Chapter Seven A Locked Door #2
Mary Beth turned the small iron key beneath the latch.
That sound changed the room.
She had heard keys turn in Blackthorn all her married life: cupboards, wine cellars, estate boxes, her late husband’s desk. None had ever seemed to declare so plainly that the person inside had chosen to remain there.
Ambrose’s voice was quiet. “Unlock it.”
“No.”
“Mary Beth.”
“You may ask me to leave.”
He shook his head. “That is not the same thing.”
“No. It is not.”
He took one step toward her and stopped. “Why are you here?”
She could have made a joke. Four years of managing gossip had made wit a useful shield. A clever answer would have restored distance and given them both somewhere safe to stand.
Instead she said, “Because I want you.”
Ambrose did not move.
The honesty made her pulse race more violently than the locked door had.
“Say it because you mean it,” he said, “not because you think the answer will shock me.”
Mary Beth held his gaze. “I want you, Ambrose. I have wanted you since the bridge, and I am tired of pretending that wanting you becomes less true if I phrase it cleverly.”
His restraint faltered.
He crossed the space between them and kissed her.
There was no hesitation this time. His arm went around her waist, drawing her against him, and Mary Beth caught his shoulders beneath her hands.
He tasted faintly of brandy and rain. The careful distance he had maintained all day vanished so completely that she wondered how either of them had managed it in the first place.
His hand moved along her back and stopped at her waist as if he had reached a boundary he intended her to cross for herself.
Mary Beth understood. She took his hand and placed it where she wanted it.
His breath broke against her mouth.
“You are not making this easy.”
“I was unaware ease was the objective.”
“It was once.”
“Before me?”
“Long before you.”
She smiled, and he kissed the smile away.
The room seemed to contract around them. Rain touched the glass. The lamp flame shifted in a draft. His rolled sleeves left his forearms bare beneath her fingers, and there was something far more intimate in the roughness of his hands than in any polished courtship Mary Beth had ever known.
Ambrose loosened one pin from her hair. It fell against the carpet. A second followed when she turned her head beneath his mouth.
He stopped.
Mary Beth did not. She kissed the corner of his mouth, then his jaw, feeling the faint roughness of a day’s beard beneath her lips. His hands settled at her hips.
“Mary Beth.”
“Do not become sensible now.”
“I am trying very hard not to.”
“You are succeeding badly.”
A low laugh moved through him, but when he lifted his head the humor was gone.
“Do you know what you want from tonight?”
“You have already asked whether I want you.”
“That was not the question.”
She went still.
Ambrose did not release her, yet he did not pull her closer either. “You know what happens if we continue. I am not asking whether you understand the physical part of it. I am asking what tomorrow is supposed to be.”
He had found the question Mary Beth avoided by choosing men who never required an answer.
The widowed gamekeeper had known the terms before the first night. The gentleman from York had departed the following morning with no expectation beyond memory. There had been pleasure and kindness, but no future standing before her asking what came next.
Ambrose was not asking for marriage. That would almost have been easier to refuse.
He was asking whether she intended to remain honest after desire had been satisfied.
Mary Beth stepped back. His hands fell away immediately.
“I do not know,” she said.
His disappointment was small, but she saw it.
“I know I want you,” she continued. “I know I have thought about you while approving timber, reading drainage reports, and considering Benedict’s ridiculous dinner.
I know I dislike the idea of this wall being finished because you may leave with it.
I know I do not have a respectable name for any of that. ”
Ambrose listened without rescuing her from the silence.
“Is that enough?” she asked.
“For a kiss? More than enough.”
“For this?”
His gaze held hers. “Not tonight.”
Anger arrived first because anger was easy. “You demanded that I tell you I wanted you. I did.”
“And I believe you.”
“Yet you refuse me.”
“Yes.”
Very few men had refused Mary Beth anything she offered freely. The experience was so unfamiliar that insult and astonishment tangled together.
“How virtuous of you.”
Ambrose flinched as though she had struck exactly where she intended. “Do not turn this into judgment because that is easier than believing I might want something you have not decided whether you can give.”
Her anger sharpened. “And what exactly is that?”
“Tomorrow.”
The answer quieted her.
Ambrose came nearer, though he did not touch her.
“I do not need your reputation cleaned. I do not need an apology for the gamekeeper or the gentleman from York. I do not need you to promise me a church, children, or forty years. But if I take you to bed tonight, I need to know I will not become another man you arrange neatly into the past before breakfast.”
Mary Beth’s chin came up. “You think so little of me?”
“No. I think enough of you to see what you have been doing. Your husband gave you a cold marriage. Society punished you for wanting anything afterward. So you made rules. A man could have what you chose to give him, but never enough of you to leave damage behind.”
“You presume a great deal.”
“Yes.”
“And you imagine yourself different?”
“I am trying not to imagine anything. That is why I stopped.”
She turned away from him, furious because the room was too warm, because two pins had fallen from her hair, because some hidden part of her understood precisely what he meant.
After a moment Ambrose bent and retrieved the pins. He set them on the writing desk rather than attempting to repair what he had loosened.
“This is an extraordinary seduction,” Mary Beth said.
“I am not seducing you.”
“That may be the most insulting part.”
A reluctant smile touched his mouth. “If it helps, I have spent the last ten minutes wanting to be considerably less honorable.”
“It does not help at all.”
“I did not think it would.”
Mary Beth should have unlocked the door and left. Instead she sat on the edge of the chair beside his desk, suddenly tired of standing as though they were still arguing over a wall.
Ambrose leaned against the desk opposite her. The plans between them showed the north slope in careful lines, the old drain beneath, the new course marked around it. A problem mapped honestly enough to be repaired.
“Suppose I come to you again,” she said.
The humor left his face. “Then I will ask you again.”
“Infuriating man.”
“I have been told.”
“By whom?”
“Mostly foremen.”
Mary Beth laughed despite herself. The sound took some of the sharpness out of the room.
Ambrose looked toward the locked door. “You should go before someone wakes.”
“Now you are concerned with my reputation?”
“I am concerned with your choice. There is a difference between deciding to be seen and being exposed because a maid wanted a blanket from the linen press.”
That, too, was annoyingly reasonable.
Mary Beth stood. She crossed to the door and rested her fingers on the key.
“Ambrose.”
“Yes?”
“When I come to you again, do not assume I have not thought about tomorrow.”
His face became very still. “I will not.”
“And do not make me say everything twice.”
“I will try to survive the disappointment.”
She unlocked the door.
Before she could open it, Ambrose came close enough that his shoulder nearly touched hers. “Mary Beth.”
She turned.
He kissed her once more, differently this time. No urgency, no attempt to persuade. It was a promise of nothing except the fact that stopping had not diminished what stood between them.
When he stepped back, Mary Beth’s hand remained on the latch.
“Good night,” he said.
“You are very pleased with yourself.”
“Not remotely.”
That made her smile.
Mary Beth opened the door and slipped into the corridor. The house remained silent. She walked back toward her rooms with her loosened hair over one shoulder and both pins closed in her hand.
For four years, tomorrow had been the safest part of desire because it always belonged to her alone. No man remained long enough to ask for a share in it, and she had considered that freedom.
Tonight Ambrose had left her untouched in the one way she had expected him not to, and somehow that restraint had reached further into her than possession might have done.
By the time she reached her door, the argument had stopped feeling like something she could postpone with wit.
Benedict’s dinner was Thursday. She would go, because Ambrose had forced her to ask what Benedict was actually offering and what it would cost.
Afterward, she would return to Ambrose with something better than deflection.
Whether she liked the answer or not, she intended to know what she meant by tomorrow.