In the darkness behind her eyes, the world contracted to this: the sheets that crackled with starch as she restlessly stirred; the light scrape of his teeth, the quest of his lips and tongue; the brush of his chest against hers. She groped blindly up his back, feeling across the muscled expanse, the sharpness of one shoulder blade, the path of his spine, which swept her hand into the small of his back, the perfect place to press him closer to her. His body came fully against hers, and with a start she remembered the rest of him, so much taller and broader and harder, pressed against her now, over and around her. Her breasts ached; she shifted restlessly against him, and his hands slid down to her sides, over and over, steady and soothing until his knuckles brushed the sides of her breasts, a touch light enough to be accidental, but not soothing at all.
Her eyes opened just in time to catch the flutter and lift of his own long lashes. They stared at each other. The silence seemed too full to break. His eyes were the shade of high alpine lakes, the color of water in spaces close to the sky; so close that she could see the flecks of gold scattered through them, secrets that so few people would ever know.
Her impulse was to shove off his jacket. To strip away his shirt. Her brain bade her press herself against him, to act quickly before he changed his mind again.
Her instincts held her still. She did not move. Some defiant impulse made her turn her face away. If he wanted her, he would have to prove it.
He smoothed his hand over her hair, pushing it away from her face, and kissed her jaw. His mouth moved down her throat, and he licked her once, where her throat joined her collarbone. A shuddering breath escaped her. She wanted to move. Her fingers curled into her palm.
His hands slid around her waist. He pulled her up and she set her face into the darkness of his throat, breathing him, her fists at her sides as his clever hands unlaced her gown.
The corset gave his fingers brief pause. “My God,” he said. “What is this?”
A giggle escaped her, scratchy and startled. “The Pretty Housemaid.”
He gave her a look through his lashes, extreme skepticism, his brow quirked. But when it came off so quickly, he leaned into her ear and growled, “Always wear that corset,” and then he was lifting away her chemise.
She was naked. Utterly bare. She felt the blush move across her skin; the air seemed painfully cool in comparison, brushing like another touch across her breasts. He went still, briefly, and then she felt the hot rush of his exhalation across her shoulder.
“Gwen,” he said. The softest thread of sound. “You are . . .”
When he did not go on, the possibilities began to penetrate her daze. She was—naked, yes, but what else? Too round? Too full? Too long in the waist? “I’m what?” she whispered.
His hands moved slowly over her waist, one finger tracing a slow line to her navel, up her abdomen, to her collarbone. “You’re the palette from some pre-Raphaelite’s dream,” he murmured. “Cream and strawberry and scarlet. You are . . . beyond my imagination. It’s a wonder you can be touched at all.”
She stared at him. His words were so far removed from her worries that for a moment, they did not seem to address her concerns in the least. And the next moment, as they turned in her brain, they seemed to reassemble her expectations entirely. Round, full, long-waisted, what matter?
His lips dipped to her skin now, tracing the same path that his finger had made, slowly wending upward. As his mouth reached hers again, he cupped her skull in one broad palm and laid her back onto the bed, kissing her as he lowered her onto the pillows. She had accused him—as a show for Barrington’s guests, but with a ferocity that had felt, suddenly, all too genuine—of treating her like a wind-up doll. His hand at her head brought the comment back to mind. She crossed her arms over her breasts and immediately he drew them apart, placing them gently but firmly at either side of her torso.
For some reason, his decisiveness made her breathless. She tested it by looking away.
One long finger touched her jaw, nudging her face back toward his.
He met her eyes and smiled just a little: a knowing smile. A shock went through her, hot and delicious. He understood exactly the game she was playing.
He held her eyes as he lowered his head. And then, as his mouth closed on her nipple, her own lashes fluttered shut. With his free hand, he brushed a delicate path down her side, his thumb finding the crease between legs and torso, tracing it lightly, over and over, as the languid pleasure in her began to sharpen and solidify. His fingers slipped lower, drawing intentions on her inner thigh, turning to scratch lightly down the length of her leg. Her control broke; with no conscious design, she bent her knee, rubbing the sole of her foot against his clothed calf.
