Page 99 of The Governess and the Brooding Duke
She pulled away from him, lying flat on her back. ‘If that is the only reason that you wish to avoid my wrath, West, then I fear you may have offended me already.’
He rolled over so that he was above her. ‘Do not say that, Mary.’ He nuzzled her neck. ‘You know that is not all I value you for. Also, I would not lie here talking to you long into the night when we should have slept hours ago.’
That made her feel warm too. Because it was the same for her. It was the same.
‘I will not be offended. Or at least, I will not remove myself from you.’
She wouldn’t. She didn’t know how long this was going to last between them, and she would not miss a day of it.
She had thrown herself into this love affair with everything she had.
It was all-consuming.
It knit together confusingly with the work she did during the day. With the connection she now felt to his children.
To the bairn.
Lachlan.
They very much felt like hers in many ways, and it was painful. Painful to realise.
Because she had walked away from a child once. She hadn’t been ready. And that child could not have been hers then.
But sometimes she felt as if this one could be. As if Elizabeth and Michael could be. She was a different woman now. She was a woman. Not a child.
She shoved those thoughts to the side.
‘I told you my father was a horrendous libertine. He subjected all of us to his foul temper. And not only that, we all bore witness to the dissolution of his many love affairs. They were always tempestuous. There were suitors, men and women, who would come to our home in shambles after my father had made merry with their lives.’
‘Oh,’ she said.
‘He cared nothing for the feelings of others. I am convinced he took both men and women as lovers not because he felt any genuine attraction to one sex over the other, but because there were different ways to play with their emotions, and he enjoyed that distinction. A man like him cares about only one thing, and that is himself.’
‘And you bore witness to that.’
‘Yes. When he was killed—shot, by the way, by a scorned lover—my mother’s brother came to Attingham. He sat me down, and he told me that the one good thing my father ever did was spare my mother the disgrace, the indignity, of making her serve his more... His more creative desires. My uncle told me that a lady was gently bred, and you could not treat her the way that you did a prostitute at a brothel. I had some experience of prostitutes at that point. I was sixteen. My father gifted me a woman when I was fifteen.’
‘West...’ Horror stole over her.
‘I know. It was yet one of the many things he did that crossed a line, one of the many things that was not appropriate in any fashion, and yet I did not know better at the time. Afterwards... Afterwards I felt no small measure of guilt. I did not go to a brothel again until some time later. I did not have intercourse with a woman again for several years. It was an experience that made me feel out of control. That made me feel shame. And I did not wish to repeat it. Not until I was in control. I did, however, by the time my uncle spoke to me have some idea of my... The flavour of my desires, shall we say.’
‘I know no desires other than yours. Not truly.’
‘I’m not a gentle lover,’ he said.
She looked at the ceiling and smiled. ‘No, you are not. I do not feel that a gentle lover would suit me. I like your strength. The way that you hold me. The way that you push me to the edge, but that I can trust you will hold me just there. That you will not let me fall.’
‘I knew that I could not subject my wife to my appetites. That first night, when I licked you between your legs, it had been some years since I had done that for a woman. It was one of the things I could not ask of a lady. Our passion in the bedroom was tempered. By the fact that it was never fully what I desired.’
‘I see.’ She frowned. ‘Why did you think that would offend me?’
‘It is not gentlemanly to speak of one’s past lovers to one’s current lover, first of all. Also, I did not know how you would feel about...’
She rolled over onto her side. ‘The idea that I’m not a lady?’
‘I do not mean to cause any offence.’
‘In truth, West, I am not a lady. And I understand that. Also... What you gave me is what I needed.’
