Chapter 15 #2
It was from the Marlow estate steward. The wheat tithe miscalculation she had been wrestling with for weeks had finally revealed its source—a clerk who had been quietly skimming from the accounts for the better part of two years.
The amounts were not enormous, but accumulated over time, they were significant enough to explain several of the shortfalls that had been keeping her up at night.
“How did you come by this?” she asked.
“I had my own man look at the accounts,” he said. “I hope that does not offend you. I did not intend to interfere; I simply wanted to help.”
“No... It does not offend me,” she said carefully. “It is... I am grateful. This has been troubling me for some time.”
“I know,” he said. “I could tell.”
She looked back down at the letter. She needed somewhere to rest her eyes that was not his face.
“The clerk will need to be dismissed and the matter referred to a solicitor,” she said, because practicality was the safest ground available to her at that moment. “I will write to the steward this afternoon.”
“We will write to him,” Tristan said. “Together. I know these accounts better than you might think. I have been reading your notes.”
She was not accustomed to those words being directed at her regarding her family’s disasters.
She had always been the one who dealt with things alone.
The idea that someone might simply sit across a table from her and say we as if it were the most natural thing in the world was so entirely foreign to her experience that she did not immediately know what to do with it.
“Well, I will leave you to...” He gestured vaguely at the letter, the tea set, the morning room in general. “All of this.”
“Of course,” Cathy said.
He took a step toward the door. Then he stopped and turned back, as if he had remembered something. He had not, apparently, because he simply looked at her for a moment with an expression she could not read, opened his mouth, and closed it again.
“The curls,” he said finally.
She blinked. “I beg your pardon?”
“They suit you,” he said. Then, as if alarmed by his own words, he turned and walked with great purpose toward the door.
She told herself her cheeks were not burning.
They were absolutely burning.
Tristan closed his study door and leaned against it hard enough that the latch clicked twice.
He needed a moment.
You are a grown man, he told himself. You have seduced several women. You cannot have been undone by a woman who got her finger caught in her own hair.
He pushed off the door and crossed to his desk, but standing behind it was not much better than standing at the door.
He was uncomfortably, inconveniently, undeniably aroused, and his cock was not interested in the distinction between a polished seductress and a woman who had just spilled tea on herself while attempting to look alluring over a teapot.
This is ridiculous.
He tried to adjust his aching cock and dropped into his chair.
The lavender silk had been the first problem.
He had walked through that door, and his brain had managed approximately half a coherent thought before his body had registered the neckline and simply stopped cooperating.
He had known within seconds what she was attempting.
The too-bright rouge, the curls, it had been clear to him that his wife was up to something.
However, this had not helped his lustful thoughts about her.
Knowing that she is doing it deliberately should make you immune to it.
He had been seduced by women who did it for a living. Women with perfected smiles and calculated glances who knew exactly which angle caught the light best. He had appreciated it and felt nothing that lasted past the next morning.
Cathy had tilted her neck and nearly given herself a medical complaint, and he had wanted to put his mouth there.
He shifted in his chair. The problem was that he could not stop replaying the moment she had leaned over the teapot.
The neckline from that angle and how her breasts had almost spilled had the blood roaring in his veins.
The way she had deliberately not looked away, holding his gaze right up until she misjudged the pour and soaked the doily, and said blast in her normal voice, had him enchanted.
He had nearly laughed. He had also nearly reached across the table. Oh, how he had longed to pin her on the couch, rip her corset in half, and bury his cock so deep inside her that she would only remember his name.
What is wrong with you?
He pressed his fist against his mouth and stared at the ceiling.
She had gotten her finger stuck in her hair, and he had wanted to pin her against the nearest flat surface.
He was still not over the fact that she had grasped him so firmly after their accidental night together, but she had made it clear to him that she wanted nothing to do with him in that regard.
She had told him that she had felt nothing about him, so what was that guileless act of seduction about? Worse, why was it working so badly?
He stood up because sitting was not helping either. He paced to the window. The cold glass was somewhat soothing. He briefly pressed his forehead against it and thought about his options.
He could go back through that door, or he could remain in his study and release his pent-up frustration. He could also try going to the gardens and chopping wood again.
Of all his options, he knew he could not go back through that door, because if he went back through that door, he was going to do something about the fact that his wife had spent the last hour trying to seduce him, and she was not ready for what that looked like from his end.
He had told her what he wanted. He was going to wait until she came to him without the borrowed gestures and the rehearsed angles, until it was just her, and he was going to be patient about it.
Starting after you stop thinking about your wife’s breasts.