Once she quieted, he barked out, “If you could kindly explain, I’ll be forever at your service.”
She cast him a withering look. “You saw where I live. You sawwhoI live with. What do you think? That I take lovers in Halston Place? Or, when the Wethersbys were still in fine form, do you fancy that I was letting lovers in through my window, as my guardian paced below, a man who would have surely thrown me out on the street if he knew I so much as looked at a man twice? Particularly given how I had ended up in his care in the first place?”
He grunted. Of course, she described a situation in which having lovers would be quite difficult.
“I do nothave lovers. I am a woman of eight-and-twenty who understands the mechanics of sexual intercourse and has read plenty of French novels. They’re Lady Wethersby’s avowed favorites.”
“I see,” he said, hoping he was catching her intimation. “So what you are trying to say is that, you haven’t…you yourself haven’t…?”
“Have I been with a man? I am not going to answer that question. You have no right to ask it.”
“I’ll give you twenty pounds to tell me.” He found himself desperate to know the answer. He realized that this conversation was taking a rather scenic route to his declaration that they could never do again what they had done last night. However, he needed to know the answer to this question. It felt, suddenly, vitally important.
“You can’tbuymy answer.”
“One hundred pounds.”
“I’ve said no.”
“Five hundred pounds.”
She leveled him with a gaze. “Five hundred pounds? Are you serious?”
“As the grave.”
“I will expect the money. I am going to demand it.”
“I’ll give it to you the moment we arrive at Edington. I swear on my sister’s life.”
“You are a very odd man.” She gave him an arched look that drove him mad. “But, very well, I can’t turn down five hundred pounds. Few can, after all. No, I’ve never been with a man.”
Relief coursed through him. Not that it would have mattered if she wasn’t a virgin—he would have desired her just as much. It was more that, if she was truly a virgin, it felt much less likely that she had some fellow waiting in the wings to whisk her off.
Then another thought occurred to him. “And before the night in the Tremberley gardens?”
“I am not answering any other questions. And I’m not even sure what you’re asking.”
“Had you ever kissed anyone? Before then? Or after?”
She met his gaze for a long second. For a moment, he thought her blasé demeanor might crack.
“No,” she said, with a smile that he couldn’t quite understand. “There, you get that one for free.”
He tried to repress his grin but found he couldn’t.
“Although, right after I arrived at the Wethersbys, a footman didtryto kiss me. But Lady Wethersby caught him and sent him packing. She wasn’t cross with me, although some might have thought me a vixen. But she knew I had no hand in it.”
While John admired Lady Wethersby’s liberality, he was more entranced by the idea that he was, as of now, the only man who had ever touched or kissed Catherine Forster. It filled him with a possessiveness that made him a little light-headed—although, finding out that she had a series of affairs would have done the same, albeit to a more murderous tune.
“I don’t know why you’re so curious. What do you expect? You know the rules for gently bred ladies. You have a sister.”
He did have a sister. And if anyone tried to touch Henrietta, peer or ploughboy, he would run them through the nearest thresher. If they wanted her, they could ask, the proper way, and he could deliberate before he said no.
Although, he considered, he hadn’t exactly asked for Catherine. He thought of the Wethersby boy’s letter—a manly letter at its heart, even if a child had written it. He felt an unwelcome pang of guilt. He had already broken his vow to the boy. He had said he wouldn’t do anything improper. He had blown clear through that promise last night.
“I do have a sister and Iamaware of the restrictions on gently bred ladies,” he said, shaking himself outof thatdepressing train of thought. “But that night in the gardens, you…”
He found he couldn’t quite complete the thought in a way that didn’t seem eminently insulting.
