Page 149 of The Language of Love

She opened her sleepy blue eyes and caught him gawking. Her smile was the lazy and sated expression of a woman who’d just enjoyed multiple climaxes. “Ah, I could get used to this level of service,” she teased.

“Me too.” He slid a hand into the water between her thighs.

She groaned. “I can’t, Henry.” But she opened her legs as wide as the tub would allow.

Henry grinned. “Hussy,” he said, approvingly. He’d only meant to clean her, but once he felt her slick pearl and silken folds, he couldn’t resist stroking another orgasm from her limp body.

“Can a person die from too much pleasure?” she asked a few moments later.

“I shall make sure you don’t come to any harm,” he assured her.

She chuckled. “Liar.”

Henry soaped up his hands and took her breasts in his palms, earning another moan of pleasure.

He could have played with her all day, but the water was cooling.

Leaving her to soak for a moment, he rang for a servant and ordered dinner.

When he returned to the tub, she smiled and held up her hands. “I’m getting pruny.”

He lifted her out and set her on her feet before wrapping her in a fluffy towel and drying every part of her while she remained pliant in his arms, like a doll.

He’d just slipped her arms into a dressing gown when there was a timid knock on the door.

“That will be dinner,” he said, tying her sash and leaving her in the chair closest to the fire before opening the door to find Mrs. Jenkins and two maids waiting with trays of food. “Set them on that table, please.” He pointed to the long table behind the settee. He would rather organize the dishes himself than have servants faffing about, especially Jenkins. Having her in the room with a wife he’d just repeatedly debauched made his face heat.

“Thank you,” he said. “I will ring when I want somebody to clear.”

Jenkins bowed her head, a sly smile on her lips as she backed out of the room and closed the door without a sound.

“Mrs. Jenkins adores you.”

He turned at the sound of Annis’s voice. “I thought you were asleep.”

“Won’t you tell me about her, Henry?”

He busied himself plating their alfresco-style dinner, using the distraction to consider what she was asking.

She wants to know about your childhood, Henry—it’s not like she’s a spy who’ll be selling your darkest secrets to the French. It’s the sort of things married people talk about. It’s the sort of things one tells the people close to them.

Henry wanted to argue with his imaginary persecutor, but the truth was he was bloody tired of holding himself apart from her. Maybe if he confided in her, she would trust him and do the same?

There is only one way to know…

Once he’d set up their plates and poured the wine, he could no longer avoid her question.

Henry settled on the chair across from her and began to talk. “My uncle never believed that my parents had married.” He took a sip of wine and stared into the glass. “When my father’s business partner Jitesh Chanchani—a middle-aged Indian bachelor who had no idea what to do with a five-year-old boy—sent me to Stoke it didn’t occur to him to send a copy of my parents’ marriage lines back with me.” He stared at his plate, moving the food idly.

“I don’t understand,” Annis said. “Why would he have needed to send such a thing?”

Henry sighed and looked up. “Because my mother was a chambermaid here at Stoke.” His eyes narrowed as he watched for her reaction. “Your husband is the child of a servant and the family black sheep, my dear Annis.”

Rather than the disgust that he’d expected, she merely looked concerned, concerned for him, he realized, not for her reputation.

“When my uncle—who was the earl by then—learned that my mother was pregnant, he threw her out of the house. He threatened my father with disinheritance if he didn’t discard my mother, but my father refused, so my uncle threw him out, too. Before giving him the boot, he handed over a deed to some property in India and a small amount of money on the understanding that my father would never return to England.

“So, my mother and father left. They married in London while they waited for the ship that would carry them to India.” He gave her a bitter smile. “My uncle could have easily found proof that they’d married, but he didn’t want to accept that fact, so he never looked. And when I arrived, he pinned the name bastard on me and gave me to Mrs. Jenkins to raise.”