Chapter Six #2
She had imagined this. Lying in her narrow bed in the dark with one of her uncle’s books open on the pillow beside her, she had imagined what it would be like to touch a man this way.
The imagining had been clinical, curious and entirely inadequate, because the books described hardness, heat and urgency in a language that made it sound like a medical condition, and this was not a medical condition.
This was a man trembling against her hand.
This was his hips shifting forward half an inch, involuntary, his body seeking the pressure of her palm before his mind could stop it.
This was the sound of his breathing changing, going ragged and shallow, and the feel of his stomach muscles tightening beneath his waistcoat, and the knowledge, sudden, complete and devastating, that she had done this to him.
That her presence, her proximity, her face, her hands and her body in a room full of orange trees had produced this response in a man who had spent eight years surrounded by the most beautiful women in London and had not, by all accounts, been moved by any of them.
“Feel what you do to me.” His voice was raw.
Not performed. Not shaped. Raw, the words coming out rough-edged, as if they had been dragged from somewhere that had come unwillingly and had left marks on the way up.
“Tell me if I have invented this, tell me if you do not feel it too. I will go away if you say it. I will go away tonight and not return.”
She should have said it. She should have told him to leave.
Bethany’s voice echoed in her mind, along with everything she knew about the Hambridge family.
The sensible instinct that had protected her for four seasons was warning her: a duke who pulled her close in a conservatory was not a duke who intended to marry her.
The sensible voice was probably right, but it did not matter at all, because the truth in his voice was undeniable, and the honesty was the thing that broke her.
Not the desire. Not the heat of him against her palm.
Not the gasping, the kissing or the hand on her breast. The honesty.
The fact that he had asked her to tell him to leave.
The fact that he had given her the exit and had meant it, and the meaning was the most intimate thing he had offered her.
She did not pull her hand away. She held it there, against him, for one slow breath, feeling him pulse against her fingers, and feeling the slight involuntary shift of his hips as his body responded to the pressure of her hand.
His forehead dropped to hers, and neither of them moved.
The conservatory was silent around them.
She could feel his heartbeat through his waistcoat, fast and irregular, matching her own, and the matching was intimate in a way that went past the physical contact between them.
Whatever this was, it was not something either of them had planned, and it was not something either of them could stop.
She released him and stepped back. His hand fell from her breast, and the air between them was suddenly cold, empty and wrong, as if removing her hand had broken something that had only just begun to form, and the breaking hurt in a way she had not anticipated.
She did not speak. She pulled her shawl back over her shoulders, tugged her gloves on with fingers that shook badly enough that the second glove took three attempts, and walked out of the conservatory without looking back.
She walked quickly, her heels clicking on the stone, her breath still not steady, her body still thrumming with the ghost of him against her palm.
She passed the morning room and the parlor.
A footman near the front door asked if she required assistance, but she refused, her voice coming out remarkably normal given that the rest of her was anything but.
She walked out the front door and down the steps.
The night air hit her face; she stopped, breathed and pressed her gloved hands against her cheeks and stood there for a long count of ten, trying to reassemble herself from the pieces the conservatory had scattered.
The carriage was not ready. Aunt Margery and Cassie were still inside.
She stood on the Asquith gravel in the dark, her cheeks burning, the warmth between her legs insistent and steady, a pulse that matched her heartbeat and would not quiet.
She waited, because waiting was what she did, but it was terrible, because waiting alone in the dark after what had just happened left her with nothing but her own thoughts, and her thoughts were full of him.
***
The carriage arrived. Aunt Margery and Cassie climbed in, full of the evening’s gossip, and Imogen pressed herself into the dark corner and watched the Asquith manor recede through the window without saying anything.
She was thinking of what had happened in the conservatory and the memory of it was not fading, but she did not want it to fade, and that was the most frightening part of all.
She went to bed and lay in the dark with the quilt pulled up to her chin, her body still humming and her mind running over the same ground again and again: the conservatory, the orange trees, the lamplight, his voice.
She pressed her thighs together beneath the quilt and tried to make the pulse stop but without any success.
So, she lay there; hot, restless and awake, and thought about his hand on her breast, his forehead against hers and the slow breath he had taken when she held him.
***
Bethany arrived at the Goodall morning room the next morning before the breakfast chocolate had cooled, which meant she had been watching the street from her upstairs window again.
“Tell me,” Bethany said, sitting down across the table and pouring herself chocolate without waiting to be offered any.
She was in her morning gown, her dark hair pinned back severely, no jewelry, no adornment, the face of a woman who had got out of bed and crossed the garden before dressing properly because the matter was urgent and dressing could wait.
“There is nothing to tell,” Imogen said, and the lie was so transparent that Bethany did not bother to acknowledge it.
“Imogen.”
“We were in the conservatory. At the Asquiths.”
“I know you were at the Asquiths. I know there is a conservatory. Tell me what happened in it.”
Imogen told her. Not everything. Not the hand on the trousers, not the specific heat of him against her palm, not the trembling.
Not the hour she had spent afterwards lying in the dark with her thighs pressed together and his voice in her head.
She told her about the conservatory, the kiss, the words he had said and the honesty in his voice.
She watched Bethany’s face change as she listened, the protective sharpness softening into something that looked less like certainty and more like worry, the kind of worry that came from recognizing that the situation had moved past the point where good advice could help.
“He told me to tell him to go,” Imogen said. “He said he would leave and not return. He meant it, Bethany. I am certain he meant it.”
“That is precisely what concerns me.” Bethany set her cup down. “A rake who does not mean it is a nuisance. A rake who means it is something else entirely, because meaning it does not change what he is. It only changes how much damage he does when he leaves.”
“You assume he will leave.”
“No rake has ever told the truth about wanting a woman who was not paying him for the privilege,” Bethany said, and her voice was quieter than usual, as if the volume of it mattered, as if speaking softly might cushion the landing.
“I have watched them, Imogen. I have watched them for six seasons. They say what is needed and they mean it while they say it and then they leave, and the women they leave behind are the ones who believed the meaning would last.”
Imogen did not argue, but she did not agree either.
They finished their chocolate in silence. Bethany kissed her cheek at the door but paused, her hand on the latch, and said, very quietly, “I hope I am wrong about him, Imogen. I have never hoped that before about any man. I want you to know that.”
The latch clicked. Imogen sat alone in the morning room for a long time, her hands wrapped around a cup that had gone cold, and the memory of his body against her palm still vivid.
She thought about hope, and about how dangerous it was to want a man you had been warned against, and about how the warning made the wanting worse.
How none of that mattered, because her hand still remembered the shape of him, her body still remembered the heat, and she was past the point where warnings could help.