Page 66 of The Lady Knows Best

As if jolted back to full awareness by his words, she slid down from the table.

With a discreet adjustment to his breeches, he bent and retrieved her dressing gown and his shirt from the floor. “Now, back to your bed with you,” he admonished, laying the garment around her shoulders, and then adding in a low murmur, “Only a few days more until you can join me in mine.”

Her face was hidden from him as he pulled on his shirt and she slipped her arms into the sleeves of her dressing gown and bent her head to tie the sash. Something passed through her, a shudder, a shiver . . . whether cold or longing, he couldn’t say.

He stepped to unlock the door as she retreated to the desk to retrieve her candle.

When she returned to his side, he could at last see her clearly, the faint blush of passion still staining her cheeks, the uncertainty flickering in her eyes.

Though there was no clock in the library, he swore he could hear its ticking. Three days left . . . Three days left . . .

Three days to persuade her—if kisses weren’t enough—that having a rake for a husband wouldn’t be all bad. That they could be good together.

That this marriage meant more to him than winning a bet.

“Tomorrow morning, I shall give you a tour of the house,” he offered. “And then in the afternoon, we’ll all take a carriage ride into the village. Will that suit?”

She nodded—a trifle hesitantly, he thought. “Just as you wish.”

“Come.” Cupping his hand beneath her elbow, he led her through the drawing room to the hall.

At the doorway, she paused. “It’s best if we go up separately, I think.”

She was right, of course. He watched as she ascended the stairs, taking the light with her. As she disappeared into the shadows, he licked his lips, tasting her there.

What he wished, what he’d had just a moment before, seemed once more far out of reach.

CHAPTER 21

Famished, Daphne piled her plate with eggs and sat down beside Bell, who was not so surreptitiously feeding Eileen bits of kipper beneath the table.

“You look well rested,” Lady Stalbridge said to her while buttering her toast.

“It must’ve been all that fresh air she took in during her long walk in the garden yesterday,” suggested Bell, with a sly, sidelong glance at Daphne.

Daphne managed, somehow, to keep her own expression mild. “I did sleep well,” she admitted. “For whatever reason.”

In fact, she’d not expected to sleep a wink, plagued by restless thoughts and wayward recollections. Instead, she had collapsed on her bed and fallen instantly into a dreamless slumber, without even pausing to remove her dressing gown.

It was just as well. If one had to remember and reflect upon the events of such a night, it was surely better to do so by the clear light of day.

Alas, it was a misty, cloudy morning. But no amount of sunshine could have prevented her from clenching her thighs together at the memory of what he’d done, and how thoroughly, wantonly she had enjoyed it. When, at the end, he’d mentioned joining him in his bed, she had hurried away, embarrassed by how much she wanted to do just that.

Her chiding conscience sounded remarkably like Miss Busy B.: Of course you enjoyed it—who would be surprised to discover a rake knows the means of coaxing pleasure from a woman’s body?

But that prim voice was unexpectedly countered by another—softer, but surprisingly confident: If he were nothing but a rake, wouldn’t he be concerned first and foremost with his own pleasure?

Daphne thought of how he’d paused more than once to ascertain her will and fulfill her desires, how the slightest pressure of her fingers—she’d hardly realized she had tangled them in his golden hair—had been enough to stay him, and how a single word would have been enough to stop him for good. Not rakish behavior, as she’d always heard it described.

And that was not even to mention the most important discovery of the evening. Miss Grey hadn’t caught him in a moment of faithlessness, merely in the midst of losing an actual game of chess.

There was still the matter of the wager, of course, but her understanding of even that had begun to shift.

While her disparate thoughts wrestled with one another, Lord Stalbridge sauntered into the breakfast room and bent to give his wife a kiss on the cheek.

One could not be in their presence for long without some reminder that they were, in fact, newlyweds, childhood friends who had rediscovered one another only last winter. As a consequence, they sometimes indulged in open affection that would scandalize those of a certain social set. More often, they limited themselves merely to a stolen glance, a gleam of satisfaction in Lady Stalbridge’s eyes and a catlike smile playing about her husband’s lips. This morning, Daphne read even those more subtle exchanges with new knowledge and found them more scandalous than the kiss.

“I’ve been speaking with Deveraux,” Lord Stalbridge said, waving off a footman in favor of pouring his own coffee. “He proposes to show off his house this morning, and to take all of us on a jaunt into the village this afternoon, once the sun has had a chance to burn away this damp,” he finished with a disparaging glance toward the window.