Delilah, however, appeared to gather where the sentence had been heading, and didn’t seem the least offended. “A good tup?” There was the smile returned to her mouth.
“Erm, yes.”Oh, Lord.“Do you know how you could have a good tup whenever you liked?”
She reached for him, hooking a finger into the waistband of his trousers and tugging him forward, a saucy glimmer in her eyes. “How’s that?” She wasn’t truly asking. “By making you my love slave?”
“Or,” he countered, summoning his last shreds of will. Her idea wasn’t a bad one. “Marriage.”
The smile froze on her lips, but a saucy echo of itself.
“Haven’t you ever considered it?” he asked. Most women did.
“Why should I?” She looked genuinely nonplussed. “If I shackled myself to a man, what would I receive in return? Someone who would happily accept my dowry and strip me of my freedom?”
“You don’t think there’s a man out there who wouldn’t? A man who would respect you as an equal?”
“I’ve never met such a man.”
The proclamation passed her lips with the certainty of repetition, as if it were a line she’d memorized that had become rote response.
He wouldn’t let it slide by unchallenged.
“Haven’t you?”
She blinked. Her eyebrows drew together. “Why would two people like us marry? We have wealth and status. You and I could live in sin and freedom forever.”
Oh, these Windermeres. Didn’t they understand anything? “To safeguard what we have.”
She exhaled an annoyed sigh. “Why do men have to think like that?”
“Like what?”
“Like everything—including a woman—is a possession to be kept under lock and key.”
“I’m not speaking in generalities, Delilah. I’m speaking of you and me—us. I don’t think of you as a possession.”
Realization lit across her face, and she gasped. “Are you proposing marriage to me?”
And Sebastian understood something.
He wasn’t.
“Delilah, when you decide to marry me, it will be your idea.”
Her mouth opened, then snapped shut. Opened again…and snapped shut again. She would be well within her rights to call him an arrogant, condescending arse.
But he wouldn’t mind—for he knew he was right.
Delilah possessed a wildness to her heart that would ever demand to be free. To rush her would be the height of foolishness. Besides, summer yet held a couple of weeks in it—weeks to woo and win her.
For her to decide she would be his.
That much he knew—even if she didn’t yet.
Once she’d regained her capacity for speech, she said, “I suppose we should return to camp.” She pushed off the stage and smoothed her skirt. “I’ll need to run my lines again this evening.”
She wanted a change of subject, and he agreed it was likely for the best. They began retracing their steps across Wimberley Hill toward the docked punt. “Are you nervous about tomorrow night’s performance?”
“Yes.”