His mouth let go of her nipple with a wet, sucking sound. “Gwen,” he said, his voice soft and rough.
Her foot froze. Traitorous foot. She kept her eyes closed, struggling to control the ragged pattern of her breathing. For some reason, it felt very important not to admit that she had moved of her own volition. Not yet. She wanted him to work for her attention.
His tongue flicked delicately over her nipple. She shuddered despite herself. He bit down very lightly, and her entire torso arched of its own volition toward his mouth.
His hand moved beneath her back, gathering her toward him as he suckled her. His free hand delved between her thighs, finding the hot, wet place between her legs and rubbing gently. Yes. Yes, this was what she had wanted. She opened her eyes. He was poised over her, the bulk of his weight supported by his arms, the rise of his biceps clearly delineated by the thin lawn of his white shirt. Take it off, she wanted to say.
He glanced up and met her eyes. “Open your legs,” he murmured.
A hot blush washed over her. She swallowed. She would have pretended not to hear him, but the pressure of his hand abruptly increased, causing her whole body to contract on a startled wave of pleasure. Her head fell back, and a soft noise filled her ears.
Oh, good Lord! The noise had come from her.
“Gwen,” he said, and there was a note of laughter in the word that disarmed her as nothing else could have. She looked back to him and he took her hand, lifting it to his mouth, planting a kiss in her palm before placing her fingers against his cheek.
The feel of his hot, rough skin fractured her control. She had no idea why she’d delayed, what her aim had been; everything she wanted was here, being offered to her with his smiles and body and the intent, burning focus of his eyes. She pushed herself up, groping for the buttons of his waistcoat, unclipping the suspenders, stripping away his shirt—freeing his chest of all encumbrances.
She rose on her knees to press her breasts to his bare chest—a full-bodied, electric shock; he made a noise deep in his throat, and she felt the vibration register through her flesh. She burrowed closer yet so their thighs touched; she put her arms around him and drew him close, closer, her grip so tight that it awoke a reflexive panic deep within her; one did not hold anybody so tight unless one feared he might try to get away. But, “Shh,” Alex was saying into her ear, “shh,” and now he was kissing his way down her body, his mouth hot against her belly, tracing a path downward. Without warning, he ran his tongue along her seam, and the breath hissed out of her; he tipped her back and she sank as limply as a deflating balloon.
His hands gripped her thighs firmly as he laid her bare. His mouth settled between her legs, and she almost could not—bear—the feeling of his tongue; it made her aware, too aware, of that part of her, her quim as he called it. He slowly licked her, delicately charting the outlines of parts of her that she did not even know or understand. The spot that had given her such pleasure the night before throbbed now, and he tongued it, again and again, until strange little noises slipped out of her, pleading noises; she would have thrashed had his hands not held her down so firmly. Again and again he abraded her, and then he released her thigh to press his thumb firmly against the spot as his tongue moved lower, pushed into her.
The pleasure did not creep up, this time; it crashed onto and through her so forcefully that a split second of fear accompanied it. As she gasped and seized, his fingers replaced his mouth. They pushed slowly and steadily into her, a slight, burning pressure that made her cry out and buck harder. She barely felt his kisses to her thigh; and then his mouth was working its way back up her body again; he was gathering her to him tightly, pulling her against his body as she calmed.
Shame and grudges and complicated designs and anxiety seemed like the languages of a foreign land now; the long, liquid, loose feeling in her had burned away everything but the most elemental and important knowledge. She curled her leg up over his and felt the solid jut of his erection; she rocked against it, and he gasped. Yes. She could make him cry out, too. She reached between them for his trousers; his hands brushed hers, but if he meant to stop her, she gave him no chance. She rolled on top of him and shoved his arms away, laying them out at his sides as he had done to hers. She met his eyes.
“Be still,” she whispered.
He was breathing hard, and a sheen of sweat showed on his forehead. But as he met her eyes, the barest whisper of a smile moved his lips. “Oui, mademoiselle.”
