The moment the words left her, her cheeks went hot.
Heavens, was she flirting with this man, this stranger? Her husband’s nephew, she reminded herself sternly. If this arrangement was to work, she could not afford to form any attachments to him.
He regarded her over the gilt bronze epergne on the table between them, which was laden with a bouquet of Astrantia and yarrow from the gardens. “Do I please you then?”
Heat stirred to life, a strange lick of longing accompanying the sensation. What was it about the way he uttered that lone word—please—as if it were a promise? She knew she should turn her attention to the consumption of her salmon, but she was no longer hungry. She was filled, instead, with a restlessness. A curiosity.
For the first time in a very long time, with a burgeoning hope.
“You please me as a dinner companion,” she told him calmly, before taking another sip of her wine. “Despite your woeful lack of appreciation for poetry.”
“Mayhap you can persuade me my opinion is wrong.” He raised his glass to her in a mock toast.
Tilly could not stifle her smile or her reaction to him. There was something so very potent sizzling in the air between them. A portent of possibility.
Could they make this mad scheme work?
By the glow of the chandeliers, it certainly seemed so.
“We must adjourn to the library after dinner,” she told him. “I will read one of my favorite poems to you, and you can tell me whether or not you are convinced. It is not as flowery and ephemeral as love poems.”
The moment she issued the invitation, she wondered if she had been too forward. Too earnest. If she had spoken from the heart when she ought to have used her head instead.
But Mr. Carstairs’s blue gaze was vivid upon hers, glimmering with intrigue. “Do you not believe in love?”
What a question for him to ask. Once, she would have had a ready answer. When she had been young and awash in the naivete of a girl who had never experienced life. Before she had been so vastly proven wrong by the tragedy of her marriage to Longleigh. She had believed love possible then. He had disabused her of the notion, and quite thoroughly.
“I find myself increasingly of the belief that it does not exist,” she answered carefully.
“You are not in love with your husband, then?” Mr. Carstairs queried, his voice low and intimate.
She flicked a glance to the footman dancing attendance upon this course, wondering if he had overheard before deciding it did not matter. “My dear Mr. Carstairs, I do not even like him.”
Her dinner companion threw back his head and laughed. The prominence of his Adam’s apple above the knot of his neck cloth captured her attention. How was it that she had failed to notice how attractive a man’s throat could be?
“A woman of candor,” he said when his levity had subsided.
Belatedly, it occurred to her that she did not know the details of the relationship between Mr. Carstairs and Longleigh. They could be close. This nephew, he had said, was the son of his brother in Cornwall, the third son of a fourth son, no hope of inheriting the title.
She lowered her gaze to her wine, taking another sip. “Forgive me, sir. I do not mean to offend. You spoke of owing Longleigh a debt, and I presumed. If you are close—”
“We are not,” he interjected smoothly. “I have no wish to dissuade you from your opinion on the matter. Indeed, I think you will find our minds are similar.”
“You are here because of a debt you claim to owe your uncle,” she said, repeating his words from earlier in the drawing room. “What manner of debt can bring you to such an uncommon understanding?”
He drank his wine, watching her over the rim of his glass, his stare penetrating. “A lifelong one.”
“That is hardly specific, Mr. Carstairs,” she pointed out, needing to know more. “I thought we were friends.”
“New friends.” He raised a brow, studying her. “A man must be permitted his secrets, just as a woman must. You need not tell me your reasons for accepting this bargain, and I’ll not burden you with mine.”
There was no bite in his words, but she could not help but to feel chastised for her curiosity. It would seem that Mr. Carstairs was willing to share his body with her but little else.
Nettled, she gestured for the footman to take away the largely untouched fish course before them. She had never cared particularly for salmon, and it seemed Mr. Carstairs did not prefer the dish either.
“I am sorry for prying,” she told him when the servant had gone. “I have never found myself in such a situation. Aside from my marriage, of course. But that is nothing like this.”
Because she had entered into her marriage believing she could find happiness with Longleigh despite the age disparity between them. In no time, she had discovered her husband’s aloof nature during the time he had briefly courted her had been as warm as he was capable of being. There had been no thawing of his ice. He blamed her for his impotence. She blamed him for her misery.
