Chapter Sixteen
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
WHEN PATIENCE GOT home that evening, she was wrung out. She retired to her bedchamber and would have asked someone to send up some sort of liquor to drink, except she was still feeling the effects of drinking all that port the night before, so, instead, she simply asked for some chocolate. It was a morning drink, usually, but it wasn’t nearly as caffeinated as tea, so she thought it might be warm and comforting.
She sipped her hot chocolate and felt wrung out, and then Charlotte gently knocked on the door. Patience let her in.
She started talking.
Somehow, it all came out, the entire story, every bit of it. She told Charlotte about the night that Balley had been killed, about being captured by Nothshire, about seeing him at that ball, about essentially blackmailing him. She told Charlotte about Janet and the tiny Naomi. She told her about the way she’d felt that she was not ready to be a mother, about drinking too much port, about drunkenly attempting to seduce Nothshire, about the way he’d insisted he wouldn’t do it.
Charlotte listened. She took cups of chocolate when prompted, until there was no more chocolate to be drunk.
When Patience finally stopped, she didn’t know what else to say, and it seemed that Charlotte didn’t know what to say at all. Charlotte gazed into her empty mug, glancing up at her here and there, and then looking away.
It was dreadfully silent.
“All right, well, I suppose I’ve decided—once and for all—that there is no real benefit to being a Papist,” Patience finally declared. “Confession is not good for the soul after all. I feel worse having said it all aloud. I feel embarrassed and wretched.”
“No,” said Charlotte. “Don’t. It’s… you are extraordinary, my lady. I am in awe of you.”
Patience scoffed. “Off with you. I need to sleep.”
Charlotte stood up. “I’ll take down the chocolate tray, shall I?”
“I don’t care,” said Patience, slumping into her chair. She did not care about anything.
Charlotte got up, and she put her mug on the tray and Patience’s mug on the tray, and then she hesitated. “I knew, of course, I obviously knew, but I hadn’t realized it mattered so much.”
“Knew what?”
“That you had not loved your husband,” said Charlotte. “I sort of thought that you must have loved somebody, though why I thought that, I can’t even say. It doesn’t make any sense. You never have, so now that it’s happening to you, it’s badly affecting you.”
“What?” Patience sat up straight. “Now that what is happening to me?”
“You are obviously in love with that Nothshire person,” said Charlotte.
“I am not. He’s a horrible person.”
“Well, I suppose,” said Charlotte. “But he did sort of rescue you, didn’t he? From Balley? And I can tell you don’t like the idea of needing rescued, really. I don’t like it either. But maybe you should just marry him.”
“He doesn’t wish to marry me! He made that very plain. And I don’t wish to get married at all!”
Charlotte opened her mouth to speak and then closed it.
Patience felt a dull rage building inside her. “Go,” she said.
“Yes, my lady,” said Charlotte. She took the tray and started for the door. At the door, she hesitated. “It’s only that love is like that. It’s about allowing other people to see us weak and vulnerable and allowing them to rescue us sometimes. That’s how trust is formed and that’s how attachments are made. If you never let anyone see you vulnerable, you simply end up with nothing and no one. I’m not saying that this Nothshire person is a rational choice, but I’m afraid love often tends not to work in rational ways. It would be lovely if we all acted in accordance to our best interests all the time, but we don’t. Much of life is simply accepting that and making the best of it, I think. I have trusted you, my lady, with things I shouldn’t have trusted someone of your class with knowing about me.”
“I would never harm you.”
“I believe you,” said Charlotte. “Whether or not it’s wise to believe you is another story.”
“But Charlotte, I would never—”
“Never mind,” Charlotte sighed. “Never mind, forget I said anything.” She hurried out of the room, shutting the door behind her.
Patience got up to go after her, but when she got to the door, Charlotte had disappeared. She was too tired to call her back and finish that conversation, anyway. She fell into bed instead, pulling the covers over her head.
And she fell asleep rather easily, fell into a deep and dreamless sleep that tugged her down into a warm darkness of rest.
When she woke, it was barely morning. She was not alone in her room.
She knew it, somehow, with a sixth sense, though she realized she had probably heard something and that had woken her from sleep.
