Portia Da Costa (3 page)

His fault. He couldn’t be blamed for her chicken pox scars, though, even if Adela would probably have liked to pin them on him, too. The little pink marks were like a dusting of stars scattered across the apples of her cheeks that only accentuated the otherwise porcelain perfection of her skin.

But what female ever saw her flaws as assets? Adela was intelligent and pragmatic, but even the most sensible woman had vanity.

Her next words only confirmed that. “Well, if you’d stop gaping at my bent nose and my pockmarks, I might consider staying. But I’m not one of your scientific studies, you know.”

“I’m not staring.” More lies. He
was
staring. “It’s just that it’s, um, very pleasant to see you.”

Good Lord, I sound like a gauche youth faced with his first woman.

His heart turned over and his hand went limp, freeing her again. Adela
was
his first woman, and he her first man. And whatever difficulties and conflict arose, that simple truth would forever be a bond between them.

“Well, it looks like staring to me.” But Adela was the one staring now. She was gaping at him as if he’d gone stark mad. “And I don’t care for it. I’m looking careworn and as washed out as whey at the moment.” Her mouth pursed in a little moue of displeasure. “Black is the most unflattering of colors, and even though I know Papa wouldn’t mind me abandoning it, thanks to the Old Curmudgeon and his grudges we don’t have funds for colorful gowns at the moment.” She fixed Wilson with an old-fashioned look, as if daring him to comment.

Black
did
suit her. Couldn’t she see that? She looked superb in the inky hue, and was just trying to make him feel guilty. Again. “Don’t be stupid, Della, you look exceptionally fine in black. It gives you a regal and very intriguing quality.” It sounded fanciful and made-up, but by George it was the truth.

“You have a strange way of trying to butter me up, Wilson. It won’t work.” She gave him a stiff look, narrow of eye, but surprisingly, she stayed where she was.

“But I’m not trying to butter you up. It’s the truth. You’re a handsome woman.” Her gleaming walnut-colored eyes widened. He saw her
wanting
to believe. “You’re only being willful in denying it. If you don’t believe me, I’ll prove it to you.”

Catching her again and spinning her toward him, he inclined his head and pressed his lips on hers. As hard as he could.

3

The Most Aggravating Man in the World

The touch of Wilson’s lips rocked Adela in her shoes. Seven years ago he’d done exactly this. Grabbed her and kissed her. Now it felt as if barely a second had passed between that kiss and this one, and just as before, all her resolution melted, lost in a heightened perception so intense it almost pained her.

Her cousin’s mouth was like warm velvet moving against hers, infinitely teasing and tantalizing, and she could smell his shaving lotion and his soap, the notes of each one quite separately distinct. On his lips there was a very faint flavor of something sweet and spicy, plum cake perhaps. It was on his tongue when it traced the seam of her lips.

These impressions crowded into the space of a small, surprised fragment of a second, each one of them enough to rock her heart.

I should push you away. I should push you away and run like the wind. This is all wrong and it will only lead to trouble, no matter what Mama thinks.

Yet with this rationale in her mind, Adela still wound her arms around her outrageous cousin instead of thrusting him away. He was, and always had been, the most aggravating man in the world, but still she parted her lips for him, instead of clamping them shut and grabbing him by the ears to get him off her.

Oh, how she’d yearned for Wilson once, yearned for him with all her young heart and soul. But until a moment or two ago, she’d believed the urge done and dead, crushed by circumstances and Wilson himself. Now, it was patently obvious she’d been completely wrong about that. Her feelings for him were as alive and rambunctious as ever. The taste of his mouth and tongue thrilled her just as it had all those years ago. Sliding her free hand boldly beneath his dressing gown, she clasped his strong, lean back and pressed her body close to his, metaphorically waving adieu to her wits.

Ah! I’m not the only one with feelings alive and well, then....

His cock was hard, and it pressed against the curve of her belly, just beneath her corset, as hot and ungovernable as it had been those seven years ago. In the frozen moment of time that they stood together, his eager flesh seemed to twitch, calling to hers. Even though there were layers and layers of clothing between them.

Adela rocked her hips, the response like breathing. Wilson gasped, making a gruff sound in his throat, countering her action.

What was she doing? This was absurd. Unthinkable. In the space of a few fractious exchanges, he’d unmasked her. Compelled her to reveal her secret self, just by...just by
being Wilson!
Trying to back away, Adela shoved hard, her hand spread against his chest to dislodge him. No more blindly clinging and cleaving like a hysterical trollop. It was madness.

“Wilson! For heaven’s sake, what are you doing? You can’t just grab me and kiss me as if you own me!” He seemed reluctant to let her go. His grip even tightened. But then he succumbed, fingers relaxing their hold on her arms. “Have some decorum. You’re not a rutting dog!” Adela cried, jumping back a step.

