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He did, that was for damned sure. “Yes, that’s exactly what I am,” he crooned, cursing himself for ten kinds of a fool as he cradled her head against his chest. “Let it out. Call me all the names you wish. I deserve every one of them, God knows.”
She gazed up at him, tears glistening in her eyes. “How dare you tell me … How could you possibly think my pain matters any less than yours?”
“I don’t think that, I swear. I’m just a fool. I’m so sorry for trampling over your feelings. I had no right.” He smoothed her hair and brushed tears from her cheeks with his thumbs. “Sometimes I get so caught up in my own losses that I forget other people have them, too.”
“Everybody has them, you b-bloody arse!” She clapped her hand over her mouth in horror. “Now, look what you’ve done! You have me cursing!”
He’d never so much as heard her use a mild oath, and now she was cursing at him. “I deserve it. Go ahead, you can say it again. It’s true.” Now that the storm of her tears seemed to be on the wane, he held her close, murmuring sweet words and rubbing her back, wondering helplessly what else he could do to make it better.
She curled into him, as if seeking comfort in his arms, which he didn’t deserve. “I-I suppose I shouldn’t call you an arse.”
“Why not, when I am one sometimes?”
“Yes, but it’s not ladylike to say it,” she mumbled. “And I definitely sh-shouldn’t have said ‘bloody.’ ”
He couldn’t help laughing at that, and she glared at him. She used the tie of her wrapper to wipe her eyes, reminding him that he had a handkerchief in the pocket of his banyan. So, of course he produced it for her, and she took it to blow her nose with.
They sat there in silence for a while more.
“Better now?” he asked as she wiped her nose with his handkerchief again.
“I probably look a fright,” she said with a frown.
“You look beautiful,” he said in a husky voice. “You always do.”
She gazed into his eyes. “I meant what I said about everyone having losses. Everyone suffers. You’re so intent on your own misery that you forget to see the people you still have. Your mother, for one. She would do anything for you.”
It was true. He hated that Eve thought him so ungrateful. “I know.”
She ducked her head to focus on his handkerchief in her hand. “And surely your Lady Margaret must have some feelings for you that—”
He kissed her then, at first to make her stop talking about Margaret, and then because he wanted to. Because three days without kissing her had been three too many. After a very long, very passionate kiss, he whispered, “She can’t hold a candle to you, dearling.”
Then he began to kiss her in earnest, with deep, drugging kisses meant to show her how much he cared. And to his great pleasure, she leaned up into them, sliding her arms about his neck … crushing his hair beneath her fingers … surrounding him with her luscious scent that perversely made him think of clove-studded oranges hanging in the dining room at Christmas.
Realizing that if he didn’t stop, he’d soon go too far, he drew back and tried to regain control of his desire for her. “Your resilience humbles me, you know. How do you do it? How do you always manage to put a cheerful face on things even when you have—”
“Nothing?” she said, anticipating the word he’d just barely kept himself from saying. “But I have wonderful things in my life. I have people still around who love me. Work I enjoy. Enough food to keep from starving, and a place to live that is larger than we had for years in Verdun.” She stroked his hair. “Besides which, my family is all in good health.”
“Except for your asthma,” he pointed out.
“Yes, but that can be controlled with a change of my surroundings. Whenever I am tempted to despair over my lot in life, I remind myself how lucky I am to be back in London, where I can walk to parks and museums. How wonderful it is to have friends like you and your mother.”
“Friends who make you cry.”
She smiled. “Sometimes. But who make me laugh other times. You have as much as I do and more.” She swept her hand around to indicate his study. “You have all this, and your mother, too. Only think how lucky you are.”
A lump caught in his throat as he stared at her shining face. “Lucky, indeed,” he said hoarsely, then kissed her again. But this time, he wanted more than just her mouth. He wanted to touch her, taste her, imprint her essence on him so he never felt brokenhearted again.
He wanted her.
CHAPTER 7
Eve sensed the change in his mood at once. So, when he slid his hand up and inside her wrapper to caress her breast through her thin nightdress, she not only let him but she reveled in it, leaned into it, silently begging him to do more.
He did. Flicking open the buttons of her nightdress, he bent her over his arm so he could take her breast in his mouth and suck, tonguing her nipple to a hard peak as she delighted in the sensations it beat through her very veins. She caught his head to hold it there while he slipped his hand inside her nightdress to fondle her other breast and thumb that nipple over and over until she thought she’d go mad from the pleasure of it.
She could feel the thickness of his member pressing against her bottom and knew what it meant. Her stepmother had been very clear about what happened between a man and a woman. He was aroused, and it suddenly dawned on her that she wanted him aroused.
