10. Chapter 10 #2
He took a swallow of his drink, letting the sweetness settle on his tongue.
He wasn’t certain if she was speaking of their relationship, but at least he had an answer to his question.
“Thank you for that.” He’d be lying if he said her easy opinion of his brother and Kit hadn’t swayed his quick acceptance of her offer.
She lowered her gaze and didn’t answer as she lifted the glass to lips, appearing somewhat bashful .
“Did you play here as a boy?” she asked a moment later. He followed her gaze to the remnants of a tree house settled into the thick branches of one of the oaks.
“I did. This was my favorite place on the estate. Still is, I suppose.”
“Do you come out here often?”
He nodded. “Every time I come home, I walk here. It’s peaceful and quiet.”
“Do you bring many lady friends here?”
“No.” Though it was occasionally necessary to hide away in Heathercote when his brother wasn’t in residence, David had never brought a woman to this hidden place. She was the only one.
She smiled, but he couldn’t tell what she made of his admission. “It feels like we’re cocooned away from the world.”
It did feel that way. They were in their own little cove here, hidden away, protected from everything.
He wanted to kiss her, he realized. More than anything, he wanted to lay her back on the grass and kiss her breathless.
To spend the afternoon with her out here.
A foolish want. He needed to steer this conversation back to safer territory, a subject he understood.
“Were you able to go to the address I gave you?”
She blinked, momentarily taken aback by the shift in conversation, and her cheeks turned a delightful shade of pink. “Yes.”
Desire hit him again like a bolt of lightning. His mouth went dry and his cock throbbed with a rush of blood. This conversation change had been a terrible idea, but the course was set and he was helpless to steer away. “You obtained an apparatus? A diaphragm?”
She nodded and took another sip of her drink, refusing to meet his gaze.
He’d have her bare. There was no good reason he was obsessed with the idea, with having her with nothing between them, but he’d not been able to get it out of his head ever since he’d conceived of it. “Then you still want me to take you…”—he swallowed—“without a sheath?”
Apparently, he also had a perverse need to hear her say it. He’d long known that he wanted— needed —her to want him as much as he wanted her.
She raised her eyes enough to ask, “Have you kept your part of the agreement?”
“I’ve not been with a woman since the night of the soiree.”
“Since that night? ”
Ah, he saw the confusion. “Earlier in the day,” he clarified.
“ Earlier in the day? ”
“The morning of.” Why was she behaving as if he’d done something egregious?
“The morning of our engagement party?”
When said like that it did sound a bit vulgar. He felt color rise in his own cheeks. “I knew I would see you that night. I needed to…to make things more manageable.” God knows he’d been ready to take her at the dining table anyway. Imagine if he hadn’t indulged beforehand.
Something unidentifiable flickered across her face. She stared at him in a way that he felt deep in his soul. What did it mean? Did she not believe he’d kept himself chaste since then? He supposed his reputation didn’t recommend him, but he wasn’t a rutting beast who couldn’t control himself.
Reaching over, he covered her hand resting on the table with his. “I’ve never lied to you. I wouldn’t lie to you about this. I’ve been chaste as you requested.” He brought her fingers to his lips and pressed a kiss to the backs of them. She drew her hand away and a pang tugged at his heart.
“Really?” She doubted him .
“I’d like to clear up what appears to be a misconception.
I understand I have a reputation, well earned, for pleasurable pursuits.
I don’t deny it. But I approach these things in a forthright manner.
I don’t seduce innocents. I don’t take advantage of the women I’m with.
In fact, most of the women are some years older than me. ”
“Wives and widows.” She’d heard about his preferences.
“Precisely. I choose women who understand what I can offer them. I prefer that we enter our…agreement on equal footing. Both of us understanding what we want and what we don’t want. It makes things…easier.”
“I’d like to believe you.”
“But you can’t?”
“It’s only, if I recall correctly, you did once proposition me, a debutante…not someone’s wife or widow.”
“Fair point,” he said. She had been something of an Achilles’s heel for him ever since he’d first laid eyes on her.
He couldn’t explain it and was terrified to examine it too closely.
“I can’t pretend my fascination with you is anything other than it is.
” He took a breath and continued, his voice a near whisper, “But even in this…I hope we have an understanding.”
She sat up straighter and nodded, businesslike again, but shadows lingered in her eyes. He still didn’t quite know what he saw there but it left him unsettled. He wanted her eyes filled with pleasure and all manner of soft things when she looked upon him.
“I understand,” she said. “I won’t ask for anything other than tonight. I won’t make any demands on you.”
That wasn’t what he meant but it was as good a transition as any to the next part of their afternoon.
“Why don’t we finish up?” Dabbing his mouth with a napkin, he glanced at the house. Another wave of anticipation surged in his stomach. “There are some papers I need to share with you in my study.”
“Papers?”
“The accounts I’ve set up for you.”
Her brows rose in surprise as if she hadn’t considered the need to discuss the inheritance Hathaway had settled on her. “Yes, that would be good.”
They finished up and a maid and footman appeared on the dirt road with a wagon in tow to collect the remnants of their meal.
The pair waited patiently near the phaeton until David and Jenny emerged from the trees.
The servants watched from a respectful distance as David helped her up, but he couldn’t help but notice how the footman’s eyes seemed to cling to Jenny.
She was beautiful. Obviously, David knew that.
She garnered male attention wherever she went.
Only he hadn’t been prepared for how that would make him feel now that she was his wife.
It wasn’t even a feeling he could put a name to.
Proud? Jealous? But those implied an ownership he certainly didn’t feel.
She wasn’t his. They were hardly even married.
But for the legalities, Kit and his brother were more of a married couple than they.
“Are you all right?” Jenny asked after she settled in her seat and caught him staring at her.
“Fine,” he murmured, blinking free of the spell of her face, and climbed in beside her.
She seemed content to be silent on the ride back. He was glad because there was a peculiar pressure in his chest that he could only attribute to the cheese. Perhaps it had turned. He’d have to take care with dinner. Nothing would stand in the way of the night ahead, especially not his health.