“I didn’t mean to suggest it isn’t important,” he hastened to explain. “I just don’t like the notion of you working so hard. Could you not hire others to assist you?”
“I couldn’t before,” she said quietly. “The funds earned from my pupils didn’t support more than a handful of employees, and I needed to continue investing part of my earning back into advertising and supplies.”
But she could now that he had paid her such a princely sum for this week. Guilt cut through him.
“Let me pay you more for this week,” he said.
“You’ve already paid far more than the week’s desserts were worth.”
“Not to me,” he insisted stubbornly. “If you’ll not accept more for this week, then please take what I offered for the month.”
“I cannot,” she denied, her tone every bit as mulish. “I’ll not be a kept woman. You know what my terms are.”
Yes, he bloody well did. But that didn’t mean he had to like them.
“When would you have my carriage arrive, then? Midnight?”
“Your carriage can’t be waiting for me at the school either. What would my students say? Or my employees, for that matter? Someone will most assuredly take note.”
“The carriage will be unmarked.”
“It will be exceedingly fine,” she countered. “Others will see the difference.”
“Well then, how do you expect me to see you every night?” he asked, frustrated and feeling not just a little bit like a child who was being deprived of his favorite toy.
“I didn’t imagine we would see each other every night.”
He was astounded. “Of course we will see each other every night, just as we have here at Wingfield Hall.”
“But we won’t be at Wingfield Hall.”
“Ye gods, woman.” Having had quite enough of this argument—for he would have his way, he was determined—he caught her waist and hauled her back onto his lap.
She landed there sideways and with a lack of grace he found utterly irresistible as water sloshed over the sides of the tub.
“Rhys,” she protested.
“I need you,” he said simply.
Because it was true. Hedidneed her. Did she not see? He needed her every waking hour. He needed her in his bed, in his arms. But he would persuade her of that later. For now, he would show her how badly he needed her here, in this moment.
Her emerald eyes went wide. “In the tub?”
“Oh, my innocent little kitten.” He grinned, pleased at the idea of further debauching her. He had been quite remiss and neglected to show her the joy of making love in the bath.
“Is such a thing possible?” she fretted.
“Quite.”
“But the water. Surely?—”
He kissed her, silencing further protest, and then he reached for her hand, settling it over his straining cock. And then heproceeded to show her, in exacting detail, just how possible making love in the tub was.
The carriage ambledalong the same country roads she had traveled one week ago, but as Miranda stared out the window at the passing Hertfordshire scenery, she felt as if a lifetime had passed instead. So much had changed. If someone had warned her before she had left London that the sennight facing her would change her in a way that nothing else in her nine-and-twenty years had, she would have laughed. She would have sworn it was impossible for her life to be so thoroughly upended in a mere seven days.
She would have been wrong.
So very wrong.
