“You are not to enter my rooms without permission,” she began. “Not my bedchamber, not my sitting room. If you need to speak with me, you will send word first.”
She kept her voice even and practical, the voice of someone discussing household logistics and not at all like she had spent the carriage ride from London thinking about what it meant to share a house with a man who looked the way he looked.
“And you are not to touch me without warning. Not even in company, if it can be avoided. I realize some contact will be necessary for appearances, but I would prefer to know it is coming,” she finished.
The room was quiet, except for the fire.
William looked at her for a moment. Then he said pleasantly, “Do you truly think I would storm into your room uninvited?”
“I think,” she said carefully, “that you are a man accustomed to a great deal of latitude. I think doors have opened for you rather readily your entire life, and you have not often had cause to consider whether they were meant to.” She held his gaze. “I am simply being clear.”
He rose from his chair. It was not a threatening move, but she couldn’t keep her pulse from jumping.
He moved around the desk with the unhurried ease of a man taking a turn about his own study, and came to stand perhaps three feet from her, close enough that she was aware of it without it constituting any kind of transgression.
“You have a reputation,” she said, holding her ground, “for turning heads and bending women to your will. For being persuasive in ways that have nothing to do with reason.” She kept her chin up. “I am your wife, not one of your conquests, and I would appreciate you remembering the distinction.”
His head tilted, very slightly. “Bending women to my will,” he repeated, as though testing the phrase for accuracy. “That is quite a characterization.”
“It is the characterization the papers… in fact, the ton has given you.”
“The papers and the ton,” he said, “have also described me as dissolute, reckless, and once, memorably, a menace to the institution of matrimony.” The corner of his mouth quirked up. “I am now married, so at least one of those has been addressed.”
Despite herself, she felt a pull—the warmth of him, the effortless way he made even a difficult moment feel almost enjoyable—and she straightened against it like a ship correcting in a cross-wind.
He took one more step toward her. Not into her space, simply nearer. Close enough that she could see the slight disorder of his dark hair, the sharp line of his jaw.
“Most doors,” he added, with a smile that was doing something entirely unfair to the room, “open for me without protest.”
It was the smile that did it—easy, unearned, and utterly aware of itself. Cecily took a step back before she had decided to, and then another, until the wall met her shoulder blades.
She realized she had backed herself into a corner, which was not the impression she had intended to make.
She did not move. To move now would be to admit retreat.
He had not followed her. He had not needed to. He simply stood where he was, three feet away, with that expression of mild, genuine amusement that was somehow more disconcerting than if he had actually advanced.
I am not frightened of him.
She had said so to Letitia not forty minutes ago with complete confidence, and she had meant it.
She still meant it.
“Do you truly believe,” he asked, his voice dropping to the quieter register he used when he was no longer performing and was simply saying something he meant, “that I charm women against their will?”
“I believe that charming men rarely have to.”
He considered this. Something shifted in his expression—interest, she thought, genuine rather than affected.
“And sensible women? What do they do?”
“Sensible women,” she said firmly, “avoid them.”
“Avoid charming men altogether.” He looked faintly amused. “That seems like rather a bleak strategy for navigating Society.”
“It has served me adequately so far.”
“Has it?” He looked at her for a moment with those green eyes that were, she was discovering, considerably more expressive than they appeared. They revealed exactly as much as he chose. “Do you find me charming, then? Since we are on the subject.”
