Her breath came unsteadily, and she tried to shake herself free of his spell. “I had to leave. The maids rise early. I would have been noticed.”
Resisting the urge to point out that if she had agreed to marry him, she wouldbelongin his bed, he instead cupped her face and angled her head to his—an unfair maneuver, given that she could hardly smack his hand away while her own were occupied with the tea tray. “Come to me tonight, andIwill pleasureyou.”
Her breath feathered over his lips. Beneath his palm, he felt the tension leave her face. He’d spent the past few days attempting to annoy her into submission, when he should have seduced her into it instead. She listed toward him, and he would have bet that she had altogether forgotten that they were not in private, that anyone could have stumbled across them.
She had certainly forgotten the tray. The teapot slid across it, clinking against the cups on their saucers. “Claire,” he said, chuckling. “The tray.”
She blinked. Blinked again, and drew a shuddering breath. “Oh,” she said, righting the tray once again.
“Tonight, then.” He brushed a kiss to the top of her head while she examined the tray in her hands.
“I can’t,” she said. But she did look conflicted about it.
“I’ll send for some champagne. Some strawberries.” They were dear this time of year, an indulgence beyond what a servant could expect.
She made a faintly covetous sound. And she said again, “I can’t.”
∞∞∞
But she did.
He hadn’t been certain she would, though when he’d retired early and sent down for strawberries and champagne he would have given it even odds. He had left her mostly to her own devices for the rest of the day, trusting that she would think on his absence, think on his offer.
And it had worked. Shortly after ten, as he had reclined in his bed and waited, hoping that she would appear, finally she had. The doorknob turned, the door slid smoothly across the floor, and at last—
“What the devil are you wearing?”
She paused just inside the door, swathed from neck to toes in what had to be acres of gauzy linen encased in a plain muslin wrapper. It might once have been blue, he thought, but time and years of washing had faded it to a sort of murky grey.
“My nightclothes,” she said as she snapped the door closed behind her. She smoothed her hands down her front, bending her head to glance down at herself, as if in search of whatever it was that he had found so objectionable. “Why? What’s wrong with them?”
Her tone had taken on an unmistakable tartness, as if daring him to find fault with her garments. Her hair, which had been bound into a proper plait, slid over her shoulder, taunting him with its prim confinement.
It wasn’t so much that he had expected her to come to him gowned in something silky and seductive—and quite likely far outside the realm of what she could afford—but that something in him objected to the sight of her in something so common. Sheoughtto be draped in silks and satins, ought not to have to wear things that showed their age quite so clearly.
“Nothing,” he said at last. “Nothing at all.” But when she had consented at last to marriage, he would take great pleasure in having that wretched ensemble torn up for rags. “Would you care for a glass of champagne?”
The bottle had certainly not yet gone flat, and it sat on the nightstand beside the bowl of freshly-cut strawberries. He had not called for a second glass—doubtless such an action would have given rise to speculation on whom he planned to entertain—but she could have the lone champagne flute with his compliments.
For him, there were more interesting places to drink from.
She tiptoed across the floor like a doe in the forest, as if any sound above a whisper might startle her into flight. As she approached, he reached for the bottle and the glass and poured. She would not take tea with him—but she would come to his room for a glass of champagne and more. She was a woman of contradictions, his Claire.
And shewouldbe his.
For tonight. For always. It had been so many years since he had cared about anything at all—she had given him something to care for, and he would not surrender it willingly.
She took the glass from his outstretched fingers with that conflicted expression, with the awareness that she had given into his skillful manipulation, that she stood behind enemy lines in the private room of a man who had declared his intentions to wear down her resistance.
But her fractious expression smoothed to complacency as she sipped; an angel lured by sweet temptation into a fall.
He caught her free hand in his, used it to compel her closer, to draw her down beside him on the bed. Toying with the loose knot that tied her wrapper closed, he asked, “Have you had champagne before?”
“Just once.” Her index finger tapped the glass, an anxious gesture. “My wedding night.” Her eyes shied away from his and she took a long drink from the glass. If anything, she seemedmorenervous tonight than she had been the first time they had lain together.
Perhaps she was weakening.
The knot unraveled. He spread the fabric apart, exposing the plain linen nightgown beneath. It wasn’t the sort of garment designed to arouse a man’s passions, but he knew now what lay beneath it. There were no tightly-tied laces to contend with, no stays to discard, nothing to camouflage the fullness of her breasts. There was only the thin string tied in a bow at the neckline of her nightgown, and that took only a simple tug to loosen, to make the fabric gape, sliding toward her shoulders.