She unfastened his trousers and bared him completely. His hips were lean, his musculature cut as though by a blade. He looked like one of those Greek statues in the British Museum that she had always made such a show of ignoring—only he was hotter, and larger, and his eyes were watching her. She reached out to touch the line that started at his hip bone, a faint groove where the muscles of his upper and lower body met, and he made a faint sound, between a gasp and a hiss. She watched her finger trace the line toward his manhood. Oh, really, Gwen. Toward his cock, which was straight and large and far thicker than she had expected, and also . . . well, she supposed she had thought it would look like white marble. Her hand paused.
His breathing paused.
She cupped her hand around it and closed her fingers.
Soft, she thought with wonder. Soft but so hard, beneath. She bent to kiss it.
A hoarse oath came from him. He caught her beneath the arms and pulled her up. “Later,” he said breathlessly when she started to ask where she’d erred. A hard kiss silenced her. He rolled her onto her back and came on top of her. Oh, she thought, a silent and formless revelation that glittered through her like fireworks. He felt right atop her. He felt like he was hers. He was kissing her now with intention, with an enthusiasm so fierce and focused that it carried an edge of desperation, and this, too, seemed like a miracle—that her touch seemed as necessary to him as his did to her.
His hunger was contagious. It kindled hers again as well. She wrapped her arms around him and lifted her legs. Desire built low in her belly, a pressure that wanted puncturing, release. He broke away to reach down her body again, to touch her quim, but the pleasure he’d given her that way now seemed like a delay. She took his hand and brought it to her mouth, looking into his eyes as she kissed his palm as he’d done to hers. Then she lifted her hips against him, angling so his cock brushed against the place he’d wanted to touch.
He turned his hand in hers, lifting hers to his lips and taking her index finger into his mouth. Below, the head of his cock found her entrance. As he sucked her finger into his mouth, he gave a slow, smooth push below. The force of his exhalation washed down her hand, her forearm.
He pushed again, harder this time, and she caught her breath. The premonition of pain was suddenly upon her.
The sound made him go still. He took a deep breath. Then another.
She pulled her hand free of his mouth. If he was struggling with notions of honor, she had no tolerance for it. She was wicked. She grabbed his arse, so smooth and hard, and dug in her nails as she lifted her hips again.
His hand speared through her hair and tightened. “Be still,” he said through his teeth.
“Don’t stop,” she whispered.
“God save you if you think I would,” he said hoarsely. “Just a . . . moment.”
She waited, breathing hard. A shudder moved through him. And then he pushed again
She bit her lip. No, this definitely would not be comfortable.
“Gwen,” he murmured. He kissed her, harshly, his fingers tightening in her hair to a shade short of painful, and pushed again.
She inhaled in startlement.
He was inside her.
It did not hurt so much after all.
His lips molded hers as he settled into a slow, rocking movement. She kissed him back, too astonished to do much more, too rattled by this bizarre sensation, his tongue inside her mouth and his, yes, his cock inside her down below. The soreness was subsiding. It felt very queer; her fingers twitched atop his back like startled birds as new sensations registered, the slide of his abdomen across hers, the jab of his hip bones into her stomach. This was more complicated than what had come before; it was very athletic, for him. She had no idea what to do. Was she meant to move? Would he mind if she simply lay here?
He slid his hand up her arm, and her startled attention flew to him. “Gwen,” he said softly, and ran a rough thumb over her mouth, pushing inside. She sucked it obediently, and then watched, wide-eyed, when he put it down between them. When he touched the space where they joined, she gasped and felt herself contract.
Inside her, he pulsed.
Her mouth went dry. She swallowed with an effort and tightened her legs around his hips. She wanted to lick him, devour him, wrap herself so closely around him that no inch of his skin was spared. But she had no idea of how to do it. “I don’t . . . what should I do?”
His finger probed gently, stroking, causing her to gasp again. “There is no way to do this wrong,” he murmured, his voice like banked coals, dark and hot. “Everything about you is right.”
The words struck her dumb. So simple, they were. But such a statement . . .
