Not tonight, of course. He wasn’t going to seek pleasure with Etta.
“Shit,” he repeated as he strode down to the stable and waited for his horse to be prepared.
The ride to Kent’s Row was a quarter of an hour and he tried to quiet his mind as he took it. Tried to make himself look unaffected as he turned into her drive and stared up at her home. He could see her through the window in her parlor that looked out over the street. She was standing by the fire, reading a letter. His heart beat a little faster.
“Shit,” he said again, and thought, briefly, about simply riding away and never returning ever again. Only her servants had begun to swarm and he couldn’t do so. So instead he swung down from his mount and made his way up the stairs to where her butler awaited him.
“Your Grace,” he intoned.
“I realize I am not expected,” Theo said. “But will you see if the duchess will see me?”
There was a brief change to the man’s expression that Theo didn’t entirely understand, but then he inclined his head. “A moment, Your Grace.”
He disappeared and Theo hated that his heart throbbed faster as he waited. Would she see him? Or was she so embarrassed by what had happened between them the night before that she would pretend she wasn’t available? And then what would he do? Stride down the hall and press his suit? Or break away from her and never see her again? Make things awkward for their friends? For her? For himself?
Luckily he didn’t have to come up with those answers, for the butler returned and motioned him toward the parlor where he’d seen Etta earlier. “Her Grace will see you.”
The relief Theo felt was too powerful and he entered the room entirely out of sorts. A feeling that didn’t ease when she turned from the fire and he caught his breath. She was no longer holding the letter she’d been reading when he arrived and she smoothed her skirt gently. God, but she was pretty. So bloody pretty that he wanted to hold this image of her forever in his mind. Conjure it when he needed a little light in his life.
“Theo,” she said, stepping toward him hesitantly. She gripped her hands in and out of fists at her sides. “I…I didn’t expect you.”
He somehow found breath enough to speak. “My apologies. I should have sent word ahead, but my decision to come here was rather sudden.” He moved closer and watched her pupils dilate, her hands shake a little before she gripped them again. “I can’t stop thinking about what you said to me last night.”
Her eyes went wide and a dark flush entered her cheeks and spread down the exposed flesh of her throat into the sloped neckline of her pretty blue dress. “Oh?”
“Did you mean what you said to me?” he asked. She hesitated again and her gaze left his. He pursed his lips. “Etta.”
“I suppose my humiliation must be complete,” she murmured, he thought more to herself than to him. She lifted her eyes and held his gaze evenly. “If you were any other person in the world, I could play this off. I could pretend I didn’t recall what I said. I could say I meant something else. I could lie. But not with you.”
“Not with me?” he repeated. “Why?”
“Because you see through me,” she said, her tone suddenly faraway. “I feel you always have.”
He opened and shut his mouth at that statement. It was odd, because he’d always felt that way about her. Even as a girl, she had pulled things from him that he wouldn’t have shared, never had shared, with anyone else. When they’d been reunited with Callum and Valaria’s union, he’d hoped Etta wouldn’t have that power anymore.
But she did. Still. Always. He should have run from it, but he hadn’t.
“So youdowant to take a lover,” he pressed, and heard how rough his voice had become. She nodded silently and just like the night before, her response seemed to weave its way into his flesh, his bone, his blood. It conjured images so inappropriate that he had to turn away from her so they wouldn’t be so clear.
“I do worry about your safety,” he mused as he stared out the window.
“Oh,” she said from behind him. He heard disappointment in that tiny word. “Of course that would be your concern. It’s very kind of you, Theo, but it’s not your responsibility. You can disabuse yourself of that notion.”
He faced her again just in time to see her moving toward the door. Perhaps she intended to ring for tea, perhaps she meant to excuse him from her presence. Either way, he recognized she wanted to create a distraction so this conversation could be over and he couldn’t allow that.
He moved to her in a few long steps and caught her arm. She staggered back against his chest and looked up at him with a gasp. Oh, that gasp. He so very much wanted to make her make that sound for far more pleasurable purposes.
She blinked. “Th-Theo, I’m not asking you to want me. I know you don’t, I would never burden you that way. Honestly I’m not even sure I could findanyoneto want me, so there may be no point to this entire exercise.”
He stared at her now, bewildered for a new reason. “You cannot be serious.”
She tugged her arm away and stepped back, smoothing her skirt over and over. “It’s a serious subject—of course I’m being serious. I know what I am and what I’m not. And I realize I’m being an utter fool, perhaps.”
“You think no one would want you?” he repeated.
She lifted her chin. “No one ever has.”
“Your husband,” he retorted, folding his arms.
