“What about you?” he asked. “I know just as little about you, perhaps even less since at least you spoke to our friends about me.”
She worried her lip between her teeth gently and then nodded. “I suppose that is a fair statement. The circumstances you and my father created for our engagement didn’t exactly offer us time to get to know each other.”
“Tell me about your childhood,” he offered. “As much or as little as you would like.”
He tensed as her breath exited her lungs in a shaky sigh. The topic he’d chosen was not a happy one. But she spoke regardless of whatever pain he had unearthed. In that way, it seemed, she was far braver than he was.
“When I speak to you about a marriage between ghosts, it is because I witnessed one,” she said. “My mother and father did not love each other. Theirs was a union of coldness and distance. She married for his title, he for her money. They each held it over the other’s head for years.”
“In front of you?”
She nodded. “Indeed, often. I was a byproduct, a tool, a weapon to use against each other. My father was kinder to me than my mother.”
“Your mother was not kind?” Hugh pressed, horrified by that idea.
She set her jaw. “She was not present. She did not care a whit about my life. And then she died. Truth be told, my world hardly changed at all. At least my father actually seemed to have plans for my future. I think—Ihope—he loves me in his own way.”
Hugh turned his head slightly as he thought of the viscount’s cruel assessment of Amelia’s engagement to Walters. This man she so desperately wanted to love her had been willing to trade her to a bastard just to get what he wanted. And it was Quinton’s bargaining and lies that had placed her where she was.
If that was love, Hugh wanted no part of it. Amelia deserved more.
“And you are close to him,” he encouraged her.
She bent her head, and a sad, knowing smile crossed her face. “Close is a relative term, isn’t it? Closer to him than to the woman who birthed me and hardly looked at me again. But that might not be called close. I would want to protect him, obviously.”
Her gaze dashed away from Hugh’s face, and shame filled him. He could judge Quinton all he wanted, but he had been part of her father’s manipulation. Trading on Amelia’s love for her father in order to get what Hugh wanted.
“Obviously,” he repeated.
“It isn’t that I don’t recognize the shortcomings of our relationship. He wanted a son and he got me,” she said. “I don’t think he’s happy about it, but he used me when he needed me. I was his tool.” She shrugged like that meant nothing when it so obviously meant everything. “That is the world of women in our day and age. He used me. You used me. I know that.”
Hugh shut his eyes. She lumped him in with a man like her father, and he deserved that. He deserved her censure, her hate, her fear…and yet she gave him something more than that.
“I don’t want you to be miserable, Amelia,” he said.
She lifted her gaze to his. “I know. And I’m…not. I thought I would be. I was taken away from the future I wanted and yet…I’m not miserable.”
“How?” he asked, genuinely curious. He had always had a hard time adjusting when things went wrong. The planning nature in him chafed at the unexpected twists and turns in his life.
Amelia, on the other hand, flowed like the streams around his home. She could twist and turn and make the best of it all. That was something worthy of study.
“I accept that this isn’t what I wanted,” she said, and for a moment he saw the sparkle of tears in her eyes. She blinked them back and continued, “But itiswhat I am experiencing. And there are other things it seems I want a great deal. Things I never understood until you…taught me.”
She was talking abouthim. Wanting him, needing him. Desire was what she clung to now as a raft to close the distance between them.
Just as he did. For now, that would be enough. It had to be enough.
He reached out and took her hand. Her breath caught as he wound his fingers through hers and then lifted them to his lips. He kissed her knuckles, lingering to taste her skin before he said, “Are you finished eating?”
She didn’t break her stare as she nodded. “I am.”
“Then may I take you up to bed, Your Grace?” he whispered. “And perhaps we can both explore those things we both want. All night.”
Her throat worked as she swallowed and her pupils dilated in the candlelight. She nodded. “Yes.”
He got up, tugging her to her feet, and they moved together to the narrow stair that led to the bedroom they would share. All night, this time, no escaping to a connecting chamber. But he didn’t want escape. He wanted her.
And he was going to have her until they both had their fill.
