“Can you, Jane?” He turned his head and looked at her—again with those burning eyes. “And have you done as well with the bedchamber? Or am I going to find two hard, narrow cots in there and a hair shirt laid out on each?”
“If you find scarlet a necessary titillation,” she said, trying to ignore the thumping of her heart and hoping it did not betray itself in her voice, “then I daresay you will not like what I have done to the room. But I like it, and that is what counts. I am the one who has to sleep there every night.”
“I am being forbidden to do so, then?” He raised his eyebrows.
That foolish blush again. The one sign of emotion it was impossible to disguise. She could feel it hot on her cheeks.
“No,” she said. “I have agreed—in writing—that you are to be free to come and go as you please. But I daresay you do not intend tolivehere as I do. Only to come when you…Well, when you…” She had lost her command of the English language.
“Want sex with you?” he suggested.
“Yes.” She nodded. “Then.”
“And I am not allowed to come when I do not?” He pursed his lips and regarded her in silence for a few uncomfortable moments. “Is that in the contract? That I can come here only for sex, Jane? Not for tea? Or conversation? Or perhaps just to sleep?”
It would be like a real relationship. It was too seductive a thought.
“Would you like to see the bedchamber?” she asked.
He regarded her for a few moments longer before the smile came—that slight smile that lit his eyes and lifted the corners of his mouth and turned Jane’s knees weak.
“To see the new furnishings?” he asked her. “Or to have sex, Jane?”
She found his raw choice of words disconcerting. But any more euphemistic way of phrasing it would mean the same thing.
“I am your mistress,” she said.
“Yes, so you are.” He strolled closer to her, his hands still at his back. He dipped his head closer and gazed into her eyes. “No sign of steely martyrdom. You are ready for the consummation, then?”
“Yes.” She also thought she was ready to collapse in an ignominious heap at his feet, but that fact had nothing to do with a weak resolve, only with weak knees.
He straightened up and offered his arm.
“Let us go, then,” he said.
THE FURNISHINGS HAD NOTchanged, only the color scheme. But he would scarcely have known he was in the same room if someone had blindfolded him, picked him up bodily, and deposited him here. It was all sage green and cream and gold. It was elegance itself.
If there was one thing Jane Ingleby had an abundance of, it was good taste, plus an eye for color and design. Another skill learned at the orphanage? Or at the rectory or country manor or wherever the devil it was she had grown up?
But he had not come to inspect the room’s furnishings.
“Well?” Her eyes were bright, her cheeks flushed. “What do you think?”
“What I think, Jane,” he said, narrowing his gaze on her, “is that I will see your hair down now at last. Take out the pins.”
It was not dressed with its customary severity. It was waved and coiled in a manner that complemented the pretty, elegant dress she wore. But he wanted to see it flowing free.
She removed the pins deftly and shook her head.
Ah. It reached to below her waist, as she had said it did. A river of pure, shining, rippling gold. She had appeared beautiful before. Even in the hideous maid’s dress and the atrocious cap she had been beautiful. But now…
There simply were not words. He clasped his hands behind him. He had waited too long to rush now.
“Jocelyn.” She tipped her head to one side and looked directly at him with her very blue eyes. “I am on unfamiliar ground here. You will have to lead the way.”
He nodded, wondering at the great wave of—oh, not desire exactly that washed over him. Longing? That sort of gut-deep, soul-deep yearning that very occasionally caught him unawares and was shaken firmly off again. He associated it with music and painting. But now it was his name that had aroused it.
“Jocelyn is a name that has been in my family for generations,” he said. “I acquired it when I was still in the womb. I cannot think of a single soul until now who has spoken it aloud to me.”
