“I could keep you in my Manor for a week. A month. A year.” His mouth left burning kisses from her chest back up her neck to her mouth. “Tell me what you want, Sybil.”
“You are a cruel man.”
“Cruel, am I? I could be more so.”
“Absolutely not.” She was half laughing, half serious. “You promised me your bedchamber.”
“I promised you no such thing—you are the one who demanded I take you there.” He leaned back so he could better see his face, and the expression in his eyes left her in no doubt about what he wanted.
“George.”
“Sybil.” She ran a hand down to the bulge in his breeches and grinned at the way he kissed a breath. As his thumb swiped across her nipple, sensitive even through the fabric separating them, she palmed him, rubbing up and down as his breaths grew heavier.
“Do you not want this as much as I do?” she asked, her voice low and husky. If she hadn’t been the one to utter those words, she might not have believed they came from her mouth. “Do you want to tarry longer?”
“I had not thought I would propose to such a witch.”
Her hand froze on him. His hands froze on her. Eyes wide, faces pale, they stared at each other, waiting for someone to say something. Anything. Heavens above, had he said—
“Did you say—”
“Yes,” he interrupted, his voice hoarse but a spark of fun entered his eyes. “I called you a witch.”
“Be serious, George.” Her hand fell away from his breeches as she looked up into his face. “Did you saypropose?”
ChapterEighteen
George could not have proposed to the woman he was in love with in a less felicitous manner. As he racked his brains to think of a worse way, he came to the conclusion that he had monumentally put his foot in it.
“Yes,” he said eventually when it was clear he was obliged to saysomething. “I did.”
“You were intending to propose tome?” The shock on her face was distinctly unflattering.
“Is that so difficult to believe?” he demanded. “You know what that night meant to me… what you mean to me.”
“I know you have… you enjoy—” Words appeared to fail her, and she gaped at him before snapping her jaw shut again. “I know that I meansomethingto you, but when your mother is so opposed to a union between us, and whenmymother is—”
“Neither of our mothers would prevent me from proposing to a woman I wish to spend my life with,” he said, an edge to his voice. “The only thing further to ask is whether you would object to the idea.”
Her mouth dropped open again, and she shut it just as fast. “Object? Why should I object?” She flung her arms around him, and he staggered back under her weight. “This is everything I had hoped for.”
“Then your answer will be favorable?”
“Perhaps you should ask and see,” she said, but this time, there was a teasing note to her voice. Her arms were still wrapped around his neck and it was the work of a moment to lift her legs so they, too, were wrapped around him.
Nothing, now, would prevent him from taking her to his bedchamber. If she wanted everything, he would give her everything—and he would demand an answer to her proposal whether she liked it or not.
“Where are you taking me then?” she asked with a gasp.
“You suggested I should ask and see whether your answer will be favorable,” he said, shouldering his door open. The room was dark, but after laying her on the bed, he lit a candle. The golden light bloomed, and she frowned at the sight of it.
“Why must we always be in the light? If you are to see me without—without my dress, why not do it in the dark?”
He kissed the end of her nose and tugged at his cravat, destroying the work it had taken him several minutes to perfect. “Because then I wouldn’t be seeing you.”
Her eyes were a little wider than before, and he wondered if she had ever seen the interior of a man’s bedchamber before.
No, of course, she hadn’t. The thought was as stupid and insistent as a fly, and he shook it away. She had never been inside another man’s bedchamber, and another man had not touched her the way he had. Of that, he was at least relatively certain.
