Chapter 34
“Come here,” Gervaise said as soon had both washed and dressed for bed. He was clad in his nightshirt and she in her voluminous nightgown.
Caroline scooted over and he hugged her close beneath the covers. “Cold?” she asked.
He kissed her brow. This constant craving to hold her was damnably inconvenient but at least he could indulge it at bedtime. He tangled his feet with hers and found hers still encased in socks. “I want to feel your toes,” he admitted huskily.
“My toes?” She sounded startled, as well she might. It was an odd request.
“Yes.”
When she tried free herself of his hold, he perversely tightened his grip on her. “I thought you wanted me to take my socks off,” she exclaimed with a gurgle of laughter.
“No. I want to remove them.” Fuck, why was he so excited about the idea of removing her woolly socks? This spell of celibacy was affecting him strangely. The socks weren’t even hers; they were his!
“Feel free,” she answered. “Though you will be responsible for the warming of them, and I don’t want to hear any complaints about how cold they feel against your ankles.”
He smiled against her hair. “Now you sound like a governess again. Authoritarian.”
“I think you must have a tendresse for governesses,” she mused. “You never had one of your own so it must be a new development. Tell me, how did you find Miss Pinson when you stayed at Vance Park?”
“Miss Pinson?” he echoed, thinking of his godson’s diminutive governess. “An admirable woman, though she would not be my ideal at all. I doubt she’s ever scolded Teddy a day in his life.”
“So, it is a stern governess you desire?” she mused. “A scolding governess with a secret life.”
“A secret life?” he repeated, intrigued.
“Yes, for she cannot be trusted with the men of the house, I remember you saying so.”
He gave a short laugh. “Did I?”
“Yes,” she answered promptly. “You did.”
“Hmmm. No doubt because of that secret prettiness of yours,” he mused.
“Only a select few can detect it at first. Teddy saw it,” he admitted grudgingly.
“For all my taste and discernment, I only became aware of it that night you were out of your mind on laudanum. Then it wasn’t a secret anymore, but blazingly apparent. ”
She caught her breath. “What do you mean?”
He hesitated. “It blazed forth that night. You weren’t just pretty, you were…stunning.” His thumb stroked over her jaw. “Eyes bright, cheeks red, you looked…”
“Like a maenad?” she suggested when his words fell short.
“Exactly. That is how Bailey is painting you. He conjures it forth from artistic imagination, but I have seen it with my own eyes. Soon, everyone will see you as I did on that terrace. It makes me wildly jealous but also, surprisingly…”
“Surprisingly what?” she prompted when he fell silent.
“I want to show you off,” he said. “To display you to all and sundry so they catch their breath and gnash their teeth that you belong to another. To me.” His fingertip traced over her shoulder blades, around and around in a figure of eight.
“Exclusivity has never really been a thing for me before.” Even he could hear the baffled tone to his voice. “I’ve never craved it or required it. But with you… I don’t know. It’s just different.” Caroline lay silent, probably turning over his strange and conflicted thoughts.
“I should have seen it before that night,” he said abruptly. “If I had seen it sooner… Well, things would have fallen into place in a more orderly fashion.”
She lifted her head. “Seen what? My secret prettiness?”
“Yes. It’s so…delicate and elusive. I see it now in everything you do.”
She was quiet for a long moment. Then she asked, “What would have been different if you had?”
He shrugged. “How I conducted myself, of course.” She made a noise of skepticism against his shoulder. “You don’t believe me?”
“No. I remember you at that Christmas party.”
He felt a twinge of annoyance. “But I would not have been so dismissive if I had noticed it then.”
“I don’t think delicate charm stands out much in a glittering ballroom,” she said frankly. “Not when it’s stood next to the likes of bold Blanche. Even Edgar stood up with her twice.”
“Did I dance with her that night?” He genuinely could not recall.
“Yes, but don’t feel badly about it,” she said, patting his chest. “I have always had a tendency to fade into the background in such settings.”
He frowned. “Nonsense,” he said in clipped tones. “Young Vance noticed you, did he not?”
“Yes, but he is a remarkable child.”
Gervaise experienced a wave of terrible and overwhelming jealousy so great that he could not speak for a moment. “You love him,” he heard himself say accusingly.
“I—well, yes,” she said with some surprise. “I suppose I do.”
He was quiet. He was not jealous of his ten-year-old godson. That would be fucking ridiculous! I want you to love me, he thought, the words so clear in his mind that for one horrifying moment he actually thought he had voiced them aloud. Instead, he merely persisted, “It would have been different.”
“You would have pursued me? Flirted with me?” she asked doubtfully.
“Why not?”
“I just can’t imagine it, that’s all.”
“Then don’t. Allow me to demonstrate.”
“How?”
“We’ll imagine we are back at the Vance Christmas party. Right now.”
