Chapter Ten #2
“Yes, but you see, that’s part of the problem.
You’ve gone around giving such kisses to everyone.
Your kiss is rather devalued in the marketplace of such intimacies, is it not?
” She reached out then and patted his knee.
“But a nice kiss, nevertheless. Your expertise is appreciated. It was quite educational.”
“Educational?” he repeated flatly.
She nodded kindly. She meant it!
“As I said, I don’t intend to seek out intercourse. However, I cannot promise I’ll turn down an opportunity for a proper kiss from someone. Someone who means it.”
Alexander had absolutely meant it. He would gladly demonstrate just how much he’d bloody meant it.
Harriet was fidgeting. Alexander was coming to understand that she hated silence.
“Shall we be friends then?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“It’s just that I’d been wondering what this marriage might look like after we return to London.
I know we’re to recommence our previous lives, but we’ll be expected to interact on occasion.
You haven’t been entirely intolerable company, thus it occurred to me just now that you might become a friend. ”
“I don’t believe I’ve ever had a female friend before.” Alexander was bewildered. He was drifting, spinning, floating far above himself.
“What abject poverty you live in!” Harriet replied.
“And you? Do you have many friends of the opposite sex?” he challenged.
“Naturally! Our neighbor Mr. Hammons has poor eyesight, and I read to him on Thursdays. He’s the nicest man one could imagine, and uncommonly droll. And Garrett, his stable boy, I’ve been teaching him his letters, even though he’s almost sixteen. He’s most eager to learn.”
“I’m quite sure he is,” Alexander rejoined. Harriet paused then and studied his face.
“Not everything is about intercourse, you know.”
“When you’re a sixteen-year-old boy it is.”
Harriet rolled her eyes, although a quite becoming blush spread down from her cheeks to her neck. Alexander blinked as she continued. “The Thompson boys down the road, although they’re closer in age to Caroline and Frances. And, of course, Mr. Dawkins.”
“Yes, our inimitable Mr. Dawkins, how can we forget him?” Alexander grumbled. He knew he was being surly, but really. He’d just kissed the woman, and she was listing other men.
“Oh! Giuliana! There—you have a female friend!” She looked delighted for some reason.
“I do not view Giuliana in that capacity.”
“Do you enjoy her company?”
“In ways you can’t imagine,” he gritted out.
“Do you attend to one another?”
“Yes,” Alexander replied, although he was rather certain the type of attending he was thinking of bore little relation to what Harriet spoke of.
“And do you value her opinion?”
“Certainly.”
“Well, there’s a friend of yours!” Harriet replied smugly as if she’d settled a matter in his life that needed sorting.
Alexander couldn’t help but want to wipe the look off her face, which is perhaps why he replied: “One doesn’t usually want to fuck one’s friend.”
“On the contrary, I imagine that the desire to fuck one’s friend occurs quite frequently. You mustn’t let such a silly thing interfere with friendship!” The carriage was rolling to a stop, and Harriet alighted without any help from him or a groom, clearly quite pleased with her exit.
Alexander stayed seated in the carriage for a moment, until his driver, confused, peered around the door.
“Do you, uh, require assistance, sir?” Charleston asked, shyly.
“No, no.” Alexander brushed him off and gathered his hat and gloves from the seat beside him.
As he stepped out of the carriage, he was hit with a wave of bracing cold, which was welcome. The temperature was something to think about that wasn’t, well, her.
The respite was brief, however. As soon as he walked into the tavern, his eyes found Harriet once again, this time sidled up to the bar chatting with a female barkeep, a woman good-looking enough to appear out of place in such an establishment.
A woman whose undeniable beauty would, under normal circumstances, inform Alexander’s evening plans.
Surely decency was the reason for his uncharacteristic lack of interest; it was not the done thing to bed a barmaid while eloping with one’s fiancée.
Why had his attention snagged so on Harriet?
Because she was under his protection? Because he was to marry her?
He shook off that line of thinking and made his way over to the pair, where Harriet was already unfathomably deep in conversation. Damn, but the woman loved talking. Her status as a wallflower was baffling. How anyone had gotten her to stop speaking long enough to stand on the wall was a mystery.
“There you are! Sarah, this is …” Harriet began, spinning toward him, her cheeks flushed from either the cold or the delight of having a new conversation partner. Beside her, a rough-looking man sat, nursing an ale.
“Lord Alexander Stirling. Her husband,” Alexander cut in, gruffly, neglecting to give the false name they’d agreed upon. It was a little possessive, but he didn’t particularly like the way the man was eyeing the two women.
Harriet casually looped her arm through Alexander’s without her eyes ever leaving Sarah’s face.
Next to them, the drunken man let out a loud belch before humming something to himself.
Harriet didn’t seem to notice. “My lord, this is Sarah. Sarah owns this place—how magnificent is that? A female innkeeper?”
He nodded to Sarah. “Lovely to make your acquaintance, and congratulations on the inn.”
Something about the offhanded touch mere minutes after he’d heard the word fuck come out of her mouth set Alexander on edge. Or perhaps it was the knowledge that Harriet had no intention of ever touching him beyond these moments of playacting. And certainly, no intention of fucking him.
“Sorry to interrupt this”—Alexander swept a hand between the newly minted friends—“but do we have a room secured, darling? I’d like to dry off if that’s all right.” He wasn’t sure why, but he needed distance from her good mood. His undue sullenness would surely puncture her happiness.
“Of course, my lord,” Sarah responded, “you are upstairs, the third door on the left. I had Ruthie make it up for you, she should be almost done. Would you like to take your dinner upstairs?”
“Yes, thank you,” Alexander replied, just as Harriet said, “No, we’ll eat down here!”
Alexander loathed the idea of acting cheerful right now, although he couldn’t have said why he felt the need to perform for her at all.
Surely a man could enjoy a bout of disagreeableness from time to time.
However, he knew Harriet well enough to know she wouldn’t be moved, and he didn’t relish the idea of her eating downstairs without him, so he nodded his acquiescence before heading to the room to freshen up.
Alexander washed himself in the basin and then sat gingerly on the end of the bed in the small though well-appointed room.
He was not a slight man, and inns always made him feel even larger.
He scrubbed his hands through his hair, no doubt messing it up further; his valet would be quite put out seeing him now.
Alexander laughed, imagining explaining himself to the man.
“Coleson, I know I seem in a state right now. As it happens, I can’t stop thinking about my wife, which might sound perfectly acceptable, only I’ve found out I’m never to bed her. Ever.”
Damn if he wasn’t a bit disappointed that telling the truth had cost him having her, even just once.
It shouldn’t have felt such a great loss; he hadn’t even noticed the lass before the Dunley ball—fool that he was.
Even if he had noticed her then, it wouldn’t have done him any good, he reminded himself.
He didn’t court unmarried ladies or dally with innocents.
He was noticing her just fine now, as his cock was eager to point out. Indeed, for the next week he was to be tormented by her lips, which never stopped moving, and the citrusy scent of her, and her massive pile of chestnut hair, which was always escaping her terrible coiffures.
God, but he needed to get this wedding over with so he could go back to London, back to a place with women he actually could swive, back to drinking at White’s on Tuesdays, back to courting widows at balls. Back to who he was.