Perspiration filmed his upper lip. His heart yet pounded. But there was one undeniable reaction to her: his prick was as hard as it had ever been. Even in such a state, his body knew what it wanted, and it wanted hers.
“Of course I should not,” she agreed, giving him a look he imagined she might also use upon someone who had just kicked a puppy. “But I was thinking of your welfare, Your Grace. You seemed…ill.”
Ill, yes.
That was one word for it.
Of all the frustrations in Gill’s life, here was the greatest one: that he had no control over his own mind or body. None. A part of him had hoped, futilely, that he would somehow outgrow his affliction. Or that he would be strong enough to conquer it. But his affliction was not about strength, and he had been forced to acknowledge that truth, regardless of how daunting he found it.
“I am,” he began, only to pause, struggling to find a suitable explanation. “I do not prefer gatherings of people. Or speaking. I find silence far more comforting.”
“Silence,” she repeated, blinking, as though the word was unfamiliar.
When a lady chattered as much as she did, he supposed it would be an unfamiliar word.
“Silence, yes.” He swallowed, then inhaled, trying to regain domination of his senses. His heart seemed quite unwilling to obey. “Quiet is peaceful and comforting.”
Though in truth, he did not particularly enjoy silence either. Silence reminded him of the chamber. The darkness. The stale air. The helplessness.
Silence gave him nightmares.
Speaking robbed his voice.
What a hopeless muddle he was.
“Complete silence?” Miss Winter wanted to know. “What of the birds singing in spring? Do you like that sound?”
He pondered her query, never having thought about birds before. “Yes, I suppose.”
“Or the wind rustling through the trees,” she added. “Do you find fault with that sound, Your Grace?”
He cleared his throat again. “I cannot recall finding fault with it.”
“How about the waves crashing upon the shore?” she asked next. “My brother took us all to Brighton once, and it was quite beautiful, even though there was a storm churning off shore. Indeed, the storm almost made it more exquisite, if I think upon it now. We often forget how powerful the world around us is, just how much we are at its mercy.”
She was strikingly astute for a chit with a wayward tongue.
Against his will, Gill was beginning to like Miss Christabella Winter.
“I do not object to the sound of the sea,” he told her grudgingly. “Indeed, it is quite calming, in the proper circumstances.”
“What about the sound of a mewling kitten?” she ventured next. “Or the bark of a sweet little puppy? Do you like the sound of the pianoforte? The jangling of tack? One of my favorite sounds is that of a stream, gently rushing, never stopping. There is something so magnificent about water, I find. Do you not find it so?”
“Magnificent, yes,” he agreed.
But he was staring at her. Taking her in. He was not thinking about water at all. Rather, he was noting the precise shade of her hair, the tints of gold within it. Noting the copper, the way it almost seemed like a flame, the hues all dancing together in the sunlight. And then, he was looking at her long lashes, her blue-green eyes, her wide lips, her creamy throat, her perfect bosom…
Fucking hell, this was no good.
No good at all.
“Then youdolike sounds,” she pronounced, as if she had just solved some great mystery. “But you do not prefer conversation. That is the sound to which you object, is it not?”
She was right, confound her.
“I converse when I must,” he defended himself.
That was a lie, and he knew it. For he often eschewed speaking altogether. Or he allowed Ash to speak for him. Ash, with his smooth, rakish ways, spoke effortlessly. Gill, weighed down by his affliction, was abysmal at conducting any sort of meaningful dialogue.
