“You keep my interest,” he mumbled.
“Only now. When it’s too late.”
“You’ve always kept my interest. And it’s not too late. You’re not married yet.”
She could feel the tears coming. “What do you want, George?”
“I want to hear what you want, Phee.”
The words tumbled out of her. “Shall we couple again? In the house of my husband-to-be? So you can laugh at him behind his back? So you can satisfy that perverse part of you that wants to win? That sick part of you that never wanted me until I was somebody else’s property.”
“You’re nobody’s property.”
She used her free arm to pull her nightdress up, high over her right breast. “What is the meaning of the mark you gave me with your mouth? Don’t people put marks on their property? Did you think I wouldn’t see it? That I don’t look in a mirror at my own breasts? That my lady’s maid wouldn’t see it and look at me like I had been a whore with my betrothed? The only saving grace was she would never guess it had been you instead of him.”
He let go of her then.
But she couldn’t leave his room. She couldn’t leave him.
Why? Why can’t I leave? I hate him. I just told him so.
Because she wanted him. She had wanted him as soon as she knew what wanting was. She still wanted him.
Standing next to his bed, smelling him, seeing his naked chest and knowing the rest of him was bare under the sheet, Phoebe was finally ready to acknowledge the terrible truth. Of course, she hadn’t asked for a bedding lessononlybecause she was so worried about failing at one of the most important duties of a wife. It hadn’tsolelybeen so she could know what to do or how to act with Thornwick in a bedchamber.
It was because I wanted to couple with George. She had wanted him for so long and it was never going to happen unless she took matters into her own hands. And with her engagement, her looming marriage, her opportunity was slipping away.
Her worry she wouldn’t please her husband? It had been real. She hadn’t lied to George. That worry was still real.
But it had been an excuse, hadn’t it? An excuse to know George’s body, to be in his arms, to have his kiss, to thrill to his touch. To have her nose next to his skin and inhale, great huge lungfuls of the most wonderful aroma in the world. To catch hold of a little piece of her girlhood fantasy before it was lost to her forever.
She thought she didn’t know her future husband? Ha! She scarcely knew herself.
She used her now-free hand to hold the other side of nightdress up, to show her left breast.
Had it only been eight days ago she had first shown her body to George? So scared of his disapproval. So nervous that her breasts, her hips wouldn’t please him enough to get her lesson, her chance to be with him. And how she had trembled with fear.
As she was trembling now. She tried to force her body to be still.
“That was very wrong of me.” His words were quiet but clear. “All of it. Very wrong.”
No!She screamed inside.Touch me, take me, make me yours.
But he made no move toward her. He kept speaking in a low, calm voice. “The fault is mine. Entirely. About everything. I should never have taken your wager. I should never have bedded you.”
He regretted bedding her. Of course, he did. He was the man most aware of all her faults, and he had never minded pointing them out to her. And he had made it clear what he thought of her two days ago. Here she was, hoping his coming to the house party, his baiting her with usingnauseatedincorrectly, his being in the bedchamber next to hers meant something. Meant at least he wanted something womanly from her still.
He only wanted the least womanly thing about her. But she would never let him havethatagain. She pulled her nightdress down.
“We are speaking truthfully now, are we? Well, let me tell you something, George Danforth. I never liked chess.” She leaned forward and hissed, “In point of fact, I hate it. I loathe it. I despise it. It’s childish. The little pieces. The pedantry of it. The slowness of it. The pretense that it is some great intellectual battle when it is really a game. And I hate that I’ve wasted so much of my life playing it with you.”
He recoiled.
She left his room and locked her side of the door behind her.
She had done it. She had hurt him as he had hurt her.
And she had finally learned how to lie.
