“If you don’t like something, you have to tell me.” He waited. “Tell me what I did or said that you didn’t like, darling.”
It was too difficult. It was too much. She didn’t have the words let alone the wherewithal to explain that his playfulness had cut into her heart like a threat. How could she tell her husband not to call her a bad girl when she was one?
She shook her head.
“Maybe you’ll tell me later?”
She held still.
“I have a guess, but I’d rather you tell me.” He sighed. “Well, whatever I did, you have to forgive your silly husband if it takes him a little time to puzzle you out.”
He would never puzzle her out. Please God, let him never puzzle her out.
He lifted her hand to his mouth and kissed her palm. “Do you forgive me?”
There was nothing to forgive. It was all to do with her and nothing to do with him. He was the sweet one, the lovely one, the one who should be showered withdarlings. She brushed his jaw lightly with her fingers to tell him that.
A rumble. It was his stomach.
“And now your husband has a different kind of appetite. I’m sure Mrs. Cull has made us a delightful dinner. I hate to lose sight of my wife’s beautiful body in the service of my digestion, but shall I dress you now?”
Twenty-Five
Over the breakfast table, Phineas watched his wife eat. That beautiful pink tongue just barely escaping her darker lips as the spoon deposited the porridge into her mouth. He found his own mouth hanging open slightly while he first envied the spoon and then the porridge. When she looked up at him, he had to close his mouth quickly with an almost audible snap of his jaw.
Of course, it had not escaped his notice that she hadn’t wanted to take him in her mouth yesterday. He didn’t know why she didn’t, but how like his sweet Caro not to want to refuse him openly. Instead, she had diverted him to something else that had given him a great deal of pleasure. She had paid attention to him, made love to him, been with him. Well, until the very end. And then he had said something that had made her into the woman who pushed him away.
He had courted her as the girl had wanted to be courted. But now he must try harder to appreciate the woman who was his wife. He still knew so little about her, but the bed might be the place where he had the best chance of understanding her.
Good girl, naughty girl. They were just words, weren’t they? And she liked his talk. But she hadn’t liked that he had made her spend that way.
What had he been thinking? She was barely deflowered. That had been only her second time in bed with a man, if you didn’t count the bookshop and he did count it, so third time. Fourth time if you counted his tonguing her to a climax in the drawing room.
He had only been inside her a total of four times—five times now, since she had woken him at midnight last night by lightly skimming her fingers over his flank—0nly four times before he had spoken to her as if she were a trollop.
Could it be he had shamed his daring wife?
He knew her silence had nothing to do with shyness. It was her lisp and her stutter. Someone had made her hate her own speech. Probably her father.
Phineas’ time in the company of the late marquess had been brief, but he knew Caro’s father had not been a man who had a heart of gold hidden under a layer of gruffness. He had been rigid and disapproving, through and through. And likely cruel. Edmund had always been open about his distaste for his father, making visits home very rarely, only arranging the shooting trip after months of nagging from Phineas.
His darling Caro must have lived with shame for a long time in her father’s house. Phineas was never going to be party to bringing more of that into her life. And he wanted his desirous wife to stay just that. He’d have to watch his words.
So, no morenaughty. No morebad girl. No more shame.
Not that he really understood shame. Shamelessness was his calling card.
But Caro had taught him about temptation during their engagement as he had held his lust back, wanting to be a friend to her.
And she was teaching him about love, too. And patience.
But he’d rather not learn about shame.
“What are we going to do today, Caro? Our first full day as husband and wife?”
“C-c-can we go get La? From my brother?”
“Yes. And after that?”