She seized his hair and pulled his mouth down to hers, and he began to move again. This time, it was different. This time, she tried not to hear her doubts, and his mouth and his hands did not permit her to dwell on them. His palm at the small of her back guided her so she was moving with him, and she found a way to rub against him that stroked the pleasure higher, so suddenly they were both moaning as they moved, together, as if they were in one skin, the sweat between them no barrier; she licked a bead off his chin and he sucked her earlobe as his thrusts quickened.
The final pleasure took her gradually this time, stealing up in bits and pieces; she imagined herself as a well, being filled to the brim—a drop here, a bucketful there, slowly, pleasure mounting so slowly—and then, all at once, too much, overflowing, pure bliss. She clung to him as she trembled, then felt him move hard into her, again and again, until his own climax took him with a groan.
He pulled her on top of him as he rolled to his back, keeping her joined to him, as close as their skins would allow.
She lay listening to the diminishment of their breathing, as beneath her cheek, his heartbeat began to slow.
Gradually the silence began to assume overtones. Someone needed to say something. The thought made her tense. She could think of nothing to say. Love me, Alex, and I will never cling too tightly to you: it was the only thing she might say that was remotely close to honest. But it was still a lie.
In the end, it was he who filled the silence. He smoothed the hair away from her eyes, and then combed his fingers through her hair, an idle, contemplative gesture. “The Christmas you were eighteen,” he said. “Just before your debut. You and Richard spent the holidays at Caroline’s. I was about to make my first trip to Argentina. Richard spilled my plan to do that trek through the Andes. Do you remember?”
“Yes,” she said absently. His eyelashes distracted her. They were long enough to grace a woman’s face. His eyes were purely beautiful. “The twins were furious.”
“Mm. They asked if you had any advice for their mad, suicidal brother. Do you recall what you said?”
She reached out, very tentatively, to touch his lashes. He did not flinch. He watched her, unblinking, as she ran the lightest finger across them. This is trust, she thought. “I said that I could have no opinion on such matters, as I was afraid of heights and knew nothing of mountains. And you made some irritating reply, of course—That is why ladies don’t climb mountains, or some such masculine nonsense.”
The lines bracketing his mouth creased in a smile. “Actually, your answer was slightly different. You never said you feared heights. You said, ‘I would be afraid to take some misstep and fall off.’”
“Oh.” She put her thumb to his brow now, tracing the rough arch, simply for the sheer pleasure of witnessing her entitlement. She could touch him as she liked.
His voice lowered. “And I said, ‘That is why you don’t climb mountains, Gwen.’ But now I wonder. You aren’t afraid of heights.”
“No,” she said. “Not particularly.”
“Only missteps.”
She paused midstroke. Did he mean to imply this had been a misstep? “I was afraid,” she said carefully. “For a very long time. But no longer.”
“So was I,” he said, and lifted her chin and kissed her.
The next morning, she woke twined around him, her face tucked into his shoulder, her leg between his, her arms wrapped around his torso. The hour was early; the ghostly glow of dawn barely lit the room. Alex was sleeping soundlessly, one arm thrown over his head, the other wrapped around her waist.
Disbelief moved through her, sweet as a strain of music. Her eyes fluttered shut, and she fell back asleep wondering how much she dared to dream.
When her eyes opened again, she found him sitting cross-legged beside her, fully dressed, his head bent over the maps she’d purloined from Barrington’s desk. His expression looked dark in thought.
Trepidation roused her to full alertness. “Alex,” she whispered, and he lifted his chin to meet her eyes, and smiled.
That smile was like the sunrise for her. She smiled back at him. Stubble darkened his angular jaw, and his brown hair was rumpled. She tentatively reached up to brush a stray lock from his forehead. Fully a wicked woman now, with license to do such shocking and unspeakable things as to lie around with a man not one’s husband, and handle his overlong hair with a tenderness too spiced by desire to be anything bordering on virtue.
“Good morning,” he said. He leaned forward to kiss her ear. His tongue curled around her lobe as he withdrew, sending a shiver through her. “Coffee?” he asked, and waved toward a small clay pot on the nearby table. “Madame Gauthier just delivered it.”
