His took his weight and warmth away from her and fortified himself with the disappointment in her voice.
“You will.” He sat at her hip and began to straighten her clothing, but paused to brush his thumb over her pubic curls. “When this next time comes around, that we are not going talk about, I will put my mouth on you here.” He closed his fingers over her sex. “You will enjoy it, but not half so much as I.”
She looked surprised then intrigued as he closed her buttons and bows, and the earl concluded she was a virgin to oral sex as well as orgasms. Mr. Seaton, God rest his lazy, inconsiderate, bumbling, unimaginative, selfish soul, had much to answer for.
“Up you go.” He tugged Anna to a sitting position then settled down beside her and wrapped an arm around her shoulders. Her head rested against his chest, and her hand stole onto his bare stomach.
He yawned sleepily. “I should put on a shirt if we’re to have a meaningful discussion.”
“You needn’t,” Anna assured him. “It won’t take long at all to tell you this sort of thing has to stop.”
“Going back on your word, Anna?” Westhaven leaned over to kiss her temple and to again inhale the fragrance of her hair.
“I agreed not to seek another position until the end of summer,” she reminded him. The glow in Westhaven’s body faded a tad with each clipped syllable. “I did not agree to become your light-skirt.”
“Were you a virgin, you would still be considered chaste.”
“But I wouldn’t be for much longer if this keeps up.”
Westhaven knew some genuine puzzlement. “I will not force you, Anna.”
“You won’t have to,” she bit back. “I will spread my legs for you just as eagerly as I did tonight.”
“With results just as pleasurable, one hopes, but we’re talking past each other, Anna. Why won’t you let yourself enjoy my advances? That’s the real issue. If you have a reason of any substance—a husband somewhere, a mortal fear of intercourse, something besides your silly conviction earls don’t marry housekeepers—then I will consider desisting.” He punctuated his comment with a soft kiss to her neck.
“Keep your lips off me, please.” Anna straightened away from him but didn’t move off the couch. “I cannot think. I do not even know right from wrong when you start with your kisses and your wandering hands. You don’t mean to do it, but you leave me helpless and lost and… You have no clue what I mean, do you?”
“In truth,” the earl said, urging her head back down to his shoulder, “I do. You would be astonished, Anna, at how surprised I am at the way matters have progressed between us, and I am not often surprised.”
“Well, then,” Anna huffed, “all the more reason to give up this courting you seem so bent on.”
“Can’t say I agree with you.” His lips grazed her temple again, completely without conscious thought on his part. “And you have yet to name me a single reason why you could not wed me. Have you taken holy orders?”
“I have not.”
“Have you a mortal fear of copulating with me?”
She buried her nose against his shoulder and mumbled something.
“I will take that for a no. Are you married?”
“I am not.” And because he heard what he wanted to hear and insisted on hearing, the earl missed the slight hesitance in her answer.
“So why, Anna?” He bit her earlobe gently. “Those were my teeth, not my lips, mind you. We’ve gone only so far as lovers, and already you must know we would bring each other pleasure upon pleasure. So why do you play this game?”
“It isn’t a game. There are matters I hold in confidence, matters I will not discuss with you or anyone, that prevent me from committing to you as a wife should commit.”
“Ah.” The earl was listening now and heard the resolution with which she spoke. “I will not pry a confidence from you, but I will make every effort to convince you to confide in me, Anna. When a man marries, his wife’s goods become his, but so too, should her burdens.”
“I’ve given you my reason.” She lifted her head to regard him closely. “You will leave me in peace now? You will give up this notion of courting me?”
“Knowing you are burdened with confidences only makes me that much more convinced we should be wed. I’d take on your troubles, you know.”
“You are a good man,” Anna said, touching his cheek, her expression both solemn and sad, “but you cannot be my husband, and I cannot be your wife.”
“I will content myself with being your suitor, as we agreed, though now, Anna Seaton, I will also be encouraging your trust, as well.” He kissed her palm to emphasize his words. “One last question, Anna.” The earl kept hold of her hand. “If you were free of these obligations that you hold in confidence, would you consider my suit then?”
He was encouraged she couldn’t give him an immediate no, encouraged she’d offered him the smallest crumb of a confidence, encouraged they’d been more intimate with each other than ever before—encouraged, but also… concerned.
“I’d consider it,” she allowed. “That is not the same as accepting it.”
“I understand.” He smiled at her. “Even a duke mustn’t take his duchess for granted.”
Anna fell asleep in the secure circle of his arms, her weight resting against him, his lips at her temple. As he carried her to her bedroom, the earl reflected that for a woman who insisted there be no next time, Anna had certainly been reluctant to bring an end to things this time.
It boded well, he thought, kissing her forehead as he tucked her in. All he needed to do now was gain her confidence and meet these obligations she was so determined to carry alone. She was a housekeeper, for pity’s sake, how complicated could her obligations be?
Anna awoke the next morning with a lingering sense of sweetness, of stolen pleasures not quite regretted, and—most incongruous of all—of hope. Hope that somehow, she might find a way to extricate herself from the situation with Westhaven that didn’t leave them enemies. Westhaven was doing exactly as he said he would: He was giving her pleasure, pleasure beyond her wildest imaginings, pleasure she could keep for herself in memory long after her dealings with him were over, and she would give a great deal to see that those memories were not tainted with a bitter parting.
And under that hope there beat against the cage of reason and duty the wings of another hope, one she didn’t even acknowledge: The hope that somehow, she might not have to leave him, not at the end of the summer, not any time soon. She could not marry him, she accepted that, but to leave him might prove equally impossible, and what options did that give her?
Anna was practical by nature, so she forced herself to leave those questions for another time, got out of bed, dressed, and went about her day. Memories of the night preoccupied her, though, and she forgot to don one of her homely lace caps.
She also forgot to chide Morgan for the wisps of hay sticking to her skirts, and she almost forgot to put extra sugar in the earl’s first glass of lemonade. She wasn’t looking forward to seeing him again, and yet she yearned for the sight of him.
The man and his ideas about courting were botheration personified.
“Post for ye, Missus.” John Footman handed her a slim, worn missive posted from a remote inn on the Yorkshire dales, and Anna felt all the joy and potential in the day collapse into a single, hard lump of dread.
“Thank you, John.” Anna nodded, her expression calm as she made her way to her private sitting room. She rarely closed the door, feeling the space was one of few places the servants could congregate with privacy, particularly as Mr. Stenson would never set a sanctimonious toe on her carpet.
But she closed the door before reading her missive. Closed it and locked it then sat down on the sofa and stared into the cold grate, trying to collect her courage.
Finding the exercise pointless, she carefully slit the seal on the envelope and read the brief contents:
Just that one cautionary sentence, thank God. Anna read it several times then tore both letter and envelope into tiny pieces, wrapped them into a sheet of foolscap, and put them onto the hearth grate to burn later that evening.
Beware as your location may be known.
A warning, but understandably vague. Her location may be known; it may not be. Her location—Southern
