He opened his eyes. “I havepaidyou to call me John. If I have to remind you again, I’m letting you off at the next corner.”
“My apologies,” she said, not sounding sorry at all. “Are you a nervous traveler, John?”
It was the first time that she had used his Christian name and he went hard at the sound.Damn her, he cursed internally.
“Not at all. I would ask you the same but you are clearly adept at distracting yourself from the boredom of the road.”
“I have truly traveled very little. I have never left England and have barely even left the south. I am sure you have traveled much more extensively and yet you seem not to know what to do with yourself.”
“I could never read through the rocking of the carriage.”
“I trained myself on the trips between the Wethersby estate and the town house in London, back when we had such luxuries. Such interminable carriage rides. You would learn how to read and ride too.”
Read and ride.The words were so banal and yet, somehow, they sounded wicked coming from her mouth. They did nothing to alleviate his physical distress. Despite having spent so recently, his erection was straining against his breeches to the point that he had to enact a discreet readjustment.
God, he was in a desperate way.
“I have been on many long carriage rides,” he said, trying to distract himself from his own thoughts, “and I have never learned.”
“What do you do then? On long carriage rides?”
“I prefer to ride beside the carriage myself but that wouldn’t do now, given that I am trying not to attract attention. Usually, when I go by carriage, I travel with my friends…” He trailed off. He didn’t want to say the truth, which was that he and his friends usually distracted themselves by drinking, gossiping and trading stories about women they had bedded. And reminiscing about old times at Eton and Oxford when they had lived for the type of mischief that, while technically more innocent than what they got into now, had been, somehow, more fun.
She was still looking at him expectantly.
He shook his head. “It’s not important. I should let you read.”
John regretted having said anything about his friends. He never spoke about Trem, Montaigne and Leith to outsiders. Others most likely assumed that the bond between he and his friends was not real, that they were just a collection of heartless rakes who enjoyed the same sins. No one ever considered that his friendships might be important to him for their own sakes.
She kept her gaze on him. “I have read about you and your friends in the society pages.”
He winced internally. Of course she wouldn’t understand.
“Most of the things that appear in there are bosh.” He couldn’t help but try and dispel whatever notion about him and his friends that had worked its way into her mind from that tripe. “You shouldn’t believe them.”
“What do you care what I believe?”
He coughed, trying to clear his head. It felt like everything she said was a trap. And he suspected that the discomfort in his breeches wasn’t helping his powers of conversation.
“I just mean,oneshouldn’t. I didn’t meanyou—you can believe whatever you like. It makes no difference to me.”
She still looked at him. Her expression appeared more curious than wounded. God, how could she makeinquisitiveseem beguiling. He thought of her aunt, the woman with the same hair and eyes, who had ruined his childhood. For the first time that day, he felt the right part of him harden: his heart.
They rode in silence for hours. Her reading through the books from his study and him with his eyes closed, sometimes dozing, other times looking out the window, and only intermittently succeeding at keeping lewd thoughts about the silver-haired woman next to him out of his mind. At midafternoon, they stopped, and Marcel procured a country lunch for them at a roadside tavern. After a few minutes, they were on their way again, making good time towards the Crown Arms.
They set about eating their cold luncheon with only the carriage wheels breaking the quiet between them. He had resolved not to speak to Catherine if he could help it, but then he saw her reach towards a fresh roll with those ink-stained fingers.
“Give me your hands.” He drew his handkerchief from his pocket and his flask from his waistcoat.
“Excuse me?”
“Give me your hands.”
“I would rather not.”
“Your hands are filthy. You can’t eat with your fingers covered in ink. To begin, God knows what they put in it.”
“If it were poison, I would have died long ago.”
