Chapter Nineteen #2
“I was the child of a whore and a duke,” he said. “He got me into the best schools. I learned how to fight. I learned that intelligence will beat brute force, if given enough time. So I became smart and brutal.” He flashed her a wicked grin. “It was the perfect education for a military man.”
“And did your mother give you something? Tenderness perhaps? Love?”
He shook his head, unable to voice even a glib lie. “I had a nurse who cared for me when I was young. What I know of love came from her.”
“And your mother?”
“She taught me about sex. Not her specifically, but I was surrounded by it from my earliest days.”
He expected her to recoil at that. Every modest virgin should be appalled.
Instead, she tilted her head. “I learned from anatomy textbooks and from peppering my brother with questions.” Her expression softened as she looked up at him.
“I am not comparing yours and mine. I expect yours was a lot more…um…experiential than mine.” She sighed. “And I doubt it was all pleasant.”
How well she saw him. How wise to know that sex wasn’t always good, even for a man. “You’re a sheltered young woman,” he said slowly. “How could you know about that?”
“I was sheltered, but Betty was not. And she was very curious.”
She stretched out her legs in front of her, revealing trim ankles and slippered feet. He’d never thought those body parts particularly attractive, but any part of her drew his gaze. And his hunger.
“What have you seen?” he pressed.
“Not as much as you,” she said. “But enough. Boys can be victims as easily as girls. And it might be more of a violation. Mrs. Sundy treated everyone, and she told me stories of things I could not imagine on my own.”
He shook his head. “You should not have been exposed to those things.”
“Why? Because they don’t exist if I don’t know?
How can I help what I cannot even imagine?
” Her head tilted back again, exposing her white neck.
“Do you know that titled women were not so sheltered once upon a time? We were taught how to heal wounds, cook food, and manage entire castles. The lady of the manor knew how to fight with daggers, if not swords. Bows and arrows might be her skill. And she was in charge of everything while her lord was out fighting wars. And yet suddenly, it is 1814 and I’m not supposed to know anything but how to speak French, dance at a ball, and praise a man’s horses.
Or dogs. Or whatever it is he fancies. It’s ridiculous. ”
“Indeed,” he said as he looked at the curve of her cheek and the blush of skin at her bodice. How pure she was. How gloriously perfect. “You were born into the wrong time. You would make an excellent queen.”
“Queen!” she exclaimed with a laugh. “I would hate that. All those people everywhere, having to wear so many layers of clothing, and listening to speech after boring speech about I don’t know what.
That would be like being at a ball every moment of my life.
No, Gabrrriel, I much prefer this.” She straightened with a smile.
There was a surplus of energy in the woman as she shifted from one position to another.
“A baby delivered, a full belly of simple food.” She grabbed the wine flask and drained it.
“And conversation.” She looked to him. “I cannot say half my thoughts to anyone in my set. Nanny and Faye help, but even they maintain a distance because I am the mistress and they, the servants.” She cast him a baleful look.
“There is only you, and I didn’t want to tell you anything.
Yet you followed me, you poked at me, and now you know everything. ”
He watched the way her lips shaped the word you.
If it were a hook, it embedded itself straight into his soul.
He would kiss her, if given half a chance.
He would devour her if he could. The only thing that held him back was his sense of honor.
She was engaged to his superior officer.
She was a noble woman in every sense of the word. And he was a bastard.
“Why don’t you want me to marry Lord Benedict?” she said. “The truth this time.”
Her gaze was level on his, her entire body held poised. He had a list of partial truths to say. Any number of them would have appeased her. Instead, honesty spilled from his lips.
“Because I want you for myself.”
Her eyes widened. At first, she didn’t say a word, but then she whispered her question. “Why?”
One word that revealed a kinship between them that he couldn’t deny.
It told him that she was as lonely as he was, buried beneath layers of duty and responsibility.
He already knew that she valued her own skills, but now he knew that she didn’t think anyone else recognized them.
Not someone of her own set. Not even her own family, who knew so little of her.
“Because I know,” he said. “I know your heart and your passion.” He gestured at the birthing chair, but his gaze didn’t leave her face. “Because a man such as me doesn’t get to touch pure things, and yet we know them. And we prize them.”
He touched her then, a slow caress of his hand down her cheek and to her mouth. He felt her breath heat his fingertips and he trembled with yearning.
“You are everything I want,” he said.
“You are the only one who knows everything about me,” she said. “I have held nothing back from you.” She stretched forward. She came to him, her lips parted and her gaze liquid with desire.
“Have you ever kissed a man?” he asked. Why, why, why would he ask that? He did not want to know her as a sexual creature, and yet he had to know.
“Twice,” she said. “Once as myself, once as Betty. I don’t think they were good kisses. I never wanted more.”
“Then they were terrible kisses.” He curved his fingers beneath her chin then extended them to stroke her neck.
“You must know how to do it right,” she said. “You must have kissed a thousand girls.”
“Not so many as that.”
“Make it a thousand and one,” she whispered. “Please.”
She was begging him to kiss her. Didn’t she know how small a measure it was between a kiss and a babe in her belly? Clearly not, but he did. His blood pounded in his ears and his cock urged him to give her everything she wanted.
“You are engaged to Lord Benedict,” he said.
She nodded, her expression sad. “I do not think he is a passionate man. Not in the way you are.”
So she was perceptive in that way as well. “He is not,” Gabriel rasped. “It doesn’t change the fact that you are his.”
She snorted. “I am not his yet. I am my own self and just once, I should like to experience a good kiss.” She was up on her knees now, her hand stroking up his arm as she begged him. “Please Gabrrrriel. Please teach me. No one will know.”
No one but himself, his honor, and her.
She flashed him an impish smile. “You are sworn to make my dream come true. You said so yourself.”
“That is not what Lord Benedict meant.” He kept saying the man’s name as a way to cool his blood. It didn’t work.
“It is my dream, Gabriel.” She didn’t purr his name this time.
She wasn’t trying to be seductive with her very limited skills in this arena.
She was simply telling him the truth. She longed for someone in the way all women yearned.
She wanted a man who could give her pleasure in the most carnal way.
“One kiss,” he said. He could bend his honor that far. “And then I will take you home.”
“One kiss,” she agreed. “And then I will ask you questions.”
Of course, she would. And of course, he didn’t mind.