“So have you overtaken all domestic matters, then?”
Alfred shifts in his seat.
“It displeases you.”
“It doesn’t.”
“You are affronted.”
“I am not affronted! Only surprised.”
“You find it ill-befitting your husband to stoop to such matters as lemon cake.”
I bite back a smile.
How can I not be weak where he is concerned? Hedoesstoop to matters such as lemon cake—and it is why I have lost my head over him. There are men all over England who think the matter of a lemon cake beneath them. Hell, I thinkIam above lemon cake. And nevertheless I have found one of the rare men who knows that such concerns can often be the difference between happiness and unhappiness and does not see it as a degradation to attend to it.
“Not in the slightest. I think it suits you quite well.”
“You have so much to manage, Annabelle, and I have so little to do. Let me manage it for you. You have no interest in the household. And I do.”
“I’ve already said yes. Come here.”
He moves off the chair and comes towards me.
I want to ask him to hold me. I want him to comfort me the way he did in the water closet. I just don’t know how to ask for it.
So instead I reach for his hand, pulling him towards the bed.
When he lies down next to me, I turn so that my back is against his chest. I close my eyes.Thisis what I wanted. And I got it without having to ask.
I begin to drift off to sleep again, making myself comfortable against him, when he begins to shiftaway.
“Don’t go.”
“I’m not. It’s only…”
I angle myself back to where I was. And then I understand his consternation. He is hard, his cock rigid against my back.
“You aren’t well. I do not expect you to bed me now.”
The truth is for the first time ever in Alfred’s presence, I don’t want to bed him. My desire, which with him is always so sharp, has lost not only its edges but its shape.
“I know,” I say, quietly. “And you’re right—I can’t. Not now.”
But I still want his touch.
“Then I won’t bother you?—”
“No, I don’t mind.”
He curls around me again. Perhaps it is selfish of me. But I find at the moment that I am predisposed to be selfish.
I lie there, strangely and deeply at peace.
And then my husband shifts once more, moving his cockstand—which has grown quite large—away from me.
“Are you uncomfortable?”
