I stumble to the chair. My cock is so stiff that the brush of the fabric of my trousers has me panting.
“Eat,” Miss de Laceysays.
I raise a slice of potato cut thin in the French style to my lips and chew. I am sure it is very good. But I taste nothing.
“Now, I don’t want us to just sit here in silence. I want to talk about your past.”
I swallow.
“What do you want to know?”
I reach for my glass, needing a sip of wine but finding merely water instead.
I look up and she is smiling again. For a moment, I forget anything but the wonder of her face.
“I want you in your senses, Mr. Saintsbury.”
My outrage returns.
“I am not a child. I can control my drinking.”
“I am not taking chances. You will do what I say,” she says. “Tell me about your past. Have you had any lovers?”
“I have already told you. I have had none. Not until—the carriage. The other day.”
“That hardly makes me your lover,” she scoffs.
My cheeks heat. Of course, to her it must seem nothing.
“Then I have had none at all. If you will not count yourself.”
I spear another potato and eat it mechanically.
“It’s a rather paltry history for a man of your looks,” she says, as if talking about my sexual history, or lack thereof, is completely normal breakfast table conversation.
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“You must know that you are beautiful, Mr. Saintsbury.”
“Please, call me Alfred.”
I don’t like having my surname, my father’s name, here between us. It feels wrong.
“I will call you what I like, Mr. Saintsbury. Have I not made it clear that it is me that sets the terms between us?”
I grind my teeth together but can manage no retort.
“You are too beautiful to be a virgin.”
“I have never considered myself beautiful.”
“That seems odd. Because you are.”
I have never given the matter much thought. My beauty, if it exists, doesn’t have any practical use to me. It could make it easier to marry, I suppose, if it helped a woman prefer me. But having not yet tried to marry, I have no idea what effect my appearance would have in a courtship.
“Perhaps it is only you who thinks so.”
“Perhaps,” Miss de Lacey says, sipping from her glass.Sheis allowed wine it seems. “But I doubt it.”
