Chapter Seven #2
How had it come to this? Sitting on her bed in her nightclothes drinking whiskey with Alistair Burke-Price, contemplating ways to break their engagement and thinking it was not an altogether unpleasant experience.
But it would get a great deal more unpleasant if their plan was unsuccessful.
‘I know how I reached this point, but what about you? How is it that a man of your…means’ she would not say looks and further stoke his ego, but dear heavens, the man was just as handsome in dishabille as he was in evening clothes ‘…has achieved the age of thirty-two without a wife or occupation?’ Even his bare feet managed to be attractive.
He had a tiny brown freckle on the third toe of his right foot. She took another swallow.
‘Just lucky, I guess.’ He gave a dazzling smile.
‘Oh no you don’t. You will not wiggle off that particular hook.
’ She held the flask out of reach when he grabbed for it.
‘No whiskey until you tell me the truth. Start with the women. I know there have been some. Your father’s letters said so.
Have you ever been close to marriage? Have you ever been in love?
London would not overlook a handsome man with a rich father and a duke for an uncle.
’ Would he answer, or would he wrestle her for it?
The thought of grappling with him unleashed a disturbingly warm heat low in her belly.
He leaned back on her pillows, hands behind his head, a strikingly masculine contrast to the white linen and lace of her bedding.
The heat in her belly ought to have cooled, but it didn’t.
He was grinning. ‘I’m always falling in love, falling out of love.
There was this dairymaid in a town in France where we stopped for a while—we’d broken a carriage wheel, and it took a week to fix.
Then there was the merchant’s widow in Marseilles before we sailed. ’
‘That’s lust, you idiot.’ If she’d had a pillow to hand, she would have thrown it at him. ‘A week? That was all it took to fall in love and then fall out?’
‘Well, the carriage was fixed. It was time to go,’ Alistair protested.
‘That. Is. Not. Love.’ She couldn’t tell if he was teasing her or if he was serious.
‘All right, then. What is love?’ Alistair challenged smugly.
‘Love is wanting to please someone else more than yourself. Love is putting another first and not minding the cost.’
‘So love is sacrifice?’ Alistair reached for the flask, and this time she gave it.
‘Not really, because the other person’s happiness is good for you both.’ She let out an exasperated sigh. ‘Truly, Alistair, has no dewy London miss caught your eye in all the years you’ve been up to Town and made you want to reform?’
Alistair made a grimace. ‘Heavens no, and based on how you describe it, I’m rather glad they haven’t.
Love your way doesn’t sound very fun. Besides, dewy doe-eyed misses aren’t very exciting in general.
I can’t see myself spending a lifetime with an empty-headed beauty who doesn’t know her own mind and hasn’t a lick of fire to her.
Perhaps that is why no woman lasts more than three months with me. ’
Of course not. Alistair Burke-Price would want a woman who could keep up with him and all of his boundless energy, who wouldn’t mind him flirting or climbing onto balconies to barge into her bedchamber or the scandals that would inevitably follow him home; a woman who would understand that he was not for the taming.
Perhaps that was the reason for it, then—why he could fall in and out of love so quickly.
Such a woman would be a rare find. Everyone else was just a paper doll.
Paper burned, easily consumed by fire and Alistair was all flame.
‘Your turn.’ Alistair waggled the flask. ‘Since you’re such a love expert, have you ever been in love? Or lust?’
‘Both.’ She did not shy away from the question, but the answer did require a healthy swallow.
‘I was in love when I was eighteen, and that is all that I’m going to say about that.
I was in lust when I was twenty-one. Both times it caused me to behave recklessly and regrettably, but I learned a few valuable lessons that have served me well in the interim. ’
‘Like what?’ Alistair’s curiosity was getting the better of them both.
He wanted to know, and she felt a powerful urge to tell someone.
She ought to hold back. She did not. His refrain, You never did know when to stop, echoed in her head.
Perhaps if he knew her story, he’d understand why she was committed to this ruse succeeding.
‘That men fail. All the time, when it comes to women. They put themselves first, in pleasure, in life. A woman is merely an accessory to his story, but he is always the main character.’
‘Aren’t we all the main character in our own stories, though?’ Alistair seemed intrigued and unbothered by her insight. Most men would want to argue it.
‘No. I don’t think so. Women are happy to put their children first, their husbands first, to promote them from backstage instead of always being front and centre themselves.’ She shook the flask. ‘Do you have any more? It’s empty.’
‘In my room,’ Alistair said and yawned, ‘but I am not crossing those balconies for it.’
‘Stop it, you’re making me yawn, too.’ She covered her mouth with her hand as she rose and moved around the bed to gather up her books.
Alistair rolled to his side, and she was aware of his eyes watching her put the books in the armoire. ‘Ismay, most people keep clothes in their armoire.’
‘I’m not most people.’ She returned to the bed and stretched out on the newly cleared side.
‘Do you remember the first time we finished off a decanter of liquor?’ Alistair flopped onto his back and joined her in staring up at the painted ceiling filled with blue skies and frolicking, pink-fleshed putties.