Page 18 of Lord Ramsey's Red-Headed Ruin
“I’m sorry.” She put her arm around the girl’s shoulders. “It is difficult to lose your mother at any age.”
“Is yours alive?” Sophie asked with hope in her eyes. “I apologize. I should not have asked so personal a question.”
“Of course you could. I do not mind.” Amber looked away for a moment. “I do not remember my mother well.”She is a ghost to me.
“Non!Terrible!” Sophie caught Amber’s hand. “I am so sorry.”
“My father was a duke’s aide and became very ill. When he could no longer take care of me, my aunt came to London. I was nine when she took me with her to Paris. I lived with her until I married.” Amber paused, another thought of beloved Maurice bringing tears to her eyes.
The girl’s brow furrowed. She did not understand Amber’s emotion. “ButMonsieur le Vicomteis a very handsome man. You must be proud. I would be so happy to have such a wonderful man by my side.”
Caught in the moment when she reflected too much on the past, Amber remembered the present danger—and her growing affection for her “new” husband. “Oui, oui.”
Fearing that Sophie would ask more—and that she had told the girl too many facts—Amber hurried to change the subject. “Now,” she said with a brightness she did not feel, “fetch your sewing basket. We will tend to this gown.”
As they cut seams and basted new ones in the luscious silk, Amber saw Godfrey DuClare’s flame-blue eyes and pondered the words she had let slip into her consciousness. Yes, she admitted, she did have affection for her new husband.
Chapter Six
Breakfast in thesmall strawberry-painted room off the kitchen was always a cheerful, chatty affair.
Ram today was in no mood to appear bright and affable. Rather, he could easily chew the hefty circular table down to wood chips. Frustration had him trying to plaster on a smiling face. Acting for once in his life took too much out of him.
“Good morning,” he bade Georges, his three children, and Amber. He took his usual chair beside his supposed wife, uncommonly gorgeous in muslin violet at eight in the morning.
One cause of his grumpiness was his failure to learn much about weapons production in town. The other, bigger, cause of his sour mood was that his back was killing him. He had volunteered yesterday to help Georges and the men of the town to build out wooden planks in front of thehôtel de villeto create a dance floor. All for the fair tomorrow and ball Friday night. But his shoulders throbbed because he had slept on the floor of his and Amber’s bedroom last night. It was not the first night of such rude incapacitation. It was his third.
Oh, Amber had argued with him last night as he grabbed a pillow and threw it to the floor.
He had barked back.
Drawing in her pretty chin to her neck in shock at his growling, she’d appeared chastised. “I wish you wouldn’t sleep there,” she had said in a pout.
“Well, we don’t always get what we want.” He knew that too damn well. If he had his wish, his hands would be full of her every night. His cock would be buried inside her mouth-watering flesh and—
“I wish I didn’t sprawl out so much. I could learn to be a more polite bed partner. Honestly—”
“Polite, my arse.” More tempting, she could never be. He blew air from his lips. “Hardly the major problem,ma femme.”
“I could say we had an argument and ask for another room—”
He shook a finger at her. “That you will not do.”
“Come now, Ram. I am safe here. No one can hurt—”
“I said no.” Then he threw blankets to the floor.
“You’ll not be able to help tomorrow with the woodwork. I see how you stoop.”
“Will you leave it alone? If I stoop, it is not from working with wood. But from working wood.”
She had blinked. Hard. Began to form the wordwhat?But never finished it—instead she’d clamped her lips together and turned away to the bed, giving him her back and her silence.
She was no innocent, and she jolly well knew now that his aching back did not give him a problem as much as his aching cock.
This morning’s conversation, thankfully, turned to the musicians for the ball. Adele played the violin and would be among those playing for the dancers. Edouard, who had helped with the planks for the dance floor, had hurt his hand yesterday.
“I know they will be without a drummer, but my wrist hurts,” he said.
