than the stuff she sneaked off into the back of the stacks to read.

He would reach for a chest on his desk and unlock it. It would be filled with gold and silver coins, some large, some small. He would pick half a dozen from inside and rattle them in his palm.

“I believe this is what you requested.” He would slip his coin-filled hand into her bodice and cup her breast.

Oh, dear!
The booms of the army’s cannons outside
. . .
matched the pounding in her veins.
It must be the brandy. I would never . . . or would I?

He would smile, and his thumb would trace the tender outline of her nipple.

“That was the price when you were making a gift,” she would say. “Now you are making a purchase.”

His brows would rise, and the light in those sapphire eyes would sparkle approvingly. He would bring his mouth to her ear. “Double? Triple?”

She would point to the chest on the desk and smile.

His hand would jerk away if he’d been burned. “Are you mad?”

“What would you call a woman who risks her reputation to bed a man in an unlocked room?”

His mouth would crook into a smile. “The mistress of her own library.”

A happy charge ran all the way to Panna’s toes, and she wiggled them inside her shoes, smiling.

“Did you finish?”

She jumped. The flesh-and-blood Bridgewater was looking at her curiously. “Finish?” she repeated.

“Counting? Did you finish?”

“Er, yes. Two hundred ninety-eight, two hundred ninety-nine, three hundred,” she said quickly.

He frowned. “That seemed a little fast.”

“Did it? It seemed just right to me.”

Of course, that’s only how it happens in books or in the minds of highly imaginative librarians. In her experience, there was usually a kernel of corn in someone’s teeth, an uncooperative corselet of Spanx, a condom past its use-by date or some other sort of humbling horror meant to remind the parties involved that nothing good ever comes from too much pleasure. But, oh, were it only so.

He fiddled with the telescope, checking the path below.

“Are they there?”

“Not yet,” he said. “A few more minutes.”

The evening had grown dark, save for the occasional punctuation of crimson and orange from the cannons. Without the lights of the industrial world to compete with them, the stars in the Cumbrian night sparkled like a tray of million-dollar diamonds. She marveled at the number of them.

“Would you care to look?” he said.

“Pardon?”

“At the stars?” He swung the telescope’s eyepiece toward her.

She had never used a telescope before, and her lack of knowledge must have been apparent. He pushed a crate in her direction and said, “It’s exceedingly straightforward. Just put your eye there,” he said, pointing to the end, “and adjust here.”

Standing on the crate made her a little too tall to look through the eyepiece comfortably, so she stooped, brushing a lock of hair out of her face. Against the deep blue-black, she saw spots of light, some large, some small, some even appearing to her overexcited imagination to be the color of a robin’s egg or a peach.

Bridgewater touched her cheek and she started.

“Open your eye,” he said.

She had shut the one she wasn’t using.

“Your mind will let you see what you need with the one at the scope,” he said. “In any case, a good soldier always wants to have an eye on what’s going on around him.”

The problem was there was too much going on around her. Her blood was still racing from her daydream, the brandy’s delicious warmth seemed to have turned her arms and legs to rubber, and the touch of Bridgewater’s coat on her arm was making her self-conscious almost to the point of light-headedness.

She moved a foot to better support herself on the crate and nearly tumbled off. He caught her by the waist, steadying her easily, and when she straightened, she was looking directly into his eyes.

“What’s that?”

The voice had come from the rampart outside—a guard speaking to his companion. The guard pointed to their window.

“Don’t move,” Bridgewater said.

“Do you see that?” the man said. “There, in that window. I thought I saw something move.”

“It’s my hair,” she said, panicked. “They can see it.”

“They cannot see beyond the reflections of the firepots on the glass.” Bridgewater’s caramel-scented breath came in waves across her cheek. His chest was reassuringly solid under her fingertips.

“It’s just the fire,” the other guard said. “There’s been nothing in that wing since the place burned in ’86.”

The men walked on, but Panna didn’t move. Bridgewater’s hands tightened on her waist, and his eyes sought in hers the answer to an unspoken question. He held her until the last echo of the soldiers’ footsteps died away.

She clasped the rough wool of his lapels, intensely aware of the dampness of her palms and the beating of his heart against her chest. The answer she wished to give was such a complicated mixture of attraction, desire, and the pain of letting go of Charlie, she couldn’t speak.

He saw her disquiet and brought his mouth to hers lightly, an offer she might accept or dismiss. The gentle connection sent a stabbing pain through her. Hungrily, she kissed back, reeling in the storm of emotion.

His lips were warm, and the hunger in them seemed as strong as the hunger in hers. He brought his fingertips along the ridge of her spine, sending waves of delight through her. Though he handled her reverentially, she could feel the desire like a harnessed panther just under his skin. He was waiting for a sign.

But what sign could she give? He was opening a box she’d locked after Charlie’s death. Her brain said, “Run!” but her body and her heart would have none of it. They had been denied too long.

