Silently, he reached out and fastened her dress, resisting the impulse to feather his fingertips down her vulnerable spine, resisting the compulsion to influence her to lose that business-like tone. Recent dealings had shown him how.
Task complete, his rational mind asserted itself. “Why was it you came to my rooms?”
She emitted a short laugh. “For this.”
“Forthis?”
“Yes, for this.”
His mouth clamped shut in exasperated silence. The woman would explain herself sooner or later.
“I was hoping to speak to you today about arranging . . .this.” She stood and moved to the other side of the room where a small rock garden lay unaffected by their little drama. “To have this tension out from between us. To purge our systems of one another. Simple and uncomplicated.”
“And has it worked?” There was no help for the testy note in his voice. “Is the tension gone? Are our systemspurged?” The words came out more demanding than he had a right to be, given the circumstances of their . . .tête-à-tête.
At last, she faced him. She looked vulnerable, spent, and at complete odds with herself. “Isn’t that the way of a fleeting affair?”
“Olivia,” he began, “this is no way to cope—”
“And you’re the expert on coping?” She glared at his bruised chest. “Is this how you’re coping with being a viscount? By allowing yourself to be beaten black and blue?”
“No, these”—He spread his arms wide—“have nothing to do being a viscount. As far as that goes, I find myself settling into the role.” He surprised himself with that last bit. It was true.
“Then why?” she whispered.
“You don’t know?”
“Perhaps.”
That single word confirmed it for him. He’d allowed himself to be pummeled black and blue for the same reason she’d splattered his face across her studio walls: it was his release . . . from her.
And they both knew it.
“Is it working?”
“No.” He paused. “Did this?”
“We shall see.”
He didn’t believe her. She didn’t believe her, either. Further, she was scared it hadn’t worked. He saw the fear in her eyes.
“Olivia, it doesn’t have to be like this.”
“You may want to resume calling me Lady Olivia. Decorum matters in our little world.”
“LadyOlivia, have you ever experienced a fleeting affair?” Silence stretched out between them as he slid off the bed and tied the lacings of his trousers. “What we just shared was simple and uncomplicated?” Disbelief sounded in his voice, and he wanted her to hear it. “And our systems are purged of one another?”
“You are, of course, not obligated to me in any way,” she stated, undeterred. “You are free to pursue a proper wife, and I am free to remain a scandalous divorcée. In fact”—She began sliding the fingers of one hand into gray kid gloves, one by one, methodically, determinedly—“we could keep doing this until—”
Alarmed, he sat forward. “That won’t work.”
Her gaze, cool, unaffected, met his. He could see her striving to place distance between them. “You’re a man of the world. Surely, as a sailor, you had a paramour in every port.”
“For us, Olivia,” he cut in before she could speak another word. “That won’t work for us.”
Her gaze refused to meet his as she began tugging a glove onto her other hand. In the space her silence created, he was afforded the distance to think and allow reason to assert itself. Hemustfind a wife. To continue with Olivia in this manner wasn’t only unthinkable, it was ungentlemanly. He would arrange an outing with Miss Fox and wouldn’t beg off this time.
At the edge of his vision, he saw that Olivia . . .LadyOlivia had gone still. She stood in a posture both aloof and expectant, poised on the verge of flight. “I shall be on my way to fetch Lucy from school now.”
