Chapter Ten Jealousy #2
What angered her now was not that Ambrose had heard the story. Everyone heard stories. It was that for one moment he had allowed a stranger’s version of Mary Beth Blackthorn to stand beside his own and compete with it.
She left the glasshouse and headed for the wall.
She found him near the north wall with two of his men, checking the line of the new facing. He saw her and returned immediately to the level in his hands.
Mary Beth did not interrupt.
Instead she walked the length of the works.
The new drain ran deeper than the old one, bedded in stone with room for water to move even after years of silt.
Behind the wall, Ambrose had insisted upon coarse rubble and open channels rather than the packed clay that had trapped pressure before.
The rebuilt section would not merely resemble the old wall. It would work.
That, she thought, was his nature.
He disliked surfaces that concealed bad structure.
Perhaps that was why her past unsettled him now. He had believed he understood the foundation beneath them. Then a careless sentence from a laborer had made him fear there was another hidden channel he had failed to see.
The explanation did not excuse him.
It did, inconveniently, make him human.
One of the workmen called to Ambrose. He answered, bent over the line, and adjusted the level.
Mary Beth watched his hands.
She remembered those hands on her body, careful when care was needed, rougher when she asked for it. She remembered waking beneath the weight of his arm and nearly laughing while a maid stood outside the door.
Anger and desire had no business occupying the same body so comfortably.
Yet there they were.
Ambrose straightened.
This time he came to her.
“The rebuilt section will reach the old sycamore by Thursday,” he said.
“You need not report every foot of progress because we argued.”
“I know.”
“There is that phrase again.”
“I seem to be relying on it heavily today.”
She almost smiled.
He saw that she almost smiled.
Neither of them mentioned it.
“Will you dine with me tonight?” he asked.
“That depends.”
“On whether I intend to question the footmen?”
“Or the cook. There was a rumor about a pastry once.”
His eyes closed briefly.
“I deserved that.”
“Yes.”
“Dinner?”
Mary Beth considered making him wait.
Then she remembered that pride was useful only when it protected something worth keeping.
“The morning room. Eight o’clock.”
“Thank you.”
“Do not thank me yet.”
“I am beginning to understand that.”
At eight, Ambrose arrived in a dark coat and clean shirt, his hair still damp from washing. He had shaved. Mary Beth noticed because she had kissed his face often enough to know exactly how it felt by evening.
They ate roast chicken, potatoes, and the first acceptable pears the gardener had managed to save.
For ten minutes they discussed the weather.
For another five they discussed the wall.
Mary Beth finally set down her fork.
“This is unbearable.”
“Agreed.”
“Then speak.”
Ambrose put his wineglass aside.
“I was jealous.”
“We established that before breakfast.”
“I am not trying to excuse it.”
She waited.
He leaned back slightly, as though he needed room to arrange the truth.
“When you told me about the gamekeeper, I meant what I said. I still mean it. You broke no promise. You owed me nothing then because you did not know me. You owe me no confession now simply because we share a bed.”
Mary Beth said nothing.
“But there is a part of me,” he continued, “that has begun wanting things I have not earned the right to want.”
Her pulse changed.
“Such as?”
His gaze held hers.
“To know where I stand with you. To be the man you reach for without wondering whether there is another. To walk into a room and not have to remember that half the county believes someone else has already been there.”
Mary Beth’s first response was anger.
Then she heard the last sentence again. His discomfort was not really about another man having been there; it was about half the county believing it could claim knowledge of her.
“You are ashamed of me,” she said quietly.
Ambrose’s chair scraped back.
“No.”
He crossed the small distance between them and crouched beside her chair rather than tower over her.
“No, Mary Beth. That is the one thing I need you to understand. I am not ashamed of you. I am ashamed of what I did this morning.”
She studied his face.
“Then tell me what frightened you. Not the respectable answer.”
He was silent long enough that she knew the next words would cost him something.
“It is not the thought of another man touching you.”
Mary Beth’s breath caught.
“I dislike the thought,” he added. “I am not a saint. But that is not the fear.”
“What is?”
His hand settled on the edge of her chair, close to hers but not covering it.
“Wanting you to belong with me when I have no right to ask you to belong to anyone.”
The room became very still.
Mary Beth had been desired by men before.
She had been pursued, judged, whispered about, offered protection, offered money, offered marriage on terms that sounded suspiciously like surrender.
No man had ever admitted that his desire frightened him because he feared turning it into a claim.
