Chapter 11
Blaze supposed it had been inevitable.
From the moment he’d seen her in her library.
Hmm.
From that moment.
Inevitable, but that didn’t make it right.
But, here, with her head resting on his chest and the silky strands of her hair sliding through his fingers and her delicious body pressing into his, he was having a hard time conjuring a sense of wrongness.
It might not be right—but it felt right.
She stirred, and he thought this was the moment they would separate.
Another inevitability.
He braced himself for it.
But all she did was nestle her head deeper into his shoulder and exhale a sated breath.
He’d put that sated breath in her body, and he couldn’t help but exult in it.
“If only romance novels could include what we just did.”
She would wish that, wouldn’t she? “I don’t think the world is ready for that.”
“Someday.”
“Probably.”
“I have a question,” she said.
This woman and her questions.
“What’s that?”
“Have you ever thought you’ll get married?”
“Naw.” He snorted. “Have you?”
Her head shook from side to side against his chest. “I thought I wouldn’t. But now, I think I shall.”
Blaze’s stomach sank as suddenly as if shot with lead.
Crikes.
Of course, Viveca would marry.
Of course.
How wasn’t she married already?
Yet there was every cell of his being rejecting that very idea.
“You know,” she said, breezy as she pleased, “you and I could marry.”
The breath stopped in his lungs.
He might never breathe again.
But she just kept talking. “What we did just now, well, it was— Oh, how does one describe the most exquisite thing one has ever experienced? I could keep doing it for the rest of my life.” If silence could ring out, it did now in the heartbeat of time before she added, “With you.”
Slow and deliberate, he pushed to a more upright position, bringing her with him, then setting her arm’s-length away. He needed to be meeting her eyes when he said… “A good tup is no reason to marry somebody.”
He hadn’t convinced her. The determination yet shining in her eyes when she said, “I’ve seen people marry for worse reasons,” told him that much.
“You need to listen carefully.” He was as serious as he’d ever been in his life. “You’re only saying this because you’ve never done it with anyone else. I made you weak at the knees and brought you to climax—”
“Twice.”
“—and no one has ever made your body feel that. But all you’re feeling now is a haze of lust. It will fade.”
“I know myself, Blaze.” Her adamancy was almost compelling him to consider her way of thinking. “The question is, do you?”
The thing was… Until a few weeks ago, he was convinced he’d known himself quite well.
Then he’d met Lady Viveca Calthorp.
And ever since, he’d been on wobbly ground when it came to knowledge of self.
“I’m not the sort of fellow a lady marries.”
“Shouldn’t a lady be able to decide that for herself?”
Blaze saw she was doing it again. This thing she did where she turned a conversation arse over head and made a person think it was their idea to have the conversation in the first place.
“She should,” he said, wary.
“There.”
She spoke the word as if that was the matter settled.
But nothing was settled.
In fact, it was all very unsettled.
“Here’s the thing,” he said, “you’re not the sort I would marry, if I were to marry.”
She blinked. “Why not?” Her eyebrows crinkled. “Aren’t I…desirable?”
He could howl.
“Of course, you’re desirable. The most desirable woman a fellow would ever meet, but that’s not the point. I am not desirable.”
“Oh, I can assure you, Blaze, you are.” There was that glint of determination again. “I’ve never seen women look at a man the way women look at you.”
“There.”
“There?”
“That’s my point made. Those women don’t want to marry me. They want me to tup them silly.”
“I can see their point,” she said, nodding. “You are quite skilled at tupping a woman silly.”
“Viveca, I’m begging you to stop.”
“So, you’re saying you could live without this?”
He wasn’t sure he was saying that at all.
In fact, the very suggestion of living the rest of his life without this was causing a rebellion at the level of cells.
Still, he had to try. So, he went in at a different angle. “You don’t know anything about me.”
“Oh, I know a few things about you.”
“You don’t.” To make his point, he said, “Did you know I nearly had your sister kidnapped?”
“Why would you kidnap Saskia?”
“Not that sister. The other one—Tessa.”
“Oh, Julian wouldn’t have that.”
“Before she was married.”
“And why would you do a thing like that?”
“To give her a little startle.” In fact, it had been terribly awful judgment on his part.
