“But Ido, heaven help me.”
“You never stand when I enter?—”
“Isthatyour standard?”
“—nor have you had any compunction about giving me imperious directives. And, at Wisterley, you felt free to come into my bedchamber.”
“I ordereveryoneabout, as is my rightandmy responsibility. And you shared your Wisterley bedchamber with the children. As for the night at the inn?—”
She gave him a significant look.
“Ah yes, you were simply seeking reassurance.” He’d been almost certain that she’d come to hold him insomeregard. He ran his hand through his hair. How—how—could he have been so wide of the mark?
Then again,hadhe been wide of the mark?
“Would you have me believe”—he eyed her carefully—“you are completely unaffected?”
She held his gaze. “Of course not.” Her cheeks stained with two patches of red. “But you are bad for me,duke.”
He sifted again through the elements of her “story,” this time, feelingheranger and fear. Slowly, his understanding altered. “Do you really believeIam bad for you?”
She turned her face slightly away, although her gaze remained fixed.
“I think, perhaps, the subject of the phrase may be at fault...”
She flinched.Ah.He felt a sharp pang. He’d been right.
“...I gather from our exchange that you aren’t completely without,” he paused, “experience.”
“I’ve experience,” she answered darkly, “that would put even you to blush.”
He searched her gaze and did not doubt. Then, in one, fluid movement, he draped himself by her side and stretched out his aching legs. At a complete loss to find something he could say that would set things right, he, instead, captured her hand.
A strange specter arose within his chest, an apparition newly born, flailing and blind with fumbling limbs not yet fully blooded. He held fast to her limp fingers while the thing inside him slipped and slid and tried to steady.
“If you find these,” he caressed her knuckles with his thumb, “less cumbersome than a fully readied cock. I doubt you’ve been properly introduced tole petite mort.”
She expelled a puff of air. A half-chuckle?
“Doubtless,” she replied lightly, “you feel you could do better.”
“With you”—he side-eyed her with a rueful half smile—“IknowI could do better.”
She made a noise low in her throat. “Part of the problem is”—she dropped her head back against the cushion and closed her eyes—“I fear you could be right.”
Well, then. “Bad for you...” he echoed, hearing his own voice as if in a dark canyon—a canyon that he feared was the gulf between them. Was there a way to traverse that gulf?Perhaps—he winced—not. “If youtrulybelieve I am bad for you, we will end this conversation now.”
She made a soft sound—part confusion, part protest, part need. A sound that pinched down low within his gut. Then, by what felt like organic means, her formerly flaccid fingers tendrilled around his own.
The specter inside him stilled, overpowered by something stronger—the first, pale flicker of hope.
“Then again, perhaps the preposition is the rub...”
Her eyes flew open.
“...There’s also badtoyou. Which, at present, I—I...” He lost his voice.
Her breath slowed. Her brows arched at the center as if she could not believe—or did not wish to hear—what he had to say.
