Chapter Thirteen What Mary Beth Wants #2
Mary Beth had expected love, if it ever came again, to announce itself like disaster. Instead it stood before her in a mud-spattered coat, furious with itself for wanting too much.
She crossed the remaining distance and put both hands on Ambrose’s face.
“You ridiculous man.”
He caught her wrists gently.
“That is not the answer I had imagined.”
“You were not meant to imagine it. You were meant to let me give it.”
His next breath caught before he could hide it.
Mary Beth felt suddenly afraid, which annoyed her. She had invited men into her bed with less difficulty than it took to say four simple words in a field she owned. Desire had always been easier; it asked less of the morning after.
“I refused Benedict,” she said.
Ambrose did not move.
“I told him no before I came out here. I did not refuse him because he insulted you, although he did. I did not refuse him because I enjoy scandal, although apparently I have a talent for it. I refused him because I do not want the life he offered me.”
“Mary Beth—”
“Be quiet. You have had your turn.”
His mouth almost curved.
She slid her hands from his face to his coat collar.
“I want Blackthorn. I want the tenants to know they can come to me instead of a steward who reports to my husband. I want to sit on the hospital committee if the work is useful and leave if they become fools. I want to spend my money without requesting permission. I want to be able to walk into my own drawing room without wondering which version of myself will be easiest for the man waiting there.”
Ambrose’s hands settled at her waist.
“And?”
“Greedy.”
“Very.”
Mary Beth felt the smile escape her despite the pressure behind her ribs.
“And I want you. Not only in my bed. Not only until the wall is finished. Not only when it is convenient or secret or raining hard enough to excuse bad judgment.”
His fingers tightened slightly.
She made herself finish.
“I love you too.”
Ambrose kissed her before she could decide whether the confession had made her brave or merely defenseless.
It was not the desperate kiss beneath the bridge or the hungry one in the carriage room.
There was hunger in it, certainly; Ambrose had never shown any difficulty with that.
But there was something else beneath it now, an absence of caution that felt more intimate than the nights they had already shared.
Mary Beth drew back when one of the men shouted for a wedge.
“Your employees are twenty yards away.”
“I am aware.”
“You are holding your employer rather improperly.”
“You rejected the respectable alternative. I am adjusting to my new responsibilities.”
She laughed against his mouth.
“Finish your culvert.”
“You came out here and broke my pencil.”
“You broke your pencil.”
“Because you suggested you might marry Sablehurst.”
“A sturdy engineering instrument should withstand emotional distress.”
“Go back to the house.”
“Is that an order?”
“A plea. I am meant to calculate water flow before dark, and you have made arithmetic unlikely.”
Mary Beth stepped away, pleased by how difficult he found letting her go.
“Come to me tonight.”
Ambrose’s humor quieted.
“Are you certain?”
She knew what he was really asking. Not whether she wanted sex. They had settled that question repeatedly and enthusiastically. He was asking whether she wanted the intimacy that would follow what they had just admitted.
“Yes.”
“After the house sleeps?”
“No.”
His brows rose.
Mary Beth felt a small, wicked satisfaction.
“Come to the morning room at eight. We will have dinner. The servants already know you are staying at Blackthorn for the work. There is nothing scandalous about my engineer eating a meal.”
“And afterward?”
“Afterward we will discover whether love has improved your patience.”
“It has not.”
“Good.”
She walked back toward the house before he could kiss her again.
At eight that evening Ambrose came to the morning room in a clean dark coat, his hair still damp at the temples.
Mary Beth had changed into a deep green dinner dress she had not worn since the previous winter.
It was not one Benedict’s mother would have selected for a county dinner.
The neckline was too generous and the color made Mary Beth’s skin appear warmer than propriety required.
Ambrose stopped inside the door.
“That is unfair.”
“You survived the culvert.”
“Barely.”
Dinner was simple: roast chicken, potatoes, greens, and a pear tart Mary Beth knew Ambrose liked because he had once eaten two slices while claiming the second was professional compensation for a difficult day.
They spoke first about the wall because both of them needed somewhere ordinary to begin.
The culvert widening was sound. The new drainage fall remained sufficient even after the afternoon’s water. Final wall courses would begin Monday. If the weather held, the work might finish a day ahead of Ambrose’s latest estimate.
The knowledge no longer sat between them like a threat.
