Chapter Thirteen
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
“YOU DID NOT ,” Nothshire said in the darkness, his voice hard. “You just climbed into my bed and woke me and I was not even in my right mind when you started… I thought I was dreaming.”
Patience shrank from him, steeling herself instinctively. Then, she realized she was waiting for a blow, and she relaxed. He’s not going to hit me, she thought, and she knew that was true.
She felt more sober now, though. Maybe it was the aftershock of the pleasure she’d found. She couldn’t believe she’d done that. If she hadn’t gotten distracted by that, she could have gotten him to put it inside her, and she hadn’t even really tried. She’d just rubbed herself into his body like a wanton thing. What was wrong with her?
“Apologies,” said Nothshire. “This is my fault. I’ve taken advantage of you here, and you’re too drunk to know what you’re doing.”
“I’m not,” she said. “I know what I’m doing. I came here to get you to give me a child.”
“Yes, you said that,” he said. “But that’s ridiculous.”
“Is it?” She shrugged. “I doubt you’d mind getting it on me, in the end. You seemed to be enjoying having a go at my leg, didn’t you?”
He groaned.
“I enjoyed it, too,” she said with a sigh. She had not expected that. She hadn’t expected to enjoy anything about it at all. He was different than Balley in a number of ways, wasn’t he? Balley had always been rough with her. He’d mauled her breasts and tweaked her nipples, laughing when she cringed or cried out. This had been so very lushly different, Nothshire’s hands reverent and soft against her, just the barest of teasing. It had been quite nice.
“You say that now,” said Nothshire, “but you won’t in the morning when you wake. You will see it all very differently then, I assure you. You will be appalled. With me. With yourself. With the amount of port you drank.”
She probed the place on her shift that was soiled from the wet spot of his spend. She should probably mind that was against her skin, shouldn’t she? She sort of liked it, though, which was positively disgusting. She touched it gingerly with one finger. “I don’t wish you to talk like this. I wish you to simply get your prick hard again. Do you think you could?”
He let out a noisy breath. “All right, my lady, you need to go back to your bedchamber now,” he said gruffly.
“Because you couldn’t?” she said. “What if we light a lamp very low and I take everything off. I understand that men find it arousing to look upon women’s bare bodies, and you were sort of inspired at touching my bosom before, so perhaps you’d find that interesting to look at—”
“Stop.” He sat up next to her. His gaze went to her finger, and he watched her rubbing at the wet spot on her shift. He swallowed visibly, his Adam’s apple bobbing in his throat.
She watched as his prick stood straight up inside his smallclothes. They were soiled too, of course. “There,” she whispered. “Now, you put it inside me like it’s supposed to work.”
“No.” His voice was a rasp.
She looked up at him. “But why not?”
He reached down and seized her by the wrist, stopping her from touching the wet part of her shift. “Stop that,” he said in an insubstantial voice. “That’s… uncleanly for you to do that.”
“ You’re the one who made me uncleanly,” she said, blinking up at him. She’d like it if he kissed her again. When it came down to it, kissing wasn’t very cleanly either, was it?
“I know,” he rasped, “and I’m very sorry about that. It was a bad thing to do, to get my filth all over you.”
“You liked it,” she countered. “You want to cover me in your filth.”
He swallowed again.
She pressed in closer, putting her hand on his chest. “You want to spurt that filth inside me, don’t you?” She dragged her hand down over his abdomen, going for the hard part of him between his legs.
He reached out and stopped her before she could touch him. “My lady, I have said stop. I have said no. And I can’t help but feel as if you’re simply not listening to me.”
“If you don’t want me to touch you, stop me.”
“That’s what I’ve just done, isn’t it?”
She felt doused in a bucket of cold water. Now the wet spot on her shift did seem positively uncleanly and disgusting. She wasn’t sure what could have possibly driven her to like it before. She scrambled out of the bed. “Fine.”
“You’re going back to your own bedchamber, then?”
“Yes,” she said, glaring at him.
“I am sorry, my lady. I’m incredibly sorry. I really should have stopped it earlier.”
She didn’t say anything to that. She wanted away from him now. She was starting to feel the edges of mortification. What had she been thinking? She rushed towards the door. She put her hand on the handle. She paused. “You did like it,” she said, and then she let herself out of the room and scurried back to her own room.
THEY SET OUT in the carriage together the next morning, and Patience had a pulsing headache that seemed to hurt worse every time they went over a bump in the road.
