“You’re standing across the room, Tessa,” he panted. His voice was hoarse. “Granted, it is a small room. Hardly an ideal room for a romantic encounter, but I was enjoying it.” He exhaled quickly, like he’d just cheated death. “I’ve... I’ve overstepped, Tessa. Forgive me. Tell me how I’ve frightened you.”
“No,” she said immediately. She thrust her hand out with one finger raised like a governess. “No.It’s not you. It was never you.”
Her brain thrummed with conflicting jolts of desire and fear and frustration. She wanted to scream, but what did screaming solve? She wanted to sob against his chest, but she’d cried enough at Vauxhall. She’d needed tears that night, but now crying seemed like a regression.
“Give me a moment, please.” She turned away.
Tell him, tell him,she thought.Tell him something, anything.
She wanted to talk even less than she wanted to scream or cry. She was loath to reveal a single, excruciating detail about Captain Marking and the night that Christian had been conceived. But how much of her struggle with Joseph Chance was because of what she did not say? She glanced over her shoulder. He looked as if he was slowly dying of a gunshot. He was owed some explanation.
And she had loved kissing him so very much. If ever they were to kiss again, if ever she were able to muddle throughmorethan kissing, he must know of her... experience.
But how could she articulate what she did not understand herself?Joseph, I enjoy kissing you and touching you but there are certain ways that you might touch me that will send me into hysterics.
And I won’t know these incendiary touches until we are upon them.
Good luck to us both.
She toyed with blurting out these precise things, but she bade herself pause, take a deep breath, think. She reached for practicality, which had been a mainstay of the New Tessa.
“Here,” said Joseph gently, “Tessa, please will you sit, or let us go—”
“Yes,” she said. Without really thinking, she sat down again, right in his lap. She sat squarely this time, facing away, her spine straight. They sat like children on a downhill sled.
When her bottom hit his thighs, Joseph went rigid. He made an odd sound, like someone had handed him a wet cat. He held his arms wide.
Tessa took a deep breath. She wanted the closeness of sitting with him without the intensity of lookingathim. And she’d wanted to be still. Everything effective about the New Tessa had been still and deliberate, not hysterical and reactionary.
She raised her chin, examining the opposite wall. It was dotted with pegs on a grid, each peg hung with a man’s hat.
“This family has a proliferation of hats,” she said.
“Trevor doesn’t like the sun in his eyes,” Joseph answered cautiously. His voice was rough. “They travel much of the year.”
“Resourceful,” said Tessa.
“Tessa?”Joseph said. He sounded miserable. Slowly, he lowered his arms to his sides. He did not touch her. She reached on either side and gathered up his open hands. He clasped them, and she held on. He let out a fraught breath.
“Joseph,” she began, “this has become so very strange, and I’m sorry.”
“I was too aggressive,” he offered.
Tessa shook her head at the hats. “No. No. I am determined to accept whatever amorous... er, tide you may wish to, er, be carried away upon. However—”
“Accept my amorous tide?”Joseph repeated. His voice was too loud in the small room.
“Yes,” she vowed, trying to sound very open, “however, there is more to my experience with, er, kissing, than you and me. As you know. I hesitate to bring it up, but I worry there is no help for it—for me—if I do not. Can you tolerate it?”
“Tessa,”he breathed. “The only thing I can tolerate is not knowing what you want.”
She sighed at this. Could she simply stop with this assurance? No, she thought, he deserved more. He deserved all of it. She forged ahead. “In the weeks before I met you, I endured an encounter with the man who fathered Christian...”
Tessa gritted her teeth. It was physically painful to form the words, as if she spoke around a horse’s bit. Joseph fell silent, not a breath, not a shuffle. She had his full attention. She forced herself to start again.
“On the night Christian was conceived, the man who was Christian’s natural father was rather... demanding. And he... he, well—”
Now she squeezed Joseph’s hands tighter. She closed her eyes.