She sat straight up in bed, pulling the covers up to her chin.
He was standing inside the doorway.
“Nothshire,” she breathed, horrified.
“Can’t be an effective highwayman if one hasn’t learned to sneak around,” he said. “Don’t scream and alert your staff, if you don’t mind. I won’t do anything you don’t like. I promise.”
Her heart was pounding. “No one knows you’re in here?”
He shook his head.
“Why are you here?”
“I need a favor, viscountess. I need a favor, and I thought the best way to get you to do me a favor was to do one for you.”
“What sort of favor?”
“I need you to go and visit your brother in Kent, and I need you to accept me as a caller. It’s not about you, per se, it’s about a guest of your brother’s, the Earl of Penbrake.”
“My brother doesn’t even really like me,” she muttered. “I doubt he wishes me to visit and have callers.”
“But he would accept you in his household, wouldn’t he?”
She shrugged. “Why would I go there? Why would I do that for you?”
“I’ll give you what you want,” he said. “I’ll get you with child.”
Her mouth was dry.
“I’ve illustrated well enough that I can come and go from your bedchamber without anyone being the wiser, have I not?” He gestured with one hand. “As many times as it takes, I’m at your disposal.”
She squirmed on the bed, clutching the blankets tighter, which was nonsensical, because she was actually much warmer all of the sudden. “You said you wouldn’t.”
“I’ve changed my mind.”
“Why?”
He shifted on his feet. “Why do you care? I have, and that is all that matters.”
“Anyway, that was payment for my not telling anyone that you were a highwayman!”
“Yes, and this will be more than that, because I shall not interfere in any way. You wish to have a child and pretend it is not yours and not mine, and I shall go along with that, which is… awful . So, that pays for this other favor.”
That didn’t make any sense, she didn’t think, but she could not remember why, because she was so warm. She thrust the covers away from her heated body and glared at him. “Well, something has changed since we spoke last. What do you care about the Earl of Penbrake?”
“That’s my affair,” he said with a shake of his head, but he was greedily gazing at her in her nightclothes, staring at her not-entirely-clothed body in a way that was making feel a little dizzy.
“Your affair.”
“I don’t entirely have a choice in that.”
“Just like you don’t have a choice about being a highwayman? Are you going to tell me about that, ever?”
“I don’t see why I would, no.”
“I don’t know anything about you, and what I do know doesn’t entirely recommend you to me.”
“Well, my lady, you are not exactly a proper widow, are you? You are not meek or submissive or even properly feminine. Everything about you makes me…”
“Makes you what?”
He stepped closer to her bed. “Agree or don’t.”
“I don’t,” she said, but she was breathless, and as she said it, she crawled out of the bedcovers toward the bottom of the bed. “I don’t trust you, Lord Nothshire. You are the very definition of untrustworthiness.”
He advanced all the way to the foot of her bed and looked down at her. “If you think I shall allow you to let some other man put a child in you, you’re mad. I shall not. Never.”
A thrill went through her. She, on her hands and knees, glared up into his face, and seethed. “I hate you.”
“Yes, well, I already know that.” His gaze slid over her face. “I can see down your nightdress.”
She should have covered herself. She didn’t. She undulated instead, pushing out her breasts, feeling them jiggle just a little as she did so.
He sucked in an audible breath. “I’m going to put my hand down your nightdress and touch your bosom. I’m going to do it right now unless you tell me not to.”
Her body felt alight with a delicious tautness. She let out a series of noisy breaths and did not tell him not to.
But he didn’t actually move. He only looked at her body, like a man fascinated by witchcraft. His expression was pained, as if he wasn’t even enjoying himself, as if he was angry with the way she was affecting him.
She rather liked that for some perverse reason. She moved, settling back on her knees. She gathered up handfuls of her nightdress and began tugging them up to expose her knees.
He groaned, really groaned, and his expression went needy and pleading. He ran his tongue over his upper teeth, waiting.
She bared her upper thighs.
He climbed onto the bed with her, bracketing her body with his own thighs. Now they were inches away from each other. “I keep thinking about the way it felt to kiss that little eager mouth of yours. I remember the way you tasted of port.”