“We don’t have to talk about it,” said Nothshire from the other side of the carriage. “We can pretend it never happened.”
She didn’t have a spare shift, of course. She had not packed to spend the night anywhere. She was wearing her dress from yesterday, but with nothing at all underneath it except her stays. It wasn’t entirely uncomfortable. On the other hand, having only the one layer of fabric—her dress—between her skin and the carriage was a quite odd feeling.
“You can’t have been thinking things through when you were that drunk,” said Nothshire. “I’ve done stupid things while drinking as well. I don’t hold it against you, certainly. Of course, I did a stupid thing to you last night, and I wasn’t drunk at all. I am sorry. But the more I think about it, the more I think we’re both equally in the wrong. You shouldn’t have sneaked into my room and my bed while I was sleeping. I shouldn’t have touched you, definitely shouldn’t have done that. I shouldn’t have put my leg between yours. That was my fault. So, it was both of us, and that’s why I think we should simply never speak of it.”
She was embarrassed, of course.
She would never have come up with such a ridiculous idea sober.
But more than she was embarrassed, she was annoyed. Why couldn’t he have just done it? Why had he sent her off like that? What was wrong with him?
No, she thought. It must have been her. Something must have been wrong with her that he didn’t actually want her. He had wanted her when he was half-asleep, but then he’d come to himself and realized what was going on and then he hadn’t been even a little interested in her.
“Anyway,” said Nothshire, “I just think it’s better to move on from it and leave it in the past. I promise not to chastise you if you promise not to chastise me, and I think that’s fair. Let’s just forget it ever happened.”
“You say you wish to forget it happened, and yet you won’t stop talking about it,” she said tersely.
He shifted on the other seat, uncomfortable. “I am sorry.”
She rolled her eyes. “Yes, so am I.”
“Good, then,” he said. “We shall put it behind us.”
“In one moment, if you don’t mind,” she said. “Tell me what it is, if you don’t mind?”
“What it is? What are you talking about?”
“What it is that’s wrong with me.”
“What are you talking about? Nothing’s wrong with you.”
“Well, you didn’t want me, so—”
“I obviously wanted you. I spent all over your— This is why I don’t wish to talk about it.” He groaned, turning to pointedly look out the window.
“Yes, but I don’t suppose that means much of anything,” she said. “As I understand, men are spilling their seed all the time, rubbing themselves in their beds each night before they fall asleep, ruining handkerchiefs and the like. I don’t see why—if you don’t prize it at all—you couldn’t spare some of that seed for me, for my womb, that is all.”
He turned back to her, lips parted, his expression dumbfounded. He sputtered. “You did not just say that.”
She hunched up her shoulders, her face feeling dully hot. She was embarrassed, yes, quite embarrassed. “Well, then, just tell me what’s wrong with me!”
“Attend to me, Viscountess Balley, it is one thing to wish to bed a woman and another thing entirely to do it. There’s nothing wrong with you. Obviously, I utterly approve of your…” He gestured. “You’re quite lovely, and you know it, so don’t act like some imbecile in that way. Why are women always so insecure?” He clenched his hands into fists.
“Are they?” she muttered and her face felt even hotter.
“Oh, that is neither here nor there, I suppose, but I can’t understand it. You have seen yourself in a looking glass, I assume?”
“You don’t have to call me an imbecile,” she muttered.
“I apologize for that, too, but hell’s bells, woman, I lost control because I wanted you so badly and then you act as if I rejected you.”
“You did ,” she said.
“I did not.”
“You wouldn’t…”
“What?”
“Oh, you know what you wouldn’t do.”
“Do I?”
“You wouldn’t fuck me.”
“I don’t wish to get you with child, obviously! ”
She cringed. There was a long pause. She licked her lips. “Perhaps, we should both try to keep our voices down so as not to broadcast this to the driver.”
He sighed. “Perhaps.”
A long silence passed.
“Why not?” she said. “Why wouldn’t you wish to get me with child?”
“That’s… are you seriously asking me that? It would be a disaster. I’d have to marry you. Honestly, if you weren’t a widow now, I’d feel compelled to marry you. I likely should, strictly speaking, offer for you, and if you wish it—”
“No! I don’t wish to get married.”
“I know,” he said. “Which is why I assumed you were just out of your head on port last night.”
“I have an idea of how I can hide the pregnancy,” she said. “No one will know the child is actually mine, and I shall raise it as a foundling—”
“ My child? As a foundling? I don’t think so.”
