“In here, Mrs. Brightmore.”
She glared at me, as if Mr. Markham’s dinner preferences were somehow my fault, and left in a swish of starched fabric.
I found my port glass refilled.
“So, Miss Leavold. You would feel trapped by employment?”
“I didn’t mean to make myself sound indolent. It’s only that I’m used to keeping my own hours, my own company. Having my life be at the whim of another’s would be almost unbearable.”
“And yet there are those who find more solace in imprisonment than they ever have in freedom.”
“Show me such a person,” I protested, then stopped. Here I was, only a few moments into meeting my benefactor, and I was contradicting him in precisely the sort of way that used to vex Thomas so.
“Is not marriage like this? Strictures and bindings that can become pleasurable?”
“Are you comparing love to imprisonment, Mr. Markham?”
Something stirred in his eyes.
“For some, perhaps.” He reached across the low table between us and grasped my wrist. His fingertips were surprisingly rough for a gentleman, but the feeling of them against the thin skin of my wrist left me agitated somehow, as if he had trailed hot coals across my flesh instead of his fingers.
“Here,” he said quietly, “I have your wrist captured in my hand. You cannot move it unless I let you, you cannot touch it unless I let you. Complete confinement. But…” His fingertips made light circles—swirls, eddies—around my wrist, skipping lightly over the pale blue veins and the delicate tendons, drifting from my palm to the edge of my sleeve. He slowly unbuttoned the buttons of my sleeve, sliding it up past my elbow. Gooseflesh rose on my arms, on my neck, even on my breasts under the thin wool of my dress. It felt so close to being undressed, to being exposed.
His fingers continued their work all while he stared intently at me. “And how does this constraint feel now, Miss Leavold? If I allowed you to withdraw your wrist now, would you?”
“No,” I said, my breathing coming faster. “I would not.”
He bent low, as if to study my wrist, except his mouth was so near my skin, and then I was suddenly aware of my pulse pounding, of my lips parting, of the flush that was spreading on my face.
“Your dinner, sir,” Mrs. Brightmore said, entering the room. The handsome servant wheeled a tray behind her, and the covered silver dishes and glassware rattled as he rolled it across the thick carpet to the armchair where his master sat. Mr. Markham didn’t let go of my wrist at first—I tugged and he arched an eyebrow and I tugged again and he finally let it drop.
Relief thrummed through me. And disappointment.
“Is there anything else, sir?” the housekeeper inquired. Her words dropped like acid, singeing the air as they fell.
Mr. Markham ignored her, staring at me instead. She left after a minute, her quick footsteps and irritated manner making her feelings clear. Why does she hate me so much?
The servant winked at me before he left.
Mr. Markham opened his mouth to speak again, and then shut it, his eyes alighting on something behind me.
“Are you hungry, Miss Leavold?”
I wasn’t, strangely. I felt too agitated to eat.
“I am not.”
He rubbed at his forehead. “Then you should go to bed,” he said.
“Sir?”
“I told you not to sir me, at least not now. Get to bed. The hour is too late for young women to be about. Even those accustomed to keeping their own hours.”
I dearly wanted to protest. I never retired before midnight at home. But I reminded myself that home had been sold to satisfy my brother’s grasping creditors. Markham Hall was my home now. I would do well to make myself pleasing to my cousin’s widower, no matter how much I inwardly thrashed against it.
But perhaps I would grow used to it. What had he said? Strictures and bindings that become pleasurable…
I unconsciously touched my wrist. “Goodnight, Mr. Markham.”
