“You didn’t ruin anything.”
“Yes, I did.”
“No, you didn’t.”
“You stopped.”
“I can’t make love to you when you’re crying, Phee.”
He didn’t want her. She was wrong. She had no power. She couldn’t even be a good wife this way, a way she had felt sure of with him. She was nothing but self-pity and tears and sadness.
She rolled away from him. “Go away.”
“Phee.” His strong, warm hand on her waist.
She squeezed her eyes shut. That hand couldn’t fix her. Nothing could fix her.
“Go away.”
The hand disappeared. A sigh. The mattress shifted. He went away.
And suddenly that wasn’t what she wanted at all.
Thirty-Three
The next day she had Dawson dress her when the luncheon gong sounded, and she went and waited for him in his study.
“I won’t do that again,” she said as he came through the door.
He had been reading a letter and he looked up, startled.
“I won’t send you away,” she clarified.
He came over and sat across from her, folding the letter and putting it away in his tailcoat pocket.
“Are you sure you want to make that promise, Phee? I want to send myself away most of the time.”
“Yes.”
He leaned back in his chair and steepled his fingers. “I’ll try not to take advantage.”
“Is that innuendo, George?”
Worry creased his forehead, and he moved his hands away from his face. “Did you want it to be innuendo? I’m not very good at hinting at things.”
“I want a rematch, George.” He looked at her, not understanding. She stood. “I want to do yesterday afternoon over. Will you come upstairs with me again?”
He rose to his feet slowly. She took his hand. “But let’s go to your bedchamber this time.”
She undressed him, touching his skin, the hair on his chest, the top of his head, his shoulders, his back, his legs. She made him sit down on the edge of the bed and she sat in his lap and nestled her face into the side of his neck and inhaled deeply as she rubbed his head.
“Phee? Can I undress you now?”
“Yes, please.”
He replicated her slowness in taking her clothes off and when they were lying in the bed together naked, he kissed and caressed her body even more slowly, paying attention to her, inch by inch.
“Please,” she said.
