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“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?”