His lips curved into a masculine smile. “Perhaps I should help you clarify the issue,” he said, touching his lips to the delicate skin of her neck. “Do you want me?”
She said nothing, but her body was arching up against his, her hips straining for him.
He slid his hands under her skirt and moved up her legs until they reached the warm skin at the tops of her stockings. One finger dipped beneath the edge, drawing lazy circles on her bare skin. “Do you want me?” he repeated.
“No,” she whispered.
“No?” He moved his lips back up to her ear and softly nibbled. “Are you certain?”
“No.”
“No, you're not certain or no, you don't want me?”
She let out a frustrated moan. “I don't know.”
He contemplated her for a long moment, looking very much as if he wanted to crush her to him. His face was hungry, and his eyes burned in the candlelight. But in the end all he did was roll off her. He got to his feet and crossed the room, the evidence of his desire making his breeches tight. “I won't make this decision for you,” he repeated.
Victoria sat up, utterly dazed. Her body was shaking with need, and in that moment she hated him for giving her the one thing she'd been asking for all along—control.
Robert stopped before the window and leaned on the sill. “Make your decision,” he said in a low voice.
The only sound she made was a strangled cry.
“Make it!”
“I-I don't know,” she said, her words sounding lame and pathetic even to her own ears.
He whirled around. “Then get the hell out of my sight.”
She flinched.
Robert strode to the bed and yanked her by the arm. “Tell me yes or tell me no,” he bit out, “but don't demand that I give you a choice and then not make one.”
Victoria was too startled to react, and before she knew it she had been pushed back into her own room, the connecting door slammed shut between them. She gasped for air, unable to believe how miserable and rejected she felt just then. God, she was such a hypocrite! Robert's words had cut to the quick. She had asked him over and over not to try to control her life, but when he finally put a decision into her hands, she was unable to act.
She sat on the bed for several minutes until her eyes fell on the package she'd so carelessly thrown aside several hours earlier. It seemed a lifetime had passed since then. What, she wondered with a shaky laugh, was Robert's idea of appropriate nightwear?
She untied the strings holding the box together and lifted the lid. Even in the dim light of her single candle, she could see that the lingerie was made of the finest silk. With careful fingers Victoria lifted the garment out of the box.
It was dark blue—a shade hovering somewhere between royal and midnight. Victoria didn't think it was an accident that the silk was the exact color of her eyes.
She sat down on the bed with a sigh. Her mind held a picture of Robert, examining a hundred nightgowns until he found one he deemed perfect. He did everything with such care and precision.
She wondered if he made love with the same quiet intensity.
“Stop!” she said aloud, as if that would rein in her wayward thoughts. She rose to her feet and crossed the room to the window. The moon was high, and the stars were twinkling in a manner that could only be called friendly. Suddenly, more than anything, Victoria wanted another woman to talk to. She wanted her friends at the dress shop, she wanted her sister, she even wanted Robert's aunt Brightbill and cousin Harriet.
Most of all, she wanted her mother, who had died so many years earlier. She stared up into the heavens and whispered, “Mama, are you listening?” then scolded herself for foolishly hoping that a star would shoot through the night. Still, there was something soothing about talking to the darkened sky.
“What should I do?” she said aloud. “I think I might love him. I think I might have always loved him. But I hate him, too.”
A star glinted sympathetically.
“Sometimes I think it would be so lovely to have someone to take care of me. To feel protected and loved. I went for so long without feeling that way. Without even a friend. But I also want to be able to make my own decisions, and Robert is taking that away from me. I don't think he means to. He just can't help it. And then I feel so weak and powerless. All the time I was a governess I was at the mercy of others. God, how I hated that.”
She paused to brush a tear from her cheek. “And then I wonder—do all these questions mean anything, or am I just afraid? Maybe I am nothing but a coward, too scared to take a chance.”