She blinked, still caught by his assertions. Beautiful. What a thought. And then there was his hand, his fingers callused just that much to set off more shivers.
Questions, yes.Begin as…
“Do you have a mistress?”
Well, that certainly caught his attention. He froze as if she’d called his parentage into question. “I beg your pardon?”
She briefly closed her eyes against the outrage in his. “Something Grandmama said. That I should begin as I mean to go on in this marriage. Well, you should know that I am terrible at pretending blindness and deafness as mosttonwives do. I would rather know right up front where I stand. Whereyoustand…or sit or…whatever.”
He took a long moment to answer, his head tilted in consideration. “You wouldn’t mind my having a mistress as long as I notified you beforehand?”
It took quite a bit of her remaining discipline to maintain her poise when what she wanted was to pummel him for even suggesting such a thing.
“I did not say that.”
“But you would understand if I met my needs while you are forbidding me them.”
“I did not say that either.”
“Then what?”
She briefly closed her eyes again, mortified but committed. She had to know. “Am I to truly assume you cannot control yourself for a few weeks until you are back home and we are able to truly begin this marriage?”
Again, he tilted his head, as if considering the wisteria over his head. “Well, I don’t know. I have never been asked to before.”
She found herself staring. “You have never…refrainedfrom carnal activity for a few weeks at a time?”
“Well,” he mused with a suspicious twinkle in his eye. “There was the time I was in that French prison. And the siege of Badajoz. Precious little fun there.”
She surprised herself with a huff of laughter. “Then you could manage it again if you tried.”
“If I landed in another French prison, perhaps.”
Now, a frown. “But you expect me to refrain without complaint for years. Isn’t that a bit unfair?”
“Grossly unfair. You are going to prey on my sense of justice, aren’t you?”
“Do you need to be threatened?”
For a moment, there was silence, punctuated only by the hum of distant bees, a bit of birdsong. The ruffle of a breeze. The thud of her pulse.
But then, still smiling, he leaned down and kissed her. Just that. A meeting, an acknowledgement. A promise. “If you can promise not to run off with the head gardener while I am away, I imagine I can withstand the lure of any female I encounter.”
She all but held her breath. “Can I ask for a vow to that?”
He leaned close, brushed her lips with his. Reached up to stroke her cheek with that deliciously callused finger. “I imagine you can. As long as you promise you will honestly consider the moratorium only to be for this trip.”
“I will…” she reached up this time and kissed him. “Consider.”
“In that case,” he said, his voice unbearably soft, low enough to set up a resonance in her chest, in her belly, “would you like to meet back here after dinner, or is it too public for what I intend to do?”
She was beginning to find it hard to breathe. “What exactly is that?”
His finger strayed south along her throat, back towards her very sensitive collarbone. Just above where her dress skimmed the beginning swell of her breasts.
“Well,” he murmured, leaning closer, his eyes all but pitch black, his smile again a thing of sin and temptation, “I thought I would begin by kissing my way along your pulse.” His lips brushed the throbbing at the base of her throat. “Here, for instance, and here—” to the inside of her elbow, her wrist. Up to where she could feel her heart pound against her ribs. Just a touch, a feather against her breast that set it to puckering again, filling, all but reaching out to be touched. “I would very much like to divest you of all this clothing, dress, stays, stockings—I can promise you that rolling them down is quite a lovely pastime….”
She couldn’t catch her breath at all now. He had run his hand down over her hip, along her thigh, to just behind her knee. Even through her dress, oh, who knew that spot could be so sensitive, so evocative? Who could imagine that faint touch could set off fireworks deep inside? Who could think that just those touches would make it impossible to look away from the kind of eyes that made more thorough promises than any words ever could?
