Page 8 of The Lady in White
Her lips quirked. “I am not. Everything that I have experienced in life has shaped me into the person I am today. I am rather happy with who I am. Would you alter the course of your past if it meant being someone different from who you are today?”
“I do not know, truthfully. Regardless, we need to discuss our current situation and how it has altered the way we might deal with one another.”
“You wish for me to stay here in the master suite with you,” she surmised. “There are two bedchambers?”
“There are,” he said. “But I do not think that will be sufficient for our plan to work. The servants here have no loyalty to me. I have been away for many, many years. Most of them had never laid eyes upon me until this past year when my uncle died. But Terrence grew up here and lived here off and on for the decade I was with the army. He has their fealty.”
He saw her uncertainty. Her expression shifted almost imperceptibly before she once more schooled it into impassivity. “Then we are to share a bed chamber?”
“Yes. Until he leaves, which may not be for some time. Months, perhaps,” he admitted. “I had thought that we might take our time and get to know one another a bit before we embarked on the more intimate part of our marriage—to give you some distance and privacy as we adjust to this new state.”
“To be perfectly clear, the distance and privacy were entirely your idea. Not mine. I understood when I agreed to the marriage what I was committing myself to.”
It was as if all the air had been sucked from the room. God above! The more he discovered about her, the more fascinating he found her.
She cocked her head to one side, staring at him curiously. “How well must we know one another for it to be enough?”
*
He’d stepped closerto her with each word, until they stood toe to toe. Staring up into his dark gaze, Louisa felt herself swaying toward him. She’d never been kissed. But growing up as she did, she certainly knew more about it than many young ladies did. And all the nonsense from Alexandra’s gothic novels made it sound positively divine. “How well do you normally know the women you take to your bed?”
The moment the question escaped her lips, she wished she could call it back. It was terribly provocative. And bold. So very, very bold.
His lips curved in a smirk. “There is no way to answer that question that does not cast me in a negative light. I think it’s best, always, to let the woman in question decide what is well enough. But perhaps there is a small experiment we might try.”
“Oh? And what is that?” she asked. Was that truly her? There was no denying the flirtatious challenge in her voice, but where in heaven’s name had it come from?
“A kiss, Louisa. Only a kiss.”
Before she could think of some appropriate response, he’d simply swooped in. His lips covered hers, moving over them in a way that was mesmerizing. For all his seeming indifference to her initially, that kiss was a revelation. It was gentle but insistent. Generous and also demanding. It was not at all what she had thought. She’d certainly seen others kissing and so much more. But she’d never experienced it. She’d never known that it would sweep her away into a haze of pleasure.
When his arms closed about her, pulling her against him, her lips parted in surprise. He swiftly took advantage and deepened the kiss. And Louisa was simply lost to it. All thought fled and she clung to him, ready for whatever might come next.
Chapter Seven
Douglas punctuated thatkiss with a slight nip, his teeth scraping gently over the lushness of her lower lip. The shiver it elicited from her was enough to test his resolve. He wasn’t going to bed her. Not yet. Despite the intense desire he felt for her and her apparent willingness, he knew that wasn’t quite enough. Louisa, with her sweet and passionate response, was still an innocent. And they had known one another only three days. He was selfish enough to want it, but not self-serving enough to give in to those desires.
Forcing himself to gentle the kiss, to ease it back from the cusp of calamity and to something sweeter, something that was far more about romance than about naked lust. When his breathing had slowed, when the blood that had been racing in his veins returned to its normal pace, he pulled back more still. With a final brush of his lips against hers, he released her.
“That was not how I intended for things to go. I want to be certain that when you invite me to your bed, Louisa, it’s because you want me there and not because you feel it is simply what a wife is supposed to do. We have enough things stacked against us in this without adding the weight of obligation.”
She shook her head. “You are mistaken, Douglas. Nothing that has passed between us has been because I felt it was what I ought to do. If I were concerned with that, I would have refused you outright.”
The startled laugh that erupted from him shocked them both. It had been a long while since he had laughed. Certainly, he hadn’t since returning to Rosehaven. “Indeed. I suppose you would have. In light of that, Louisa, I would advise you to rest while you may. I imagine there will not be any sleep for you tonight.”
“Where are you going then?”
All trace of amusement fled. “To find out precisely what Terrence is doing here and what he really wants. Nothing he says can ever be taken at face value.”
With that resolve firm in his mind, he turned and left the room. It was best that she not be present for his confrontation with Terrence. She was a distraction for him, and with his cousin, having all of one’s faculties about was imperative.
He found him in the billiard room. It was where Terrence normally spent the majority of his time while in residence. Or at least, it always had been. It seemed his habits had not changed.
“Cousin, I would have thought you had better things to do today than keep me company,” Terrence said, lifting his gaze from the billiard table even as he took his shot.
Douglas nodded in agreement. “Certainly more enjoyable things, but then there is little that would not be preferable to being in your company. I cannot simply toss you out of this house, not without providing other suitable lodgings for you. Uncle James made that a contingency, didn’t he? Now I must support you regardless of whatever wastrel endeavors you throw yourself into.”
Terrence lined up the next shot. “Unless your marriage is dissolved. Or something happens to either of you before the year is out.... What a pity that would be.”
