Page 22 of A Delicate Deception
“I am,” she said. “I’m pleased with you too,” she added with an air of charitable concession.
He laughed and kissed her again, and couldn’t remember if he had ever been so happy in anyone’s arms.
“That wasn’t bad, was it?” Amelia asked after she had made some efforts to rearrange her clothes into a semblance of presentability. They were sitting against the stone wall in a patch of sun. She was wondering if they could stay out here long enough to do that again, preferably with Sydney considerably more disrobed. Between her legs there was a dull ache, but she wanted more of that fullness, more of Sydney’s hands on her, his body pressing against hers.
“Not bad?” Sydney asked. He still looked dazed, which was highly satisfactory from Amelia’s point of view. “How lowering.” But his fingers were twined with Amelia’s and his voice held a hint of a laugh.
“I mean not bad for a novice. I don’t think I was too terribly disappointing,” she said with full confidence she had not been in the least disappointing.
His hand went still against hers. “You hadn’t—you were—Amelia, what are you trying to tell me? When in your letter you wrote that you had previous correspondents, I thought that was a code for—” He rubbed his face over his beard. “I am an idiot. Had you not done that before?”
“No,” she said, dreading the follow-up.
His jaw set and his eyebrows slanted into dark slashes. “Are you telling me you were a virgin?”
She knew she shouldn’t have said anything. But here she was, sated and happy and warm and she stupidly felt like she could be honest with this man. “Don’t be like that,” she said. “Don’t mystify my hymen.”
“Don’t mystify—what—” he sputtered. “I’m not mystifying anything. But you’ve now put me in the position of having deflowered you up against a stone wall.”
“I beg your pardon,” Amelia said, getting to her feet, “I have not been deflowered, as you so vulgarly put it. My hymen—my entire vagina as well as the rest of my body, thank you very much—are mine to do with as I please, with the consent of my lovers—”
“You haven’t had any lovers, that’s the point!” Sydney scrambled to his feet beside her, tucking in his shirt.
“No it is not,” she snapped. “My previous experience of this one specific act has nothing to do with you. I have no duty to tell you. It’s none of your business. Besides, if I had told you, you would have gotten sentimental.” Oh no, she shouldn’t have said that last part. Far better to pretend that sentiment didn’t enter into this, that it didn’t even exist as a possibility between them.
He reached out to brush some dust off her sleeve. “And what’s so wrong with sentiment? I would have taken care, Amelia.”
She glanced away. “I felt very much as if you did care for me,” she said.
“I would have made an effort not to hurt you.” He stepped nearer, and took her hand.
“You didn’t, though. You didn’t hurt me. I enjoyed myself, which I think was abundantly clear, was it not?”
“Yes, but—”
“And I think you did as well?”
He took her other hand and drew her against his chest. “Obviously.”
“Then next time we can have the tearful deflowering you feel I cheated you out of this time,” she offered, feeling diplomatic.
He stared down at her for long enough that she thought he really was upset with her. Then he laughed. “Amelia,” he said when he collected himself. “As long as there is a next time, we can do whatever you please.”
“Well, then,” she said, trying not to sound smug, trying not to acknowledge the warm feeling of softness and fondness that bubbled up inside her whenever she caught his eye. “I suppose that settles it.”
Chapter Nine
“Sydney, I have a matter to discuss with you,” Lex called out when Sydney returned to Pelham Hall. He was lounging on a sofa that had definitely not been there yesterday. Every time Sydney walked into a room, he found that its contents had doubled in both quantity and quality. Leontine sat on a new rug in a patch of sunshine, apparently reassembling the clock that she had taken apart some weeks earlier. “Is something dripping? I hear water. If there’s a leak in this roof I might actually cry.”
“No, it’s me. I went for a swim before coming in.” He hoped Lex couldn’t tell that he was blushing. After parting with Amelia, Sydney had been overheated in both mind and body, so had cast off his boots and coat and jumped into what had once been the trout pond but was now a clear lake. He felt much more sober and serious now, far less like a man who was perilously close to falling in love with a woman for whom this was all a lark. They had never once discussed the future, never even come close to stating what they were to one another, and now Sydney was devastatingly aware that all the idiotic feelings he had let himself acquire were very possibly unreturned.
“You took a—have you run mad? Even in the middle of August, that pond is one step removed from ice.”
“It was perfectly comfortable,” Sydney lied. He had sought out the sudden chill, hoping it would shock his mind into behaving reasonably.
“Get on dry clothes and when you come back you can help make sure that the house is ready for company,” Lex said, as if offering a reward.
“Company,” Sydney repeated, not sure why he was even surprised that Lex took it upon himself to issue invitations to a house that wasn’t even his.
