demimonde, and you sit there all pristine and innocent, smiling at me, for God’s sake.”
“What should I be doing? Demanding more jewels? Breaking plates and screeching if I don’t get them? Threatening to leave you for a man who will buy me more?”
“It’s what they all do.” His voice was hollow.
“You see, you do despise women. I told you that before, remember?”
“I despise women like what you describe, yes.”
“Then have nothing more to do with them. Let’s go to Berkshire and say to hell with the lot of them.” When Cam eyed her skeptically, Ainsley wrapped her arms around him and ruffled the hair on the back of his neck. “It’s what I truly want, Cameron. The horses, the mud, and you.” She kissed him.
And so, they went to Berkshire.
Cameron had never brought a woman to his Berkshire estate, Waterbury Grange, which lay south of Hungerford. He’d bought the place after Elizabeth’s death, needing a retreat far from Kilmorgan and his father and Elizabeth’s grave.
He’d hired a houseful of servants, let Daniel run wild, and concentrated on horseracing. Newmarket, Epsom, Ascot, the St. Leger—these were the events around which his world revolved.
Needy mistresses didn’t fit into that world. Ainsley, on the other hand, slid into it without breaking stride. She took over the running of the house from the moment she arrived, soon discovering and curtailing the servants’ long-running practice of keeping the best foodstuffs for themselves while serving the offhand Cameron what was left over.
Cameron found her indignation about the way they took advantage of him amusing. “These people kept me alive when I first moved here, and they looked after Danny for me. I don’t begrudge them.”
“There is a world of difference between begrudging them and dining on gristly salt pork while they feast on tender beefsteak.”
Cameron shrugged. “Do what you like. I’m not good with domestic arrangements.”
“Obviously not,” Ainsley had said with a frown.
Cameron couldn’t deny that Ainsley had been right to bring them back here. January winds were brisk and raw, but the worst of winter’s grip soon departed and he and Angelo, with Daniel in tow, began training in earnest. Cameron found that he looked forward to rising before dawn every morning and leading out the horses with Daniel as the sun rose.
Pierson had not yet rolled up from Bath with Jasmine, and Cam wondered whether the man would bring her at all. Other than that, training commenced in a satisfactory way.
Cameron’s stables were true working stables, with multiple trainers, people coming and going, and a well- run routine. Angelo was second-in-command, and any trainer, stable hand, or jockey who had trouble with this was asked to leave. Angelo knew the horses as well as Cameron did and could glide onto them bareback to run them to the clock. The trainers who’d been with Cam the longest had come to respect Angelo, saying, “He knows what he’s doing, that Romany.”
As for Cameron, once he had the Berkshire wind in his hair, and felt the young horses’ excitement coming to him through the lounge line, his ennui fled. Once again, he was awake and alive. When he and Daniel went back to the house each afternoon, Cameron had another bright spot in his life—Ainsley.
She fit smoothly into the household as though she’d lived there her entire life. The housekeeper, who’d never spoken much to Cameron except when absolutely necessary, kept a constant conversation running with Ainsley as Ainsley questioned her on all aspects of the housekeeping. Ainsley now had her own set of keys, and the housekeeper began saying, “Let me ask her ladyship,” when any question came up.
The staff here were quiet, undemonstrative, well-trained domestics, apart from their now-ended habit of skimming off the foodstuffs. If they didn’t actually burst into song and dance about Ainsley, they at least respected her.
Even the one point of contention between Cameron and Ainsley—the fact that Cameron left her every night to sleep in his own bed—seemed to ease a little as spring commenced.
Or so Cameron thought. He should have remembered that Ainsley was very good at stealth.
The locks in Cameron’s old manor house were easy to pick. The doors and locks were leftover from a hundred years ago, when the house had been built, and several of them even opened with the same key. Ainsley had practiced picking the locks from the day she arrived, which was how she’d discovered the cache of foodstuffs the servants had kept for themselves.
On a moonless night, she crept down the hall the short distance from her bedroom to Cameron’s, hairpin at the ready. She knelt softly on the carpet, listening to his snores from within for a time before she quietly moved the old- fashioned keyhole cover on its tiny hinge.
And found herself faced with a shiny new lock. He’d changed it.
Botheration.
Ainsley let out her breath, but she refused to give up. She had to work a little harder on this lock, and in the end it took two hairpins, but finally Ainsley had it open. She stood up, her heart beating swiftly, and very quietly opened the door.
The room was dark, save for the glow of coals on the hearth. She’d made certain to visit Cameron’s bedchamber often, so she’d studied the lay of the land. Unless he’d decided to rearrange the furniture at eleven o’clock last night, his bed would be that direction. The continuing snore told her she was right.
Ainsley softly closed the door behind her and started across the room.
“Ainsley.”
The word was hard, clear, and told her that Cameron was fully awake.
“Drat you,” she said. “You only pretended to be asleep.”
A match spurted and a kerosene lamp glowed to life. It showed Cameron sitting up in his bed, his lap covered with a sheet, the rest of him delectably bare.
“I was asleep. Then I heard the unmistakable scratch of a thief trying to pick my lock.”
“Your hearing must be very good then.”
“It is.”
Ainsley took another step. “Did I frighten you?” He’d told her he’d wake up in violence when he was startled. She’d planned to wake him as gently as she could, to show him that nothing terrible would happen.
Cameron’s smile was hot. “When I hear someone picking a lock, I immediately think of you. Not to mention the little mutters of frustration you make when the lock proves challenging. What are you doing in here?”
Ainsley closed the distance between the door and his bed. “I came to sleep with my husband.”
“Ainsley.”
She put her knee on the mattress. “You refuse to talk about it, but I refuse to let matters stand as they are. Beds are for sharing. Especially beds as large as this one.”
Cameron lunged for her. Before she could scramble away, Ainsley found herself dragged onto the bed and pinned to the mattress, much as he had the night she’d broken into his room to search for the queen’s letters. The difference was that last time, he’d been more or less fully dressed. This time, nothing rested between Cameron’s bare body and Ainsley but a sheet.
She felt every inch of his hard body—every inch—the strength of his hands, the heat of his breath.
“Do you need reminding how dangerous I am?” he growled.
“You’re not dangerous.”
Cameron pinned her wrists to the mattress with his weight and gave her his hot, wicked smile. “No? Perhaps I should demonstrate.”
Did she want him to or didn’t she? A wise woman should be frightened of a giant rising over her in the dark, looking ready to ravish her, but Ainsley was not wise. Or maybe she was. She’d married him.
“Not necessary,” she said.
Cameron licked across her mouth. “Necessary. I don’t want things becoming too domestic.”
So he’d told her on the train when he’d proposed. He wanted a lover, not a wife.
“Well,” she said. “Perhaps a small demonstration.”
Cameron rose abruptly from the bed, lifting her up with him, and the sheet fell away. He was naked in the dim light, his cock long and hard, his wanting unashamed. From Ainsley’s position on the edge of the bed, it was easy to grasp him in her hand, draw him a little to her.