“No,” she said, and pushed herself up into a sitting position. The maps niggled at her.
He followed her look. “These seemed to alarm you last night. I can’t make heads or tails of them.”
“Oh?” She picked them up. She had not given them a long look the night before, but as she flipped through them now, her suspicions clarified. “They’re survey maps.”
“Yes,” he said. “I gathered that much. But why did you find them significant?”
She cleared her throat and selected two particular sheets. “This,” she said, lying the sheets out side by side.
He moved closer, his shoulder brushing hers. “Explain to me what I’m looking at. A map of some kind. Topographical?”
The proximity, the casual way he reached out to stroke the back of her neck, made her dizzy. She willed herself to focus. The map consisted of shaded lines and polymorphous shapes, colored variously to signify different qualities of land. “Yes,” she said, “it’s the typical surveyor’s map, the sort drawn up when assessing the value of a property, or proposing to alter it. They come in very useful when designing a parkland. You’ve got various pieces of information here: elevation, soil composition, water tables . . .” She pulled a desperate face. “Drainage and so on. Above all, drainage! After the first redesign of the gardens at Heaton Dale, the pond started draining into the Grecian folly. Put quite a damper on the classical feel. Athens as swampland.”
He laughed. “But there’s something amiss with these maps?”
“Not with the maps per se,” she said. “Only . . .” She spread out the maps in pairs, keeping aside the widowed seventh. “Do you see?”
He considered them row by row. “Only three properties here, with copies of each.”
“Yes. The same topography,” she said. “The same surveyor, as well—you see the name at the bottom, one Mr. Hopkins. But you see how certain of the shadings are different?”
His eyes narrowed. “Very good catch,” he said softly.
She smiled. “The swampland gave me a powerful motive to learn to read these things. Certainly I no longer trusted the contractors so blindly! At any rate, one of these is false. Only I don’t know the key for the shadings, so I can’t guess which element has been falsified.”
An unpleasant smile twisted his lips. “I can,” he said. “Soil composition, you say? Would that comprise information on mineral deposits?”
“Of course,” she said. “Oh. You think—”
“I think land without significant mineral assets would sell more cheaply.” He paused. “Heverley End, for instance, sits on some very rich copper and tin deposits. One would think that Gerry would know that, but then, perhaps that’s why he’s so damned stubborn in his refusal to discuss the sale. If he were given altered survey data that obscured the mineral wealth . . . and he believed it . . . then the price of the estate would drop significantly.” His smile faded. “Still doesn’t explain why he sold it in the first place, of course.”
“Well.” She hesitated. “Heaven knows men do strange things. None of us are perfect.”
“Oh, Gerry offers ample evidence of imperfection. But not in matters like this.” He lifted her hair away from her neck, idly toying with a strand as he gazed past her toward some invisible thought. “Death before dishonorable profit,” he said lightly.
There was some curious emphasis in his tone, which all at once she divined. Gerry would not stoop to profit. That was Alex’s role.
“Oh, dear,” she said sardonically. “However will you play the black sheep now that Lord Weston is in on the game?”
He flashed her an impish grin and rose off the bed. “My point exactly. But let’s put aside such philosophical debates until we’re safely out of Nice. Barrington will be expecting us to head east for Marseilles, so I propose we go instead to Lake Como.”
“Oh! Elma, of course.” She was on her feet the next second. Twinges registered in various delicious and very useful spots throughout her body, bringing a blush to her face. “Only give me ten minutes,” she said, “and I’ll be ready to leave.”
It was her fault, of course, that forty-five minutes later, as they lingered at the edge of the train station in wait for the southbound train, she stood wound around Alex like a vine. He had only offered his elbow; it was she who had threaded both her arms around it and hugged it to her like a rare treasure.
And this was the pose in which she was discovered.
“Why—Miss Maudlsey! Is that you?”
The greeting fell over Gwen like the shadow of an axe. She looked down the platform into the rapidly fading smile of Lady Milton. Her sister, Lady Fanshawe, was looking between Gwen and Alex. As recognition set in, she darted a quick, shocked glance to her sister, whose jaw dropped.
