She bent to retrieve her abandoned clippers with a heavy sigh that made her frustration apparent. He reached for her, intercepting her before she could return to her work, and turned her back to him. He forced her to hold his gaze, and yes, he saw her frustration. But he also saw her exhaustion. Her worry.
How he wanted to protect her from all that. Or at least take it away temporarily.
“I’m…sorry, Imogen. I realize this is difficult for you. I realize I have perhaps made it more difficult,” he said, and her eyes widened as if she hadn’t expected that acknowledgment.
She swallowed, and he followed the motion with his gaze, wishing he could follow it with his lips. But he had to do more than seduce her in this moment. For once he had more to offer than physical pleasure.
“What is it you wanted, Oscar?” she whispered, her tone slightly gentler than it had been. “You normally don’t pursue me during daylight hours.”
He suddenly felt nervous and cleared his throat as if that could change the emotion. “You feel trapped here and I don’t feel good about that. So I found you to ask you to go out with me.”
Her brow wrinkled. “What happened to your edict that I was not allowed to leave these walls? That if I did so, it would mean certain and immediate death?”
She was teasing, but he tensed at the words she chose. “Please don’t joke about that.”
Her gaze flitted down. “Of course. I’m sorry. So you want me to go out into the world with you. When? Where? Why?”
He stifled a laugh at her barrage of questions. It so reflected her spirit when she did that. She questioned without even knowing she was doing it sometimes, and he often found himself caught up in the spell of her curiosity. It made him see the world in a new way, when she questioned it and him.
But today he couldn’t answer that barrage without revealing too much of his surprise. Instead, he straightened up and said, “You’ll have to wait and see. Just dress for a pleasant afternoon and meet me in the foyer in an hour.”
“Oscar—” she began as she wiped her dirty hands off on her pelisse.
He reached out and caught those hands. They were warm and soft in his own, and as he drew her a little closer, he caught a whiff of her honey sweetness that always made his cock very aware of how close she was. Today he ignored it.
“Please,” he said quietly.
She blinked up at him at theplease. He understood why. He wasn’t a man who asked for much. He claimed more often than pleaded.
She nodded slowly. “Very well. An hour.”
She extracted her hands from his and gathered up her basket of clippings as she headed back toward the house. At the bottom of the stairs, she stopped and looked back at him. Her face was lined with confusion, but he thought also little excitement, and he barely held back a smile.
If things went well, she was going to enjoy this day a great deal. He hoped she would. He depended on it, despite the dangers that fact created. But in that moment nothing mattered aside from seeing her pleasure, and not just the physical kind this time.
* * *
Imogen sat in the carriage across from Oscar, watching him closely. He seemed…nervous as they rode along toward whatever mystery destination he had in mind for her, and that was rare in itself. Still, he had his usual, serious expression on his face. The one that made his brow lower and his eyes dark and his mouth almost disappear in his beard.
“Do youeversmile?”
He tilted his head. “Do you mean am Icapableof it? Physically?”
She huffed out her breath at his teasing. “You must be capable. I’ve seen youalmostdo it a few times.”
“Have you now?” he asked, and there was one of those hints again, just the slightest flutter at the corner of his lips.
Which only drove her harder to make it happen fully. “I just wonder what could draw such an expression out. What if you…won a thousand pounds at cards?”
“A thousand?” he repeated, and shook his head. “Such high stakes are not in my blood. I gamble only to make my club patrons feel unjudged, and never with that much. So it isn’t possible, thus I would not smile.”
He was playing with her, and she lowered her eyelids in a glare. “If you found an adorable puppy in the park,” she suggested.
“How adorable?” he asked, that serious expression never wavering from his face even as he toyed with her.
“Like a tiny little bear,” she said, and leaned closer to him, batting her eyelashes to mimic some sweet little puppy. “With folded ears and eyes that gazed up at you and whispered, ‘Take me home, Mr. Fitzhugh.’”
He swallowed and shook his head slowly. “If he was so adorable, surely he would belong to someone else. A child, perhaps. You wish me to take pleasure in depriving a child of his beloved pet, Mrs. Huxley? Very cruel.”
