“Only you call me this endearment. My sisters used Chari, a shortened form of my middle name.”
“Like you prefer Felton, I prefer Cilia. Lovely, loving Cilia.”
The way he repeated it, did he ache for me as I him? Did he wish we had more to bind us together than a contract, a dowry, and crazed impulses?
“My dearest wife—”
“Do you mean me? I’m your only living one, I think. Another household could be where you go when you leave for months.”
He chuckled at my jealous words. “You’re the only Lady Gantry I want.” He took up my hands. “Let me confess a few things.”
I held my breath.
He bit his lip and planted his bowlegs in front of me. “I travel often, too often. But I have a group of friends that I owe everything, from helping with my military commission to sorting out my affairs when my life fell apart after my first wife died. Then there’s a deep commitment to support my brothers in arms and leaders of my old regiment.”
“You sound indebted to many. No wonder you needed my dowry.”
If he had been smiling, it would be gone now. His mouth remained a line. I could never tell if I touched his heart. “And I visited my late friend Johnson’s family. I needed to see that his son’s doing well. He would do that for me, if I had a son and hadn’t come home.”
His words tugged on my heartstrings. I’d made a joke when I should’ve been listening. “That’s why it’s hard to despise you. Even your abandoning me is for a noble purpose.”
He kissed my fingers, his lips lingering on the peaks and valleys of my knuckles. “Do you despise me, Cilia? Hope not.”
Before I could protest such nonsense, he put his arms about me. Wide flat palms clung to my waist and pressed me to his chest.
Fire.
His body was always fevered. Through all his layers, the linen, the silk, and wool, he gave off an inferno of heat. My reserved husband was a lantern, a contained flame.
How I longed for the glass to shatter, and we could both be free to live and love. I thought I might love him. This was my first time ever believing in the emotion. I hated to feel it alone.
“If I say again that I’m sorry and that I missed you terribly, could that inspire forgiveness?” His whispers in my ear always made it hard to think. It was pretty impossible with Felton being near and strong and hot.
Spinning from his chest, I faced my canvas to keep his kisses from turning me to jiggly jelly, like the delightful molds he had his cook make for me.
It was a mistake to put my back to him.
Felton fast unbuttoned my smock, planting his lips to the scooped neckline of my rosy linen gown.
Always buttoned up with the thickest cravats or high shirt collars, he wasn’t vulnerable to this feeling. The way he guarded his neck, I wasn’t sure he had a point on his shoulder that sent him panting, or stirred visions of me and him in his bed.
My ragged heart wanted to surrender and forget every anxious moment he’d been away.
But this cycle would repeat—me feeling loved and accepted; me realizing I was too easily abandoned; me grousing between worries about him and my family back home. I needed off this boat, out of this storm of my making.
“Long ago, Felton, I craved adventure. Now I want nothing but lasting peace.”
“I know this house is smaller than Warwick Manor, and London will make things seem chaotic. We’ll make this a wonderful home. You and I.”
He didn’t understand. Not sure if he ever would. Not sure I wanted to keep trying.
Freeing myself from his embrace, I went to the table and studied my palette. The colors I’d used for my proper painting were out. None of the bright ones I used for the funny picture.
Felton wouldn’t notice. Only Tramel, my father-in-law, a fellow lover of art would know.
“Cilia, I’m consistent and faithful, even when I’m called away. Is that wrong?”
“No. I’m as well, though your cousin Gladstone thinks differently. Probably Lady Jane too.”