“Hello there,” Alex said pleasantly. “How’s Reginald?”
Lady Milton made a strangled noise and drew herself perfectly straight. She was a painfully thin woman, and she was wearing a triangular, flat-topped hat; as she turned on Gwen, she gave the impression of a quivering exclamation point. “Miss Maudsley,” she hissed. “Where is the rest of your company? Where is Mrs. Beecham?”
So, Gwen thought. Here it was: total and utter ruin.
Her spirits remained strangely buoyant. She looked the woman squarely in the eye. “I cannot say where she is, for I no longer travel with an escort.”
“And why should she?” Alex added smoothly. His hand covered Gwen’s and closed, lifting her fingers to her lips as he stared down the ladies’ glowers. “Mrs. Ramsey hardly needs an escort,” he said into her fingers, “when traveling with her husband.”
As a child, Alex had learned all the usual fairy tales about evil witches and beautiful princesses lost and trapped and cast a-slumber. Princesses pricked by maleficent needles; princesses stranded behind hedges of thorns; princesses poisoned on sweet apple slices. It had never occurred to him until this morning that so many of these princesses were notable chiefly for the way in which they passed out, and woke up. Had this pattern been pointed out to him, no doubt he would have noted that these women were invariably awakened by the hands or lips of some sickeningly humble but aggressively competent prince—and that the awakening itself was a sanitized metaphor for the good rogering the prince had probably delivered. Indeed, which he did deliver, in the less treacly versions that circulated in old French manuscripts.
But after this morning, Alex would never be able to view such tales so cynically. This morning, he had watched Gwen Maudsley wake from sleep, and there had, indeed, been something magical about it. He’d sat beside her, his thoughts strangely quiescent, and watched consciousness steal over her, spreading first as a faint blush across her pale cheeks, and then in the twitch of her lashes, and the soft sigh that stirred her dark red hair. She came to life like a character from a place far sweeter and less cruel than anywhere he’d ever traveled. The half-conscious brush of her knuckles over her mouth had reddened her lips. When she’d shifted, the scent of her had perfumed the air around him.
He might have mocked himself if he hadn’t been tired of always mocking at what others took seriously. It was easier to mock, of course, but other people refrained, and not always because they lacked the imagination or sense of humor required to mock. Sometimes they refrained because they dared to long for something that was not easily grasped, something that might slip away if one did not pay it the proper respect—prayerful respect, the sort that moved one to remove one’s hat by the side of a grave, or to bow one’s head to soldiers marching off to war, even while damning the fat MPs that sent them to die. Life was not all for mockery. Nor was laughter. But it was harder to spot the prayerful moments when they called for laughter instead of tears. Tears spelled an end.
Laughter could spell a beginning.
He had watched her wake, and he’d thought to himself that he had no idea what sort of beginning he might offer her. But he’d seen, in her face, which he’d touched lightly with one hand as she’d rolled toward him, that he had certainly reached an end when he’d met her again in London.
On the platform, when the sneering crone and her assistant harpy had popped up to peck at them, he’d thought he had found the answer. What a sleeping princess required was a heroic rescue.
Apparently that was incorrect.
“Are you mad?” she demanded. They were on the Milan-bound train. He was growing rather sick of trains. By the looks of her, so was she. She turned a tight circle in the compartment and then kicked the door, exhaling through flattened lips as she turned on him. “Really, Alex, have you lost your mind? Two days ago, you would not . . . and now we are supposedly married!”
He fell back onto the mattress, bracketing his eyes with a hand. He had already exceeded his weekly quota for the care and soothing of enraged womanhood. “It seems likely,” he said. “Madness, I mean. You will have to blame yourself for it.”
“What possessed you? Did I give you any impression that I would expect you to stand for me? Do you not think I heard you last night? Your speech about suffocating? Do you think I would ask this of you?”
He sighed. She made him sound like a martyr, which seemed highly unfair. He loathed martyrs. His mother had been a martyr, an endless slave to the whims of his lungs. I used to love London in the season . . . of course, Alex cannot take the air there, and so we keep in the country year round. Perhaps when the twins come out . . .
