that. I wanted you and I to have time to learn about one another.”
“That is a good idea. We do barely know each other,” Letty said. “I don’t even know how you take your tea.”
“With one lump of sugar. I like a hint of sweetness.” He winked at her and was satisfied by the deep blush that claimed her features. She was sensual yet so wonderfully innocent too. She was no jaded courtesan faking coquettish smiles in a mercenary fashion.
“What about you?” Adam asked. “How do you take your tea?”
“With enough milk and sugar that you barely taste the tea.” Her impish reply had him laughing. “But I do need to know more about you. The serious things, I mean,” Letty insisted.
“And what do you consider serious things?”
“Well . . . Your family, to start with.”
“Ah, the paterfamilias and such. Well, the late earl wasn’t a bad man. He was a decent sort, but my mother died young, just after Caroline turned four, and Father turned to her lady’s maid for comfort.”
Letty nodded in understanding.“Gillian’s mother.”
“Yes. Caroline and I loved Gillian’s mother, but when she became pregnant, she left. I didn’t realize until I was much older that Father had sent her away. He paid for her and Gillian to live comfortably, but he feared my finding out about them.”
“Why?”
“He assumed—wrongly, as it turned out—that I would be upset. I wish he had married Gillian’s mother, to be honest. Society be damned. I would have liked for her to have been raised alongside Caroline and me. But my father discovered this truth too late. On his deathbed, he begged me to find them. By then, Gillian’s mother was dead, and my father’s solicitor had lost track of Gillian.” Adam paused, his voice softening a little. “I found my sister, only to learn that I had already lost her to your brother.”
Letty scooted closer to him in the boat. “She loves you, even only knowing you such a short time. She sings your praises.”
He smiled, his melancholy thoughts retreating a bit. “I wish I could say I deserved any such praise.”
“Well, she believes you do, and Gillian is not a person to put her faith in someone undeserving.”
“And what about you? What of the noble house of Pembroke?”
“Much the same as yours, I suppose. Father died when I was very young, and my mama . . . Well, she did not die young, but her mind faded away only a year or two after Father passed. In a way, James and I raised each other. That’s what I like about you, that you and Caroline have a bond the way James and I do.” There was a bittersweet ache to her words. Their lives were similarin so many ways.
“I think a sibling is a blessing and a comfort. I am fortunate to have two sisters now.” He gave a gentle pull on his fishing rod, testing what he thought might have been a nibble on his line, but found no resistance.
“May I ask a more serious and sensitive question?” she asked, her tone carefully neutral.
“I am, in most ways, an open book for you.”
That blush returned. “Have you had many mistresses?”
That question was entirely unexpected. “Well . . .Not many by certain standards. I’ve had four in the last ten years.”
“Four,” she said, and he wished he could read her tone. Was she upset? Jealous? Worried?
“I promise you that, as your husband, I belong to you now. I haven’t had a mistress in the last two years, and I will not take one ever again.” He braced his pole on the edge of the boat and leaned over to take one of her hands in his. Holding someone’s hand was incredibly intimate. In some ways, even more so than what they had done in the woods this morning. Hands were the way people connected to the world around them, and holding those hands, linking them like this, forged a bond with her that he didn’t wish to break.
She didn’t pull away, but she didn’t meet his gaze either.
“I feel rather silly and unworldly,” she said at last. “Do I disappoint you?”
Adam had to bite his lip not to laugh. “I would prefer you to be exactly who you are. No wilting maiden, nor some seductive courtesan. I wish for you to be you, lady wife. I find an abundance of delight in who you are—the wild Amazon creature who rides astride better than most men, yet succumbs to passion in my