“Should you?” His hands stilled, then began rubbing again. “Why don’t you stay? Please. Stay the night, with me.”
Please. Her breath caught. This was indeed the absolutely perfect time for a biting comment and a curt goodbye.
It would destroy him as surely as it would destroy her.
But her dress was so far away, there on the floor just out of reach. And her room was all the way up a flight of stairs and around a corner. And it was so very relaxing to have him stroke her hair and her back, whilst she listened to the calming beat of his heart.
Maybe she was wrong about him. Or maybe she had been right, once upon a time and for many years after, only for him to grow and change when she least expected it.
If he was not the scoundrel he was before, then she would not be exacting vengeance on the same man she’d spent all these years cursing for what he’d stolen from her.
She’d be spiting herself, for no reason at all.
“I don’t know if that’s wise,” she said hesitantly. “The sand has long since run out of my hourglass, and we both know that you pride yourself on avoiding prolonged entanglements. Never twice with the same woman, isn’t that right?”
His cheeks flushed with embarrassment. “That was the old me.”
“Old as in… eight days ago?”
“Gladys, you cannot possibly think…” He framed her face with his hands, his eyes bright and earnest. “Don’t tell me this week spent together didn’t mean half as much to you as it did to me.”
Tentative petals of hope, long forgotten, stirred in her belly. “I thought this was an extended seduction.”
“I thought that, too… until the first moment we exchanged words, there by the folly. From then on, the more time I spent in your company, the more evident it became that my life would be the worse without you in it.”
Her lungs utterly ceased being able to breathe. That was it. Gladys was going to suffocate to death right here, naked, atop a rake.
“I don’t want you for one night,” he continued, his intense gaze unwavering. “I want you every night. And every day. And every moment in between.”
Suffocating and perished. Gladys was now extinct. The despicable, untrappable, coldhearted Reuben Medford was proposing marriage to a ghost. Her spirit had left her body.
He gave an abashed, lopsided smile. “Sorry if I’m doing this wrong. As you’ve pointed out, I haven’t done this before.”
“You’re doing splendidly,” she whispered. “I haven’t done this before, either.”
A frown wrinkled his brow, and he lowered his hands from her face. “I thought you said…”
The butterflies in her stomach turned into shards of glass, whipping against every corner with the force of a tempest. “You thought I said… what, exactly?”
“Didn’t you tell me you’d spent the past several years as a courtesan? I presumed you’d meant you’d had several protectors over that time, but I guess they could’ve all been single encounters. What I’m trying to say, is that I cannot think of anyone else I’d rather have for my first mistress. You—”
Every muscle stiff with hurt and humiliation, Gladys picked herself up from Reuben’s bare chest, dropped to the floor, and scooped up her fallen shift and gown.
Reuben blinked at her. “What are you doing?”
She pulled her shift on over her head, then did the same to her gown. It was awkward to tie the cord closed all by herself from this angle, but not as awkward as extricating herself posthaste from this horrible conversation.
“Is it the money? We haven’t discussed a fee.” He propped himself up on his elbows. “I’m rich, Gladys. You can name your price.”
She considered kicking his shirt and coat into the fire. With regret, she settled on retrieving her fallen hourglass instead.
Reuben shot upright, alarm writ large all over his face. “You’re not going, are you?”
Going and gone. Never to darken his door again.
She crossed the room in a handful of strides, her footfalls surprisingly steady despite the shaking of her legs and the nausea roiling in her stomach.
“Gladys, wait!” He leapt up from the sofa to sprint after her.
