“And so you will live in fear all your life of someone finding out?”
“No one will think twice about it, darling. A man of means may be eccentric. It is only a man reliant on others who lives in danger of discovery.”
“I doubt many people view it as the deficiency you do.”
“You may be right.” He offered her his most charming smile. “But I intend never to find out.”
That night, Oliver sat at the edge of the truckle bed, his candle flickering and the sound of Emily’s slow breathing filling the air. Of everyone in the world, he had confided in Emily.
And she had not looked at him as though he were deficient. A miracle. She had not judged him. She judged his excesses, yes—he had done plenty of things that he knew she would condemn, and harshly. After all, he was his father’s son.
But she would not judge him based on something he could not help.
What on earth was he supposed to do with that?
He stared at her red lashes, tipped blonde. Those constellations of freckles, sprinkled so liberally across her nose and cheeks. Objectively, he knew, she was not pretty. Her mouth was too small, her nose too sharp. Her jaw too pronounced and her brows too severe.
And yet she did have beauty—the kind that only made itself known after looking. Eyes that could look like damnation or starlight. A smile that changed the entire contours of her face. The candlelight burnished her red hair and turned her skin to silk.
He wanted her.
Not in the way a man usually wanted a woman—the way he had half-heartedly wanted Isabella after she posed herself seductively before him. He wanted Emilydespiteall the reasons she had given him not to want her. Forbidden fruit, all the more desirous for being out of reach. He did not need to have her, and she certainly did not need him, but he hungered for her all the same.
Resigned, frustrated, unable to slate his lust, he lay on the bed and attempted to think of anything but her soft mouth around his cock, or the way she might look divested of her clothes, thighs wide to accommodate him.
He failed.
Just like everything else worth having in this world, she was destined never to be his.
Chapter Thirteen
WhenEmilywoke,shewas surprised to find it was morning and she had slept all through the night. Her head still ached, and the nausea hadn’t abated, but despite Oliver’s presence in the room, she had slept all through without fear.
Then again, perhaps that was less surprising—since her mother’s death, she had slept in the same bed as Isabella near constantly. At first for comfort, and when the money began to run out, for warmth.
Now, it was alien for her to sleep in silence, without the reassuring sound of another person’s steady breaths.
Oliver was no longer asleep now, however. Instead, he lounged across the bottom of her bed with discomforting familiarity. Or rather, she suspected she ought to find it discomforting.
Instead, she merely sat up, her stomach roiling. “What are you doing?”
“Did you know you snore?”
“I do not!” If she did, Isabella would most certainly have complained.
“No, you don’t, but it would have been exceedingly amusing if you had.” He sat up with some effort, and she saw he wore nothing but a shirt that looked remarkably worse for wear. He glanced down at it and grimaced. “Yes, I know. I look like a regular ragamuffin.”
Actually, he looked somewhat debauched, but rather than disgusting her, it made her stomach give a disconcerting lurch.
No doubt an after-effect of her knock to the head. Bricks could do that, or so she hoped.
There was a patch of skin visible at the base of his neck, lighter in colour than that of his neck. Ordinarily, he wore a cravat, but that must have become too creased to be viable.
Her cheeks heated.
Either Oliver didn’t notice or he made a valiant effort not to show it, because he merely said, “I hate to bother you, darling, especially when you’re ill, but Mr Chambers rose early and is in the fields, and I would much rather you were to do this than Mrs Chambers.”
“Do what?” she asked suspiciously.
