Any other woman would be on her back now, digging her nails into his shoulders and moaning his name with pleasure while he pounded her into his mattress. In the same circumstances, he could have, would have, taken any other woman.
Any other woman.
It was a plea to a deity he wasn’t convinced had ever taken much of an interest in him:Let me want any other woman. Not this one. Not with a fever I’venever beforefelt. Not with a hunger that makes me feel both savage and almost uncertain as a boy, and panicked, as if I’ve been abandoned on a ship I do not know how to sail.
He didn’t want any other woman.
And in this moment, after he’d taken care of his aching cock with the help of his old friend, his right hand, he could not remember ever before wanting any other woman, and he could not imagine ever again wanting any other woman. Which was probably pure melodrama. It was just that he’d gone and trapped himself in this sensual net through the measured, calculated, teasing out of pleasure. Through a wicked little triangle comprised of her innocence and his jadedness and Spillikins, of all bloody things. In the excitement of revealing to her the depth of her own sensual nature. And through constant proximity in the sensual den their suite had become.
Because he could not and would not ravish avirgin. Especially one who had almost nothing else but her virtue to bring to the marriage she was obviously destined for.
Especially one who trusted him.
What a gift it was, her trust.
His chest ached.
He laid an arm over his eyes, but even if he closed them, he saw her face as he’d left her, flushed and yearning, confused and angry.
He had taken selfish pleasure in bringing her gifts: an orange, an astrolabe, the secrets of her body.
The greatest gift he could give her now was to never touch her again.
Chapter Seventeen
Two days of torrential rains later...
“Who do you suppose we’d eat first if we were trapped in here and ran out of food?”
Delacorte said this suddenly in the sitting room.
He’d been reading the part of Mr. Miles Redmond’s book which recounted the time he’d almost been eaten by a cannibal.
Angelique and Delilah exchanged a swift glance. More than once they’d discovered there was a razor-fine line between spirited discourse and havoc. It was the thrilling risk they took every night they gathered. Sometimes everyone took turns rhapsodizing about the best apple tart they’d ever eaten. Sometimes, apparently, cannibalism was on the docket.
Occasionally the discourse grew so spirited, so merry or heated, it led to a penny or two clinking into the Epithet Jar, and to this they found they could not object overmuch, since it paid for the morning papers. It was hard to say which direction tonight would go.
“Here now, let me help you dear,” Mrs. Pariseau murmured to Dot, who had inadvertently sewn part of her sleeve to her embroidery. Not for the first time.
All the ladies held hoops tonight, and were clustered industriously in the corner.
“We should eat Delacorte,” Mr. McDonald declared suddenly, under his breath.
“I am mostly gristle, my friend,” Mr. Delacorte said placidly. “Good luck with that.” He was sitting across from St. John, who was taking a very long time to decide which move to make next in chess.
“Mar isbean greasy,” Mr. McDonald muttered pointedly in what sounded like Gaelic.
Delacorte narrowed his eyes. He didn’t know what he meant, and even if it sounded beautiful, it also sounded like an insult.
“We’re not going to run out of food,” Delilah assured everyone hurriedly, noting that the German boys’ heads had whipped toward them with hunted eyes. “We are very, very prepared to feed everybody for quite a long time.”
“Even if it’s mice on toast,” Lucien added, wickedly.
“I hear heirs to earls are tender as a result of standing about and doing nothing, like veal,” Lorcan said idly. He’d taken a chair and a brandy and was merely enjoying the ambiance of the room. The soft light. The pretty women. The bonhomie with a bite (that was Captain Hardy).
St. John looked at him balefully. Then he looked back at his fingertips in sullen resentment. It seemed he was developing calluses from practicing the cello, which half appalled, half fascinated him.
“None of you will want to eat me,” he said bitterly. “I’ll be chewy and leathery by the time this week is out.”
