Good. Very good.
“Do you know,” he said in an idle tone, stroking his thumb along her delicate wrist, “I’ve been thinking.”
“That sounds ominous.”
“Oh, it is.” With his free hand, he cupped the swell of her breast, stroking her softness through the muslin. “The object of this marriage is to get you with child.”
“Yes.” Her voice was drowsy. “I seem to recall that was our bargain.”
Her head tilted to the side, and he ran his tongue along the elongated slope of her neck. She tasted both tart and sweet. Delicious.
“So if we do this twice a day,” he murmured, “that would make our objective twice as likely.”
“I . . . I suppose it would.”
“No supposing about it.” He tweaked her nipple. “It’s simple mathematics.”
After a pause, he heard a little smile in her voice. “Is it, my fawn?”
Saucy, impudent wench.
The race was on. She helped him hike her skirts to her waist. He stroked the seam of her cleft, tracing it until he found that essential spot at the apex. She gasped with pleasure, gripped the bookshelf with both hands. He couldn’t unbutton his falls fast enough.
After what seemed an epoch of fumbling with garments, they finally pressed flesh to flesh. His hard, aching need against her wet, ready heat.
“Now?” He growled the word.
Her reply was breathless. “Yes.”
Yes.
Yes, yes, yes.
The dalliance in the library was the first of many daytime trysts. Now that Ash knew her to be game for unconventional bedsport, his imagination knew no bounds. His stamina was nowhere near depleted, either. Making love unclothed in full daylight still felt like too great a risk. When they were that close, that intimate . . . he hated the idea of pity intruding into moments when he ought to be strong. He worried that if she touched him, he might snap back.
And there was always the other risk: Repulsing her completely.
How could I bear to lie with . . . with that?
No, he couldn’t chance it. However, with a willing, adventurous partner, there were ways around the hurdle. Pleasure needn’t be confined to fumbling nighttime encounters.
Emma did not object, he found, to being bent over the nearest sturdy piece of furniture. The billiard table made for one particularly enjoyable liaison. He pulled her into shadowy alcoves and deep closets and took her propped against the wall in the hot, musky dark. They discovered all manner of accoutrements—cravats, sashes, handkerchiefs—could be pressed into service as blindfolds.
No matter what he suggested, she never told him no.
She always said yes.
She said “yes” and “yes” and “more” and “please.”
As always, those little sighs and moans sank straight to his cock, urging him closer to release. But as their passionate afternoons melted into weeks, her words found deeper targets. He even came to adore her endlessly absurd pet names. They pierced through his scar tissue, battered at the bony cage around his heart.
Ash struggled to rebuild that barricade daily.
Don’t make too much of her willingness, he scolded himself. She was a passionate woman by nature. No doubt she wanted this child-getting business over and done with, too.
And yet he could not stay away from her, could never satisfy his desire. There was no floor to the chasm inside him. It wasn’t only her body he craved, it was closeness. Acceptance. The feeling of being wanted, and never turned away.
Yes.
She always said yes.
Until the night she didn’t.
One evening, Emma failed to appear for dinner. Her maid delivered a message to the table. Ash sipped a brandy as he unfolded and read the note written in his wife’s hand.
She was indisposed, it read, and she suspected a few days’ time would pass before she felt fully restored. With apologies, she could not welcome his visits at present.
Well, then. It didn’t require much effort to sift through the delicate phrasing. Her monthly courses had arrived. She wasn’t pregnant, not yet.
He ought to have been disappointed.
Instead, all he felt was relief.
She wasn’t with child. That meant he had another month.
Another month of whisking her into dark spaces, turning her face to the wall, and feeling her teeth scrape the heel of his hand when she came.
Another month of “yes.”
Another month of not being alone.
Another month of Emma.
Something in his chest went buoyant with joy.
Ash drained his brandy. Then he propped an elbow on the table and lowered his forehead until it rested against his thumb and forefinger. He massaged the knotted scar on his right cheekbone.
You are a dolt. Ignorant as dirt. This was more than infatuation. He’d allowed a foolish, irrational attachment to develop. Now something must be done about it.
He called for another brandy. And then another. When he’d drained the decanter, he located his cloak and his hat. Then he ventured out into the darkened streets. He’d find some ruffians to menace, or some foxed dandies to scare out of their champagne-polished boots.
This, he told himself with every cringe and wince he inspired, was what sort of welcome the world gave a monster. This was how “accepted” he was by his fellow man.
Perhaps he had another month of “yes,” but he must never forget this: The long, bitter life stretching beyond it would always be “no.”
“Bloody hell. I knew it.”
Ash froze in place, one hand immobile on the gate latch. His other hand tightened on his walking stick. He turned around to view the source of the outburst.
A boy was waiting on him in the alley behind the mews.
Not merely a boy. That boy. The one from before.
“I knew it,” the boy said. “I knew it had to be you.”
God’s lords and his ladies.
Ash collared the youth and dragged him into the shadows. He looked about the alley to make certain no grooms or coachmen lingered close enough to overhear.
“The Duke of Ashbury is the Monster of Mayfair.”
“I don’t know what you’re on about,” Ash said sternly. As if there might be some other scarred man wandering the alleys of Mayfair by night, wearing a cape and carrying a gold-knobbed walking stick.
“I knew from that night—said to my mates, I did—that you had to be Quality,” the boy rattled on. “The rest, I pieced together from the gossip sheets. The Duke of Ashbury came to Town just a few weeks before the first sighting appeared in the papers. Rumored to have suffered an injury at Waterloo. I decided to wait out here just to see if my guess was on the mark. And damn me, here you are.” He smacked his hands together. “Wait until the lads hear this.”
“The lads will hear nothing.” Ash gave the boy a shake. “Do you understand me?”
“You can’t frighten me. I know you won’t