“Ambrose.”
“I know how that sounds.”
“Do you?”
“Possessive.”
“A little.”
“Primitive.”
“Very.”
“I am not proud of it.”
“That may be why I am not throwing you out.”
His mouth moved.
Mary Beth reached for his hand.
The relief in his face was so immediate that her remaining anger shifted.
It did not vanish. She did not want it to vanish. Some things should leave a mark so they were not repeated.
“If you ever ask me to account for every man who has touched me,” she said, “I will make the list longer out of spite.”
Ambrose laughed once, softly.
“Understood.”
“If you hear a rumor, ask yourself first whether the man repeating it has earned more of your trust than I have.”
His amusement disappeared.
“He has not.”
“Then behave accordingly.”
“I will.”
Mary Beth touched his cheek.
He turned his face into her palm, and the gesture undid something in her.
She bent and kissed him.
The kiss began as forgiveness and became something less civilized almost at once.
Ambrose rose, drawing her with him. Mary Beth’s chair pushed backward across the rug. His hands found her waist, then stopped there, holding rather than taking.
She could feel the restraint in him.
“You may touch me,” she whispered against his mouth.
“I am trying not to confuse an apology with an opportunity.”
“Then allow me to clarify.”
She kissed him again, harder.
His restraint lasted another heartbeat.
Ambrose’s hand slid up her back, pulling her close enough that she felt the heat of him through two layers of clothing. Mary Beth caught his lower lip between hers and heard the rough sound he made.
It pleased her far too much.
“Still jealous?” she asked.
“Terribly.”
She drew back.
He smiled before she could be offended.
“But it is my problem,” he said. “Not your sentence.”
“Better.”
“I am learning.”
“Slowly.”
“You are a demanding instructor.”
“You hired yourself into difficult work.”
“I was hired for a wall.”
“And yet here you are.”
He kissed the corner of her mouth.
The humor softened the remaining sharpness between them, but desire stayed. It moved beneath every word now, familiar enough not to frighten her and dangerous enough that perhaps it should.
Mary Beth took his hand.
“Come upstairs.”
Ambrose did not move.
“Are you certain?”
She gave him a level stare.
“If you ask me that every time, I shall eventually become offended.”
“I can live with offending you. I cannot live with assuming.”
Her irritation dissolved.
“Yes,” she said. “I am certain.”
They left the morning room separately.
Mary Beth went first, carrying a candle. Ambrose followed five minutes later by the back stair, the route they had begun using only after the household settled.
In her rooms, the argument returned once, unexpectedly, when he touched the ribbon at her shoulder and paused.
“What?” she asked.
“Nothing.”
“We are not doing that again.”
He smiled faintly.
“I was thinking that the county can invent whatever it likes. I know where I am tonight.”
Mary Beth untied the ribbon herself.
“Then remember it.”
He did.
Later, with the candles burned low and rain beginning softly against the windows, Mary Beth lay with her head on Ambrose’s chest.
His fingers moved through her hair.
“I frightened myself today,” he said.
“With jealousy?”
“With how much I cared about being jealous.”
She traced the old scar near his shoulder.
“That is an inconvenient distinction.”
“Most true ones are.”
Mary Beth was quiet.
Then she said, “I was jealous of Lady Sablehurst’s dining room.”
Ambrose’s fingers stopped.
“The room?”
“What it represented. Ease. Entry. No one whispering when I crossed a threshold.”
He resumed stroking her hair.
“You told me.”
“Not all of it. I liked being welcomed. More than I wanted to like it.”
“That does not offend me.”
“It should not.”
“I am having a day of discovering the distance between should and does.”
Mary Beth lifted her head.
“Does it offend you?”
“No. It frightens me a little.”
She waited.
“Because Benedict can offer you a life I cannot.”
“And you can offer me one he cannot.”
Ambrose went quiet beneath her hand.
Mary Beth settled her head back against him before he could ask what she meant. She was not ready to name it yet.
Since the gardener rumor had returned, anger had kept her too busy to notice what frightened her most.
Ambrose had begun to matter in every part of her life, including the parts she had once believed safest when kept separate.
Outside, water ran steadily through the new drain beneath the north field. Ambrose’s breathing slowed beneath her ear.
Mary Beth stayed where she was, annoyed by how much she wanted the evening not to end. Tomorrow there would be pears, invoices, stone, and probably another rumor. Tonight, she let him hold her.