“Sit up! You cannot mean to go to sleep! Tell me why on earth you would have made that preposterous claim, and explain to me what we are going to do about it!”
Aside from the obvious fact that he’d shagged her silly last night, and was waiting with the barest thread of patience for another opportunity? Yes, aside from that small detail, the why was simple enough. “You would not have been running about, sans chaperone, had I not suggested the adventure.” True. “Any harm that befalls you as a result is therefore my responsibility to defray.” Also true. “There was no other alternative to what I did.” Even now, he could not think of one.
“You might have said nothing. Did you think of that? I told you—ruin was my aim!”
He smiled despite himself. Her hiss was audible, sharp as a snake’s.
“You do not believe me?” she demanded. “Last night you seemed to take me at my word. Last night, we did as we pleased without worrying about others’ opinions. Today you come out the moralist. Surely I’m owed a reason for it?”
He sighed. “Gwen, last night and this morning are two separate matters. I would not have mentioned last night, but you may bet every pence of your three million that Lady Milton has headed directly to the telegraph office.”
“So? What of it?”
“So, you may say that you won’t mind infamy, but I reserve the right to doubt.” One’s essential traits had a way of reclaiming a person. “You’re a pleaser, Gwen.” Her instincts would pull her back to the narrow path, no matter how much she might come to genuinely revile its constraints. And even if he was wrong—he would not be responsible for putting her to the test.
A savage pain in his foot made him spring upright.
She was holding a chamber pot over his toes.
“Did that please you, Alex?” she asked with a very sweet smile. “Shall I please you again?”
He swung his legs to safer ground. “Had it been anyone else—anyone but that woman—I might have tried . . . I don’t know, to purchase their discretion. But . . .” Bloody hell. He trailed off as astonishment overtook him. Running a hand over his face, he admitted it to himself: he was lying. He was damned cheerful about this turn of events.
He eyed her with new intent. Gwen Ramsey. Queen of the Barbary Coast. He’d take her there for a holiday. Make her sing. She’d enjoy making the lie a reality.
Perhaps now was not the best time to introduce this idea, or admit his own sudden good cheer. She looked furious. He cleared his throat. “As I said. Anyone else. But Lady Milton?” He shrugged. “She ardently admired her son’s profile. And I was personally responsible for changing it.”
Her shoulders sagged. “Yes,” she said, and returned the chamber pot to the floor. “Richard told me how you interceded for him in that fight. But that is beside the point, Alex. What are we to do now?”
He laughed softly. The sound was odd, a bit—all right, he could say it; the sound was a bit hysterical. And he felt odd: boneless, supremely light, thoroughly enervated—as if some great weight had lifted off him. A beginning, indeed. “We find a chaplain,” he said.
“What?” Her brown eyes widened. “You can’t be serious.”
“Perfectly,” he said.
“But—” She sank down on the chair opposite. “But Alex,” she said softly. “What if we don’t suit?”
He sat up at that. How in the hell could she doubt they’d suit? Had she not been there last night? The past weeks? “You’ve known me over half your life,” he said dryly. “Do you expect any surprises? If so, I assure you, all my skeletons live well outside the closet, creating tales that regularly terrorize the Ramsey clan. Handy, that.” She looked pale as parchment, truly and deeply horrified. A laugh rose in him, rusty; it seemed to catch on something in his chest as it passed onward. “All right, cheer up. If we don’t suit, we’ll find a lawyer. Three cheers for the Marriage Reform Bill. Gerry voted against it, of course.”
He lay back again, repositioning his hand over his eyes. So. Not a true marriage, of course, but something convenient. Why not? She was already part of his circle. She belonged in that same arena as did his sisters and nieces.
The idea made him wince. All right, not precisely the same. But obligations already tied them together. He’d simply continue to honor those obligations.
“Divorce?” Now her voice sounded full of rust and nails.
“Less exciting to you than ruin, is it?” He spoke in a bored drawl. “I suppose it’s true, divorcées are a dime a dozen, these days. Fashionable, almost.”
