Falling for the Marquess - Julianne MacLean Page 0,5
felt suddenly dry. In fact, she could hardly breathe. Did this man always have this debilitating effect on women? If so, she was in for an engaging, perhaps difficult, first season there if she ever encountered him again.
They danced a little longer, and she noticed his pace was slowing, growing more leisurely. Clara found herself avoiding his gaze. He had knocked her off kilter with that last little flirtation.
The waltz ended, and the orchestra paused. The sound of pages turning filled the silence. Clara raised a hand to her cheek and felt a bit faint in the heat of the room. Or perhaps it was this man’s effect on her that was causing her to feel fuzzy-headed.
He sensed her distress with perfectly timed precision. “Would you like a cool drink? There is a punch bowl in the supper room.”
“Please,” she replied.
He offered his arm, and she permitted him to escort her into the next room, where a long buffet table was overflowing with tea cakes and crumpets, large bowls of colorful fruit, clotted cream and towers of frosted peaches. There were shellfish on silver platters, cheeses and meats, and cakes and candies and berries.
The gentleman led her to the punch bowl, filled a glass and handed it to her. She took three large gulps before she realized it was burning her throat. It tasted bitter with some sort of spirit.
She tried to swallow without croaking or making any facial contortions, then smiled politely at him and carefully set the cup on the table. She wasn’t about to have any more of that beverage, whatever it was. She didn’t want to end up smelling like a distillery.
“Better?” he asked.
“Yes, better.” Except that my throat is on fire! She tried to clear it. “Thank you.” Her response barely squeaked out of her.
“Would you like to see the Fuseli? It’s in the main hall.”
She swallowed again. “I’m not sure that I should be away from my—”
“You can’t come to Livingston House and not see the Fuseli.”
Clara looked up at his elegant mouth, heard the sound of his seductive voice, and felt a buzzing sensation somewhere deep within herself, along with a desire to follow him wherever he led her.
“I suppose I could go and have a peek.”
“‘Have a peek.’ What a charming American expression.”
He offered his arm to her again, and she went with him to the main hall, determined to take one look at the masterpiece, then politely thank her partner and ask him to escort her back to Mrs. Gunther.
Out in the hall, other couples were whispering quietly in corners, and Clara found the whole atmosphere somewhat dreamlike. The ladies seemed to float around as if bewitched by something, and the gentlemen spoke in hushed tones. The masks gave it all a rather mysterious flavor, as if they were all supposed to keep some great collective secret.
Clara attributed her odd perceptions to the few sips of champagne she’d had, and that scalding beverage in the punch bowl.
Her handsome escort stopped before a painting that hung at the bottom of a wide, circular staircase. “Here it is.”
Clara looked up. “It’s The Nightmare.”
She sensed the man quietly studying her face. “You know your art.”
“Yes, though I’ve only read about this one. I had no idea it would be so—”
“So what?”
“So....” Dare she say it? She looked up at the curvaceous contours of the sleeping woman’s breasts beneath her gown, her arm limp and flung down to the floor. “So erotic.” She continued to stare in silence at the details: the grinning devil, the luminescent horse entering the bedchamber from some other, unnatural world.
She could feel those gleaming green eyes watching her, taking in her response to the painting.
The man leaned closer. “Some say it leads to the dark recesses of the mind.”
The heat of his breath in her ear caused a wave of gooseflesh to surge across her skin.
He moved silently behind her as she studied the painting, and his presence at her back was more unsettling than anything she saw in The Nightmare, for the man standing at his ease behind her was true flesh and blood, sumptuous and beautiful, and he was breathing hotly against the damp back of her neck.
“My word, but you are lovely,” he whispered.
Unaccustomed to such open flattery, Clara grew breathless. “Thank you.”
“Your perfume…strawberries.”
She turned to meet his gaze and tried to imagine what he would look like without his mask. He must surely be the most handsome man in all of London. He certainly had more