“What happens when you finish?” Mary Beth asked.
Ambrose set down his fork.
“I have a railway retaining job outside Wakefield that requires me for perhaps ten days. After that, nothing I cannot move.”
“You would take work from Blackthorn?”
“I would take work wherever it is. I built a firm, Mary Beth. I cannot turn it into a decorative feature of your estate.”
“I would despise you if you did.”
“I know.”
“But you would come back?”
“If you ask me to.”
She reached across the small table and put her hand over his.
“I am asking now, so you need not make me repeat myself every ten days.”
Ambrose turned his hand beneath hers and linked their fingers.
“Then I will come back.”
Later, after the dishes had been removed and the corridor outside had gone quiet, Mary Beth led him upstairs.
There was no lamp signal in the sitting-room window that night because Ambrose was already beside her.
Inside her rooms, Ambrose closed the door but did not immediately touch her.
Mary Beth leaned against it and studied him.
“You are thinking again.”
“Dangerous habit.”
“Particularly now.”
He came closer.
“I was thinking I have slept with you several times and somehow tonight feels more serious.”
“Because you said love?”
“Because you answered.”
Mary Beth understood. Desire had always given her a kind of control. She could choose it, enjoy it, and survive its ending. Love offered no such bargain.
She took Ambrose’s hand and placed it against her waist.
“Then do not make tonight perfect. I would find that suspicious.”
His thumb moved over the fabric of her dress.
“I had planned a flawless performance.”
“How exhausting.”
“For you, perhaps.”
She kissed him before his vanity became intolerable.
The laughter did not disappear when the kiss deepened. That was what Mary Beth noticed later. They had known urgency together, had learned the impatient language of bodies that had wanted each other for weeks. Tonight there was still urgency, but no need to prove anything with it.
Ambrose unfastened her dress slowly until Mary Beth accused him of conducting an engineering inspection.
He retaliated by kissing the place beneath her ear that made coherent criticism difficult.
She tugged his shirt free with less elegance than determination and found the old scar near his shoulder, tracing it with her fingertips before pressing her mouth there.
“I love you,” she said against his skin, partly because she wanted to learn how the words felt when they were not dragged out by an argument.
Ambrose went very still.
Then his hand moved into her hair.
“Say it again.”
Mary Beth lifted her head.
“Do not become spoiled.”
“Too late.”
“I love you.”
His answer was quieter than before.
“I love you too.”
They went to bed without hurry.
What followed was familiar enough that they knew how to please each other, yet the words they had spoken changed the pace of it. Tenderness unsettled Mary Beth more than nakedness ever had. Ambrose, meanwhile, seemed delighted to learn that being loved had not made her less inclined to argue.
Afterward he lay on his back while she rested against his shoulder, one leg tangled with his beneath the covers.
“I have a question,” he said.
“If it concerns drainage, leave.”
“It concerns Sablehurst.”
Mary Beth raised her head.
“Less appealing, but proceed.”
“Does he know you refused him because of me?”
“I told him you were part of the reason.”
Ambrose exhaled through his nose.
“That pleased you.”
“A little.”
“He will not forgive the humiliation easily.”
“He was not humiliated. No one witnessed it.”
“Men like Sablehurst do not require witnesses.”
Mary Beth thought of Benedict’s final warning about invitations and credit reversing themselves.
“He told me the county could close its doors again.”
Ambrose’s arm tightened around her.
“A threat?”
“He called it an observation.”
“Of course he did.”
“I can manage Benedict.”
“I know.”
She waited for the familiar male impulse to appear—for Ambrose to tell her that Benedict was now his problem.
It never came, and Mary Beth relaxed against him.
“That may be the most romantic thing you have done all day.”
“What?”
“Believed me when I said I can manage my own problem.”
Ambrose glanced over at her.
“I am learning.”
“Slowly.”
“Cruel woman.”
“Sinful, apparently.”
He smiled and kissed her forehead.
Mary Beth closed her eyes.
Ambrose had work that would take him away, a name that opened no aristocratic door, and the irritating conviction that she should make her own decisions even when he disliked them. None of it resembled the orderly future Benedict had laid out in the drawing room that afternoon.
Mary Beth listened to Ambrose settle beside her and decided that tomorrow she would tell him he snored. Whether it was true could wait until morning.