Whether through desire or fear, she began to shake, and he pulled her into the glow of the candle so he could see her face.

“What is it?”

She shook her head, ashamed. “I think I’m afraid. It’s been so long.”

He pulled her close. “You need never be afraid with me. Ever.”

He crushed her to him in an embrace that left her breathless. Her mouth found his, and for a long moment the world around them disappeared.

Panna would have happily said good-bye to it forever, but they both felt the cold length of the pistol between them. He had a mission and she had a home.

A deep sigh rumbled through him. “If I could make time stand still for us, I would,” he whispered.

“I would, too.”

A distant set of church bells rang. “A quarter past the hour,” he said.

He slipped from her arms, letting his hand trail slowly across her cheek, and then allowed himself one final kiss.

She clutched the wall for support, thinking of the library and Marie and the house that held everything that remained of Charlie. What was she getting into with Bridgewater?

He aimed the telescope at the path. “Still not here.” He tsked. “You’re running late, boys.”

She straightened her dress and made her way to Bridgewater. She could feel the power of what they’d summoned thrumming like a guitar string between them. He squeezed her hand and swung the telescope upward, training it on a precise spot in the sky. “Here. Look at this.”

She almost had to slip into his arms to reach the eyepiece. The lock of hair fell forward again.

“Come, come,” he said. “We can’t have this. Keep your eyes on the path.” He pulled a pale green ribbon from the map. He removed the combs in her hair, letting the tresses fall across her shoulders.

“Tis like a thousand rays of sunshine,” he said gravely.

She gathered the hair to one side of her shoulder, and he fumbled twice before tying the satin in a neat bow.

“Thank you.” Her voice was barely a whisper.

She bent to the eyepiece and he held up his hand. “Wait. See, the star there?” She tucked herself against him to follow his line of sight.

“Yes. It’s part of the Big Dipper.”

“The Big Dipper?” He examined the sky. “Oh, aye. I suppose so. In Cumbria, tis called the Butcher’s Cleaver.”

“So that’s what you meant!”

He chuckled. “Aye. Tis an ugly name, I suppose, but it certainly fits the sensibilities of this place. Look at the second star from the end. In the sky, not through the telescope.”

She gazed where he pointed. “It’s larger than the rest. It almost looks like it’s pulsing.”

“Now through the scope.”

She looked again. “Oh! It’s
two
stars! They’re so close!”

“Like lovers circling one another in a dance, I’ve always thought. Slowly falling in love. And someday they will be as one.”

Their eyes met, and Panna thought he would kiss her again, but he busied himself with the adjustments self-consciously. “I am eager to see them more clearly. My scope is good, but I hear in Leiden they are developing even more powerful lenses. Perhaps someday . . .”

He must have seen a movement in the courtyard, for he turned abruptly. “Private Swenson. Tis time.”

Her heart lurched.

He grabbed the bag he’d prepared. “Now, remember: three minutes from the time Thorpe and Coyne break from Swenson and Baker. No more, no less. And remember to descend two flights.”

“Two flights. Yes.”

He slid the note back into her hands. “I don’t know who you really are, Panna, but you say you are not a spy, and I want to believe you. If you could take this to the home of my servant, Clare, it would mean so much. He can tell you the rest. I shouldn’t ask you to risk yourself, I know. And, in truth, the things I strive for will survive whether you deliver it or not, but it would mean a great deal, and not just to me.”

She shook her head and tried to give the note back, but he pressed it into her hand. Then he threw his arms around her and kissed her. “Come back to me, Panna. Let us stop time together. I don’t know when I’ve spent a more enjoyable evening.”

He flew down the stairs.

She exhaled as his last steps died away. A long moment passed before she had mastered her emotions. She looked down. Coyne and Thorpe were gone. How much time had gone by?

She tiptoed down the stairs, two flights as he’d instructed, though the staircase descended even farther, which is where Bridgewater must have gone. She ran through the passageway under the library and up the stairs on the other side. Since she’d lost track of time, she decided she’d count to sixty—this time without letting her mind wander—and slip out. According to Bridgewater, she’d be in the hall that ran between the chapel and the library.

By the count of thirty, she was quaking so much, she couldn’t wait any longer. She opened the door. She was in the hallway she remembered from before. After three steps a distant shout pierced the night—“You, there! Stop, I say!”— followed immediately by a pistol shot.

Her heart leapt in her chest, and she sprinted into the chapel and through the half door, slamming it soundly behind her.

Her hands shook as she fumbled with the key, and it wasn’t until she had safely locked the triangular door behind her that she noticed the man standing, back to her, outside the darkened door of the Carnegie Library.

He waved when he saw her and gave her a generous smile. Still dazed by the staggering turn of events, she went to the door, which someone had locked, and slid the bolt. She wished she was any place on earth but here.

She pulled the door open and managed a weak smile. “You must be Kyle’s cousin, Steve. I’m Panna. So sorry, I’m late.”