Page 38 of Miss Dauntless
Not ever again, becauseHarry was dead. Matilda felt a new sense of relief, as if Tremont’s proposal, his desire for her, and hers for him, somehow put Harry’s ghost to rest once and for all.
“I want more.” She whispered the words against Tremont’s mouth. “I want more from you.” And from life, apparently.
Tremont collected her in his arms and cradled her head against his chest. “I rejoice to hear it.”
He wasn’t rushing to lock the door or pull the curtains, but his heart wasn’t exactly napping either. Matilda reveled in his embrace, in the warmth and scent of him, and in the certain knowledge the Tremont had more to say.
“Shall I court you, Matilda?”
Had he not kissed her, she might have refused his request. She might have mistaken restraint and respect for a lack or absence of passion. She might have disdained his suit, attributing to him a certain laziness when it came to finding a bride. She knew better. Tremont was constitutionally incapable of laziness in any matter of import.
She grasped—now—that a man who made intimacies a mutual exploration was a better bet than one who spouted passionate declarations while fumbling beneath her skirts, or thought himself manly for rutting on his exhausted wife.
His lordship would not be content until Matilda had experienced how a man acquitted himselfvery well indeedin bed with his lover.
“I want you,” she said. “I’d never thought to desire a man again, but I desire you.”
“I am not a box of French chocolates, Matilda,” he murmured near her ear. “I am a fellow with many faults, a few dreams, and a vast regard for you.”
“I want to know those dreams.”
He stroked her hair, the loveliest caress imaginable. “I want to share my dreams with you, and join my dreams to yours,and hatch up new ones together. I want to lie beside you on a summer day and watch the clouds form into dragons and roses over our heads. I want to see you dream by moonlight and waken to the joy of your embrace on a chilly winter morning.”
Oh, ye flights of angels. Those were the words a very young Matilda had needed to hear from her fumbling soldier boy. The words she’d hoped to have from her husband.
Standing in the circle of Tremont’s arms, Matilda felt a tide of compassion for her younger self. That lonely, frustrated girl at the vicarage had been desperate for the attentions of any man who looked at her twice, who saw her as a person in her own right. To beseenmattered—the girl in the vicarage hadn’t been entirely wrong—but she should have been watching for the man who had a good opinion of himself, too, not the blustering poseurs and confidence tricksters.
And yet, in that small village, in her father’s household, she would have waited a lifetime for any man who could come close to Tremont’s self-possession and perspicacity. Her father would have seen to that, and Matilda would have been none the wiser.
We do the best we can, Mrs. Merridew, and one cannot control the results.Tremont had said that, and he’d been right.
“You shall court me,” Matilda said, “and be discreet about it.”
Tremont’s hand on her hair paused, then resumed its caresses. “I won’t say anything to Tommie or the men, if that’s what you mean. I will meet with my solicitors, though.”
“You can think of solicitors at a time like this?” Matilda’s awareness was focused on how well their bodies fit together, how lovely the warmth of the fire was, and how wrong she’d been about so many things.
To be wrong was sometimes the greatest relief in the world.
“Certain dreams,” Tremont said, “only come true if all the documents are in order. Your settlements will include a provision for Tommie, of course, and if there’s anybody else whoneeds looking after—your father’s housekeeper, your widowed auntie?—then you must let me know.”
Tremont was a peer of the realm, a man born to wealth and privilege, the very sort of person whom the satirists loved to lampoon. He was also a greater repository of decency and kindness than Matilda’s ordained father had ever been.
“I can trust you,” Matilda said slowly. “I truly can trust you.”
“If you can’t, then you are to give me my congé on the instant, madam.”
She peered up at him. “Is that an order?”
“An emphatic suggestion. Without trust, what is a marriage? What is a friendship, for that matter?”
To him, those were not philosophical abstractions, while to Matilda, this embrace was not simply a passing hug. She stepped back nonetheless, because the notion of locking the door and proceeding with a particular aspect of the courtship would not leave her imagination.
“Whom do you trust?” Matilda asked, resuming her seat on the sofa.
“Most everybody to a certain extent, until they prove my trust is misplaced.” He remained by the fire, a handsome fellow in a room suited to his consequence. He was also a good man who wanted to share his future with her.
“I will need time,” she said, “to become comfortable with your trusting nature. My own nature is not trusting. Please do sit with me. Kissing you seems to have worked up an appetite.” Several appetites. For him, for a future with him, and yes, for some of this good food too.