“I probably taste like death right now,” she taunted. “I’ve just woken up, and everyone’s breath is awful in the morning.”
“Probably,” he said. He reached up and started fumbling with his cravat, gazing at her lips. “Very probably.”
“Do it, then, if you want to so badly,” she said, haughty. Oh, Lord, what was she saying?
He kept one hand on his cravat and the other shot out and seized her face. He trapped her chin between one of his massive thumbs and his thick forefingers, and he kissed her.
A shudder went through her as their tongues touched. Kissing him made her feel lit up, not just warm, but hot , all over, and she felt as if she was going to lose control. But maybe she never had control around this man, maybe she never had, maybe she never would .
“Chocolate,” he breathed. “You taste like chocolate.” He pulled his cravat free.
She let out a whimper. “I drank some before bed.”
He shrugged out of his jacket. One-handed, he started in on his waistcoat buttons. “Stop me, then, my lady.”
“You wouldn’t stop,” she said.
“No?”
She licked her lips. “Fine, then. Stop.”
He froze.
Moments passed, both of them just looking at each other, searching each other’s eyes.
Abruptly, he got up off the bed, letting go of his waistcoat, which was half unbuttoned. He fished his jacket up off the floor. He thrust one arm into it, turning his back on her.
“Wait,” she said, flabbergasted. “I didn’t mean…”
He turned back to her.
She squirmed. “Don’t stop,” she said in a tiny voice.
He eyed her. “We have a bargain, then? I do you a favor, you do me one?”
“I…” She suddenly felt the enormity of it settling into her. This was what she wanted, wasn’t it? The idea to go to his bed, it had been borne of her drink-addled brain, she was realizing, and she had not thought it through while sober, not without also feeling peeved that he had denied her. But was she really angry that he’d denied her a child or that he’d denied her something else?
Her gaze went to his crotch.
Oh.
She could see the way his trousers were straining there. He wanted her, and that went all through her like a rush of scalding water poured into a bath, and she didn’t even care anymore, not about thinking things through, not about the future, not about being with child. She didn’t care, because she was out of her head with want.
She nodded, eager, biting down on her bottom lip.
“That’s a yes?” His voice was gravelly.
“Yes,” she managed, her voice trembling. “Yes, please, yes.”
He shrugged off his jacket and climbed back onto the bed.
She yanked off her nightdress, tossing it behind her and showing him her bare skin, like some kind of mad, wanton woman.
He let out a noise in the back of his throat, and he seized her about the waist, one hand on the small of her back. He pulled her close. His other hand found one of her breasts, cupping it, but gently, so gently, even though his hands were so, so huge, and he kissed her again.
She sighed, her tongue moving against his, pressing her bare breast into his hand more firmly. She started to undo his waistcoat buttons.
He groaned again. He broke the kiss and kept toying with her breast. Her nipple was tight and stiff and sensitive against his palm, and it felt divine, whatever he was doing to her. He watched her unfasten his buttons. “That’s very good, my lady. Aren’t you an eager little thing? I thought, before, maybe it was because you were drunk—”
She pulled her hands back, shy. “A-apologies.”
“No,” he breathed. “I like that.” His fingers trailed up and down her back. “Women usually don’t—” He winced. Now, his voice went sardonic. “Oh, yes, Benedict, that’ll reassure her. Talk about others you’ve had in your bed. Well done.”
She looked up at him from beneath her eyelashes. “I thought it was the drink, too, actually.” She hadn’t thought it through, but it would have only made sense for that to have affected her behavior. But she was not even a little bit drunk now. “I’m not like this usually. I was never like this with—”
“No, let us definitely not talk about him ,” he said.
“It’s you,” she breathed. “You make me like this.”
He kissed her again, a hard and positively tingling kiss.
They fell back on the bed, his body over hers.
She was wearing a pair of drawers, nothing else, and his waistcoat gapped open. The sensation of his shirt against her bare skin was shockingly good. She arched into it, rubbing into him, still wanton, and a bit embarrassed, but she didn’t care, she didn’t care . She remembered before, and she moved one of her legs, entwining their thighs as they had been on his bed in that inn. She clamped her thighs around one of his, and there, that, it was like spun sugar, it was so good as to wipe all thoughts from her head. She writhed.
