“If you would prefer me to spend the next hour teasing this tale out of you, I’m more than happy to do so. You pay me handsomely enough to be perfectly amenable to any sort of evening you wish. However, if you’d rather forget the topic and get to fucking, I’m equally acquiescent.”
“Yes, yes, let’s,” Alexander said, although he didn’t move from the armchair.
Knowing better than to try to converse with a distracted Alexander, Giuliana stood from her own chair, crossed the room, and took thebrandy out of his hand, setting it on the side table. She leaned in close, loosened his cravat, and pushed off his chair to stand before him. Then she began leisurely unbuttoning her dress. Alexander’s eyes skittered by habit to her hands, but he found himself unable to focus.
“We were simply together in a library. It was the oddest thing … on her wrist she had written …”
Giuliana shrugged the dress off her shoulders, exposing inches of flawless skin. Skin designed to tantalize the most stoic of men. Alexander had pressed many a kiss to the very décolletage now on display.
“What had she written?” Giuliana asked, smirking just enough to entice him. Then she let her gown fall to the floor with a simplewhoosh.
“Quim,” Alexander answered, rather dazed. Giuliana was no longer in focus for him. “Monosyllable.”
As his mistress, she’d heard him say much filthier things over the past two years, but never outside the context of sex. And despite her best efforts, they were not on the path to having sex. Giuliana grabbed his brandy glass off the side table, took a sip, and then crossed the room to sit in a chair of her own, understanding that, unprecedentedly, Alexander wanted to talkfirst.
“She didn’t know what the words meant.”
“I suppose you offered to show her?” His eyes, which had been absently watching his discarded cravat weave through his hands, snapped up to her.
“I did nothing of the sort.”
“Not your usual course with women.”
“With unmarried women it is.”
“Interesting. I don’t recall ever marrying, and you swived me quite senseless just the day before yesterday.”
For the second time that evening, Alexander found himself in the presence of a woman who made him want to growl, who made his head hurt and the bridge of his nose beg for a pinch. He groaned instead, imploring her with his eyes to take this situation seriously.
“She is a lady, then?”
At Alexander’s nod, Giuliana finished off his brandy and stood to refill the glass. On her way back, she stopped to sit on the arm of his chair.
“Are you going to marry her?” she asked, handing him back his drink.
“I can’t.”
“Oh dear, I’m afraid I’m going to hear quite a silly belief a man has about himself. I do so adore when this happens!”
“I’m a bastard,” he answered, draining the glass.
“I’m plenty aware, my lord.” Giuliana took back the glass and went to refill it once more at the sideboard. “You always fuck like you have something to prove.”
Alexander groaned again. It was quite clear that she wasn’t taking this crisis seriously at all. She probably believed there was a simple solution.
“You know, there is a simple solution.”
“Women always think that.”
“Men would be much more attractive if they didn’t view my sex as a monolith, but I suppose that might be too much to ask.”
“What’s the simple solution, then?”
“Break whatever silly little promise you made to yourself about marriage—all men of your status have lofty, self-important ideas about evading the parson’s mousetrap—and marry the girl.”
Alexander leaned back in the chair and closed his eyes. His voice was barely audible when he said, “I didn’t make the promise to myself. I made it to my brother.”
Across town, Harriet sat in a similar fashion, although she’d brought a pillow to her face to muffle a scream. On the opposite sofa, Philippa waited patiently for her sister’s episode to finish. All things considered, shouting into a divan cushion seemed like a reasonable reaction.
