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‘Who looks forward to a milestone like thirty-five?’
‘Thirty-five isn’t old, Titus.’
‘Maybe not.’ But in ducal terms, Titus knew that it was. The pressure was on for him to produce a wife and an heir—and the absence of any brothers had meant that the pressure was mounting. Wasn’t there the unspoken fear that, if he didn’t hurry up and produce a son, the estate would pass down to some distant cousin who lived in some remote part of Scandinavia?
Duty demanded that he start looking seriously to find a suitable woman to provide him with an heir—and stop wasting his time with Roxanne Carmichael. He watched as she leaned back to pillow her head against her arms. Foxy Roxy, the journalists used to call her, describing her as being ‘sex on legs’ and, looking at her flushed face and naked body, it was easy to see why. So how the hell could she be suitable for anything other than transitory pleasure?
He zipped up his jeans. ‘I wish I could invite you to the party.’
Roxy shook her head. ‘No, you don’t. Not really. I’d cramp your style. You’ll be expected to dance with all those Honourable Ladies who’ll be dazzling you with their diamonds.’ And she couldn’t bear to watch. Couldn’t bear to keep a smile fixed to her face and pretend that she didn’t care. Because of course she cared when it had been her he’d been making love to—and not some jewel-encrusted fellow aristocrat.
Because that was the trouble with sex, she decided. Especially sex as good as this. It made you feel close to a man, even when you knew that was a bad idea. It made you start having emotions you didn’t want to have. A little bit of possessiveness had crept into her heart along the way—and more than a bit of resentment, too. She realised that Titus was hiding her away like a guilty secret and lately she had started to mind.
But there was no point in blowing it, not when this was all destined to come to a natural end very soon.
‘And my contract runs out once the party is over,’ she said slowly. ‘I’ll be going back to London.’
Titus nodded as he picked up his sweater, unable to ignore that hopeful little note in her voice. Would it hurt to give her what she so obviously wanted? Some kind of acknowledgement that this hadn’t all been about sex. ‘Maybe we could go out for a drive or something,’ he said vaguely as he glanced at his watch. ‘Would you like that?’
It was the closest he’d ever come to asking her out on a date and Roxy nodded, her heart twisting as she registered that he was probably asking her out of some sense of duty. She clenched her hands into two little fists, determined that he shouldn’t remember her as whining or jealous—as someone who was unable to accept the status quo. She wanted him to remember her as strong. When he thought about her in the future, she wanted him to regret that she was no longer in his life and not just be glad that she’d gone. ‘Sure!’ she said brightly. ‘That’d be great.’
But after the front door had slammed behind him and she’d quickly blown out the candle so that Amy would think she was asleep, Roxy lay wide-eyed in the darkness. Realising that she’d talked about leaving and Titus had accepted it as equably as if she’d been talking about the sun rising in the sky every morning.
And that his hard and handsome face hadn’t shown a single flicker of regret.
CHAPTER EIGHT
FOUR days later, having first established the time of her afternoon off during a snatched and rather erotic moment in one of the darkened alcoves in the library, Titus took Roxy driving.
‘Norfolk is bitingly cold in winter,’ he told her sternly. ‘So make sure you dress warmly and practically.’
Roxy had nodded, quietly jubilant about the fact that for once he was telling her to leave her clothes on, instead of being intent on removing them as quickly as possible. Perhaps it was because a statement like that implied a degree of care, rather than simply lust. Or perhaps her ridiculous sense of excitement had something to do with the fact that going out for the afternoon was the kind of thing which normal lovers did.
The snow had almost melted and was turning to a thick grey slush. Roxy dressed in jeans and two layers of sweaters, before borrowing a pair of waterproof boots from the boot-room. She tried to keep a sense of perspective about the trip, but her heart was still beating with ridiculous excitement when Titus slowed beside her at their arranged rendezvous at the bottom of the drive.
‘I feel like some kind of spy,’ she said breathlessly as she climbed into the muddy four-wheel drive. ‘As if I’m taking part in some covert operation in case Vanessa finds out what I’m up to.’
Titus drove through the stone arch and out onto the main road. ‘And do you mind if she does?’
‘Of course I’d mind! I don’t want her thinking that I’m the kind of woman who sleeps her way to the top—that I went out of my way to seduce you, when we both know it was the other way round.’
‘I don’t remember you fighting me very hard, Roxanne.’
‘You didn’t give me a chance to fight! And anyway, shouldn’t you be worried about your reputation?’ She shot him a glance as a bottled-up fear came spilling out. ‘Unless, of course, this kind of thing happens a lot.’
‘This … kind … of … thing?’ he repeated.
‘Going to bed with someone who works for you.’
His lips hardened into a mocking smile. ‘Exercising my droit de seigneur, you mean?’
‘What does that mean?’
‘It means the medieval right of the lord of the estate to take the virginity of whosoever he chose. Except that there’s no evidence that such a right ever existed.’ He paused. ‘And you were no virgin.’
The words hung in the air like undetonated bombs—and yet didn’t it come as something of a relief to be able to explode them at last? ‘Neither were you, Titus,’ responded Roxy quietly. ‘Though, let me guess—you’re one of those hypocritical people who believe it’s advantageous for a man to have had loads of lovers, but that there’s something uniquely tacky about a woman who chooses to do the same.’
‘I would describe it less as hypocritical and more of a biological imperative,’ he drawled. ‘Nature programmed men to go out and spread their seed as much as possible in order to ensure survival of the species.’
