“I thought not. Very well—I’ll send you a message once the date of the wedding is set. Expect to hear from me later today.”
With a flick of the wrist, Whitcombe gestured toward the door. Feeling like an errant schoolboy who’d just been administered a particularly odious punishment by his schoolmaster, Charles rose. He bowed, exited the study, and collided with someone on the way out.
“Oh!”
Charles reached out and curled his arms around a soft, warm body. The air filled with the scent of rose and he inhaled, relishing its sweetness, the scent that had seeped into his dreams last night, causing him to wake with a cockstand fit to burst. His breeches grew tight as his manhood twitched at the memory—the cock he’d fisted to completion before rising that morning.
For a moment, he closed his eyes, relishing the memory of the release. Then the cry came again and he opened them, blinking back the fog of animal lust.
He found himself looking into the eyes of his betrothed, but rather than a lust to mirror his own, he saw nothing but despair.
Chapter Thirteen
“He’s here!” Oliviasaid, entering her sister-in-law’s parlor, her heart fluttering. “They’re in Montague’s study and have been talking for a quarter of an hour.”
Eleanor looked up from her easel. “Olivia dear, you’ll never hear anything to your benefit if you eavesdrop.”
“But they’re discussing me,” Olivia said. “Don’t I have the right to hear what they’re saying?”
“Men speak very differently to each other when not in the presence of women,” Eleanor said. She gave a grin. “Just as we talk very differently when there are no men present. Of course, our reason for doing so is that men lack the intellectual capacity to understand what we’re saying. And you wouldn’t want to hear what they’re saying today, dearest.”
“Why not?”
“Because they’re discussing the marriage contract.” Eleanor swept her brush across her painting, then dipped it into a jar. “To us, marriage is a union of souls, a mark of the love that two people share. To have such a union set out on paper, much as the sale of goods is itemized, is not something a woman wishes to hear, particularly when she’s the commodity being discussed. I’d rather see you spared the humiliation of such a discussion.”
“There’s no love in the marriage I’m about to enter into,” Olivia said. “He doesn’t even like me.”
“He likes you enough to come here today,” Eleanor said. “And he liked you well enough last night. My opinion of him improved when he pulled you away from that broken glass.”
“Do you think so?” Olivia asked, giving free rein to the hope that had been simmering inside her from the moment she’d woken that morning.
Last night, he’d entered her dreams and taken her into his arms—arms strong enough to crush the life out of a thousand men but which held her tenderly as if she were as fragile as a blackbird’s egg. She had drifted into sleep, filled with sensations of pleasure, of soft, whispered words of love while she soared into ecstasy.
Just imagine! She would soon understand what men and women indulged in—the pleasure that made Eleanor so blissfully happy each morning, such that her eyes sparkled with delight over breakfast.
Olivia approached a mirror on the wall and turned her head to one side, patting the ribbons that adorned her hair. Might he like how Eleanor’s maid had fashioned it? Or perhaps her gown, which she’d trimmed with a deep-brown sash to match the color of his eyes?
“Come away from the mirror, dearest. You look very pretty, as you always do,” Eleanor said. “He cannot fail to admire you, but if you continue to pull at your ribbons, your hair will come loose. Harriet made it up so carefully.”
“What if he doesn’t stay for tea?” Olivia said. “Montague might forget to invite him, and I don’t want the next time I see him to be at the altar. I want to get to know him a little, to…to lessen the…”
To lessen the fear.
Eleanor had always said that fear arose out of ignorance, that the more she knew about a subject, or a person, the less capacity they had to induce fear.
She set her brush aside and rose. Then she took Olivia’s hand and kissed it.
“Have no fear, dearest,” she said. “I’llissue the invitation.”
“Montague forbade me at breakfast to disturb him when Lord”—Olivia hesitated, fighting the apprehension at voicing the name of the man to whom she’d soon belong—“when L-lord Devereux was here,” she continued, her cheeks warming.
“He didn’t forbidme,” Eleanor said. “It would be improper to not issue an invitation to tea to your betrothed, would it not? And you know how I insist on adhering to propriety.” Her eyes sparkled with mischief.
“Did you not once say ‘propriety be damned’ in front of the dowager duchess?” Olivia said.
“I think what I said was ‘propriety can go and wallow in a pile of horseshit.’”
Olivia couldn’t help a smile, and Eleanor drew her close.
