“I wish I had a home that was mine alone,” she said wistfully.
She had never longed for one, nor needed one, before now. Bertie’s death had left her nearly destitute and without the home they had formerly called their own—a lovely town house belonging to his father the duke which had been subsequently inhabited by her heartless brother-in-law and his avaricious wife. But since she had left her beautiful home and all its pleasant memories behind, she had never truly required a home of her own. Rather, she had been content for companionship. To not be alone.
“Why do you not have one?” Theo asked her, his voice bearing the pleasant husk of a man who had recently awoken. “Are not widows of English lords ordinarily well provided for?”
“English lords?” she asked, clinging to this small hint, coupled with his occasional accent and unique features, that he was originally from elsewhere.
Somewhere far from London.
“What other manner of lords are there here?” he asked, deliberately misunderstanding, she thought, the unspoken question in her words.
Who are you? Where are you from? How did you find yourself here?
Oh, how she wished she could ask them all without driving him away. But their peace was too new, and waking in his arms after he had shown her his scars was more gift than she could have imagined possible. She dare not reach for more. Not yet.
“Occasionally, there are others from abroad,” she said. “Foreign royalty, for instance, or dignitaries.”
The caresses which had been working their way up her inner arm stilled, and she felt his hold on her tighten. “Indeed?”
Something had distressed him. But what? Surely he was not jealous of the few members of royalty who had visited London in her day, none of whom she had ever been introduced to.
“I have never made their acquaintance, of course,” she hastened to add. “But I do hear the gossip, and I do readTheTimes.”
“Mmm,” he said, resuming his slow, maddening strokes. He was toying with her inner elbow now, and she had never particularly been fond of that part of her body as she was forever colliding with doorjambs with a complete lack of grace. However, when he touched her there, heat pooled low in her belly, as if he were stroking over her sex instead of a mostly ignored and derided portion of her anatomy.
The effect he had upon her.
Her nipples tightened into hard points.
His mouth found her throat.
“Tell me again,” he said against her skin, “why your husband left you without a home. Why are you here, beneath your brother’s thumb?”
“I’m not beneath his thumb,” she denied, her pride smarting. “Ridgely is a generous brother to me.”
More than generous. Yes, they had struck a bargain—in exchange for her chaperoning Lady Virtue, Ridgely paid for all Pamela’s shopping expenditures. And quite handsomely. But her brother hadn’t had to offer her carte blanche. And heaven knew she had squandered a small fortune on her expeditions. Before that, she had spent the entirety of her widow’s portion. Countless bonnets and ribbons and gowns and fans and fripperies, all in the name of filling the chasm in her heart that Bertie had left.
“I didn’t mean to suggest otherwise,” Theo reassured her, his lips on her jaw now. “But your husband should have provided for you in his death. It would seem he did not.”
“He did his best,” she said, feeling herself grow defensive, as she always had of Bertie, before quelling the urge.
Again, Theo’s fingers stilled. “You are protective of him, even in death.”
An observation, not a judgment, she thought. And yet, for a moment, she was not certain if he questioned her loyalty. Or if she questioned her own. Was it possible to love two men at once, one who was long gone and another who was very solidly here, wrapped around her, his warmth burning into her body? Was it wrong to have loved a man with all her being and yet also understand his faults?
She swallowed hard, her emotions turning jumbled. “He was a good man. He…he gambled. Poorly. Frivolously. He once wagered his prized barouche and four blood bays over whether or not it would rain in the next half hour. Needless to say, he lost, for he had betted against the rain.”
“Deus,” Theo grumbled. “Did he not know the weather in his own homeland?”
“He was in his cups,” she said, thinking upon how furious she had been when he had returned home to deliver the news. And what had happened next… No, she wouldn’t think of it now. It was a terrible memory she had buried along with Bertie.
But still, it surfaced, despite her best intentions. And she remembered.
Bertie had been at his club, and he had come home with a tale of losing one of the few possessions of value he yet possessed. But he had laughed, as if it had all been one grand lark, and she had been so furious. It had been one of the worst days of her life. She didn’t know why she had even mentioned it, for the recollection made her stomach tighten into a knot and unwelcome tears rise in her throat.
“I’m sorry,” Theo said into the silence which had descended, bringing her back to the present with a jolt. “I didn’t mean to cause you distress.”
She blinked furiously, keeping tears from rolling down her cheeks, glaring at the sunlight growing brighter by the second. “You needn’t apologize. ’Tis an unhappy memory, that is all. I was very angry with him. So angry that I shouted. I…threw a vase that had been filled with flowers, and it smashed to bits. I was quite overset. And when I was finished venting my fury, I proceeded with my day whilst he went to sleep. I had just returned to my carriage after paying a call to a friend and I began feeling quite unwell. I was aching, in pain, and I only learned later that I had been carrying a babe. I lost it, of course.”
