“Yes,” he said. “Just very brief.” He hesitated. “I need to know. Am I like to get you with child?”
She felt her cheeks grow warm. She was the one who should have thought of that. It had not crossed her mind. She had grown unaccustomed to thinking of it. After the first year of her marriage she had forced herself to stop expecting that it would happen. There had been no point in getting herself upset month after month. She had almost forgotten that conception could be the result of intercourse. She made some quick mental calculations.
“No,” she said, “it is the wrong time.”
“Good.” He continued to look at her and stroke her cheek.
What now? Was the next move supposed to be hers? She tried smiling. She was not at all sure she had succeeded.
“Go on upstairs,” he said. “I’ll come to you in twenty minutes’ time.”
“All right,” she said, standing up and setting her book down on a small table. She smiled at him once more and left the room. It all felt so ordinary, she thought, so matter-of-fact. As if they had just made some agreement about. . . about what they would have served for breakfast, or something like that.
She had not expected to be alone like this, with time to think. Twenty minutes, in fact. And time to prepare. What had she expected? To be swept off her feet, she supposed, taken right there in the sitting room, with the chance only to feel and not to think at all.
What had she said? What had she agreed to? What was she about to do? Oh, goodness gracious, it did not bear thinking of. What was she going to do now? Undress? But what should she wear? The choice was between the ridiculously large and shapeless flannel gown and the white or the black lace. Well, the laces were quite out of the question. But would she not look ridiculous in the flannel?
Perhaps she should remain dressed. But he had sent her upstairs on the tacit understanding that she would get ready. And should she lie down in the bed, or remain standing or sitting in the chair by the fire? She had always been in bed for Leonard, but then that had been a different matter altogether. She would die of mortification if Justin walked into her room when she was in bed.
But then she would die of mortification anyway.
Oh, her treacherous mouth. This time she had not stuffed just one foot inside it but both. She wished she could relive the last five minutes so that she could show the proper outrage at both his actions and his words.
Rosamund shivered as she unpinned her hair and began to brush it. No, she was not sorry for her decision. She wanted this to happen. She was not sorry at all. She just wished that he had not let them be separated for twenty minutes. She would positively die when he walked through the door.
He was not at all sure that it had been the right thing to do to leave her to get ready, Lord Wetherby thought as he stood outside the door of her room later, his hand raised to knock. It would doubtless have been better not to have broken the tension of the moment but to have taken her by the hand and led her to the bedchamber and undressed her himself. He just did not know what was proper procedure with a lady.
The thought made him smile. There was no proper procedure with a lady, was there? He knocked lightly at the door and opened it.
She was standing at the opposite side of the room, her back to the fire, her dark hair smooth and straight to her waist, her eyes enormous and fixed on him. She was swathed from the chin to the toes in a very large and shapeless flannel nightgown. Strangely, she looked very enticing. He was glad she had not worn one of the lace creations. He smiled and closed the door behind him.
He was wearing a dark-blue brocade dressing gown, Rosamund noticed immediately. She had not thought of that—of his being undressed, that was. Foolish of her. Her eyes strayed to the neck of the dressing gown. There was no sign of a nightshirt beneath. He looked unnervingly attractive. Her heart was beating into her throat again. She tried to smile and failed miserably.
“You look beautiful,” he said, coming across the room toward her and taking her face in his hands as he had done that morning in the billiard room.
“It belongs to Mrs. Reeves,” she said. “The nightgown, I mean.”
“I didn’t think it was one of the ones I had bought,” he said.
He had a strange trick with his eyes: he could make them smile even when the rest of his face was serious. She had noticed it before. At such close quarters she was almost mesmerized by it. She closed her eyes.
She was very tense. He could tell that. She did not cooperate at all in his kiss, but stood quite still and kept her lips firmly closed. She did not angle her head to meet his mouth comfortably. He widened his mouth over hers and prodded at her lips with his tongue. He moved his hands down to caress her shoulders and arms, to wrap his arms about her.
“You’re as stiff as a board,” he said. “Are you nervous?”
“Yes,” she said.
“Are you having second thoughts?” he asked.
“No,” she said. “Forty-second.” Her teeth began to chatter and she clamped them firmly together.
“Do even numbers mean no or yes?” he asked.
She looked at him blankly.
“Do you want me to go away?” he asked. “I will if you want.” Though it would mean one hell of a sleepless night.
“No,” she said. “I want you to make love to me.”