She lifted her head. “Are we getting out of bed for this?” She did not sound terribly enthusiastic at the prospect, he noticed.
“No, it’s too cold. We’ll just pretend we are vertical.”
Caroline gave another spurt of laughter. “What are we doing?” she asked curiously. “At the ball, I mean.”
“I am stood next to the punchbowl, casting my jaded glance over Penarth’s finest.”
“You should probably remove your arm from my waist in that case,” she pointed out.
He huffed but dragged his arm away all the same. “What about you?”
“I am stood next to a potted fern, wishing someone would ask me to dance.”
Me, thought Gervaise. She had secretly wanted to dance with him. “Tell me what you are wearing.”
“Certainly, I am wearing my best dress. It is of pale green silk with a white floral pattern and a bertha lace collar.”
Gervaise grimaced. He could think of no compliment to pay such a gown. “Your hair?”
“It is dressed as Mama likes it,” Caroline replied. “Arranged high on my head with fussy ringlets before my ears and a profusion of ribbon. It…well, it does not really suit me,” she admitted regretfully.
“Miss Halperston,” Gervaise said smoothly. “Despite your frankly hideous ensemble, your secret prettiness has recently come to my attention, and I feel I must act upon it, immediately.”
Caroline’s eyebrows rose. “Indeed, my lord? And how did such a thing come to your attention, might I enquire?”
“Let us not concern ourselves with minor details,” he said briskly. He certainly was not going to bring that little beast Teddy up at this juncture! “Suffice to say that now I have noticed it, it fascinates me and attracts me to an uncommon degree.”
“I see. Despite the hideousness of my ensemble?”
“That hardly signifies, for I mean to get you out of it as soon as possible.”
“Lord Atherton! How dare you speak to me, a gently reared maiden, thus! I am shocked, I am—”
“Yes, yes, I am sure.” He placed a hand back on her waist, caressing her there. “Let us discuss this further, in a less public spot.”
“Such as?” she asked, sounding curious. He smiled, realizing she had not demanded he unhand her.
“I am steering you, even now, behind a heavy velvet curtain,” he whispered.
“Am I under the influence of laudanum?” she asked.
“No.”
“Then I wouldn’t have gone with you.” She sounded so regretful that he caught his breath.
“Why would you not?”
“Because I am a coward.”
“No, you are not. A coward would not have fled her home and run away with me to London.”
“But…”
“Allow me to persuade you.”
“We could pretend I am Miss Pomfrey,” she said as if suddenly inspired. “She would certainly accompany you behind any curtain.”
“No, I do not want Miss Pomfrey,” he said firmly, reaching for her hand. “Only you.”
Her eyes grew wide. “Very well,” she said, her breathing hitching. “Persuade me, then. If you… If you wanted to tell me some more about how fascinated and attracted you are to me, then I would not stop you,” she suggested in a rush.
He lifted her hand to his mouth, kissing her palm. “Come with me behind the curtain and I will tell you all,” he promised softly.
Her expression wavered. “This curtain. Is it the dark blue velvet one with the gold fringe?”
What? Though familiar with Vance Park he had never made an inventory of its furnishings and fixtures. “The very one,” he improvised.
“Meet me there in five minutes.” She lifted the bedsheet over her head.
Gervaise followed immediately. “Five minutes have passed,” he said, planting his hands on the mattress beside her shoulders, leaning in close and looming over her. “And now I must ask if you, Miss Halperston, have ever been kissed.”
“At the Christmas party? Well, no,” she admitted regretfully. “We have already established, have we not, that I have been very deprived in life.”
“We have established nothing,” he reminded her huskily. “Save that you are an errant flirt.”
She looked more intrigued than indignant. “How did you make that out?”
“A modest maiden would not be behind this curtain with me right now.”
“You are right,” she agreed. “And I should tell you that very soon I will be kissed in the corridor of a common inn, so I am on the cusp of some experience, however trifling.”
A smile curved Gervaise’s lips. “Well, then I don’t need to worry about shocking you too unduly, do I?”
“I thought we had agreed already that I am quite unshockable.”
He brushed his lips across her jaw. “You keep forgetting, Caroline, that we met mere moments ago near the punch bowl.”
She drew in a shaky breath. “Oh, yes. Well, in that case, I should warn you, my lord, that it takes a good deal to shock me.”
“I don’t know about that, my dear Miss Halperston. I fear you go a little far.”
“Yes, people do say that about me, sometimes,” she sighed, turning her head so he could kiss down the other side of her face.
“Do they indeed?”
“Yes, they say, Miss Halperston, you go too far. You need to rein it in.”
He smiled against her cheek. “Rein what in exactly?”
“My wild woman ways, of course.”
He gave a choked laugh. “Don’t rein them in on my account.”