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She broke away from his grasp. “Perhaps you must, Thomas. I should like to take a walk.”
Thomas sighed, exasperated. If she was going to walk, she was not going to go alone.
Indignant, he caught up with her. “Then I shall have no choice but to accompany you.”
“There’s always a choice, Thomas.”
“You have not given me one. Let us proceed.” He wanted to grab her, pull her back to him, into his body, kiss those beautiful lips, feel her lush skin against his.
Instead, he took her arm. “We shall leave through the servants’ door.”
“Yes, we must,” Tricia said sarcastically. “Because someone might see us otherwise.”
She wasn’t taking this at all seriously. She had no idea what society could—and would—do to her given the chance. She’d been lowborn, and those gossiping hens would love to call her out, ruin her.
And she didn’t seem to care one bit.
He led her down the hallway toward the servants’ quarters, and through another hallway still until he reached the door that led outside.
“You’re not taking this seriously enough,” he said to her. “Don’t you care whether you’re ruined?”
“Of course I care,” she said. “I understand the rules by which we are bound. But I never asked to be part of this upper crust.”
“So you want to go back to the way things were?” Thomas quietly closed the door as they walked out into the sunshine.
“No, of course not,” Tricia admitted. “It’s lovely not to have to worry about things such as having enough money for new clothes or other luxuries. Mummy always saw that we had enough to eat, and Cameron did more than his duty taking care of us after Papa died.” She looked back on the Ashfords’ sprawling mansion. “But everything is so…so…tightly wound.”
Thomas couldn’t help a chuckle. “You’re certainly not wrong about that.”
Tricia kicked a pebble across the ground. “I never used to have to ask permission to go on a walk after luncheon. I never used to have to ask for an escort to leave the premises.”
“And believe me, I’m not the optimal escort.”
“But you are, Thomas.” She held onto his upper arms. “I would have let you do it last night. I was ready.”
Thomas growled. “Tricia, you have no idea of what men go through. We can’t speak of it.”
“Why not? You know very well that my brother ruined your sister. And he was a nobody when she was lady of the peerage.”
He drew in a breath. “Yes, you’re lucky I didn’t pummel your brother to the ground. It was no less than what he deserved.”
“But they were in love, don’t you see?” Tricia squeezed Thomas’s arm. “It was beautiful, Thomas. It was a love story written in the heavens. And the fact that my brother turned out to be of the peerage… Well, that was just dumb luck. He happened to be in the right place at the right time, and the dowager marchioness recognized him.”
“My father would have never allowed the match otherwise,” Thomas said.
“Would he have had a choice? Rose was of age. She could have gone with my brother. Sacrificed her dowry, her allowance?—”
Thomas shook his head. “Rose would have always gotten her allowance. The trust is very specific on that.”
“Then everything would have been fine. Indeed, at that point, Cameron already had a well-paying job as a composer for the Regal Theatre.”
Tricia was yammering on and on about things they both already knew. And all Thomas could think about was the ache in his groin. How his body wanted to take her to bed, meld itself with hers, pluck that virginity right off her.
“For the love of God, Tricia, do you ever stop talking?”
She stopped talking then, her lips slightly parted and glistening.
One of Thomas’s favorite oak trees was only yards away, and he walked toward it. They would be sheltered there, on the other side of the tree. The men would be returning from the hunt from the west, so they were safely ensconced. Besides, the men would not be back for several more hours.
