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Between bites, Rafael was telling her one of his adventures near Gibraltar, in the Mediterranean.
Victoria listened with half an ear. She couldn’t seem to take her eyes off his mouth.
“Victoria, what do you want?”
She forced herself to meet his gaze. “Your story’s fascinating,” she said.
“You weren’t paying a bit of attention to my ridiculous tale. One, I might add, that I was telling you on purpose, for it didn’t involve any missions or assignments on my part, just simple trading and making money.”
He paused a moment, readying to screw himself to the sticking point. So what if in the deepest recesses of his mind he was still very uncertain about her?
He said in his best calm captain’s voice, “I believe you and I trust you. I want you to be my wife. I want to consummate our marriage. Now.”
She stared at him, moistening her suddenly dry lips with her tongue. Rafael, although she didn’t notice, found the movement of her pink tongue quite fascinating. “You have,” she said at last, “made two very big statements all in one breath. I would ask you first: why? All of a sudden—perhaps because I made bread with you—you don’t believe me to be a trollop?”
“That’s right, but it came before the bread.”
She waited, but he added nothing more. She frowned at him. “You’ve perhaps decided I’m not a trollop because I eat warm bread with just the right amount of butter?”
“No.” Well, he thought. If one committed an untruth, one should do it to the best of one’s meager abilities. “I realized—and I am just a man, don’t forget, Victoria—that you are utterly guileless and innocent as a babe. And you’re right. The fact that I touch you and you melt all over me, well, that simply means that you respond to me, Rafael Carstairs, your husband and an excellent lover.” He paused a moment, judging the effect of his fluency.
She lowered her eyes, saying softly, “I was thinking about that, you know. When Damien kissed me, I was repelled and horrified. As for David Esterbridge, I just didn’t feel anything. I would have thought it was very distasteful if it hadn’t been so very personal and intimate.” She raised her eyes to his face. “It’s magic, I think, with you. You’re magic.”
He was moved; he couldn’t help himself. She sounded utterly sincere, simple honesty shining from her eyes. But could a woman respond to only one man with such wonderful abandon? An inexplicable something that existed just between two certain people? It sounded like nonsense to him. He’d responded to every woman to whom he’d made love.
He remembered Victoria before Damien had filled his ears. Not once had he doubted her virtue, but then again, not once had he kissed her or caressed her.
“I suppose it would be more accurate to say that we are magic together.”
She gave him a sweet, dazzling smile and he was hard instantly. His voice sounded harsh to his own ears when he said a moment later, “And my second statement, Victoria?”
“Consummating our marriage?”
“That’s a rather formal way of saying it, but yes.”
“But we’ve barely finished our breakfast.”
He shrugged, and his grin—showing his lovely white teeth—was decidedly wicked.
Suddenly Victoria was very tired about being so wretchedly helpless—at least as far as he was concerned. She felt like a puppet dancing to his string-pulling. It wasn’t fair, just because for some odd and inexplicable reason he had this power over her. “I believe I should like to go riding, perhaps visit Milton Abbas again. We didn’t really explore the Norman church all that completely. I am fond of old graveyards also, and I would like to find the oldest grave. We could make it a sort of contest, if you would like.”
His grin never wavered. Rafael supposed he should tell her that her expression was so open, her eyes such a mirror, that her thoughts showed as clearly as if she’d spoken them aloud. He leaned toward her and clasped her hand in his. “You’re beautiful, Victoria, and yes, I too am much enamored of graveyards. I really hadn’t realized it before, but now I do. I shall have Tom saddle our mounts. Will you meet me at the stables in, say, thirty minutes?”
He still had the control, she thought. He was merely allowing her to have her way. It galled her to realize it, but since it had been her suggestion, she would be spiting herself to go against it now. She nodded somewhat curtly and took herself up to her bedchamber to change into her riding habit. It occurred to her as she buttoned her blous
e that once Rafael hd initiated her into the intricacies of lovemaking, perhaps she would lose this disconcerting reaction to him. She flushed slightly, knowing full well what would happen this evening—after dinner, she hoped. Whether or not she should believe him, well . . . he had said he trusted her, so that was that. If one couldn’t believe one’s husband, one was in a sorry situation.
Rafael won the graveyard competition. He found a gravestone with the date 1489 still legible on the worn granite.
“What is my prize?”
She looked at him blankly. “I was so certain I was going to win,” she began.
“Shall I tell you what your prize would have been?”
He was striding toward her as he asked that question, and she saw the answer in his eyes.
“No,” she said. “I’m not stupid.”
