Perhaps she was the sort of person who required more active reparation.
She looked up at Ashford, who was still looming over her in a fashion that she found both alarming and vaguely exciting. “Now you know,” she said, “why I feel responsible for what has happened. Now you understand why I would like to try to repair the damage.”
“Lady Matilda.” Ashford’s voice was a dark growl, and truly, she was mad in the head, because the sound of it sent a hot thrill down her spine. “I do not know why you think this confession would persuade me, but if anything, it has done the opposite.”
“I know!” she burst out. “I know that. I am too scandalous for your sister. I am disgraceful and shocking—Iknow.But I simply—want to fix what’s gone wrong. I—”
He swallowed, and she could see the pale line of his throat bob beneath his beard. “No,” he said.
She stepped toward him. “If you—”
His hands closed over her shoulders, and she could feel each finger through the layers of her cloak and gown. She forgot the words that had been in her head, her lips parted on nothing but her quick, unsteady breaths.
“No,” he said again. Somehow his face was very close to hers.
She touched his chest. She could feel his heart thundering through his greatcoat. His pulse was racing.
Heat pooled in her lower belly.
“Please,” she said, and she did not know what she meant to ask for, only that she wanted it. She wanted everything.
His gaze went to her mouth. Matilda caught her breath.
And then Ashford dropped her shoulders and stepped back, breaking the contact between her palm and his body. “Go home, Matilda,” he said. “We have nothing more to discuss.”
Chapter 5
It occurred to Christian, as he pondered the green baize of the card table, that he was exceedingly drunk.
He had no idea why he’d let Whitby drag him to Katherine Montmorency’s midnight card party.
Or, wait. Yes, he did. It had been twenty-four hours since Matilda Halifax had propositioned him in St. James’s Park, and he’d been completely out of his head ever since. He’d thought perhaps the card party would prove a distraction.
He squeezed his eyes shut, and then opened them again, staring at the cloth-covered table. It was alarmingly green.
She had notpropositionedhim, of course. She hadproposedthat she accompany him to Bamburgh to tutor his sister.
It had been an entirely chaste, practically respectable idea, at least as far as Matilda Halifax was concerned.
But he’d had to say no. He’dhadto. Because she’d started in on restraints, and erotic pamphlets, and her desires, and Christian had—
He’d thought about her. He’d pictured her. He’d wanted her.
God, it had been a long time since he’d felt that sharp bite of desire. He had been a young man, adifferentman when he’d explored the world of pain and pleasure, submission and restraint, in the bawdy houses of the London demimonde. The fact that she had heard about him in her erotic research almost made him laugh. He’d been fresh out of Cambridge, had not yet inherited. He had not married Grace.
Perhaps that man—that Christian—would have let Matilda come to Northumberland. That Christian would have wanted to hear more about her bloody interests, would have offered himself as test subject for whatever sexual experimentation she could dream up. That Christian would have been amused and baffled and enchanted by her.
ButthisChristian—the one drunkenly examining a card table as though it held the answer to several important religious mysteries—was…
Oh, for God’s sake. This Christian was all of those things too. But he could not afford to be. He was halfway to hell, and a cynical old bastard besides.
And if, when he closed his eyes, he thought of her—the queen of the milkmaids, her chin tipped up in defiance, her curvy little body naked under his hands—it could never go further than that. She was too young. Too innocent. Too goddamned bloody sweet. His life was edged in darkness, and he had no wish to dim her light.
He felt a stab of guilt when he thought of Bea, of course. If he were a better man, he would not want Matilda Halifax tied up in his bed, spread out before him like a feast. He would take her up on her offer, haul her to Northumberland, and let her give his sister the time and care Bea needed.
He was not a better man.
He had just resolved to return to Bamburgh on the morrow when a gentle hand closed over his shoulder.
