Chapter Eight Mary Beth’s Choice #2
“I am trying not to say the wrong thing because you have just given me exactly what I asked for.”
“That has never stopped you before.”
“No. It may be a sign of declining health.”
She laughed, and the tension broke just enough for him to cross the space between them.
His hand came to her face, warm and rough along her cheek.
“Mary Beth.”
“Yes.”
“I am not asking you for vows you cannot make.”
“I know.”
“And I am not promising I will always be reasonable.”
“I would consider that suspicious.”
“But if you ask me to stay beyond the work, I will not pretend I do not want to.”
Her breath caught despite herself.
“Good,” she said. “Because I am asking.”
He kissed her.
There was no bridge, no rain, no jealousy, no locked door after midnight. Morning light lay across the plans table. Men worked somewhere beyond the yard. A cart rattled over stone outside.
Mary Beth kissed him back with all of it present.
When Ambrose drew away, his forehead rested against hers.
“Tonight,” she said.
He exhaled slowly. “Are you certain?”
“I was certain about wanting you two nights ago. I am certain now about not pretending tomorrow is someone else’s problem.”
His thumb moved once along her cheek.
“Tonight, then.”
They spent the rest of the day behaving with such determined professionalism that Mary Beth nearly admired them.
She nearly managed it.
Ambrose supervised the opening of the western cut.
Mary Beth met with two tenants whose cattle would need temporary pasture.
A quarry cart lost a wheel near the lower track, delaying the first full load of stone by an hour.
At four, Mary Beth and Ambrose argued over whether a damaged culvert could wait until the retaining wall was stable.
Anyone watching them would have seen an estate owner and an engineer disagreeing about priorities.
Twice during the afternoon she caught Ambrose watching her when he thought her attention was elsewhere.
Neither time did he smile. The absence of flirtation was somehow more intimate than a grin would have been.
They had agreed upon the night; now they had to carry that knowledge through hours of ordinary work, surrounded by men with shovels, ledgers requiring signatures, and tenants who deserved decisions unclouded by private anticipation.
Mary Beth found the discipline oddly satisfying.
Desire had too often arrived in her life as an escape from duty, something claimed after the doors closed and the useful part of the day was finished.
With Ambrose, wanting existed beside work instead of replacing it.
He could argue with her about the culvert at four and still make her pulse change simply by taking the pencil from her hand at four-ten. Neither truth canceled the other.
When the final quarry wagon creaked into the yard shortly before six, Ambrose walked beside it with one hand on the rear wheel, checking the load over rough ground.
Mary Beth stood beneath the arch and watched him speak to the driver, then crouch to examine a cracked block himself rather than ordering another man to do it.
The sight gave her a small, unreasonable rush of certainty.
She had not chosen him because society disliked the choice.
She had chosen him because she liked the man when no one was watching.
Mary Beth saw the man who would come to her room after the house slept.
That knowledge transformed every ordinary sentence.
At dinner she ate almost nothing.
At nine she dismissed her maid earlier than usual and sat before the bedroom fire in a loose ivory nightdress with a dark robe over it.
She did not light the lamps beyond the two nearest the hearth.
The room felt familiar and strangely altered, as though expectation had shifted the furniture without moving anything.
At half past ten, there was one quiet knock at the inner sitting-room door.
Mary Beth opened it herself.
Ambrose stood outside in shirtsleeves and waistcoat, his coat left somewhere else in the house. His hair was still damp from washing. He had shaved.
The effort touched her more than it should have.
“You came,” she said.
“You asked me to.”
She stepped aside.
Ambrose entered. Mary Beth closed the door and turned the key.
This time neither of them pretended the lock was accidental.
For a moment they simply stood there.
Mary Beth had known men before. She had known desire without fear and pleasure without apology. She had thought experience would make this easy.
Instead, Ambrose’s stillness unnerved her because nothing in it suggested haste. He was not waiting for access to her body. He was waiting for her.
“You are thinking too loudly,” he said.
“A terrible habit.”
“Should I be worried?”
“Probably.”
She crossed the room and put her hands on his waistcoat.
“I want you here.”
“I know.”
“I want you in my bed.”
His eyes darkened.
“I know that too.”
“Then stop being so patient.”
“That,” Ambrose said, “I can do.”
He kissed her hard enough to erase the last of the distance.
Mary Beth had expected hunger. She had not expected tenderness to arrive with it.
Ambrose touched her as though confidence did not cancel care. He untied her robe and let it fall from her shoulders, then paused when she stood before him in the thin nightdress. His gaze moved over her without disguise.
“Do not become reverent,” she murmured.
“I am not reverent.”
“You are staring.”
“I am appreciating the consequences of several poor decisions.”
She smiled against his mouth. “Whose?”
“Mine, certainly.”
Mary Beth pulled his waistcoat open.
The humor did not survive long.
Clothing became an inconvenience dealt with between kisses.
His hands, roughened by years of work that money had not quite erased, were careful where care mattered and certain everywhere else.
Mary Beth guided him when she wanted more, stopped him once only to kiss the scar near his shoulder that she had not known existed, and laughed softly when he seemed surprised by the gesture.
“Railway girder,” he said.
“I was not asking for an engineering report.”
“Habit.”
“Unbearable already.”
“You were warned.”
When they reached the bed, Ambrose paused again.
The pause had nothing to do with reluctance; he was giving her the choice again.
“Mary Beth.”
She understood the question in her name.
“Yes.”
“Say it because you want to.”
She touched his face.