“I learned something, anyway, which I thought I had always known,” he said. “Billiards is not a game for women.”
“But I won,” she said. “Don’t you like losing, Justin?"
“No more than anyone else, I suppose,” he said. “But it is not that. It has something to do with the female body bending over a billiard table.”
“Oh,” she said.
“Yes, precisely,” he said. “Oh.”
“What are you going to do with your life, Rosamund?” he asked her somewhat later. “Are you going to marry again?”
“I suppose so," she said with a sigh. “Leonard left me as much as he could, but it is not enough for a total independence. And I hate the thought of living as a dependent on either his nephew or Dennis.”
“Do you have anyone in mind?” he asked.
“No,” she said. “I was only seventeen when I married, and I have been living in the country ever since. Dennis has someone in mind, though.”
“You do not sound pleased,” he said.
“I knew him when I was growing up,” she said, “and he used to pay me silly, flowery compliments even then. Now he is ordained and has an influential patron—though he is wealthy in his own right—and has expressed a renewed interest in me. Dennis thinks it would be a good match.”
“Perhaps it would, too,” he said, stroking his fingers through her hair. “You have not seen him for how many years? Nine? Ten? Doubtless he has grown up just as you have.”
“Yes, probably,” she said.
“But you must not marry him just because you think you ought,” he said. “You will have many offers, Rosamund Hunter.”
“Is that a compliment?” she asked, smiling. “Thank you.”
“It is the simple truth,” he said.
They made love four more times in the course of the night. And Rosamund, who had thought the first time that she had been touched in every way it was possible to be touched, learned that it was not so, that sensual pleasures were as many as the stars in the sky.
By the time they drowsed at some time before the late dawn, it already seemed to her that one more day and one more night were precious little time. But she would not think of it, she decided. She would feel now and think later.
The Earl of Wetherby was having much the same thought as he dressed in his own room later that morning. One more day—already cut short by their sleeping late—and one more night were very little time, indeed.
He rather thought his good-bye to freedom was going to be more reluctant than he had expected. A week of lusty beddings with Jude was what he had planned and then a simple good-bye when they returned to London. She knew that this was to be the end. There would have been no tears— not from Jude. She had already chosen his successor and had talked to him quite freely and cheerfully about the man.
He would have been rather sad at knowing that one phase of his life was at an end, but he was resigned to the fact. He had always known that one day he would settle down to respectability and one woman.
But now things were going to be a little more difficult. Perhaps if he could have had Rosamund for a full week instead of just two nights and one day . . . But, no. That was not it at all.
Not at all. It must be because she was a lady and something of an innocent. It must be because she had given herself so sweetly and so totally, even though she had been almost as ignorant and every bit as frightened as a virgin.
It must be something!
All he did know for sure was that bedding her had not been simply a matter of taking and giving sexual pleasure, as it always had been with him. He could not quite explain to himself what else it had been, but it definitely had been something else.
Perhaps a continuation of the tension of the day before would have been better, he thought. At least then he would have been looking forward to the following day with some eagerness. He would have been relieved beyond words to see her on her way. But now? He preferred not to think of the next day. And the next day it would be, he thought with a glance toward the window. It was cloudy outside, but the clouds were high. There would be no more snow.
Mrs. Reeves would probably be wondering why they were both so late for breakfast, he thought, striding resolutely across to the door of his room. Or perhaps she would guess. Indeed, she would have to be unusually obtuse not to guess.
There was a strange breathless nervousness about sitting at the breakfast table, watching him enter the room and stride across to take her hand and lift it to his lips and smile at her and bid her good morning. And a strange formality, too. But then Mrs. Reeves was in the room.
And there was wonder in the knowledge that this man, dressed so impeccably in his well-fitting green superfine coat and white linen, and form-fitting biscuit-colored pantaloons and black Hessians, that this man with his longish fair hair and blue-eyed smile was the man she had lain with all night, the man whose body held no secrets from her and who knew her far more intimately after just one night than Leonard had in eight years.
She felt like a bride the morning after her wedding night. Except that the comparison was quite inappropriate. She was merely his makeshift mistress. And it was a self-chosen role. She was quite happy with it.
