“You are only three-and-twenty,” Aubrey said then. “You are yet young. I wouldn’t think there ought to be a need for haste in determining your future husband. If you wish for children, there is time aplenty to beget brats.”
Was he being deliberately cruel? She couldn’t say.
“I am pleased to hear there is time aplenty for me tobeget brats,” she drawled cuttingly, rising from the bath. “I should so hate to think that I am too ancient for my prospective husband. My sole purpose in life is, quite naturally, to provide him with an heir and a spare.”
She stood, naked, allowing water to run down her body, and all too aware of his hungry gaze on her, devouring her. But for the first time since they had arrived at the cottage, Rhiannon wasn’t thinking lustful thoughts where the Duke of Richford was concerned. Indeed, all she could seem to think about was boxing his supercilious ears.
She stepped over the rim of the tub and onto the towel he had laid on the floor before their bath. Finding a spare, dry towel, she snatched it up and wrapped it around herself. The last thing she felt like at the moment was being on display before him. She already felt vulnerable enough as it was.
“That is not what I was suggesting, minx,” he said behind her, punctuated by the sound of him rising from the bath as well. “I was merely cautioning you not to rush with your judgment. Choose wisely. You will be trapped with this chap for the rest of your life. All I want is your happiness.”
She wrapped her towel around herself and turned back to him. A mistake, because he was still naked and dripping, looking like some sort of marbled Greek god descended among mortals to torment them with his unearthly beauty. Water ran down his chest, over his muscled abdomen and powerful thighs. His cockwas thick and long, rising to attention. She wanted to catch every droplet with her tongue, and then she wanted to splash his insufferably handsome face with water.
But she did neither of those things.
“Why should you care whether I am happy or not?” she asked him instead.
“I want you to be happy, Rhiannon. Surely you know that.”
She clutched her towel to her. “Do you?”
He wrapped his own towel low on his hips, securing it. “Of course I do.”
She stared up at him, so much emotion inside her. Could he not see what would truly make her happy? That it was he? That she loved him more than words could possibly convey?
Did he feel nothing for her?
“Then who do you suggest I wed?” she asked, daring him to tell her another man.
To tell her himself.
“I hardly think such a tremendous decision must be made tonight,” he said, moving toward Rhiannon and sliding an arm around her waist to pull her into his chest. “Must it?”
Her rebellion went liquid inside her. She couldn’t resist him when he was looking at her thus, when he was holding her close.
She settled her hands on his shoulders, absorbing his casual strength. “Of course not,” she conceded.
“Tonight is just the two of us.” He lowered his head and kissed her softly, lingeringly.
All her inner resistance melted. She had no defenses against this man. Not any longer. She loved him, and that was all.
Rhiannon kissed him back, concentrating on the play of his lips over hers, the strength of his arms wrapped around her. And then she told herself that all would eventually turn out as it was meant to be. She just had to have faith in Aubrey. In herself.
Inlove.
Yes, it was as easy, and as impossible, as that.
One more night.
That was all he could allow himself with Rhiannon.
This, Aubrey promised himself as he led her from the bathroom to the bedroom they had been sharing in the cottage for the past two days. What she had left unsaid in the bathtub had been in her eyes, easy for him to read.
She didn’t want to marry Carnis, which filled him with a relief he had no right to feel. But she did want to marry him, and that could never happen. Because Aubrey had no intention of marrying anyone. Ever.
“Come and sit by the hearth, and I’ll brush your hair,” he told Rhiannon, taking up the hairbrush she had thrown at him a few days before.
It may as well have been a lifetime ago for how much had changed between them in the intervening time.
