“You have been here… what, seven years?”
Her gaze flicked away. “Six and a half.”
“As a wife?—”
“As a widow,” she corrected him.
Widow.
He still could not believe that she carried such a title.
“No widow I have ever met would have stepped into my red room,” he said darkly.
“How many times must I confess that I was lost?” she insisted.
“I believe you.” He winked and continued walking.
“You cannot stay,” she said, trying to keep pace with him.
He swallowed before replying. “I can. The law allows it. I am merely undecided whether I will.”
“What is that supposed to mean?”
“It means, Little Blossom, that I am not in the habit of turning women into the street without cause. If you are what you appear, which is a penniless widow who has kept the floorboards from rotting through, then I may yet decide to leave you a corner of it. On condition.”
Suspicion sharpened her features. “What condition?”
He smiled slowly. “That remains to be seen.”
In truth, he did not yet know. He only knew that the idea of expelling her sat uneasily in his gut, while the idea of keeping her under his roof sent a decidedly different tightness through his body.
“This is madness! There is nothing here for you.” The viscountess let out a humorless laugh.
“Oh, I have already brought my own belongings,” Blaise said idly. “Henley House is just… an annex to my discomfort.” He stopped in front of two carved doors. “Now, let us see where Hentley slept. I hope it proves more comfortable than his company.”
The viscountess made a frustrated sound. “You are impossible.”
“So I have been told.”
He opened the door, and her breath hitched. Blaise stopped with his hand on the handle and glanced over his shoulder. Her cheeks were flushed, eyes wide and glossy as they had been in his red room, and her hands fisted in her skirts.
“This is my room,” she said tightly. “You have no right?—”
“On the contrary.” He walked in. “If this were Hentley’s room, it should be mine.”
The room smelled likeher. Lavender and starch. The bed was neatly made, the dressing table lined with brushes, combs, and little bottles. A shawl lay abandoned over the back of a chair, as if she had risen in haste that morning.
His cock reacted again with irritating enthusiasm to the thought of her sleeping in that bed. Sprawled across the linen. Perhaps wearing nothing. The memory of her in that blue gown, the way it had clung to her waist, slid over his mind.
Blaise stepped over the threshold.
“Do not dare,” she hissed, darting in front of him.
For a moment, they were so close he could taste her. She had placed her body between him and the room, one hand planted on the doorframe as though she might bar him by will alone. Her breath feathered against his chest. He could see the faint, darker line of her lashes and the tiny pulse at the base of her throat.
“Move,” he commanded softly.
“No.”
