their hips, glaring at Alice.
“How was I ta know? I—I was makin’ polite conversation, as any woman would with such a man standin’ outside her door!” Alice’s breasts shimmied as she shook her finger at them. “I weren’t the only one who fell under the spell of ’is looks. Or his sweet talkin’!”
Colette exhaled loudly and tossed the bolt of scarlet fabric to the worktable. “I believe Rubio’s prediction was poppycock anyway, so I refuse to worry any further about Mr. Swann,” she declared. “I’m going to write up the tickets for his gowns now, and charge him extra for presuming he could demand so much of us in so short a time. Not only is he rude for expecting special treatment, he was downright vulgar, thinking overpayment would justify such arrogance!”
As her sister strode rapidly to her office upstairs, the strong, steady tattoo of her heels on the wooden steps accelerated Camille’s pulse. “You might be right,” she whispered to Alice. “We’ve probably just sold our souls to the devil. But what else can we do? We agreed to his terms and took his money. When he returns tomorrow—”
“Rubio should meet ’im. He’ll know right off if this is the man from his prediction.”
Camille nodded. She felt like a ninny for the way her knees quivered at the mere thought of seeing Hadrian Swann again…because he’d caught her off guard? Or because of the way he’d excited her sister?
5
“You look wan, my darling. And you’ve hardly touched your food.”
Camille sat absolutely still as her husband’s hand enveloped hers. Lord Bentley had huge hands, pudgy and pale beneath the hairs that sprouted all over the backs of them. He was a bear of a man, rather intimidating as he smiled at her from his chair at the head of the table. His close-set eyes shone beneath a heavy brow line, and the white hairs in his goatee bristled among the darker ones when he worked his lips, thinking. Awaiting her response.
Why did she never know how to respond, even when Rutledge was being kind? Why did marriage feel like such a constant compromise? Camille sipped her wine for inspiration. “I’m fine, really. It’s just that we’ve been so busy at the shop—”
“Time away is what you need! You work far too hard, and for what?” Rutledge asked. “When I provided you a shop as an outlet for your designs, I didn’t intend for you to become a slave to your talent.”
“Ah, but our success has taken us further than we anticipated in our wildest dreams!” Colette asserted. Then she demurely lowered her gaze, to humor her husband Heath and her father-in-law. “After all, happy wives are the foundation for happy homes and…satisfying relations. Don’t you agree, Heath?”
Heath eyed his wife across the top of his wineglass. “I see no merit in working five days a week, at the mercy of your clients’ whims, when you needn’t work at all, dear Colette. I made more in an hour at the tables today than your dress shop earned all week. And you don’t see me looking pale or upset over what someone implied about my work or talent—or the lack of it.”
Camille pressed her lips together. He might be a stallion in the bedroom, but Heath was an ass about knowing when to speak and when to keep his mouth shut. She and her sister had worked very hard since they were girls, helping to put food on the table after their vagabond father abandoned Mama, and it would never set well that the English aristocracy played all day—or all their lives, as in Heath Bentley’s case. “I don’t work to see how much money I can make,” she insisted, sitting up straighter. “I work because my life must have a direction. A purpose.”
“Making babies. Producing heirs,” the dark-haired rake across the table replied pointedly. “Now there’s a purpose!”
Camille bristled, but before she took his bait her sister replied, “Let’s not forget that any child of Camille’s will be in line for some of your inheritance, dear Heath. Meanwhile, the night is young and the full moon’s shining through the bedroom window. What do you propose we do about that?”
Heath’s expression changed immediately. He studied his wife from beneath a dark, rakish fetlock that fell across one brow, and Camille saw her sister’s hand slip surreptitiously beneath the table. Heath shifted in his seat then, his eyes narrowing.
She sighed. Colette had led the conversation toward their bedroom on her behalf, to stop this conversation before it ended as it always did: their men didn’t understand why she and her sister spent so much time working, even though Rutledge and Heath followed their own pursuits in London most days. Lord Bentley often spent weeks overseeing his shipyards and textile mills, here and abroad, and thought nothing about how she would fill her days were it not for designing innovative gowns at LeChaud Soeurs.
Heath rose quickly to pull out his wife’s chair. Colette gazed up at him adoringly, and moments later, in the wake of their escape, their amorous laughter drifted back into the dining room.
And what an opulent room it was: mahogany paneling and gilt mirrors, two huge chandeliers glistening with hundreds of crystal prisms above a massive mahogany table that stretched fifteen feet beyond where the four of them sat. Camille smiled politely at her husband. She knew without daring to ask that he’d never once coaxed a lover to the top of this staid table…never thrown a woman’s skirts up and ravished her on the spur of a passionate moment, oblivious to the goblets and china that would shatter around them. The thought made her prickle, down where her drawers bunched between her legs, for by now Heath had relieved Colette of her corset and drawers—
“You look so very lovely in that gown, Camille. Is it one of your own designs?”
She blinked. “Why, yes it is, thank you. I made it as a sample, to determine how the pattern and fabric would complement each other, before completing a similar gown for Lady Gody.”
“That shade of pink puts roses in your cheeks.” Rutledge observed her through half-closed eyes as he drew a teasing finger along the crease of her cleavage. “I’m glad you didn’t change before dinner, my dear. When I saw this dress at breakfast, I felt sadly inadequate…desperately sorry I couldn’t act upon my inclinations. You think me terribly old, I know, but inside me beats the heart of the randy young swain I once was. A man might outlive his abilities to perform, but he never loses the desire.”
Camille swallowed, speechless, as his fingertip continued to tease her exposed skin. She sensed the butler—and probably half the staff—waited to clear the table, knowing better than to intrude upon this rare moment…watching every move and nuance from the breaks between the Chinese screen’s panels. Three years here at Briarcliffe hadn’t accustomed her to having domestic help, and to knowing they saw everything, and then gossiped about it among themselves.
“Sit on the table in front of me. I’m going to lift your breasts and kiss them…bury my face in their softness.”
Her cheeks burned. What was this he demanded of her?
Rutledge scooted back from the table and flung his soiled plate off to one side. The china shattered and then his flatware clattered on top of it, which brought a maid scurrying from the kitchen. “Get out!” he rasped, pointing imperiously at the girl. “You and the others are dismissed for the evening! Do not interrupt me again!”
The poor girl fled, wide-eyed, and Camille almost felt sorry for her. Whatever fantasy had inspired Lord Bentley would most certainly become her reality, as well.
A cataclysmic change…a hurricane of passion…a volcano of sensations and delights! As Rubio Palladino’s prediction came to mind, Camille realized that everything he’d foretold seemed to be coming true. There was no talking her way out of this: the expression on her husband’s creased face brooked no arguments. So she rose from her chair to step between his knees and the table that stretched the length of the mirrored room. She felt dwarfed and quite plain, in comparison to this ornate salon where Bentleys had dined for generations. Her squeal rang out as her husband lifted her unceremoniously to the tabletop.
Rutledge slipped his fingers into the bodice