“An army just for me,” she said. “Fancy that. The truth is, I would be content with him letting me be when I need it.”
He nodded. His thumb was lazily stroking up and down the fragile stem of his goblet. “What else?” he asked. “What else do you need from a husband?”
She was tipsy, and disturbed, because this was no longer a hypothetical discussion, or was it. “I confess I haven’t thought too hard about it.”
“I have trouble believing it,” he said, smiling faintly. “You think hard about everything.”
She was struggling to contain a riot, raging right behind her breastbone. Sometimes, she suspected that her rejection of a romantic companion wasn’t her actual battle, but only the first line of defense, and that deep down, she wanted love rather too much, with a desperate, grasping passion that scared her witless. When she was under him, open and receptive, the defenses broke down and hope rushed in. But why would she be the exception? Why would it go differently for her, but not the countless others who had dared and failed?
She eyed her empty glass. “Did you know that they give champagne to the debutantes during the London season?” she asked. “As a stimulant?”
“Is that so?” His tone had, thank goodness, returned to conversational.
She nodded. “I had one season. We were expected to socialize five days a week from three o’clock until three in the morning. It’s a Darwinian struggle to secure the best mate. They want us to sparkle like a Veuve Clicquot while we do it, and so the glass is never empty. By autumn, I couldn’t stand the smell of it.”
Elias’s eyes were cool. “You could have told me. I’ll order something else.”
“I’m glad you didn’t know.” She smiled. “I enjoyed this very much. From now on, champagne shall remind me of our lunch in the oyster bar.”
Chapter 25
It was the nights that allowed hidden thoughts to reach the surface. Entwined and drowsy in liminal spaces, they gave voice to the things they usually kept to themselves, until their eyes fell shut or the room filled with light. They drifted over the loss of their mothers, his father’s fatal accident at sea; and smaller things, memories of their childhood that somehow seemed relevant again or some wish for the future that sounded too bombastic during the day.
This night was no different, though it was close to the darkest hour and Elias’s breathing sounded as if he was already asleep. His head was a dark shape on the pillow, save a thin strip of blue starlight that fell across his face.
“I keep thinking about something Mrs. Weldon said,” she whispered.
He gave a sleepy grunt, but he opened an eye.
“She said it wasn’t the actual noise that sets me on edge around people, but everything they bring with them. As though we’re all surrounded by invisible nuisances.”
As though they all had their ghosts trailing along.
He was so silent, she thought he had fallen asleep after all. “It’s no trouble for me to stay at the Oxbridge Club,” he said at last.
Her heart gave an anxious leap. “Why?”
He rolled onto his back. “We have spent a lot of time together,” he said.
“No,” she said, quickly. “You don’t tire me.” She realized this now, as she consciously took stock.
“That’s a shame,” he said, “because I tried.”
Heat suffused her. He did keep her well up at night. “It’s just that your presence doesn’t seem to count.”
He made a low sound of comic exasperation.
She hid her face under the cover. “That came out wrong. You seem to give me more than you take, that’s what I mean.”
“Ya albi,” he said, a cruel note in his tender voice. “My heart. Most would say that I have taken everything.”
Most people would say that, she supposed. He had taken her virginity, which greatly reduced her worth on the marriage mart. For a lady, given she cared, it was indeed everything.
She couldn’t see the ceiling in the dark, just a faint shimmer of chandelier crystal, and a glimmer of gold from the plaster.
“My husband,” she said, “he would have to leave me be, and he must never confine me to the home.”
She could sense him smirk. “He wouldn’t have to. You are, by nature, a housecat.”
“What if I wanted to be outside,” she said with some heat. “For my cause. For anything.”
He trailed a finger down her cheek. “Do you know why I enjoy watching birds of prey?”