Married to the Rogue (Season of Scandal #3) - Mary Lancaster Page 0,19
gloomier than before. Christopher had not yet come down, so she walked over to the window and lifted the casement. While the inside was clean, the outside was too dirty for much light to penetrate. She breathed in the fresher air with enjoyment, which is how Christopher found her.
“The whole house needs aired,” she observed.
“I suppose it doesn’t need to smell like a mausoleum. In fact, I’d rather it didn’t. A glass of sherry?”
It was a pleasant evening, for Christopher turned out to be very agreeable company. To her surprise, he actually seemed interested in her opinion on more than the superficialities of art and music, and she soon found herself discussing politics, history, the peace in Europe, and the conditions of the poor, all with a rather beguiling mix of humor and passion on his part.
When dinner was announced, they took their conversation to the dining room, where places had been set at opposite ends of the large table. Christopher immediately moved his place beside her, obliging the footman to place the dishes in a more sensible place.
And afterward, he did not bother with the tradition of sitting over his wine, but picked it up and accompanied her to the drawing room.
The candles had been lit, and the darkness of the place no longer seemed so oppressive. He told her about a few amusing incidents at the House of Commons and asked about her duties with the princess.
“You miss her,” he observed at last.
She considered. “Perhaps. Life was never dull around her. She is excessively kind and good-natured. But mostly, I pitied her.” She stopped, biting her lip before she said too much.
“Because her husband was relentlessly nasty?”
She nodded, gazing out of the window to avoid looking at him.
She felt his movement within the room, and then he took her hand, and she jumped, her gaze flying to his face.
He crouched in front of her chair, a rueful half-smile lurking on his lips. “Theirs was a marriage of inconvenience. There is no reason why ours should be so.”
“Of course not,” she said nervously. Close up, his intense eyes were overwhelmingly attractive. As was the lean, even bone structure of his face, the shape of his generous, sensual mouth. Without realizing it, she thought, his fingertips idly rubbed the skin at the base of her thumb, causing an odd commotion in her body.
“I am content with my marriage,” he said gently. “I hope you will grow to be so.”
She swallowed. “I have no complaints, sir. You have been most kind.”
A frown tugged at his brows and vanished. “Have I?”
She smiled uncertainly, and his fingertips stilled on her hand. His lips quirked, then he raised her hand and dropped a light kiss, not on her fingers, but by chance on the precise spot sensitized by his careless caress. Her breath caught, but he had already released her and straightened.
“Do you know, I believe I shall retire early,” he said. “Do you wish to sit on, or shall I blow out the candles?”
She all but leapt to her feet, having no desire whatever to linger in the room alone.
He presented her with a lit candle, and they walked along the gallery to the staircase together. Somewhere, the ease and companionship of a growing friendship remained. But it was overlaid now with this strange, new awareness, not just of his handsome face, but of his tall, masculine body and the loose yet graceful way he moved. It kept her silent until they reached the door of her apartment when it came to her with a jolt that this was her wedding night.
He had said he would not force his attentions on her, that this was a marriage of mere convenience. But nothing that had happened between them that day could have led him to believe a husband’s attentions would be unwelcome. They were his right and her duty, as her mother had sought to explain in a muddled, only half-understood conversation the previous evening—a discussion that both she and Mrs. Shelby had been delighted to end.
Now, facing him before her bedchamber door, she felt curiously agonized. Panicked and yet excited, her stomach in turmoil, her skin tingling.
He held out his hand compellingly, and she placed hers on it, praying it did not tremble. Would it be so very bad to give herself to this man? He was kind and gentle, and at this moment, oddly thrilling. Time stretched out between them. She was afraid to breathe.