The Way to a Gentleman's Heart - Theresa Romain Page 0,14

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“Ah. You want me to slake my manly urges with you,” he said lightly, though the sight of the room troubled him. She was a gentleman’s daughter, and she lived with almost nothing. Was she at the edge of poverty? What would happen to her if she couldn’t work anymore?

Questions he’d never thought to ask until he’d realized his family had no more money. Questions he felt compelled to resolve now that his finances were secure.

“Come with me to my hotel room,” he offered. “There’s a feather bed, with more than enough room for you to stay the night, and—”

“Jack. No.” She lifted a hand, laid it gently over his lips. “This is where I live. It’s where I belong now.” She gestured broadly, encompassing the servants’ quarters as a whole. “If you want to be with me, be with me here.”

He pressed a kiss to her hand, then pulled it from his face. Taking her into his arms, he replied, “I want to be with you.”

So he was. And after much undressing, and kissing, and caresses and laughter and a pleasure almost shattering, he had to admit that there was nothing at all wrong with a narrow bed in a plain room, as long as one shared it with the right person.

In a tangle of limbs, they fell asleep.

Chapter Four

MARIANNE AWOKE WHEN the lamp guttered out, her eyes snapping open in the darkness. Without lamplight, it was always dark in this windowless room, but she’d a good internal clock, and she knew it wasn’t yet time to awake for the day.

Who was she fooling? Not only the sudden fall of darkness had awoken her. The press of Jack’s warm, lean body against hers—almost nudging her off the edge of the bed—had unsettled her sleep too. The sensitive space between her legs, the tingle of her skin where he’d touched it—these things had pervaded her dreams and made her wakeful, wistful.

“Marianne,” he said quietly, and his arm came around her to settle beneath her bare breasts.

“The lamp went out,” she whispered. “It woke me, but I’ll drift off again.”

“I want to tell you some things,” he replied, “and it’ll be easier in the dark.”

She wiggled under his arm, apprehensive. “Bad things?”

“No. Just...old things. Honest things.”

“All right. I can listen to old and honest things.” She rolled toward him on the bed. Though she couldn’t see his face, she knew it to be close. His arm cradled her, tugged her against his body so her nipples brushed his chest.

“When I was twenty-one, twenty-two...before you went away,” he began, “I had nothing to offer but the circumstances of my birth. My maleness. Connected to that were the responsibilities of my father’s land, the tenants my grandfather and his father had placed there, and all the generations of tradition before that.”

“I always thought you had more to offer than that.” She rocked her torso, liking the feeling of his chest hair against her breasts.

He didn’t seem to notice; he must have been deep in thought indeed. “My father arranged the marriage with Helena Wilcox so I could safeguard them all. I felt cheap for doing it, yet it helped so many. Two of my sisters have married well, and all three of them found love. I have nieces and nephews. The tenants’ cottages are in good repair, the land is healthy, and the crops have been more than fair.”

If he’d sounded proud, she would have thought him boasting. But he didn’t sound happy at all. “Why are you telling me all this?” she asked. “I don’t care. That is—I do. I’m glad for those people. But it’s no part of my life, and I never thought it would be.”

“Exactly.” His breath tickled her ear, making a wisp of hair dance. “You agreed to marry me without thinking of what it would mean in the years ahead. You agreed only because you liked me.”

“I loved you,” she said faintly. Not knowing whether she ought to speak the phrase in the past tense, or the present.

“My father didn’t understand that. He didn’t marry for love. Not that he was a bad man; he was a responsible landowner and respectful husband and dutiful father. But—it didn’t matter to him that I loved you. Not compared to making a marriage that would help our family in the present and future.”

“This might be too honest for me.” Marianne pushed against his chest, putting space between them. “I don’t want to hear that I weighed too little against your