Chapter 19 #2
“I’m joining you,” he said. He was trying to sound calm in a way that she could tell was designed to annoy her, but he was clearly practically trembling with irritation, and that satisfied Phoebe to no end.
“I’m going to a consortium for ladies who like to embroider butterflies on screens to be sold to pay for music lessons for orphans,” she lied, gathering every single thing she thought might bore a gentleman and combining it into a single soiree. “The orphans will be performing, obviously.”
“Surely it’s after the orphans’ bedtime,” he observed. This time, he did manage the annoying calm thing. And lo, she was indeed annoyed.
“Do you know what I think?” he asked when she didn’t respond right away. “I think you are going somewhere you ought not. A salacious performance, perhaps?”
This was distressingly astute.
“No,” she scoffed. Even she didn’t think it sounded credible. “I’m going to the flower embroidery thing.”
“I thought it was butterflies,” he said.
It was probably for the best that she could not see his face because if he was enjoying this, she was going to hit him.
And she’d learned the things she knew about defending herself in the more dangerous parts of the city.
She was going to aim for the sensitive spot between his legs that made men drop like bags of rocks.
She’d seen more than a few women use this move against slimy men who didn’t know when to take a step back. It might not be entirely sporting to use such a move against her husband, but Phoebe wasn’t feeling particularly inclined to fairness at the moment.
“Can you just… go away?” she asked, feeling suddenly exhausted by this whole back and forth. She enjoyed verbal sparring as much as the next woman, but, God, it would be nice not to have to fight and sneak and scheme for a while.
Aaron didn’t react at first. Then, he let his arms uncross, his posture becoming more open.
“I was out with my friend,” he said. “Jacob—you saw him at our wedding. He made me buy him dinner, and then he also insisted on choosing the dinner which took us to this little pub in the far end of nowhere.” He paused. “Admittedly, they had good stew.”
Phoebe was nonplussed.
“I—what?”
“You asked where I was,” he said, as if this should be obvious—and maybe it should. She couldn’t seem to get her head on straight around her husband. “That’s where I was. Now. Were you going to a raunchy play?”
Understanding clicked into place.
“You know, it doesn’t count as a gesture of goodwill if you do it to try to strongarm me. You do realize that, don’t you?” she asked.
“Were you?” he asked again.
He clearly would not be deterred.
“Maybe,” she said sullenly.
He leaned slowly forward, the movement causing a stripe of light from outside to illuminate his features just long enough for Phoebe to see the flash of jealousy in his eyes.
She… liked that.
She shouldn’t like it, but she did. There was something about that glint in his expression that soothed the part of her that had worried that she was undesirable, that Aaron had taken to avoiding her because she’d erred in some way that she couldn’t even comprehend.
She shouldn’t crave feeling desirable like this, but she did.
“Phoebe,” he said, and there was a dangerous lilt to his voice that made her breath hitch slightly. Speaking of things she shouldn’t like…
“If you need someone to show you something—” He placed a hand on her knee, and even through all her layers—why were there always so many goddamn layers in the way? Why couldn’t they be doing all this in the summer?—Phoebe could feel the heat of it.
“—you come to me,” he said, low and insistent. Heat coiled in her belly. “I’m your husband. You come to me.”
“I—” She didn’t know how she planned to start that sentence, let alone how she planned to visit it. “You weren’t there.”
She was surprised to note that she, too, felt faintly jealous.
Not of another woman, necessarily—she believed what he said about going out to a pub with his friend—but a foolish part of her was actually faintly jealous of Jacob himself, not because she suspected there was more than friendship between the men, though of course she’d seen such things in her adventures, but because Aaron had hidden from her, his wife, and not from his friend.
Indeed, he wasn’t hiding from Clio as much as he was from her, either.
So, perhaps Phoebe wanted to make him suffer. Just a little.
His fingers twitched against her knee.
“Did you want me here?” he asked, his voice a little less forceful, a little less stern than it had been.
“I… don’t know,” she said, laying her hand on top of his before he could remove it. He flipped his grip so that his palm was facing hers. “I just… I didn’t understand.”
His hand touching her felt like a spell. The carriage became like the gazebo had been—a private place, just for them, a sanctuary against the world outside.
