Page 48 of A Deal With a Notorious Devil
Phoebe had hardly gotten the question out before there was a rap at the door, and a few servants filed into the room, laboring beneath the weight of altogether too much food, a tea service, clean cloths, and a massive bowl filled with water, in which bobbed several large chunks of ice.
She pinned her lips together as they set the tray of food across Chris’ lap, slanting a pointed glare in his direction meant to suggest that if he made even the slightest reference to her indelicate question before them, she would see that he lived to regret it.
With a huff of irritation, Chris held his tongue as the servants went through their paces. She supposed he was unaccustomed to not speaking freely, of whatever he pleased, regardless of the presence of his staff.
What hewasaccustomed to, she suspected, was scheming. Plotting. Working out how best to manipulate any given situation to his advantage. And by the calculating gleam in his eyes as he watched her in the fraught silence before the staff had once more departed the room, he had figured out how to do it.
“I’ll tell you,” he said, little more than a half-second after the door had closed behind the last of the servants. “If you stay for lunch.”
“I’ve already eaten,” she said.
“Yes, I know. You took tea with my mistress.” The faintly grumbling tone implied he was still put out over that. “I suppose she was the one to inform you of such things.”
Of course she had been. Phoebe had never heard of them before, not even in whispers from married friends. But then most of the women of her acquaintance were ladies in the truest sense of the word, wed to gentlemen with titles and estates to pass down to heirs. Children were meant to be the natural result of marriage, a way of preserving one’s legacy, one’s lineage.
“Am I not permitted to be curious about such things?” she asked. “I had thought if there were anyone to understand, it would be you.”
“I do,” he said, lifting the silver cover from the tray upon his lap and setting it aside to reveal a lunch of thin slices of meat, wedges of cheese, thick cuts of bread, and a bowl of strawberries. “But I’m not in the habit of giving away something for nothing.”
She had a diamond bracelet in her pocket that suggested otherwise. “Give me a damned strawberry, then,” she said. “And tell me.”
Chris speared a strawberry upon the tines of his fork and held it out to her. “It’s an item made of sheep’s gut that a man wears over his cock during sex,” he said. “Primarily, its purpose is to prevent the contraction of diseases. But it also prevents a man’s seed from taking root.”
Phoebe blinked. Perhaps she ought to have been shocked by the blunt speech, but it was somehow preferable to the veiled, confusing terms that most of her social set used. Like a riddle couched in flowery and obfuscating language, she had often felt she had come out of a conversation less educated than when she had entered it. “And this is…effective?” she asked, finishing off the strawberry as she reached for a clean cloth and dunked it into the icy water.
“More often than not. It’s doubtful I could father a child anyway—but I’d prefer not to contract a preventable illness if I might avoid it. Thus far, they have served me well.” He tore a slice of bread into bite-sized pieces with his fingers, and those sharp blue eyes surveyed her cannily. “Do you want to see one?”
“Could I?”
The corner of his mouth lifted. “For a price,” he said.
Phoebe frowned her disapproval. “Is everything a transaction to you?”
“Most things,” he said. “Fortunately for you, my price is inexpensive. I’ll ask only a kiss.”
“A kiss!”
The arch of a single brow suggested Chris thought her reaction a trifle overblown. “Is it so objectionable? To my recollection, you enjoyed yourself well enough last time.”
Phoebe knew her cheeks had to be crimson. With a sort of petulance of which she had never dreamed herself capable, she lobbed the cloth at him, and he gave a bark of laughter as it slapped against his forehead, tiny rivulets of water sliding down his face upon impact. “That was for show,” she said peevishly. “It was meant to look convincing, if you’ll recall.”
“Really? Only show?” He scraped away the water running down his face and peeled the cloth away. “I was fooled, then. And I am not fooled often.”
“I don’t believe I have got those sorts of desires,” she said.
“Do you not? Or is it that you think you’re not meant to? That you’ve acquired a certain anxiety about what such things might lead to?” There was no judgment lurking within the words; they were offered only with curiosity.
And the answer to them was—she didn’t know. She had never allowed herself to examine it too closely. There had been gentlemen she had found attractive, whom she would not have refused a kiss in a secluded garden or deserted terrace…ifshecould have experienced those things without the threat of marriage hanging over her head. Without the threat of children. She supposed it was…possible, perhaps, that she had let such fears wreak havoc upon her mind, until it had simply been safer, more comfortable, and altogether less frightening to ignore such thoughts whenever they happened to traipse, unbidden, through her mind. To turn up her nose at them and pretend them away, until they had grown fewer and farther between, more easily disregarded.
But she had liked the kiss. She had liked the way it had lingered long afterward in the slight bruising of her lips. She had liked his arm around her waist, the warmth of his palm sliding over her bottom, the heat of his chest pressed against hers.
She had just never judged that sort of thing, no matter how pleasant, worth the risk of bringing a child into the world. Even if he could not father children, still she would rather not tempt fate in that regard. But if certain things could mitigate that risk yet further—
Phoebe said, “I want to see it first.”
Chris squinted in open suspicion. “How do I know you’ll hold up your end of the bargain?”
“Between the two of us, I’m far more trustworthy.”
