Sweet Unrest by Lisa Maxwell Page B

the pond. “You can trust me, you know,” he told her, his voice soft and urgent.
    But she didn’t know. I could sense the doubt that kept equal measure with her hope.
    “I mean you no harm, Armantine. Truly. I could never harm you, ma chère .” His words were serious, but the endearment rolled off his tongue too easily and I could sense her withdraw at its casual use.
    “You may not mean to, but … ” Her voice came out deeper, huskier, with a breathless quality it didn’t have before in the studio. “I must go, monsieur .”
    “Are we back to that, then?” His voice darkened. “Shall you refuse me the privilege of using your name now, as well?” His words were sad, but they were laced through with a coldness born of frustration.
    “No,” she said softly. “You may use my name, but only when we are alone. It’s not proper otherwise.” Her heart ached even as she said the words. She loved the intimacy of being allowed the privilege of calling him Alexandre, but her fear that he might shatter her fragile world held her back.
    “Then we shall be alone again, yes?” He took her hand and covered it with his own. “You will promise me that?”
    I willed her to accept him even as I felt her withdrawing. “I can’t make such a promise,” she whispered. “I should never have come here.” She started to gather the charcoal pencils that had fallen into the grass near her skirts and placed them, along with sketches she’d made of the pond and of him, into her bag. They were, she realized with a sudden certainty, the only thing she’d ever really have of him.
    “I shouldn’t be here.” She didn’t look at him as she stood up. “Can you take me back?”
    “Why?” He rose to his feet and grasped her arms, the word coming out dangerous, low, and with a thread of pain running through it.
    Armantine paused, considering her worlds carefully. “I have nothing to offer you.” She met his eyes. “Except what I cannot. What I will not.”
    His brows drew together as he puzzled out the meaning of her words, and then he seemed to understand. His frustration seemed to roll off of him in dangerous waves. “You are worth far more than you suggest, Armantine. You mean much more to me than what you suggest.” He searched her face for some affirmation, and the anger in his eyes eased to disappointment. “I thought you understood that?”
    “What is there to understand?” Her voice was gentle, but it carried in it all of the pain of her regret. At the sound of it, he eased his grasp on her.
    “I am not toying with you, mon coeur ,” he murmured. Releasing one of her arms, he traced the line of her jaw with a single fingertip. “I want you,” he told her as his fingertip followed the line of her throat, down across her collarbone until he reached edge of the scooped neckline of her dress. “I will not lie to you, love. Not a moment goes by that I do not think of you. Of your beauty and your fire and the light you have brought into my life.” His finger followed the neckline of her dress, dipping down to the soft swell of her breasts and then back up, sending little frissons of heat and awareness across her skin. “Not a moment passes that I do not think of us. Of our future. Of what it would be like to have you as my own,” he whispered.
    “I know you don’t mean to toy with me, Alexandre.” She said his name softly, her voice hitching with desire even as she pulled away. “But there is no future for this. For what is between us.”
    “You are wrong,” he told her, his voice thick with meaning.
    “I wish I were.” She smiled sadly. “I wish I could imagine the future as you do, but I know otherwise.” Reaching up, she brushed a stray lock of hair back from his smooth forehead. She knew immediately it was a mistake and started to draw back, but he grasped her wrist and covered her slim hand with his own.
    “Can you not learn to imagine it?”
    She ruthlessly pressed down the hope she felt at his