“Fashionable—” The word ended on a choking noise. “Oh, please do sit up! You’ve gotten me into this mess; you can’t mean to nod off while I think how to fix it!”
He lifted the edge of his palm to look at her.
She had her arms wrapped around herself again. And a tear slipping down her cheek.
He swung up and came off the bed. “Christ, Gwen—what’s this? You must have known there was a risk that someone would spot us when you agreed to this charade with Barrington.”
“Of course I did!” she cried. Her arms tightened around herself; she must be bruising her own ribs. “But I thought I was choosing the risk! Instead you have made the decision for me, a decision I’ve never thought about—did not plan for—did you plan for this?” She looked up at him, mouth agape, face lit by some emotion he could not parse. “Did you?” she asked softly. “Alex, did you think the outcome might be marriage?”
He cupped her elbows, as bony and delicate as a bird’s wings. She was shaking. The violence of her reaction made no sense. “I never planned for it,” he said slowly. “But if you were ready to be ruined, I fail to see why this turn of events should seem so much greater in magnitude.”
Her face bowed. Silently she shook her head.
He frowned down at her.
Oh, what the hell.
“Gwen,” he said. “I never had any intention to marry. I never had any intention to show you around Paris. I never had the slightest intention of shagging you—but I can swear by God and everything holy that I had dreamed of it for years.”
Perhaps her breath caught. He could not be sure. Certainly, he reflected, it was not the most romantic sentiment one could speak to a woman. But at least her shaking ceased.
This was a good enough result to merit greater investment. “For years,” he said. His fingers tightened of their own volition. “And not just because you are lovely, truly lovely, beautiful in a way that is only partly an effect of your looks. The way you see the world is beautiful. And you make others see its beauty through your eyes. And you have made me exceedingly irritated by wasting yourself on tossers. I have cursed you repeatedly for selling yourself so cheaply. And I have never placed a bid because I never believed you were for sale, and I did not know that I was capable of offering what you deserved. So”—he drew a great breath—“if it’s the divorce that troubles you, we can shelve that part.”
No reaction.
“That is, marry. For good.” Was he really proposing this? Dear God, his sisters would throw a party that would last until the new year. “For real,” he clarified. Christ, he sounded like a five-year-old. Next he’d be adding, For keeps! No take-backs!
A sigh escaped her, almost soundless.
He had no idea how to interpret it. His own thoughts felt a bit muzzy, but he supposed he was making sense. Wasn’t he?
Then why was she not replying?
“My bases are New York and Buenos Aires,” he said, feeling more and more the idiot, “but if you prefer to stay in London, I can move the operations here. Indeed, at this rate, with the Peruvian business—well, that’s no matter. Perhaps biannual trips would serve us. We can choose a house in town. Wherever you like—Grosvenor Square, if you prefer. If you must,” he added under his breath, because he could really only go so far.
She flashed him a dark look and pulled out of his grip. Giving him her back, she went to stare out the window.
“Do you love me?” she asked.
Her voice sounded very small. And he wondered, suddenly, what sort of divide it created between them, that he knew pieces of her that she had never shared with him—facts and stories and moments and memories to which she had no idea he was privy. He had collected them for so long, denying to himself that this acquisition was anything more than casual amusement, when in fact it was zealous, and jealous besides; disowning as accidental the fact that he never forgot a single remark she made, or that others made about her, and that he approved of these other people, or disdained them, according to their treatment of her. Such a lopsided intimacy existed between him and her. Inevitably, it created a chasm whose depth neither of them could know until they tried to chart it. Would this chasm prove impossible to bridge?
“Yes,” he said quietly. “I do love you, Gwen.” How had she never realized that? Even Richard had known it.
He was watching her posture as she turned to face him. She stood so painfully erect. He was waiting for her shoulders to relax.
They never did relax, even as she lifted her face to him and smiled, a smile so unearthly radiant that he had a brief, uncanny fear: he was in a dream; none of this was real; he was dreaming, and she was not really saying, “Then yes, Alex. I will marry you.”