He propped himself up over her, breaking the kiss, grinning at her, delighted. “Oh, yes, I definitely want you to do that again, my lady. Definitely. But may I take my trousers off first? I want the feel of your bare little cunny against my skin.” He tugged on the drawers. “These off, too?”
She bit down on her bottom lip and nodded again, her breath catching in her throat. That sounded quite good.
He sat up and started to undo the falls of his trousers.
She watched. She watched as he pulled his shirt free and took it off, took off his waistcoat at the same time. His bare chest was the most interesting thing she’d ever seen in her life. He was so broad . He had bits of dark hair clinging to the most interesting parts of his body, especially around his flat, small nipples, and in a little trail traveling down his abdomen. He was somehow powerful and strong and yet also vulnerable bared to her like that. She liked the way those things jumbled together—both true at once.
He glanced up at her, then looked at his own chest, and then—adorably—he blushed, turning bright red, and there were little splotches of that on his chest. She couldn’t stop herself. She reached up to touch them, reverently tracing little patterns into his skin.
He gasped.
He kissed her again.
She rubbed her skin into his skin—oh, that was the most wondrous thing she’d ever felt. She could likely spend the rest of her life like this, crushed against him, both of them bare, safe here with him, safe against his broadness. She sighed and tilted back her head and he kissed the tip of her chin and the front of her throat, and she let out a long, low sort of noise, something nearly as gravelly as the noise he’d made before. He echoed it approvingly.
“I like you liking it,” he whispered. “I suppose I didn’t think women did. You’re so… the way you give yourself over to your pleasure, it unravels me.”
She felt self-conscious. She looked up at him, and she blushed, too, but maybe that was all right, if they were both blushing. She thought of that thing that Charlotte had said about vulnerability.
Maybe… maybe it wasn’t trust, not in the end, if you were assured of a person’s good behavior. Maybe trust could only be trust if there was risk. He was risk, all risk, but maybe this risk was worth it, somehow? She ran her hands over his chest. “I do like it,” she said softly. “I like the way you look. Quite a great deal, I find. I’ve never liked anything in this way.”
He groaned again. He kicked off his trousers, kissing her again.
She wriggled out of her drawers.
Then they were both bare, and she ran her hands over him, all over him, until her fingers touched a thatched mess of scarred skin, starting at the back of his lower back and continuing all over his buttocks.
She could tell because she explored it all with trembling, shocked fingers.
Until he stopped her and moved her hand. “Not there,” he breathed into her ear. “Don’t touch me there.”
“What happened?” she whispered.
“Just… whipping,” he said.
Whipping with what? A horse whip? How many times? Why was he so scarred? Who did that to him? She started to ask all of those questions, but he shook his head at her in such a way that let her know he wasn’t going to answer any of them.
Then he did what he’d said, pressing his bare leg between her thighs, against her sex, and it felt, well, it felt like heaven . She got distracted as she wriggled there, rubbing herself against him like she had done before, in the same way she’d rubbed against pillows, controlling the pressure to the exact way she liked it. She didn’t think about the scars. She thought about how good it felt. She was soaring in no time.
Oh, dear, it was going to happen quickly, then, wasn’t it?
It usually didn’t happen so quickly, but it was building, her pleasure, building and building. She yanked his face down so that he could kiss her again, and then… she needed… “Touch me.” She picked up his hand and put it to her breast.
“Oh, like this?” He toyed with her stiff nipple.
“Please,” she gasped. “Yes, please, like that.”
He made a male noise of deep satisfaction and she suddenly just crested, tightening her legs around his thigh as her climax barreled through her like a waterfall crashing over the rocks, turning frothy and white and frenzied. She cried out.
“Shh,” he said, clamping a hand over her mouth. “The servants will hear you.”
It should have stopped her pleasure, but she was too far gone. She rode it, the frenzy crashing and crashing and crashing…
Until it left her and she lay boneless on the bed, struggling to breathe around his hand.
He removed it, whispering apologies. “Did you… already…?”
“Should I not have?” she breathed.
“You should have,” he said. “You should do that constantly, and if you can use any part of me to do it, you should feel abundantly free to use it.”
