Page 58 of Private Arrangements
“I thought it was dishonorable. Something beneath me. Ironic, isn't it?” She pushed away from the door and advanced until she stood by the bed, on the farther side from him, her silhouette limned against a nimbus of moonlight, the dark curves of her body just barely visible inside the diaphanous shadows of her peignoir.
He swallowed.
“I should have gone ahead and done it that night,” she said. “You'd have married me, knowing you'd been had. But you wouldn't have been infuriated enough to run to America, only disgusted enough to not be happy with me. We'd have been like every other couple in Society—a normal life, you see.”
“No,” he said, his voice harsher than he'd intended. “You should have done the honorable thing. Theodora married one day before we did. Had you a little more patience, when I returned to England for Easter, you could have had your cake and eaten it too.”
The bed dipped beneath her weight. She slid under the covers, safely on her side of the bed. “I think I've learned my lesson already.”
“Have you?”
She didn't answer. Instead, she asked a question of her own. “Why do you place so much importance on reaching financial parity with me?”
Because I am married to you, the richest woman in England after Victoria Regina, you idiot. What's a man who still dreams of fucking you to do?
He reached under the cover, grabbed her by the front of her peignoir, and yanked her toward him. She gasped. And gasped again as his teeth scraped the crook of her neck.
He rolled on top of her . . . groaning with the heavenliness of her under him. Since his return, he'd seen her naked. He'd climaxed inside her. But he had not allowed himself to feel her, the dense, smooth texture of her skin, the firm undulation of her body. He grabbed a fistful of her peignoir and pushed it upward. “Take it off.”
“No. You can do what you want perfectly well with it in place.”
“What I want is you naked. Without a stitch.”
“That wasn't part of our deal. You never said I had to disrobe for you.”
“What's the matter?” he said softly into her ear, enjoying her quiver. “Afraid to be naked under me?”
“It's not right. I'm not going to dishonor Freddie by allowing you any more liberties than I must.”
Suddenly he was enraged, at her obduracy and her obtuseness. Lord Frederick would make her about as happy as a clam in a bowl of bouillabaisse. He gripped her peignoir at her throat and tore it down its length, the shrillsszzzzzrudely rending the somnolent darkness. “There. Now if Lord Frederick asks, which is none of his business, you can tell him in all honesty that you didn'tallowme any liberties.”
She panted, the sound of a woman unable to get enough air, her exhalations drowning out the muffled chirping of sleepless crickets in the garden.
He lowered himself onto her, the sensation of her skin against his at once shockingly familiar and un-nervingly new, as if he'd never left her bed all these years, as if this was only the second night of their honeymoon and he'd been staring at her all day, dying for the sun to set and a blessed, endless night to descend.
He was a fool. A fool to fall for her the first time. And a fool to come back now, when he already knew his weakness all too well, having wrestled with it every day of these past ten years.
Too late.
He drowned himself in the velvety feel of her, marveling at the way her skin slid over her clavicles with her every breath, kissing a trail along the top of her shoulder, reluctant to leave each square inch of her glorious skin, impatient to savor all of her.
She placed her hands against his upper arms, but she didn't push. She only emitted a sweet, despairing sound as he kissed the base of her throat. The gloom in his heart lifted a bit, though he knew it was madness to think this was anything but madness.
He kissed his way to her chin, to the soft spot just under her lips. There he hesitated. To kiss her on the mouth was to inform her, in exactly so many words, that she'd marry Lord Frederick over his dead body.
Beneath him, he felt her heartbeat, as rapid, erratic, and uncertain as his own. Did he want to go down that path? Did he dare? And what awaited him at the bitter end if he were to walk this avenue of folly?
“There is something I have to tell you,” she said suddenly, rupturing the moment of suspense. “There is no point to your sleeping with me. None at all. I am using a Dutch cap. I have been using one all along. You stand no chance of getting me with child, so you might as well leave me alone.”
When he was six years old, during an exuberant game of chase in the corridors of his grandfather's house, he'd run into a wall. The next thing he knew, he found himself flat on the floor, too stunned to understand what had just happened. He felt like that now. He didn't know what to make of her outburst, her abrupt decision to push things to the brink.
He gazed down at her. Her features were only half visible in the faint illumination of the moon, a shadow of a high cheekbone, a dark fullness of lips, and eyes like water at the bottom of a deep well, black with pinpoints of refracted starlight.
“Then why do you tell me? Why not go on duping me? That would have served your purpose better.”
“Because I can't take it anymore,” she said, lying very still. “I'm sure you are happily vindicated in your opinion of me. But it doesn't matter. I can't go any further.”
“Why?” He ran his fingers through her hair, the ultimate luxury. Her hair was heavy, smooth, glossy, and cool as morning dew. He never remembered another woman's hair the way he remembered hers. “What happened to your legendary ruthlessness?”
