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“I would do that again, properly,” he said without thinking.
“Properly?” Her voice was barely a whisper.
Lance kissed her then, his hand readjusting her gown as he did.
“You taste so damn pretty.”
Idalia smiled. “I cannot taste pretty.”
He disagreed.
Then, stepping back regretfully, he glanced toward the door. “If we’d been caught . . .”
“But we were not.”
“I’d not have expected you to be so daring,” Lance said as he attempted to force his wayward cock back from the edge.
“I am not usually so,” she admitted. “Lance?”
“Aye?” He took a final deep breath to steady himself.
“I would have you do that again.”
She said it so casually that Lance couldn’t help but smile, something he’d done much more than usual since meeting Idalia.
“I would do that, and more, if—”
They simultaneously turned to the door as it reopened. Their time here, alone together, was at an end.
Chapter 13
Thankfully, her mother had eaten earlier. But she did not look well at all. Her eyes still had a decidedly yellow tint, the same one Father Sica insisted was evidence of the devil’s taint.
As they awaited the physician Father had sent for from London, Idalia’s mother fluctuated between awareness and sleep. When her eyes popped open, Idalia breathed a sigh of relief. She secretly feared that one day her mother’s eyes would simply remain closed.
“How long have you been sitting there?”
As her mother lifted herself to sitting, Idalia rearranged the pillows behind her head. In truth, she’d started her vigil at her mother’s beside just after the midday meal. Idalia could not bring herself to leave even though there was much to be done.
But her mother disliked hearing that she or her sister had spent so much time in her bedchamber, so she lied.
“A short while.”
Marina came in then with a washbowl. She approached the bed and came to a stop beside Idalia, who took the fabric from her hand and dipped it into the still-warm, rose-scented water.
Her mother hated to be doted on, attended to—for a countess who could have had servants to supply her every need, it had always been just Marina. And yet, she allowed Idalia to wash her anyway.
Avoiding her mother’s eyes as she worked, Idalia wrung out the cloth and dipped it into the water again.
“Tell me.”
Startled, she dropped the cloth into the water. Her mother typically reserved that tone for times when a firm hand was needed.
Picking the dripping cloth back up, she wrung it out once more. “Pardon?”
Her mother reached for her hand as she glided the cloth across her exposed arm, the sleeveless shift one of many her mother wore these days.
Her beautiful gowns sat unused in their storage chests.