“No one gives Tessa a little startle.”
“I discovered that much.”
“It sounds like you learned your lesson.”
Another angle presented itself. “Is it that I’ve ruined you?”
Her eyebrows crashed together. “Ruined me?”
“Isn’t that what your lot call it?” This angle was making more sense the further he pursued it. “And now we have to marry, is that it?”
“I’m not ruined.”
“You’re not?”
“I feel better than I’ve ever felt in my whole life, and that’s rather the point.”
Yet another angle came to him. “Don’t you want to marry for love?”
She shrugged.
His brow furrowed. Oh, this woman could confound and confuse no end. “I thought all women wanted to marry for love. Like the lady in that book you’re going to publish.”
“Well, that’s fiction, isn’t it? I’m not sure love is all that necessary for marriage. You’re interesting and ever so handsome and ever, ever so good at—”
“Tupping,” he finished for her, feeling oddly dispirited.
Something strange and novel occurred to him.
Perhaps he wanted to hold out and marry for love.
What was this old world coming to?
With sudden urgency, he brought them both to their feet, then reached for his trousers, jerking them up his legs. “It’s time to get you dressed and off to your own bed.”
A vertical line appeared between her eyebrows, but she remained otherwise still. “We’re not finished talking.”
“Oh, that’s about enough talking for one night.” He handed her dress over.
She held the garment slack in her hand. “Are you saying no to my proposal of marriage?”
For the second time tonight, he could howl.
Instead, he asked, “Do you need help dressing? Like most ladies?”
“I’m not like most ladies,” she stated. “I can dress myself.”
With that, she did just that in silence while Blaze went to stand beside the hearth, his gaze studiously fixed on the bronze statuette of the boy and his horse and all the while watching her from the corner of his eye.
Once she’d buttoned the twelfth button of her spencer, he pushed off the mantle, strode across the room, and opened the door.
“Smith,” he shouted, which he knew pained the butler to his mortal, proper soul. “Have my carriage brought ’round.”
Smith appeared at the end of the corridor that led to the kitchen. “Yes, Mr. Jagger.”
“It would be faster to hail a passing hackney cab,” came from behind him.
Blaze turned to find Viveca at the table, packing her manuscript away into her satchel.
That bloody manuscript had a lot to answer for, by his way of thinking.
“I’m up all hours, and my servants know it,” he said. “My carriage will be at the front steps in fewer minutes than it takes the slowest nag to run the Derby.”
Viveca nodded, satchel clutched tight to her bosom and swept past him.
So, this was going to be the end of that, was it?
They stood in the foyer with the front door open, waiting in tetchy silence.
She took a deep breath and released it, then took another, before she turned to fully face him. She met him square in the eye. “You owe me.”
“I don’t owe anyone anything.” A response born of years of reflex—but also true.
“Well, that’s simply not true,” she returned, undeterred in that way belonging only to her. “I gave you a lesson tonight and now you owe me a night out.”
Before he could open his mouth to refute her claim—what they’d done by staying in surely counted for something—the carriage, led by its pair of matched blacks, rolled to a stop and she shouldered past him.
Once inside, she leaned forward, reached for the door handle, and met his gaze.
“Your world, Blaze Jagger. You promised me.”
The carriage was already halfway down the block before his thoughts could march in a straight line.
I’m not like most ladies.
And she wasn’t lying.
But then, he wasn’t sure Lady Viveca Calthorp was capable of lying.
Rattled, that was what he was.
Rattled off his moorings, like a boat in a storm-tossed harbor.
More than her marriage proposal—that hadn’t been real, but a moment’s impulse—it was that strange and novel thought that had come to him with his refusal.
The why of his no.
Don’t you want to marry for love?
He did.
That was what he understood.
Love—a word he’d spoken but a few times in his life, and then only to Mam and Granddad.
The reason he’d never considered marriage was he’d never thought he could fall in love.
And now, well, a different possibility was presenting itself—one equally impossible.
Wasn’t he naught more than an East End rough and she the sister of a duke?
Oh, Blaze Jagger was always one for getting lofty ideas far above himself, wasn’t he?
And for the first time in his life, here was a lofty idea that would just have to stay exactly where it was.
High above and out of reach.