Ellie bobbed her chin once and broke off a piece of toast but did not eat it. “Is leaving immediately afterward the accepted practice?”
Good lord.“It depends, El. Every person is different.”
“Butyourpractice is to leave once the deed is done.”
The deed was certainly not done last night. But if I didn’t stop, then I never would have left your side.“I wouldn’t say that.”
“Then when would you stay?” This breakfast had turned into an interrogation. Heat crawled up his collar, and he resisted the urge to pull at his tie.
“At times it was—when things were more… emotional than others,” Henry stammered. “And I would stay the night.”
“With Miss Brightling?”
Ellie had missed her calling with art history. She was destined to debate in Parliament. “No, I’ve never been… intimate with Miss Brightling.”
“But you will, once she returns to London.”
Henry’s stomach dropped out of his body. “Yes,” he said, his voice thready. “I suppose I will.”
She pulled another corner off the piece of toast and brought it to her lips, only to set it back down. “What about Lady Hamlin?”
He had carried on with Lady Hamlin—Annabel—for several months, a mutual slaking of needs with little affection beyond tolerance of the other’s company. She was precisely what he wanted, physical release with nothing more expected from either of them, but not at all what he needed.
Henry cleared his throat. “I spent the night with her, sometimes.”
“Is that why you wanted to marry her?”
Henry’s eyelids dropped shut. Of course she knew. The scandal sheets and gossips of thetonhad gone wild with the news that Lord Henry had not only asked his lover to marry him, but had been soundly rejected.
After everything fell apart three years ago, when he had drowned his sorrows after hearing the news of Ellie’s engagement, he lost his mind. Henry’s father had lambasted his drunken son, berating him to settle down, take something seriously.
What if I married Lady Warwick,Henry had suggested.Perhaps you could convince her father to consider my suit?
The earl, his father, the man he considered the pinnacle of responsibility, had laughed.I won’t have you destroying one of my oldest friendships by doing Warwick’s daughter wrong.
But Henry had tried anyway, had for once summoned the courage and confidence to prove himself, and—
Failed. Just as his father had expected.
He arrived at Annabel’s door, breathless, soaked to the bone from rainfall, and more than a little drunk. He threw words of marriage at his lover as he lifted his grandmother’s ring, desperate to redeem himself.
She had laughed at him, so loud her laughter echoed down the street before she pulled him inside and fell to her knees in front of him. And he had let her, the bastard that he was, had stood there in the foyer of her late husband’s house while she unbuttoned his trousers and took him in her mouth, his eyes pressed closed as he imagined Ellie’s lips around his cock.
“I suppose,” he managed, rubbing the back of his neck and looking everywhere but into Ellie’s eyes as painful memories assaulted him. “Annabel—Lady Hamlin and I had been together for some time and it seemed like the right thing to do.”
“You wanted to protect her,” Ellie said, her voice low. “You cared for her.”
“I did.” The lie burned in his throat. He forgot about Annabel the moment he left her bed, as she did him, but that wasn’t why he had proposed. He proposed because the idea of being alone for the rest of his life terrified him.
Women don’t marry men like you, Henry,Annabel had said, still on her knees, his deflating erection having slipped from her lips.You are a superior lover, a divine dancer, and an above average conversationalist, but that does not make you a good husband.
Henry cleared his throat. “I realized the proposal was a poor decision, rash on my part, and she agreed.”
Ellie tilted her head, her expression level. “So you changed your mind, not her?”
No. “Yes,” he said. “I was an idiot.”
“So why marry Miss Brightling?” Ellie finally ate the tortured corner of toast, chewing it with far more determination than was necessary.
