Page 34 of An Affair with a Notorious Heiress
Leaning across, she squeezed her sister’s hand and smiled. “Small sacrifice. As for the people surrounding us at the moment, they probably want to be noticed as little as we do. This is a den of vice after all.”
“A respectable den of vice,” Rexton pointed out.
She arched a brow at him. “You are aware that respectable and vice don’t go together very well.”
He grinned, and she wished she didn’t take pleasure in being the one responsible for lightening his mood. “You have a point, but there are much worse places where vice occurs, where a man can lose not only his purse but his life.”
“Frequent those places do you?”
“Let’s just say I’m aware of them. Ah, it seems our main course is arriving.”
They’d already enjoyed a vegetable soup as well as crabmeat smothered in a shrimp sauce. The beef tenderloins the waiter placed before her smelled delicious. String beans and potatoes were set on a separate plate beside the first. Tillie wasn’t disappointed with her first bite, nor was she surprised when Rexton ordered a second bottle of wine. She didn’t usually indulge so much, and it was making her a bit light-headed, but she was also enjoying the sensation.
“You’ll avoid those darker places once you’re married, won’t you?” Tillie asked casually, not about to let him get away with the simple answer he’d given.
“I suspect there’s a good many things I’ll avoid once I’m married,” he said equally casually.
“Other women?”
He wasn’t quite so stony faced this time when he met and held her gaze, but she didn’t think he was analyzing how best to answer but rather he was striving to determine what had prompted her question, trying to read something about her into it.
“Tillie,” Gina said, clear exasperation in her voice, “I know you have my best interests at heart, but can’t we just enjoy the night without putting his lordship through his paces?”
Only then did she realize she was being insufferable. He’d invited them to dinner, was being pleasant—willing to discuss Jane Austen when she suspected he’d rather discuss Mary Shelley—and had already indicated she was to enjoy herself. “My apologies, my lord. I tend to be overprotective where Gina is concerned.”
“No apologies needed. I suspect I’d have been the same if I’d been in the country when Lovingdon was courting my sister. I daresay, he and I would have enjoyed a bout or two of fisticuffs.”
“Where were you, my lord?” Gina asked before Tillie could.
Once more, he gave her an indulgent smile. “Traveling the continent with my brother.”
“I suspect you had a jolly good time together.”
“It was memorable.”
“Will you share some of your adventures?”
And just like that, Gina carried them away from any conversation that would cause tenseness around them. Tillie couldn’t help but think that Rexton was born to weave stories as his deep voice carried them through the canals in Venice, the Sistine Chapel, the Coliseum, vineyards, and the Alps. When she’d come to England at the age of eighteen, she’d considered it a marvelous adventure. She’d traveled to Paris in order to have her gowns made, but she’d never traveled beyond that. He made her yearn to see the world.
He made her long to see the world with him.
It was for the best that she was returning to America after her sister married.No, the bloody hell it wasn’t.Sipping on his wine, he wondered why he’d even had the thought that he’d prefer her in America. He wasn’t courting Gina—even though he’d inadvertently implied several times during the course of the evening he was in serious pursuit of a wife.
And a woman who had been unfaithful to her husband, was divorced, and had insulted the aristocracy by insisting she be addressed by her title was certainly not a contender for the position of Marchioness of Rexton, future Duchess of Greystone. Rexton had too much respect for his family and his heritage to bring such a fallen woman into their midst. But that didn’t mean he didn’t contemplate bedding her. He did—every second of every moment he was in her company.
“That was lovely,” Gina said as she set down her fork after finishing off the chocolate cake she’d requested for dessert. Lady Landsdowne had declined dessert and joined him in a brandy instead. She seemed to enjoy the flavor, and he envisioned her relishing all sorts of dark pleasures. “Everything was delicious.”
He wondered if Gina ever complained about anything, if she ever grew angry, if she ever threw a tantrum. She was the most pleasant, docile, accommodating woman he’d ever known. He should be enthralled. He should, as Hammersley implied, decide she was the one for him. She was pretty enough. Bedding her would certainly be no hardship. Yet he could work up no enthusiasm for being in her company, thought he would expire from boredom if he took her to wife. He hated those thoughts, hated that he couldn’t treasure her as she deserved to be treasured, wondered if something was inherently wrong with him for finding himself irrevocably drawn to her notorious sister.
Christ, the things he would do with Lady Landsdowne, if given the chance. He would argue with her, he would tease her, he would tickle her. He would chase her, both of them stark naked, through his residence. When he caught her he would kiss her head to toe, front to back. He would take her slowly; he would take her quickly. He could take her gently; he would take her with enough enthusiasm they might break the bed. Hoping none of those thoughts traveled over his features, he finished off his brandy. “I’m glad you enjoyed it. The night is still young. Care for a little gaming?”
“I’d love to give it a try. What say you, Tillie?”
She appeared uncomfortable but then for most of the evening she hadn’t been completely relaxed, although the second bottle of wine seemed to have helped some, the brandy more. He wanted to see her when her walls weren’t up, when she seemed not to have a care, the way she’d been in the garden before she’d discovered he was watching her.
“I’m not certain that’s wise,” she said. “We’re likely to lose our shirts.”
He’d once played a game with a couple of ladies where clothing had been wagered. He wouldn’t mind a hand or two with her. He’d play honestly—probably. “I’ll put up the blunt.”
