She frowned, brows drawn together in thought. “Warm. Hot. I—I don’t always know what I feel. I yearn…”
He hadn’t been wrong about her reactions. It gave him courage to press on. “Exactly as you ought to feel. Glenmoor penetrated you without preamble,” Brynn said.
She nodded and bit her lower lip. “It was his right. A wife is meant to endure it. He told me so, often.”
“He was a fool. A wife is meant to welcome her husband’s attentions or even crave them,” he said, unable to keep the bitterness from his voice. “God designed your body to seek pleasure, to need pleasure, to find pleasure.”
Her eyes went wide. “Need it?”
“Certainly. In order to welcome a man’s sexual attention, a woman requires that pleasurable sensation. As I grew hard last night, you grew soft, soft and moist to welcome me in. Without that a woman feels discomfort at best, or likely pain. A man can take his pleasure either way, but one who does is an uncaring brute.”
“The kissing and cuddling…,” she mused.
“Some of the ways a man can help you be ready for intimacy. You said, ‘It hurts.’ I’m trying to tell you it shouldn’t. It never has to.”
She stared, unseeing, at his cravat for long moments while he let his words worm their way to her mind and heart. When she didn’t speak, he went on. “Maddy, if you marry again, and you should—you are too much alone—make it be to a decent man who knows those things.”
When she blinked up at him, her words took his breath away. “Can we try it again?”
It was Brynn’s turn to sit back, stunned. “Maddy, have you been listening? You aren’t some light-skirts.”
She tipped her head to the side. “Perhaps we can talk about the role of light-skirts and wanton women at another time. You said a wife has to find pleasure. How can we ever make something of our relationship if I—”
“No! As much as I admire you, Your Grace…”
“Don’t startYourGracing me again, Brynn Morgan, and feeding me the reasons I need some socially prominent match! I had the sort of dynastic marriage my parents desired, and it was hellish. I don’t want it. I’ll live alone before I endure another. I want—”
“Your Grace, the footman brought twine,” Helen’s voice called from just outside the room. “You don’t need to fetch it.”
Brynn breathed a sigh of relief. His reasons for protecting her from marriage to him were wearing thin. He rose and went to the door, keeping Maddy hidden.
“I wonder where she went,” he said. “Let me help you find her.” He clicked the door shut and left her there.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Maddy woke thenext morning, aching and irritable. He hadn’t come to her room. When she tried going to his, back stiffened in determination, she found it cold and empty without so much as a fire in the hearth. She came down to breakfast late, passing her brother in the grand entrance. David spoke with the corporal, who cheerfully reported Jessop had not been seen, confirming her suspicion the worm had left the area. She didn’t stop to ask them about Brynn.
The breakfast room preyed on her nerves. Once, long ago, her mother had chosen it to inform her crudely that the boy she’d fancied—Rob Benson, as it happened—was in fact her half-brother and her father a vile philanderer. Yesterday Brynn had used it to enlighten her ignorance with more kindness. The memory forced her to swallow the lump in her throat. She almost turned around to demand a tray but stiffened her resolve to face life head-on.
Helen Kendrick, just old enough to find the nursery tedious, joined her there soon after. “I know I’m meant to stay above stairs, but Lady Marjory and Daniel have gotten up a game of tag, and it is quite impossible to read or even think. They knocked over the nurse’s rocking chair.”
“Brothers are a blessing, but they can get on one’s nerves,” Maddy said. Sunshine beaming into the room gave her an idea. “It’s a lovely day. It might help to get them outside.”
“But Papa says we must stay in because a bad man is on the loose.” Helen frowned deeply.
“Perhaps the gentlemen will permit us use of the kitchen yard and garden, close to the house, mind you,” Maddy mused. She needed fresh air as much as the children did.
Her use of “us” to include Helen made the girl glow. “Oh, Your Grace, if anyone can convince them, you can.”
Maddy lofted a prayer that Gideon and Phillip’s relationship prosper and that she might keep these precious children in her life. “Let’s make an effort, shall we?”
David and Goodfellow considered the proposition. “Side garden might be best, my lord,” Goodfellow mused. “They can run out to the kitchen yard and walk around to the closed garden on the east side. We can assign someone to keep an eye and bring them in the French doors if anything odd occurs.”
“What will Rob and Brynn think?” Maddy asked.And where is Brynn anyway?
“Major Benson is riding the forest perimeter this morning, Your Grace, and the colonel was up all night. Went to get some sleep. We can manage it.”
Helen scurried away to alert the little ones to dress warmly, and Maddy went to her room to change her clothes, Brynn dominating her thoughts.The wretch stayed up all night rather than risk ambush by a pathetic widow.