A giggle burst out of her.
He laughed, too. “You’re going to send me straight to hell, aren’t you?”
She furrowed her brow. “Am I?” She touched his chest again. She felt bold and loose and good. She touched his belly, touched below his belly, touched—
There.
She had him in her hand now, and he was so very, very hard and hot. It was the same thing—that vulnerability along with some kind of fierce power. With this part of him in her hand, she controlled him, but he could use it to take control of her, to pierce her, and she wanted to surrender to that, to give herself over to him.
He shivered, shutting his eyes, a moan leaking out of his lips. “Well, you’ve, erm, you’ve found that.”
She squeezed him.
He grunted. “You’re good at that, aren’t you?”
This made her remember Balley, his little tutorials, the ways he’d instructed her to touch him, and she almost dropped Nothshire’s prick, but she didn’t, because this was different. That had made her feel stupid and dirty and embarrassed, like Balley’s servant to command, but this was her own choice, and she liked being in charge of it, of him, of her Nothshire.
But he wasn’t hers, she thought.
She stroked him anyway.
He panted. “Very, very good at that,” he breathed.
“I want it inside me,” she said. “That’s why you’re here. That’s what you’ll do this time.”
“Oh, yes,” he said in a low voice. “I want that, too. That is definitely why I’m here.”
“So, now, then?” she breathed. She pulled on him, struggling to extricate her leg so that she could line him up, put him where she wanted.
He simply knelt there, eyes closed, letting her do as she liked. This pleased her, and she giggled again, giggled as she rearranged them.
“I’m funny like this, I suppose?” he said dryly. “I think you’ve entirely mastered me, my lady. Do what you will with me.”
“I shall,” she said brightly, moving her hips, pulling on his hard member. She put it against herself, but then she rubbed him against the top part of herself, the sensitive part, and she got distracted from tucking it inside. Instead, she just rubbed the head of him against the slippery, just climaxed little nub of her own body, and it was heavenly, perfectly heavenly. She moved her hips, moved his prick, made little breathy sounds, and decided she could likely do this forever, too.
He put his hands on her hips. He lifted her, moving her, moving away from the part that felt good, prodding her, lower and lower and—
She gasped.
He grunted.
He was in.
He slid in easily, all the way to his hilt, and he was huge and thick and taking up every spare bit of space inside her. She felt an echo of the top of him behind her belly button. She felt the stretch of him at her opening. She mewled, because it was so much. Was it good? She didn’t know. It was too much like it had been with Balley, she thought, maybe worse than it had been with Balley. Balley hadn’t been this big .
She must have tensed.
Because he stroked the outside of her thighs, not moving inside her, not doing anything, and his voice was gentle, questioning. “If you’re not all right, it can stop, viscountess,” he rumbled. “It can stop any time, any time at all.”
She only shook her head. She didn’t know what she wanted.
“You feel like the tightest of silk gloves,” he murmured. “You feel like everything good in the entire world. I want… are you all right?”
“Fine,” she managed, but her voice squeaked a little.
He met her gaze, his brow furrowed. He moved one hand, questing. His thumb brushed against her little sensitive nub.
She let out a breath. “ Oh. ”
He smiled. “There, then.” He brushed her again, and he thrust his hugeness in and out.
She shuddered, and it was a good shudder. Was it a good shudder? She didn’t know. She needed to be sure. “Do that again,” she gasped.
He chuckled and obeyed.
She liked that. Oh, she very much liked that. She liked how big he was, how much he was, how she could think of nothing else except this reality, one where she was pinned down to her bed by his weight and girth, where she was invaded and jammed entirely full of his enormousness, where he was taking her, having his way with her, where she was consumed by being had by this man.
She started to gasp.
He thrust into her, again and again, slow and deliberate, and with each intense thrust, he brushed the sensitive nub of her with his thumb. His finger was so gentle there, just barely touching her, feathering against her, even as his thrusts seemed so forceful, so intense.
This man was just this way , she thought. He was a delightful bundle of opposites, gentle and ferocious, all at once. Balley had only been ferocious. He’d been missing this other part, this sweet part, this human part.