“What didn’t you understand, Phoebe?” he asked, sliding his fingers higher, so he could wrap them around her wrist. That connection grounded her even further.
“We…” For all her daring when it came to exploring the risqué side of Society, Phoebe found herself unable to say the words out loud, not in his private space where the stakes felt so very, very high. “At the ball.”
“We did,” he agreed, turning her hand over and beginning to tug her glove off, one finger at a time. It was very distracting.
“And then we almost kissed again after you got scared that I was out in the snow,” she added.
“I wasn’t scared!” he protested. She arched a brow. “I was… reasonably concerned,” he allowed.
That was still prevaricating, but she would let it slide in favor of her greater point.
“And then,” she said, “you started avoiding me.”
He paused in the middle of pulling the glove loose on her middle finger.
“You thought it was because you… didn’t please me?” He sounded shocked by the very idea, and that also soothed Phoebe’s wounded pride.
“The idea occurred to me,” she said, trying to sound unaffected.
He returned to his task then, tugging gently where needed until the glove slipped loose of her fingers. The air was chilly, but not as cold as she might have expected; the carriage had warmed up with their shared breath.
He turned her hand in his grip again so that he was clutching her fingers in his. Then, he pulled her fist up to his mouth and pressed a kiss on the back of her knuckles.
“I want you a great deal, Phoebe,” he said, his mouth brushing her skin with every word. “I find myself rather surprised by how badly I want you.”
A breath whooshed out of Phoebe in a rush of satisfied pride, understanding, and longing.
“I see,” she said.
He sat up straight again, and for a moment, Phoebe worried that this would be the end of it—that their moment was over, and he would retreat to…
wherever he had gone when he’d been avoiding her.
But he didn’t release her hand; he used the grip, instead, to tug her forward until she, startled into compliance, was pulled into his lap.
Phoebe caught herself with a hand against his chest just before her head crashed into his, but even so, their faces were very close to one another. He did release her hand then, but he used that arm to wrap around her waist, holding her against him, so she found that she did not mind.
“Do you see?” he asked. “Because I don’t. This whole thing… Our marriage… We both resisted it.”
“We did,” Phoebe agreed. The buttons of his overcoat were open, and she slipped her hand between the two sides of the heavy wool. Her fingers landed on the place above his waistcoat; she could feel the thud of his heart against her palm.
“And I… don’t know what to make of you,” he confessed, his free hand coming up to brush a strand of hair out of her face. His touch was featherlight.
“You don’t like not knowing things,” she said.
“Hate it,” he agreed with a laugh. “I’ve lived a life where not knowing gets you killed.”
There was sadness beneath his laughter, and it made Phoebe’s heart ache for the boy that Clio had described to her, the one who had been abused for the mere act of showing kindness to his sister.
She didn’t want to be like that. She didn’t want to hurt him for letting himself be vulnerable and kind.
“There isn’t an enemy here,” she told him softly. “There isn’t anyone in here but you and me.”
His touch on her face became more solid, almost as if he was trying to prove to himself that her words were true, that they really were there together.
She couldn’t think of a better way to prove it, so she kissed him.
It wasn’t like their other kisses. It wasn’t frantic, wasn’t hasty. Their hands didn’t grasp, their tongues didn’t probe—at least not at first.
At first, they just felt one another. She felt the soft press of his mouth, the faint rasp where his stubble was growing against her cheeks. She could smell the soap he’d used to shave earlier; his beard grew in fast, then. She hoarded that information about him, something private just for her.
But slow though it started, their kiss still built heat between them. Soon enough, Phoebe felt her pulse start to quicken, and the warmth in her belly stoked higher.
“Aaron,” she murmured against his mouth.
“Yes?”
She pulled back enough to look at him and relished the little sound of dismay that he made when she did.
“You told me to come to you when I’m looking for something that causes me pleasure,” she said, breathless with nerves and desire. “I’m here now.”
And then their embrace was no longer slow or sweet or patient.
Aaron grasped her around the waist and flipped her over, so she was lying on the cushion of the seat—thank God for dukes and their well-padded carriages—and he was hovering above her.
“Ask and ye shall receive, darling,” he said in a way that was so unrepentantly rakish that Phoebe wondered how she had ever thought him cold.
That impression was redoubled when he dove in for another kiss that stole her breath, senses, and probably part of her soul.