Page 13 of A Very Roguish Boxing Day
She lifted her chin.“It happens that I do.That is, in fact, why I paid two hundred and fifty pounds for the privilege of having you in my bed tonight.”
He shook his head.“But your first time should be with someone special.Someone who will be gentle with you.”
She studied him in the candlelight.“Would you not be gentle with me?”
“No!I mean, I would try.But…” He laughed darkly.“Just look at me.I’m this big, hulking brute.”
She decided she needed to lay her cards on the table.“That is precisely why I chose you.Because you are a big, hulking brute.”
“Well, you should have chosen someone else,” he muttered.
She shook her head, feeling mulish.“No.You are precisely the man I want.The man I need.”
He eyed her warily.“And why is that?”
She swallowed.“I need to lose my virginity.And I need to do it tonight.It all started the day of my great-aunt Agatha’s funeral…”
Chapter7
“What a fucking cunt.”
Tom winced.“Sorry.I shouldn’t have said that.”
But after listening to Gwendolyn’s story, it was his honest opinion of her brother.What kind of worm would try to steal from his own sister?Especially when he didn’t even need it?After all, Gwen had said his income was twice hers.
Gwendolyn lifted her chin.“Although it is not the language I would have chosen, I agree with your sentiment wholeheartedly.This is why I attended the bachelor auction tonight.If I pass the medical exam my brother is arranging for me tomorrow, I will be an independent widow with a moderate income and a cottage of my own.If I don’t, I will go right back under my brother’s thumb, and he will press me into marrying another one of his awful friends.”
“That still doesn’t explain why you picked me,” Tom noted.
She squeezed her eyes shut.“It was probably selfish of me.But my brother can be both vindictive and violent.When I saw you walk across the stage, I knew at once that you were the one I should choose.You were so tall and robust.I do not mean for my brother to discover my subterfuge, so it is my hope that he never finds out about our rendezvous.But, in the event that he does, I felt certain that you, out of all men, would be safe.That he would never dare to cross you.”She peered at him, cringing.“I apologize.You probably do not wish to be involved?—”
Tom snorted.“I don’t care about that.”It seemed unlikely that her brother would ever find out he’d been duped.And if he did, Tom could probably crush him with one hand.
He couldn’t believe what he was about to say.But the truth was, he knew a thing or two about struggling to secure your independence.And besides, he liked Gwen.She was a little bit odd, this bespectacled bluestocking, and they didn’t have a single thing in common.
But he found he wanted to help her, nonetheless.
“If you’re sure about this,” he began.
Hope flared behind her spectacles.“I am!Completely sure.Does that mean… are you willing to go through with it?”
Tom rolled his neck, loosening up.“I suppose I am.”
He didn’t know shit about this, about being a tender lover, about seducing a virgin.Or… he supposed he did, but it had beenso fucking long.Not since Gracie.How long had that been?Ten years?It felt like another lifetime, like he’d been a different person.Hell, hehadbeen a different person, young and full of hope.If you’d asked him back then, he would have told you what he was doing wasn’t just fucking.That he was making love to the woman he was going to marry.
He really had believed that for the year he’d thought she was his girl.It was clear he would have to leave Stockbridge, that there was barely enough smith work for his brother, Neil, and no hope of there being enough for the two of them.It was a year after he’d shot up to six and a half feet, and the notion that he might be able to go to London and make it as a boxer had started to seem less far-fetched.
He had it all planned out.He’d been saving every penny Mr.Norton paid him to help work his farm.He and Gracie would marry before they left.The first year or two would be hard.They’d both have to find paid work in order to get by.If things didn’t work out in those first few years, he would find a proper job so he could support what by then would be a growing family.
He'd honestly thought Gracie was on board.
So, imagine his surprise when he was sitting in church on a Sunday morning and the vicar read the banns for Gracie and Richard Everett.
He remembered sitting there, stunned silent.
Not Neil.Neil had blasphemed quietly, under his breath.Which he did all the time when he was behind the anvil but not inchurch.
Tom could still hear his brother hissing, “What thefuck, Tom?”
