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Beatrice remained oblivious and happy. She chattered excitedly when she wasn’t reading her novels. Drew hadn’t had any time alone with Mina. He’d told her that they needed to talk, and he’d tried to find time alone with her, but she always slipped away.
He rubbed soap under his armpits, scrubbing away the grime from the journey. She’d probably be enjoying a bath now. He’d ordered hot water for all of them, and maids to attend the ladies.
Sitting in the carriage with Mina for hours on end and not being able to speak with her about anything deeper than superficial topics was wearing on his nerves.
Beatrice thought they were retiring to Thornhill House because he’d agreed to let her end her Season early and proclaim spinsterhood. He’d also misled his mother into believing that Mina had expressed a desire to see Thornhill House before she agreed to marry him.
His mother had hopes.
He scrubbed harder with the rough-textured soap, over his chest and abdomen.
There was a part of him that had hopes as well. Some irrational fantasy that he was bringing his bride home to Thornhill.
That everything would magically come right in the end. That life could be simple. That Mina might fall in love with Thornhill House on sight... fall in love with him, despite his numbness, his coldness.
Stupid, persistent little green blade of hope, poking up through his mind, seeking sunlight and water.
He scrubbed until his chest was streaked with red.
A knock sounded at the door. Corbyn with his heated towels and a hot jug of sugared brandy.
“Enter,” he called.
Not Corbyn.Mina.
Marching around the screen as bold as you please with her arms crossed over her chest, eyes blazing.
He covered his genitals with a hand.
“Oh, please,” she said tartly. “It’s not as if I’ve never seen it before.”
“What are you doing here, Mina?”
“You said we needed to talk.” Her hair was freshly washed and still damp, spilling over her shoulders. The skin of her neck and bosom was flushed, as if warm from her bath.
The thought of all that warm, soft flesh began to do things to his cock. He added his other hand as covering for good measure.
“I’m happy to have a conversation but I’d like to do it with clothing on. Corbyn will be here any second with my towel.”
“No he won’t. I told him to take a walk. Well, I said it more politely than that, but he understood the message.” She stepped closer to the bathing tub.
“I’d say I’m at a decided disadvantage in this interaction, wouldn’t you, MissPenny? Can you hand me a towel?”
“Oh. I thought maybe you were asking me to remove my clothing and join you in the tub.”
“No,” he replied hastily.
“During our dalliance you never once lost control. You never allowed yourself to feel anything, not really. You kept your distance even as your hands and lips tempted me to abandon all restraint.”
She stalked closer.
What she said was only halfway true. Ever since he’d met her she’d been hammering at the walls he’d built around his heart.
He’d built those walls as a protection and a refuge.
Without those walls he’d be lost in the darkness, the ground swaying beneath him.
“You said that we needed to talk.” Her expression was fierce, her words spoken with a touch of bitterness. “In my experience, those words are always followed by restrictions. When my uncle told me that it invariably ended with him telling me that I couldn’t access certain areas of the estate, I mustn’t converse with strange gentlemen, I was never to venture past the woods. You had that same look in your eyes, Drew. The one that said you were about to restrict my freedoms. So, Your Grace, what freedoms are you about to restrict?”
