LITMIR.BIZ

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breeze touched her face where the mask had been. “Why are you doing this?”

      “Because I want to know exactly who you are when I kiss you.”

      Stunned, she could do nothing but sit and watch him remove his own half mask of black silk. And then he began.

      It was not the sort of kiss he had given her before, the sweetly spontaneous one in the garden. Nor was it the kind of kiss she had always envisioned, aflame with heated passion. Instead he was careful, deliberate, almost clinical. He lifted a tendril of her hair that had drifted across her cheek and tucked it behind her ear. Then he took her face between both hands, skimming the pad of his thumb along her lower lip as if to prepare it for the touch of his mouth. One of his hands dropped, fingers playing over her throat and collarbone, so indecently exposed by the daring blouse. With an assurance Isadora could not possibly imagine ever feeling, he lowered the hand and let it curve around behind her so that he was embracing her, holding her close, their bodies touching, their lips getting closer and closer.

      She made a feeble attempt to stop him, to stop the intimacy and the terrible overwhelming emotions welling up from a place inside her she had never explored until this moment. But she didn’t want to stop him, not really. He was the most beautiful man in the world; she was plain Isadora Peabody, and she might never again get the chance to kiss someone like him.

      Aching with the bleakness of that thought, which mingled painfully with her yearning, she closed her eyes.

      And he kissed them. Her eyelids.

      She was amazed.

      And then he kissed her cheek and her temple and the side of her nose. And behind her left ear and—heavens be—her neck where a pulse leaped so frantically she feared she might swoon.

      “You look…” he whispered, still kissing her there, up and down, oh so gently.

      “Yes?” she prompted in a hoarse, alien voice. Dear God, maybe a miracle had occurred. Maybe he was going to say she looked pretty.

      “You look…as if you’re about to face a firing squad.”

      “Oh…” she said weakly, opening her eyes a little. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—”

      “Don’t apologize. Just—if you possibly can—try to seem as if you’re enjoying this.”

      “But I am,” she said with great urgency. “Truly. I simply…this is a new activity for me and I don’t quite know how to behave.”

      “What I’d like,” he said wickedly, “is for you to misbehave.”

      “I’m certain I’ve been doing that ever since I set foot on your ship,” she said, not even half joking.

      “Then it’s a start,” he whispered, leaning close again. “It’s a start.”

      And he began kissing her again, his leisurely exploration so maddening and frustrating she nearly screamed, for he seemed to be touching and kissing all of her except the parts that needed him the most. She bit her tongue to keep from telling him that. It would be too forward, too humiliating.

      Too pathetic.

      But then, his gently questing mouth strayed upward along her throat, and—almost by accident—she dropped her chin a little, and their lips met.

      And the night changed color before her ecstatically closed eyes.

      Ye powers, but his kiss felt good. He tasted of rum and sweet juice and some other ineffable flavor. His mouth—the beautiful mouth she had been caught staring at so many times—brushed hers and then increased its pressure and she was astonished at the soft texture of it, the lyrical shape and the way it fit perfectly against hers. She was so startled by the sensations flooding her that she let her jaw go slack, and then something even more astonishing occurred. His tongue slipped into her mouth.

      She was certain it had to be an accident; surely it was an unnatural sin to do this…but…she liked it.

      She would suffer eternal damnation for this; of that she had no doubt. But she liked it. She loved it. The sinuous slide of his tongue, in and then out, then back in when she surged involuntarily against him, needing and wanting more than she had ever dared to need or want before. Certain places on her body flared to life as if a torch had been touched to them—the tips of her breasts, unbound for the first time in her life. Between her legs in a spot whose existence she had trained herself to deny utterly. The pit of her stomach in which was born a fire that raged beyond quenching.

      And then, far too quickly, it was over. He moved his hands to cup her shoulders, and drew back to look at her. “There,” he said. “No worse than a firing squad, was it?”

      She felt dazed, disoriented, as if she had awakened in a strange place. She blinked. “I wouldn’t know. I’ve never faced a firing squad before.”

      “Then you’ll have to trust me,” he said with gentle laughter in his voice. “Poor you.”

      “Yes,” she whispered, filled with the torpor and wistfulness of an awakening dreamer. “Poor me.”

      Seventeen

      Oh this is the place to live—a thought of winter would never enter one’s head.

      —Diary of Susan Hathorn,

      a sea captain’s wife.

      (1855)

      Isadora awoke with a smile on her face and the knowledge that she had slept indecently late. Judging by the intense dazzle of sunlight on the plaster wall, it was pressing high noon.

      The smile lingered. She knew she should feel guilty, for no one on Beacon Hill, or probably in Boston, or the entire United States for that matter, ever slept this late unless they were ill. Yet Isadora had no more viable excuse than the fact that she had been dancing with a man on a rampart at midnight, and soon after that she had kissed him.

      A delicious shiver passed through her body, tingling unbearably until she grew restive and flushed with her thoughts. She got up and went to the washstand to bathe in the cool spring water, but the thoughts wouldn’t leave her alone.

      Heavens be. She—Isadora Dudley Peabody—had kissed a man last night.

      It was not just any man. It was not just any kiss.

      Ryan Calhoun. The most interesting, compelling person she had ever met. The only person who had ever tried to be her friend. But was he trying to be more than that?

      She denied it instantly, her practical nature restoring itself. He had pursued her last night, had taken her to a private place and danced with her because they had been at a masquerade. A party where nothing was as it seemed.

      In a way, the moments with Ryan were even less real than a dream. Last night stood apart from the rest of her life, glistening with the elusive light of promise and teasing her with the possibility of what might have been.

      Trying to remember the kiss was like trying to repossess a wonderful dream after blazing wakefulness had intruded. She could recall what happened, but she could not recapture the magic. Each time she came close to reliving the sensation of his soft lips opening over hers, his nimble fingers skimming down her back, she became lost in a fog of embarrassment and desire that left her flushed and confused.

      “I mustn’t think of it,” she told herself stoutly, scraping her hair into a pathetic topknot. The short locks wouldn’t stay put, so she stabbed in more pins. She dressed herself in her familiar corset and berry-brown day dress, frowning at the way the usually crisp fabric hung in limp, pathetic folds.

      No matter, she told herself. She had never been vain. She’d never had anything to be vain about. Particularly not now, with her inexpertly shorn hair and her face bleary and wan from staying up too late and dreaming too much the night before.

      By the time she stepped out of her chamber into the colonnaded walkway, she felt as gauche and uncertain as she ever had at a Boston dancing party.

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