“She has excellent tailors,” Constance added, fixing Ellie with a knowing look.
The shirt wasn’t right either, she thought distractedly.She really ought to get rid of that as well—tug loose each of the buttons one by one until she could run her hands over the strong, solid expanse of his chest.
“Have you considered talking to him?”Constance pressed.
“The tailor?”Ellie returned absently, imagining how she’d graze her nails over the curve of his biceps as he set her down on the dinner table.
“Not the tailor, Eleanora,” Constance corrected her drolly.“Adam.About the fact that the pair of you are threatening to spontaneously combust with frustrated physical desires.”
Ellie snapped open her fan, giving her flushed cheeks a breeze.
Had it been that obvious?Or just a lucky guess?
Surely Constance couldn’tactuallyread minds.
Though admittedly, Ellie’s thoughts had been tumbling into wicked places with increasing frequency since they had left Cairo, where she and Adam had last had a chance to enjoy each other’s company in a private setting.
She thought of calloused hands pushing up her skirt under a sprawling desert sky.Of a curse on Adam’s lips as his bare skin glistened in the lamplight of her room.
They had opened the door to all the myriad possibilities Adam’simprovisational skillshad to offer—and Ellie’s brain refused to close it again.Utterly debauched notions kept spilling out of it at highly inconvenient times.
Like breakfast.
Constance’s voice cut through the rush of Ellie’s hotly tormented thoughts.“The solution to your problem isn’t exactly a mystery.”
“It’s not?”
Her voice was edged with exasperation.“You just have to be fake married!”
“Fake married?”Ellie echoed uncertainly.
“It happens all the time,” Constance assured her dismissively.
Ellie was skeptical of that—but knew better than to argue.She focused on more practical objections.“How would Adam and I even manage something like that?”
“You just start introducing yourselves as Mr.and Mrs.Bates.Who’s to say that you aren’t?”Constance gave her a skeptical look.“You two really haven’t discussed it?”
Ellie felt as though the tonga had grown corners and she was backed into one.“We’d be lying to everyone if we did that.”
“Only to a load of people you don’t really care about.The ones who really matter would know, obviously.And what’s the alternative?Live together in sin and be utterly ostracized by society, or keep going on as the pair of you have and die of sexual frustration?”
Ellie treated Constance to a quelling glare.“Nobody dies of sexual frustration.”
Constance snapped open her fan, her tone dry.“You and Adam seem set on testing that theory.”
“We haven’t beencompletelydeprived,” Ellie pushed back desperately.
“You have since we left Egypt.Don’t think that I haven’t been keeping track.”
“How could you possibly know?”Ellie protested wildly.
“Eleanora, it was quite clear in Cairo which nights Adam had slipped into your room to do wicked things to you.Just as it is very obvious when you two have not had the opportunity to… exorcise your sensual demons,” Constance finished with deliberate tact.
Ellie stared back at her, stricken speechless.
“Not that I don’t feel for you both.Aai is entirely too good at keeping track of us,” Constance grumbled irritably.
Ellie let the mortification wash over her—as there was clearly no avoiding it.“This would all be so much simpler if the world would accept that two people can be legitimately devoted to each other outside of the unjust and coercive bounds of holy matrimony.”
