“Yes, there is. But it is not what you are thinking.”
He was thinking marriage, and she knew it.
“I have a proposition for you,” she said slowly.
He was willing to listen to any idea that would bring them together. “Go on.”
She looked up at him with her big aquamarine eyes and casually brushed back a dark curl that had loosened from its pin and was now dancing against her ear in the night breeze.
This was why he found it impossible to move on. She still glowed with an inner beauty that would never fade. Her smile was shimmering starlight.
He could teach her so many things, if only she would let him. But he wanted to teach her as her husband, show her how to lether passion flow as he knew she had never done with her late husband, Lord Albert Shoreham.
This was part of the problem.
Her husband had been a good man and devoted to her, but he was about as exciting as a limp dishcloth. As improbable as it may be, Rob did not think Shoreham had ever…
The point was, Fiona did not know what true passion or arousal were. He could not even imagine what those two had done between the sheets. Clothes were probably kept on at all times.
In truth, he did not want to know.
“Here’s the proposition,” she said, clearing her throat. “You want me.”
Had he not made this abundantly clear?
“But you onlythinkyou do.” She sighed. “You only want me because I have been a challenge.”
“I want you,” he said with insistence, “because you are what my heart needs.”
She regarded him in that stubborn, pursed-lips way again. “You need to move on and marry someone suitable, someone young and vital who can share a lifetime with you.”
How was this not her?
But he knew the rest of it, the Sword of Damocles hanging over her head that she was not expressing. The quiet despair and impending sense of doom she always felt because, in all their years of marriage, she and Shoreham had never had children.
She blamed herself.
Rob blamed no one. Some things just were what they were—no fault to lay at anyone’s feet. Not hers or Shoreham’s.
“Tell me the rest of it,” he prodded when she did not immediately continue.
She took a deep breath, no doubt finding their situation as difficult as he did. “You need to get over me and find yourself the next Duchess of Durham. So, get over me.”
“What?”
“Get on top of me. Under me.”
He choked out a cough. “What?”
“Come up to Shoreham Manor a week before Gawain and Cherish’s summer house party begins…and share my bed.”
“Fiona.” His heart broke, for he knew where she was going with this.
“You shall have me to yourself for the entire week, and then you can simply ride next door to join Gawain and Cherish at Northam Hall, no one the wiser.”
“You think they will not know I have just spent a week with you beforehand?”
“My servants would never talk.”
