Chase tugged at the string, working his way down the corset past each grommet. He could either unloose every damn one of them, one by one, or he could make an attempt to slide it past her hips and down her legs.
Bethany’s breathing was deep and even. Had she fallen asleep?
“Why did you think I wouldn’t be ordinary?” He succeeded to free the bottom lace… oh, hell, another layer of strings crisscrossed beneath where the first had been. Who the hell made this garment? Some masochistic fashionista? Or perhaps it had been designed for nuns by the pope himself.
He reached across the bed to a side table drawer and located precisely what he was after.
One. Two. Three. Four. He sliced through the notches decisively.
“I just knew.” She sighed. “Ah. That feels wonderful.”
But the garment didn’t fall away until he’d cut through the last lace at the top.
“How would you know?” He tugged it out from beneath her. She wasn’t asleep anymore and yet she kept almost perfectly still, on her stomach—looking far more modest than the situation warranted.
“Because you’ve always been extraordinary.”
Chase frowned at the same time his heart waged with his head. He’d never been extraordinary in any way. He was simply one of many titled gentlemen doing his best to keep his estates and the people who depended on him out of harm’s way.
She didn’t mean it, he reasoned. The euphoria from her release had her talking nonsense.
Resting on his haunches on the bed beside her, Chase smoothed his hand over the ridges left in her skin from the tight stays. “Do they hurt?”
“No.” She turned her head and met his gaze. “I’m used to it.”
“What else are you used to?”
“Mmm. Wearing my hair in a knot. Shoes that sometimes pinch. Sitting through boring teas with my mother. Oh, that feels so good.”
“Is that when you started counting letters? When you had to take tea with your mother?” The marks from the stays faded as he rubbed his hand along her back, but he had no inclination to stop. He found the little sounds of pleasure she made inherently satisfying.
“No. Two or three years ago. I have difficulties sleeping sometimes. I realized I was doing it while lying in bed.”
“What keeps you awake?”
She opened her eyes again and shrugged a little. There was something, he realized, but she didn’t want to tell him. “I worry about stupid things. Were my stockings put away properly, both of them? Did I lose any hairpins? Is my hairbrush on the right side of the vanity? Silly things.”
“And these details keep you awake.”
“If I have to check on them.”
He remembered in February when he’d caught her straightening things in one of the drawing rooms at Westerley Crossings. She’d been rearranging seemingly insignificant items.
“Sometimes I don’t fall asleep until dawn. I hardly ever wake early.”
Chase realized this was the most she’d ever talked about herself. None of those barriers she’d erected remained in place.
“I tried sipping some sherry before bed but all that succeeded in doing was making my bed spin.”
Ah, yes. She’d mentioned that she didn’t do well with spirits. “So you count.”
“I count,” she agreed.
Chase stared at his hands resting on her shoulders. They were much darker than her skin. He smoothed them down the small of her back and then out, to the indent of her waist, the flare of her hips, and the rise of her bottom.
Damned if he hadn’t craved her this way since he inadvertently had his hand up her dress in the Willoughbys’ bottom.
The Willoughbys’garden.He shook his head.