She let out a moan, and she started to climb again, for another climax. Oh, yes, she wanted to feel what it would be like to clench around him, with him stuck all the way inside her when she did. “Please,” she said, shutting her eyes, tilting back her head. “Please, give it to me again.”
He gasped. “I…”
She opened her eyes.
But he gave her a stiff nod, even as he moved inside her. “I can hang on for you, my lady, I can. Whatever you need.”
So, then she gazed into his eyes, and he looked into her, and she looked into him, and her body swelled and pulsed as he worked himself within her and kept up the gentle pattern of his thumb brushing her again and again, and she climbed and climbed and climbed .
It was intense, and she wanted to look away, but some force stopped her, something kept her looking directly into his eyes as the pleasure took on some other quality inside her, something impossibly good, something incredibly intimate, something that belonged not just to her but to them both.
And when it happened, when she did crest against him, her body clenching madly on his huge hardness inside her, there were tears in her eyes.
He gasped and yanked himself out of her and she was confused, letting out some noise of protest, one so loud that it must have been heard throughout the entire town house.
He was off the bed, taking some article of his clothing with him, turning his back on her.
“What…?” She sat up, reaching for him.
When he turned, he was bundling up his smallclothes with one fist, and his nostrils were flaring.
“What happened?” she said.
He clenched his massive hand around his smallclothes, panting. “Nothing,” he said.
She furrowed her brow. “You did… inside me, didn’t you?” she whispered.
He climbed back onto the bed and pulled her into his arms. He kissed her forehead. “That’s the bargain, isn’t it, my lady? I wouldn’t go back on my word.”
She looked up at him, looked into his eyes, and it was just the way it had been when their bodies had been joined and they had been looking into each other, and she felt sure she could see the truth of him, the truth of his very soul, and she was mollified. She touched his chest. She could feel that she was slippery between her thighs, anyway, and she had never been that slippery with Balley. He had.
And then the knowledge of that hit her and she buried her face against his chest. “Oh, Lord,” she breathed. “Oh, Lord, oh, Lord.”
He dragged a hand down her spine, a soothing large hand. His breathing was ragged. “You’re… you’re all right?”
Her voice was muffled, but it all came out in a rush. “You said there were ways around it, didn’t you? Getting a woman with child, I mean?”
He breathed, noisy. “I… did.” His voice was careful.
“I just wonder if we…” She pulled her head back. “M-maybe… you don’t want to get me with child, anyway, do you?”
His mouth worked.
She cringed. She put her face into his chest again.
It was quiet for several long moments.
He spoke again, and his voice was very deep. “I’m confused, my lady.”
“I am too, Your Grace,” she whispered. “That wasn’t… I didn’t know it was ever like that, I suppose.”
“Me either,” he rasped.
“But I liked it,” she said. “I liked it a lot, and… and…”
“Oh, yes,” he said. “ Yes. ”
“So, then, just that,” she said. “More of that. That’s enough of a favor, I think.”
He cleared his throat. “You’re saying… you wish me to bed you in exchange for going to your brother’s house?”
“Mmm,” she said. “You said you can sneak in. Can you do it there? At his house?”
He cleared his throat again. “Shouldn’t prove to be too much of a difficulty, I don’t think.”
“But then, from then on, you simply go around it, and we wait.”
“Wait,” he repeated.
“Yes,” she said firmly, now suddenly feeling decided. “Yes, eventually, I shall wish you to actually get me with child, of course. Eventually. But no reason to rush it, perhaps.”
He only breathed.
“You don’t wish to make that bargain,” she muttered, trying to pull away from him.
“Oh, I’d be a fool not to make that bargain,” he said. “An utter fool, and I…” He sighed. “I am only thinking that I perhaps should tell you something.”
“What?”
“Well, why are you saying this?” he said. “Why are you suddenly changing your mind?”
“I don’t know,” she said, shrugging. She struggled against his arms.
He let go of her entirely.
She rolled over onto her back and addressed the ceiling. “Maybe I didn’t think it all through in the strictest of senses is all? When I think of being with child, it frightens me, I suppose. I’m not sure if I’m quite ready, just as I wasn’t ready for that child of Janet’s, when it was in my arms, and I was relieved not to have had it, and then I… now… I suppose I could be now, which I find makes me rather—”
“I didn’t spend inside you.”
