“Please,” she said earnestly. “Help yourself. If you’d like me to make another–”
“This is fine,” he said, lifting the cup to his mouth, and her thighs unconsciously pressed together as he touched the same spot where her own lips had been. “After my mother died, it’s said that my father went a tad mad in his grief. He stripped the entire household of anything that reminded her of him, and had it painted white. I’ve simply yet to get around to changing it. An adequate project for the future Countess of Hawkridge, I should think.”
As Evie searched Weston’s gaze, she felt a tug in the middle of her chest. There was such restrained pain in his eyes. Buried beneath all of the stoicism, of course. But it was there, all the same. Especially now that she knew to look for it.
What a terrible message it must have sent to a vulnerable young boy, yearning for approval, that the marquess had loved his wife so much that her passing had caused him to tear an entire house apart. But he hadn’t cared enough about his son to bother to show up at Weston’s convocation. The most important milestone in a gentleman’s life, with the exceptions of marriage and the births of his children.
And the Marquess of Dorchester hadn’t been there.
How could Evie’s mother have had an affair with such a heartless man?
At least she finally understood why Anne Thorncroft would have chosen to give up everything England had to offer her and return to the arms of a kind doctor who had valued his wife and daughters and service to country above all else.
“I am sorry,” she murmured, reaching across the worktable to splay her fingers on Weston’s forearm and feel the quiver and clench of his muscles through the thin fabric of his shirt.
“You’ve nothing to be sorry for,” he said curtly. “All of this happened a long time ago. Before you were even born. It has nothing to do with you.”
Couldn’t he see that it hadeverythingto do with her?
With them?
As much as she was a product of her upbringing, so was Weston a product of his. No doubt he thought that if his father had loved his mother a little less, then the marquess wouldn’t have fallen apart after she’d died and rebuilt himself with stone.
It was clear, both from what he’d said and the actions he’d taken, that Weston was trying to avoid a similar destiny by eradicating love from his marriage altogether. But in doing so, he’d already condemned himself to the same fate as his father.
He’d just used ice instead of rock.
But if Evie could change her views on life and love and the pursuit of happiness…then maybe…just maybe…Weston could as well.
With a little coaxing, that is.
“You’ve not spoken of passion, or desire, or lust,” she said, dropping her voice to a throaty whisper as her hand skimmed up his arm to his bicep. She traced the muscle with the tip of her finger, marveling at its firmness. There was no question that the Earl of Hawkridge kept himself physically fit. Or that he was failing–miserably–to resist the pull of his baser instincts.
“What of them?” he rasped, his eyelids sliding to half-mast as she continued her exploration of his body. Having made her way to his shoulder, she flattened her palm and slid it ever so slowly along the hard ridge of his collarbone before dipping to his chest. If she touched his nipple as he’d touched hers, would it have the same effect? All that pulsing heat centered in a circle of nerve endings, his considerably smaller than hers.
But no less sensitive, she discovered, a catlike smile stealing across her lips as she rubbed her thumb across his nipple and he all but toppled off his stool.
“Aren’t those qualities you should like to have in a marriage? You’re right. Loveisa complication.” She flitted him a glance from beneath the thick fringe of her lashes. “But surely you don’t intend to deny yourself ofallthe pleasures that come from taking a wife. Or shall you delegate the making of an heir to the butler?”
“You’re playing with fire, Evelyn,” he said thickly.
“Oh,” she purred, her ribcage pressing into the edge of the table as she extended her arm as far as it would go and began to walk her fingertips down the middle of his torso, “but Isoenjoy the burn.”
Chapter Eighteen
Evie may havebeen the one playing with fire.
But Weston was the one being consumed by it.
Flames lapped at his self-restraint as her inquisitive hand trailed across his chest. He steeled himself against the heat. The temptation. The savage desire to take and be taken. But even as he resisted, he knew it was a battle he was losing. A battle he no longer wanted to fight.
And thus he threw up his white flag…and surrendered.
He surrendered to the attraction between them. An attraction that had begun as a spark on the ballroom floor, and had since grown into a raging inferno.
He surrendered to his primal urges, long stifled beneath layers of propriety.
But most importantly…he surrendered to Evie.
