Page 21 of A Touch Wicked
“You asked me once if you were a distraction from mysomeone,” she said. “Am I a distraction for you? From your inevitable?”
“Something like that.” James shook his head and brushed his fingertips along her jaw. “May I speak plainly with you?”
“Of course. Always.”
“I don’t want a mistress after marriage. If I can’t offer my wife love, at least I can give her fidelity.” He stopped touching her face, his fingers curling into his palm. “It’s more than my father gave my mother.”
Alexandra had told her as much.
The late earl died shortly before Emma came into the employ of the Grey family, but his life cast an undeniable shadow over his children. Michael Grey had been charming, the servants said. A quality that had been both his greatest asset and biggest weakness. In his investments, that charm made him a great deal of money and connections. In his private life, it surrounded him with a constant barrage of women, or so Emma had heard.
While a number of gentlemen took mistresses, she knew the old Earl of Kent had a voracious appetite when it came to women. A mistress was one thing, a man parading his many lovers about with no regard to his wife and children was another.
“His affairs bothered you?” Emma tried to sound indifferent, as if she knew nothing about him or his past.
“Not the affairs, no.” James let out a breath. “My father was . . . careless, to put it delicately. He took his mistresses to the theatre, the opera, on holidays to the Continent. He lavished them with gifts and attention. My mother hid how it made her feel, but it took a particular toll when she was pregnant with my sister.”
“Did she love him?”
“Like with yours, far more than he deserved,” James said. “I often wondered why.”
She pulled away and tugged the sheets around her. Suddenly it was too much, her nudity and everything he had said and how it made her feel.
That sheet was armor — or, at least, a thin facade of it. A wordless way of saying,This, but no closer.Because she was a fake, a fraud, a liar.
“Selene?” James sat up, his fingertips brushing the back of her neck. “Was that too much?”
Yes. You’re too much. This is too much. It was supposed to be one night and now it’s something more.
“No,” Emma said. “I was thinking about how my father doted on my mother after long absences, but how empty it all seemed. He gave her affection and gifts, as if he could buy her forgiveness. I had trinkets in my bedchamber that he found during his travels. They were always exactly what I wanted, but when he gave them to me, he’d pat my wrist and send me to my room and never speak of it again. As I grew older, I understood why.”
She heard him swallow, as if dreading the answer. “Why?”
Emma lifted her shoulder in a shrug. “Because my mother gave him a list. She’d write my name at the top as a reminder.” At the question in his eyes, Emma looked away. “He wouldn’t have remembered me, otherwise. He could never recall my name.”
James sucked in a harsh breath. “How? How is that possible?”
“Haven’t you figured it out yet? The woman behind this mask is so easily forgettable as to be invisible.”
He stared at her. “I don’t believe that.”
Emma knew her look was slightly pitying. “James—”
He kissed her, his lips soft on hers. “Let me see you and I’ll prove it isn’t true,” he murmured. When she shook her head, he kissed her again and again. “Then wait here.”
Emma watched as he rose from the bed. She admired his beautiful form in the light. The way his muscles flexed as he picked up a candlestick and blew out the flame.
She stayed silent as he went around the room and snuffed out each candle until they were left in complete darkness. The bed dipped as he returned, and she felt him reach for her mask.
He slid it off and she heard him place it on the bedside table.
Then he touched her. She felt his fingertips brush along her closed eyelids, down the slope of her nose.
“Beautiful,” he whispered. “God, you’re so beautiful.”
Emma drew away, but not far enough. His lips found her cheek; he pressed a kiss there.
“In the darkness you can imagine me to look anyway you’d like,” she said.
