“Is that what will get you back into my bed again?” he asked cannily, and his fingers found the tension that had settled at the nape of her neck, kneading it away.
Despite herself, her eyelids fluttered. “Yes,” she said on a sigh, leaning into the touch.
“Very well, I won’t press you.” His lips touched her temple. “But you’ll come back to me in the morning.”
∞∞∞
It was easier than Jenny had expected to conduct an illicit liaison. Of course,everyoneknew—even if they would never be so crass as to mention it. Except for Lottie and Harriet, who mentioned it rather frequently and with great relish. But Ambrosia’s staff wisely kept their opinions, whatever they might have been, to themselves.
There was an undeniableconveniencein slipping out the servants’ entrance in the morning, crossing the twenty paces to his door, and falling into bed with Sebastian. There was a thrill in the exchange of tawdry literature and a peculiar delight in reenacting scenes he’d fancied from them, the practicalities of which were often in question. Some he had pronounced enjoyable, while others had been deemed unnecessarily difficult, or worse—anatomically impossible.
But somehow, theiraffair—such as it was—had shifted into something else entirely. Day by day, he was becoming more comfortable, more familiar to her. Until she feared that he had stolen more of her heart than she had been prepared to surrender to him.
Several times more she had fallen asleep in Sebastian’s bed, and she had swiftly realized she could not rely upon him to rouse her and send her home again—because helikedhaving her there. And though he infrequently slept with her, being that his schedule ran opposite to her own, sometimes she woke with the vague memory of a soothing whisper at her ear, the heat of his hand burning down her back. The sort of sound, the sort of comfort a person might have given to someone in the throes of a nightmare.
But she had not asked, and he had not mentioned it, and she had been content enough to let the matter drop. Neither had she asked what he did in the hours she slept, because it seemed to her that they belonged to him alone, regardless of her presence—she had intruded enough. Sometimes she woke to find him lying beside her, watching her sleep. Sometimes he was at his desk, or in the chair he’d positioned at the window, reading.
This afternoon he had been gone entirely. Just—gone. And she had been left to wander his house, entirely unsupervised. It seemed an odd thing, to leave a woman one had known for so little time with free run of the residence. But she had restrained herself and let her snooping run only as far as the kitchen, where she had prepared a pot of tea and a few slices of toast and butter. Of course, she would have to return to Ambrosia eventually, but she could hardly do so without the means to lock up after herself.
He returned about half an hour thereafter, and she swept out into the entryway, fisting her hands on her hips. “Where in the world have you been?”
He slanted her a curious look, as if surprised by the stridence of her voice. “Out.”
“You left me here!”
He shrugged out of his coat, his brows drawn. “And?”
“I wasalone!” She gesticulated, although what she had meant to convey by it was lost even to her.
“You reallydohave to be clearer as to your meaning,” he said, straightening his cuffs as he came toward her at last. “I haven’t the faintest inclination of how, exactly, I have trespassed.”
“You left mealoneinyour house! A woman you scarcely know! I might have—have made off with every last one of your valuables!” At his vacant expression, she could only guess that he had decided this was not much of a risk. “It’s foolish to leave a woman you scarcely know with unfettered access to your possessions.”
“Bit late to complain of it now,” he said. “I’ve left you alone before. This is only the first time you’ve woken soon enough to notice.” He tucked a lock of hair that had escaped her pins back behind her ear. “I’ll give you a key, so that you may leave when you like. I hadn’t meant to be out so late.”
“No!No,” she said, somewhat desperately, shying away from the gentle fingers that cupped her cheek. “You don’t even know me.”
“I would like to,” he said. And then, as his hand found the small of her back and slid over the fabric that gaped open still, “Here, let me do up your buttons.”
“I shouldn’t stay so late anymore,” she said fretfully, wringing her hands.
“Whyever not?”
“I should not be here when you are not.” An odd, strangled laugh emerged from her throat. “I shouldn’t even be here when youare.” It was yet more evidence that their affair had turned into something far beyond that which she had expected—so swiftly it had shocked her to the tips of her toes. She spent nearly as much time with him as she spent within Ambrosia, even if the vast majority of it was in sleep.
The last button had been fastened, and still his hands were on her. “I want you here—whether I am here or not.”
But heshouldn’t. Everything he knew of her was just lies. Lies on top of lies on top of lies.
“I want you to be here waiting for me when I return—”
“Get adog,” she advised irritably.
“—and to shriek at me like a fishwife—”
“I didn’t shriek!”
“—and I want to do up your buttons and take you to my bed and undo them all over again. And I’m sorry to tell you this, but I haven’t terribly many valuables, so if youwerea thief—which I very much doubt—you would likely be disappointed.” His lips touched her temple. “You’re worrying over things that ought not to trouble you, Jenny.”
