She hadn’t been flirting with Philip Sheridan Perry, yet her attention toward the fellow had wounded him all the same. There was a gulf between them and he had no idea how to navigate it, for Louisa liked pretty, modern, expensive things, and Giles could offer her none of that.
“Forgive me,” he said, offering no explanation for his behavior. He groped for his wine glass and nursed it, allowing the conversation buzzing around him to swallow him up. He was happy to be left behind.
He spent the main course drinking and admiring his wife. She looked charming and youthful in her powder blue satin frock embroidered with butterflies. Lengths of cream lace fluttered at her bosom and over the wide gigot sleeves. A long strand of pearls looped around her throat. She toyed with the necklace, letting the lustrous pearls skate over her soft skin, dipping seductively down the front of her prim bodice.
She had no idea what she was doing, as she was chipperly adding to the dinner-table talk, but Giles grew thirsty for this young woman who seemed so out of reach at the moment. He wanted to slip his fingers into the lace at her breasts, to run his palms in a whisper of silk down to her narrow waist.
Truthfully, he had never fantasized about her during their courtship, for his thoughts—and heart—had been engaged elsewhere. It was unseemly to harbour lustful thoughts about one’s wife, yet Giles wanted her.
His desire for Louisa had nothing to do with the business of begetting heirs.
He reached for his napkin so that he might subtly adjust his trousers. The flush of wine warmed his cheeks, and the heat in his belly made him drowsy. He watched his wife through heavy eyelids as she ate her meal.
Giles forced himself to take a few bites from his plate to keep the tipsiness at bay. He hated being drunk, but lechery was a family trait, and he could hardly sink any lower than thinking carnal thoughts about a virtuous woman.
A virtuous woman whomhe’ddeflowered.
Her behavior earlier had surprised him. Louisa was shy and maidenly in the bedroom, but she also proved to be curious. He wondered if she would ever become adventurous, and prayed he’d be there to experience her bold transformation from a virgin to a siren, from a wife into a lover.
His mind flashed back to the night before, when she’d met him in their stateroom suite dressed like a courtesan. She had all but asked him to make love to her.
“Hold me,”she had begged.“Put your arms around me. I want to be touched.”
Giles couldn’t reconcile the two women—this proper marchioness seated beside him and the curious enchantress of his bedchamber—yet she had been both, all along.
He’d been such a fool!
“Louisa…” He started to reach for her, to pull her aside after supper and have a heartfelt conversation about their marriage. To discuss what they both expected from this relationship, because Giles didn’t wish to disappoint her further.
Openness and honesty were the only ways forward.
Louisa turned from him. She laughed at something Monsieur de Roubernon said, though the joke was lost on Giles.
He feared that, were he not careful, Louisa would soon be lost to him, as well.
CHAPTER TWENTY
The dinner hour drew to a close. Soon, music drifted through the dining saloon from the stained-glass gallery above.
Mrs. Meyer glanced up at the sound of a jaunty polka. “Ah! They’ve opened the assembly room.” She turned her attention to her table-mates, asking, “Shall we dance?”
The group abandoned their desserts and made their way up the grand staircase. Louisa took Monsieur de Roubernon’s arm, happy to be included in this gay party. It reminded her of the dances she’d enjoyed with the belles—not the stuffy Knickerbocker balls, but the giddy, spinning, romps of her girlhood.
She longed to hear a rag and remember those carefree days of ice cream parlours and laughter, of nights falling into her bed just before dawn, euphoric with the promise ofeverything.
On the upper landing, the gallery of the assembly room overlooked the elegant dining saloon below. Louisa peeped over the railing to spy passengers sipping coffee in the gilded glow of electric lights. She beckoned the Misses Broome, who must shortly join the dancers above.
Waiters strolled between the tables and chairs to offer champagne or lemonade. In corner alcoves, entire parties gathered around silver ice buckets filled with bottles of Bollinger. The atmosphere was loose and lively, and Louisa gladly accepted a drink.
She sipped as she watched couples twirl about the makeshift dance floor. By day, the assembly room was a genteel space for taking tea and listening to light music. Tonight, however, the piano player banged his way through a repertoire that wouldn’t have been out of place in a Tenderloin dance hall.
Across the room, she found Lord Granborough deep in conversation with Madame de Roubernon. He leaned toward the sophisticated Frenchwoman, so dashing in his black evening clothes and white tie. He fairly gleamed and his blue eyes sparkled in a way Louisa had never seen before.
The polka transitioned to a waltz. Louisa watched her husband escort Madame de Roubernon onto the dance floor. He was charming with a champagne glass in his hand and a drowsy smile for his partner as he glided her across the assembly room. He held Madame’s voluptuous figure in his arms while she laughed at some droll remark he’d made to amuse her.
His Lordship was a practiced flirt, yet he’d never smiled at or touched Louisa that way, even when he’d been pursuing her. Maybe he had never desiredherat all…
“Care to dance, ma’am?”