“Decorum, eh? I’m not the one who threw her arms around me just now.” Oh, that voice, that damned voice. It was familiar, thrilling, deep, its resonance playing across her senses like a bow across a violin. A narrow smirk curved her cousin’s beautiful mouth with its sharply defined upper lip. “All I was hoping for was a chaste and cousinly peck on the cheek. I didn’t expect to be manhandled.”

You are an insufferable beast who should be thrashed and pummeled.

“It was just shock, cousin dearest. You kissed first and it surprised me. I wasn’t quite in my right mind.” She darted back farther, still clutching her portfolio of sketches. She had to get out of here. But just looking at him made it difficult to leave.

Her distant cousin Wilson Ruffington had always been an eccentric, and even his liaison with a notoriously fashionable French adventuress didn’t appear to have tidied him up very much. In fact, he was more a wild man now. His thick, wavy black hair was longer than when she’d last seen him, curling around his ears and on his collar, tousled and yet shiny and clean.

Which summed him up, really. He was scruffy and fastidious. A puzzle in every possible respect.

Adela compressed her lips. Why, when he was so annoying and often hurtful, did he still make her want to smile? Her fingers just itched for her pencil, and in her mind she was already drawing him. Aggravating or no, he
was
a sight for sore eyes, tall, wiry, intriguing and stylish in a way that other men just weren’t. Flagrantly bohemian, he still affected his dressing gown during the daytime, as he’d done seven years ago at Ruffington Hall. He’d swanned about in his robe then, much to the consternation of the Old Curmudgeon—who’d called him a nancy and told him to brace up—and it seemed he’d not broken the habit. Today’s example was a blue silk paisley confection, and beneath it he wore an equally absurd waistcoat in a different pattern entirely. His trousers were thankfully quite normal, but he wore his white shirt sans neckwear or even a collar, and a little open.

He was a ragamuffin prince, almost a comic opera figure, drenched in a wayward male glamour. Beside him she was the drabbest dark crow.

And yet...and yet the way Wilson was looking at her seemed to say otherwise. His blue-gray eyes, so pale and all-seeing, monitored every detail of her appearance even as she assessed his. And they were hot. Searing, despite their icy color, their devouring heat confirming what she’d felt at his groin.

How could he want her after what he’d said six months ago? And the way he’d scrupulously avoided any chance of being alone with her for seven years? He probably wanted any woman, and Adela had simply blundered unawares into his line of sight. Society talk—which she told herself was tedious and uninteresting, yet followed avidly—said that he and the famous Coraline had parted recently, so her randy cousin was probably just missing his regular quota of carnal pleasures.

Adela narrowed her eyes back at him, imagining her head clamped in place for a formal photograph. Wilson would
not
make her back down and look away.

“I see you haven’t improved your habits of dress yet, cousin.” She raked her glance from his toes to his shaggy head, schooling her face to not show the lustful feelings she couldn’t suppress. Far from a lady in that respect, she must not allow him to perceive her true nature, her dangerous secrets.

“I dress for rationality and comfort, Della, and to please myself. You should leave off your corsets and try it. You’d feel so much better.... Far less prone to fits of temper.”

Ah ha! How little you know, Mr. Clever Boots.

At home, Adela
had
abandoned her corsets. She’d happily embraced a rational form of dress, inspired not only by Mrs. Wilde and other lady aesthetes, but also by some of her free-thinking friends at the Ladies’ Sewing Circle. She’d joined the group just over a year ago, and found it a revelation, in ways she’d never have imagined. The loose, comfortable garments and lighter underclothing affected by some of the ladies were pure bliss after the restrictions of corsetry, and even better, through them she’d been introduced to a dressmaker whose charges were exceptionally reasonable. It was a lot less pricey to run up a lightly shaped “aesthetic” gown than it was to tailor a formal, fitted costume.

Adela was trussed up now only because Mama had insisted, even if it did mean that her only “presentable” gowns were those left over from mourning her father.

“Women wear corsets, Wilson. It’s simply what we do. They’re an aid to good posture and they create an elegant silhouette.” Damn him, why did he provoke her to lie? And behave badly... Why did the way he looked at her make her suddenly long to rip the whole lot off, corsets, petticoats, drawers and all, just to make those silvery eyes pop wide? “And pray tell me what’s so rational about the juxtaposition of
that
waistcoat with
that
dressing gown? It’s sartorial chaos, an assault to the eyes and to the sensibilities of anyone with even the tiniest appreciation of good style.”

“Ouch!” Wilson clutched dramatically at the offending waistcoat, even while his eyes still seemed to pierce her clothing and lasciviously view the body underneath. “But seriously, you don’t need a corset, Della. You have immaculate posture and a perfect silhouette without one...and I should know, having seen it.”

Curse the beast! Why had she ever even hoped that he wouldn’t refer to their “incident”? Their tryst. It had changed her more radically than any other event in her life, but a thousand what-ifs made it far too painful to reflect on often. And she didn’t want to discuss it or refer to it now. Not with the one other person on earth who knew it had ever occurred. Her closest friends from the Sewing Circle, Sofia and Beatrice, were aware that there
had
been a boy, in her youth...but Adela had revealed only the most oblique details. She’d never spoken of what still sang in her flesh....

