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“Besides,” she continued conversationally, making splash sounds while lathering her arms with soap, “you agreed on our terms. You could have negotiated. But you didn’t.”
“Are you saying,” he said, sitting down in his chair and looking at her over his shoulder, “you would have negotiated sleeping with me if I insisted upon it?”
She threw him another one of her superior smiles. “I suppose you will never know now, will you?”
Gabriel chuckled as he settled in his chair. As strange as it was, he actually enjoyed the company of this sharp-tongued virgin. Maybe it wasn’t so strange, since everyone in thetonadored her. Suitors, their mothers, fathers, and other relatives—everyone loved her. He just hadn’t thought that a seasoned rake like him would be charmed by this innocent girl. She was extremely beautiful, and her thin, athletic body aroused him, but that was no news. He felt this way about almost any female. He was a rake. But he’d turned down a good long tumble with a bar wench for sitting in a chair and sparring with her, and he wasn’t even regretting it.
“When you came to my doorstep the other night, it was raining too. Weren’t you afraid then?”
“I was, but I had no choice, did I?”
“Hm. So tell me the story?”
“What story?”
“Of darling little Evie being left out in the storm that led to this unreasonable fear.”
“It isn’t unreasonable. The lightning can strike at any place and just burn you. I’ve read that it can even travel inside the house if the windows are not covered.”
Gabriel chuckled. “Ridiculous.”
“No, it isn’t. And there is no story. I was always terrified of storms. My grandfather encouraged me to learn about them. He even bought me books about the phenomenon, hoping knowing what caused it would remove myunreasonablefear. But all it did was worsen it.”
Gabriel laughed again.
“You can laugh all you want,” she grumbled. “But you won’t laugh if it ever strikes you.”
Gabriel turned his head toward her. She was lathering her hands with a great deal of concentration. “You traveled alone from Carlisle; I wouldn’t peg you for a fearful one.”
She shrugged. “Everyone is afraid of something. For instance, what are you afraid of?”
Gabriel scratched his jaw in thought. “I suppose I am not afraid of anything.”
She laughed. “Impossible.”
“I am not; there is really nothing that frightens me.”
“And as a child? Were you afraid of anything then?”
“No.” Gabriel turned away.
“Come, little Gabriel never ran into his parents’ room at night because he had a bad dream?” She was teasing. He knew it. And he’d love to keep her talking because she didn’t seem to notice the rumbling thunder anymore. But his childhood was something he wasn’t willing to discuss.
“No,” he said and stood from the table. “In fact, little Gabriel spent most of his childhood in the Eton boardinghouse.”
He walked to his valise and started rummaging through it, looking for his robe.
“Hm,” she said but didn’t pursue the topic. “It must be exciting to live in a school away from your parents with a bunch of boys.”
He grinned as he put on a robe. “Yes, it was. We were into all kinds of mischief.”
“Truly, like what?”
Gabriel sat back down at the table and proceeded to tell her about the pet turtle he and his roommate hid in their room at Eton. She told him about a tabby that had fur almost the same shade as her hair and how everyone called them twins. They discussed books they had read as children and the adventures they had dreamed of having once they grew up.
He wanted to be a pirate and roam the seas. She wanted to travel across America on horseback with Indians. The conversation easily slipped off his tongue. She was so easy to talk to, never judging, always ready with a joke and a smile, warm and affectionate toward his childhood self that he forgot to be self-conscious, to pretend, to put up a façade.
When she was done washing, she stepped out of the bath, and he tortured himself with the naked visions of her in his mind’s eye again while she dried and dressed. Then they traded places as she ate and he bathed.