She sat up, her eyes wide.
He groaned, and he reached over and picked up his smallclothes. He uncrumpled them, and there it was, the telltale wet spot.
She let out a noise of disbelief. “But you said—”
“I know.” He tossed them away.
“You were lying.”
“Marry me,” he said.
She gasped. “You have not just said that.”
“Whatever this is between us, my lady, it must mean something.”
She bit down on her bottom lip, looking him over. “Because it’s so different, you mean, for both of us. So good.”
“A fucking lightning bolt from the heavens,” he said. Then he winced. “Apologies, I didn’t mean to swear in front of you.”
“I’ve heard that word before,” she said softly, shaking her head. “I don’t know, though, I don’t know. I still don’t trust you.”
“You trust me to hold your pleasure in my hand, to look at your bare body, to—”
“It’s not enough,” she said, pulling her legs up to her chest, hugging them there.
He let out a breath. “You wouldn’t want to be married to someone like me, anyway.”
“I don’t think I would,” she said.
He dragged both of his hands over his face.
“So, you came here with the intention of lying to me,” she said softly. “Of making a bargain with me and not holding up your end of it.”
He was quiet.
“Not going to deny it?”
He sat up in the bed and found his trousers. “Well, I suppose I understand it now, what I was asking Arthford last night. He is in love with some woman who will never marry him, and I was confused about that, but I see it rather clearly now, so that’s interesting.”
Had he just said he was in love with her? Her heart gave a mighty little pulse in her chest, just one, a squeeze that made her tingle all over. She bowed her head.
“Look, all right, fine. We don’t get married. I don’t get you with child, not yet, anyway. We’re agreed on that, are we not?”
“W-well, you’re not trustworthy at all. You are a liar.”
“All right, I suppose so, yes.”
“You came here with the intention of… of fucking me, and you did that just because you… you…”
“I’m a man, what do you want from me, my lady?” He got up and began buttoning his trousers.
“Well, I wish to say I want nothing from you,” she said. “But I think if I did, we would both know I was lying, and I—unlike you—am not a liar.”
“You’re indescribably better than me in nearly every way. That goes without saying.” He put on his shirt. “But can we not simply have this, whatever it is, for however long it lasts, please? Because you are mine now—”
“I am not,” she said, clenching both hands into fists.
“You are,” he said. “And if it will please you to hear, I shall freely admit that I am yours. I don’t entirely know what you could get me to do for you at this point. It rather frightens me, I have to say. But it’s done now. Please say that we…” He looked at her, his gaze so very vulnerable that she knew she had the power to crush him with one word. She had looked into his eyes while he’d been inside her body, while they’d been joined together in some ancient and powerful joining, and now, they belonged to each other, as he was saying. “Please.”
“I’m not happy about it, I don’t think, but yes,” she said in a resigned voice. “You’ll come back to me, then?”
“Definitely,” he said. “As often as possible, I think.”
“Good,” she said.
He gave her a little smile. “I don’t wish it as a bargain, not at all. I wish it to be willingness on both our parts. If you won’t go to your brother’s, then I shall understand that.”
“But you want me to do it.”
He nodded.
“What are you going to do to the Earl of Penbrake?”
“Someone who I owe favors to wishes to have a conversation with him, that’s all,” said Nothshire.
He was lying to her. He was a liar. She was in love with an untrustworthy liar who would do all manner of awful things if it suited him.
Well, at least I am not gone with his child, she thought. Actually, that’s a very good thing.
“That’s where you’re going? To Lilsbil’s End?” she said. “And if I don’t go, I won’t see you until you get back?”
He nodded. “Yes.”
“So, then, I’ll go,” she said.
He smiled at her again. “Good.”
“And you’ll come to me there?”
He nodded again, his smile widening. “Nothing could keep me away.”
She couldn’t stop herself from smiling back. “Good.”
They stared at each other, grinning fools.
“I want to kiss you again,” he said.
“All right,” she said.
He beckoned.
She got out of the bed and went to his arms.
She would never tire of his kisses, she didn’t think. Never. What had she gotten herself into? What was she going to do about it? This was a disaster.