“Well, I’d be grateful if you’d expunge that sight from your mind, Wilson, peerless as you claim it to be. The incident during which you saw it
never happened.
I thought we agreed to that?” She edged toward the door once more, then faltered, shocked by Wilson’s expression. He’d winced, pain in his eyes and the taut, high lines of his cheekbones. It lasted only an instant, then disappeared again completely, eclipsed by a narrow, wolfish grin.

“I’m not sure I ever agreed to that, Della. But if you say it never happened, then it didn’t...or did it?” Slowly, lasciviously, his tongue touched the center of his lower lip.

Her heart thundering like a runaway locomotive, Adela yearned to escape. But somehow her muscles just wouldn’t work. Just the simple task of opening the door and exiting the room was a mountain to climb.

“Don’t go, Della.” His sharply angled face gentled, the look on it conciliatory if not precisely pleading. “Please stay a little while.”

It was dangerous.
He
was dangerous. He was a colossal hazard to her peace of mind in a dozen different ways...and yet he was as irresistible to her as he’d been those seven years ago.

And retreat was cowardice, too, something she despised.

But what was better, a wise coward or a valiant fool? Despite his blandishments, Wilson’s attention was most definitely straying perilously in the direction of her portfolio now and again, and if he saw its contents, she’d never hear the end of it for the rest of this weekend, at least. What he saw could become a weapon to wield against her almost indefinitely.

Wilson was shrewd. Brilliant, in fact. It wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say he was probably a genius, one of the greatest minds in the empire. Yet even the simplest male thinker would probably be able to put two and two together, based on the evidence of her portfolio and her presence in this room. Her cousin was probably a hundred steps ahead of that already, portfolio as yet unseen.

Why, why, why did I bring it? I should have come only to look, not to compare, then sketched afterward in private. It’s not as if I can’t remember what I’ve seen....

But there were certain drawings reputed to be in the earl’s collection, special items of which pastiches had been requested. It didn’t do to disappoint her more discerning and extravagant customers.

Though Wilson would go to town on her having “customers” at all.

“So, will you stay...or scuttle off?” His pale eyes were narrowed again, as if he’d read everything passing through her mind. “Running away seems to be a habit of yours.”

That did it. Adela’s fingers tightened, ready to wallop him about the head with the portfolio, but in a massive effort of containment, she resisted.

“I will stay. Just for a little while. But only because
I
want to.”

“Capital. Now let’s inspect this toy of yours, shall we? It doesn’t seem to be working very well.” With a swift, tight, insultingly faux little smile, Wilson swept back to the desk and the praxinoscope that had amused her before his arrival, his silk dressing gown fluttering in his wake. He hadn’t forgotten her portfolio, though, that was certain, and in one portion of his devious, extemporizing mind, he was no doubt still speculating on its contents with typical Wilson relish. Adela tightened her grip, just in case.

Watching him, she almost wished she’d powdered her cheeks a little, as Mama had begged her to do. The praxinoscope’s picture strip was a risqué item, especially inflammatory in motion, and with her nemesis beside her a blush rose inevitably in Adela’s face. She braced herself for the equally inevitable ribald comment.

But for Wilson the scientist, and tinkerer with all things mechanical, a close inspection of the mechanism proved irresistible, thankfully. Reaching under the drum, he probed for a moment, then lifted it clear. Removing the picture strip, he set it aside and turned the circular container over to study it closely before shifting his attention to the spindle on which it rode.

“Hmm...most interesting. Not a bad example. But obsolete, of course. The future of moving images is photographic, utilizing perforated celluloid film.” For a moment he seemed apart from her, his mind turning over, sifting through possibilities in his grand passion for technological innovation. “There have been some exciting advances.... It’s an area I’d take a crack at myself if I had the time, but there’s a lot of trial and error involved.” He was still frowning at the spindle, but Adela imagined him picturing other devices, assessing their flaws and strengths in fractions of moments. “I saw the Le Prince exhibit, and the work of Friese-Green...but there are still difficulties. Hand-cranking the camera makes it almost impossible to produce an entirely smooth result. The same with the method of projection.... I suspect the all-conquering Edison will prevail in the end. He mostly does....”

With his lower lip snagged between his teeth, Wilson appeared intent. He seemed completely focused on the job at hand, but who knew what was going on with him? When he set the drum on the desk, he reached into the pocket of his robe. Ah, the ever-present tool kit. She should have known he’d have it with him. Drawing out the leather pouch, small but containing a comprehensive selection of miniature tools, Wilson set to work without a heartbeat’s hesitation. Utilizing several of the tiny appliances, and a few drops from a vial of oil, he made a number of swift but confident adjustments to the contraption’s workings.