She blinked at him. It had not occurred to her that he would care about such things, or that he’d feel any kind of attachment to the child. But why hadn’t she thought that? She’d been close to her own father. She knew that men often doted on their bastards, even to the chagrin of their wives. Was she particularly stupid? “You could be involved, I suppose. I mean, the child couldn’t know you were its father, but you could visit and you could be some sort of… perhaps an uncle or—”
“I am not going to pretend not to be my children’s father,” said Nothshire, irritated. “I am going to be sure never to sire children besides in a womb that is my wife’s, when I get married, and I am going to be known as their father to them and to take care of them. All of my children will be legitimate. I’m not creating some child that has no place in the world. That’s a horrible thing to do to a child.”
“Well, that’s a fine sentiment, but you can’t exactly guarantee that you don’t ever sire any children except with your wife.”
He laughed. “I can’t?”
“No, because you…” She fell silent, feeling particularly stupid, because of course he could guarantee it if he didn’t indulge in the act. “So, that’s why you said no.”
“I might… with a different sort of woman… there are things. French letters or pulling out and spilling elsewhere. It’s not as if I don’t ever…” He sighed. “Mostly I don’t, though, truthfully. With anyone. It’s not you, it’s me.”
“Right,” she said with a sigh. “So, I’ll just find someone else.”
“No,” he said immediately.
She looked up at him.
He grimaced. “I have no idea why I said that. What you do with yourself is your own business, of course.”
“Indeed, it is,” she said.
“On the other hand,” he said in a very low voice, “I never liked it that you were going to adopt some child, anyway.”
“No?” she said. “What do you mean? Why did you care?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “But I don’t like the idea of you with some other man, and I did kill the only man that had access to you in that way. And I don’t like you with some other man’s child, either, whatever that means.” He sighed. “That’s positively wretched.”
“It is,” she said. “And who asked you to meddle in my life, Your Grace?”
He folded his arms over his chest, and glowered at her, sulky. He did not answer the question.
She lifted her chin. “Well, as it happens, I find myself relieved not to be coming home with an infant. I don’t know if I’m really quite ready to be a mother, but I think if I had nine months of preparation, maybe it would be easier.”
“I don’t want to get married for another ten years at least,” he said gruffly.
“All right,” she said with a shrug.
He looked at her. Pointedly, without saying anything.
She folded her arms over her chest. “What?”
“You don’t wish to get married ever, I suppose.”
“No,” she said. “I do not.”
“Because you don’t find men trustworthy, none of us.”
“Is there a reason we’re having this conversation again?”
“I don’t wish to marry you,” he said, shaking his head. “I really and truly don’t.”
“Well, I don’t want to marry you either,” she said, quite confused. “Why would you bring that up?” Actually, he’d said something about it earlier, hadn’t he, that it would be the right thing to do to offer for her?
“It’s only that it occurs to me that if I don’t want anyone else putting their hands on you and I don’t want you to have some other man’s child to raise, that’s one way to guarantee neither of those things happen. And if you really want a child, the only way you’re getting one of mine is if you’re my wife.”
She didn’t know what to say. “If that was a proposal, it was the worst one I’ve ever heard.”
“No, it was not a proposal. I just got done saying I don’t wish to marry you.”
“Well, I don’t want to marry you, and I don’t want you to sire children on me.”
“I think you do, though,” he said. “I think I want to sire them on you, too. I think we’re both very aligned in that regard.”
“No! You were convenient last night, that is all. I just need a man, any man, to get a child on me. If you won’t, I shall find someone else.”
“I don’t think so,” he said. “No, it makes me feel sick to my stomach to think of anyone else on you like that.” He sighed heavily. “I have done this, all of this, because I must have wanted you all along. When did it start? Why didn’t I notice? Damnation.”
“You don’t want me,” she said, shaking her head. “You rejected me.”
“We could go to Scotland,” he said. “We could elope, right now. Just keep going past London and turn northward.”
“No, I’m not marrying you. But anyway, if we were going to get married in a hurry, you’re a duke, so you just procure a special license, couldn’t you?”
He thought about that. “That’s true. Yes, it could be done. But I’m not asking you for your hand in marriage.”
“All right, well, that’s good, because I’m saying no.”
He regarded her, thoughtful. Finally, he looked away, back to the window, nodding once. “All right, then. Like I was saying, let’s never speak of this again.”
“Agreed,” she said. “ Never again.”