shoulders and scooted to tuck himself against her. She wasn’t going to bolt off to her lesson plans until they’d come to some understandings, and—given her endless determination—that meant it could be a long evening.
“You are a man,” Alice said, a hint of exasperation in her voice.
“You noticed. How fortunate. I was at risk of forgetting it myself.”
Alice scowled at him. “You were not. You’re among the most masculine people I’ve met.”
“Because you’re a governess, sweetheart. You don’t exactly consort with the dragoons and the grenadiers.”
“I have brothers, Ethan Grey.” She was getting her dander up, which relieved Ethan no end. That meek, defeated version of Alice Portman made him want to howl and break things for her. “And my brothers have acquaintances, and I’ve been in your brother’s household, and Mr. Belmont’s, and Baron Sutcliffe’s. No governess goes into service without a keen wariness regarding a man’s animal urges.”
“And you are prepared to tell me about these urges? Say on, Alice. I’m all ears. My own urges haven’t been in evidence since shortly after Joshua was conceived, so you likely know more about my urges than I do.”
Her brows went up as the meaning of his words sank in.
“Hushed your scolding with that one, didn’t I?” Ethan muttered, surprised that Alice remained sitting snug against him, making no move to withdraw her hand from his. “Well, it’s the truth, my dear. I married unwisely, and life hadn’t exactly handed me the instincts of a libertine before that. The realization that my wife was a bad choice rather killed my appetite, and in the general sense, not just for her.”
“But Joshua…”
“Is five years old. It has been a long, long six years.” During which, he silently added, he’d heard a constant string of tales regarding his brother Nick’s prowess in the bedrooms of London’s demimonde, each more impressive than the last.
Alice’s gaze became concerned. “Are you sure he’s your son?”
Now who was prying confidences from whom? And yet, Ethan wanted the truth between them.
“He is my son in every way that counts.” Ethan dipped his face against Alice’s hair as he spoke, needing the comfort of lemon verbena and Alice. “My wife might have known a different truth, but I have never regarded it as relevant.”
“Why are you telling me?”
Ethan raised his face and spoke slowly. “Could it be I trust you would never do anything to hurt a child?” And perhaps, his conscience added, he was damned sick of carrying this alone? Wondering if the boy might somehow find out and turn on the only parent he’d known?
Taking his brother with him…
“You love him,” Alice said staunchly. “Joshua would be devastated to think you aren’t his papa. What was wrong with your wife?”
“Marriage was wrong with her,” Ethan said tiredly, even as Alice’s immediate defense of him warmed his heart. “Marriage to me was wrong for her, anyway. And when I would not oblige her intimately, she had an affair. She was angered by my neglect of her and fought back with the only weapon she felt she had. My lack of expertise with the fairer sex was such that I could not see the corner I drove her into.”
“Oh, Ethan.” Alice did lean into him then, bringing her hand up to the back of his head and holding him as much as he was holding her. “You deserved so much better.”
“I am beginning to think perhaps I do.” He wanted better, and that was a start. “But I suspect you do not mean what you say.”
“You think I’d lie to you?” Alice drew back and resumed her frowning. He was coming to adore that starchy, prim expression on her face, because it was such a pleasure to relieve her of it.
“I think you do not divine the direction of my thoughts, Alice Portman,” Ethan replied, and in his chest, he felt his heart begin to beat with a slow, palpable throbbing. He was going to lay himself open to intimate rejection, and he knew it. He chose to do it, though, because wanting and not having was better—far, far better—than never wanting anything at all.
“So elucidate your thoughts for me,” Alice said while her fingers tightened around his.
He could prevaricate and hint and complicate what was simple and precious. His regard for Alice would allow none of that.
“I want you,” Ethan said. “I want your body under mine, overcome with desire. I want to share intimate pleasure with you, to drive you to incoherence with longing and satisfaction.” He wanted that desperately. “I want the taste and scent of you filling my senses, the texture of every inch of your skin burned into my memory. I want to hear you cry my name in the dark, Alice Portman.”
Before she could formulate a scathing set down, Ethan charged forth, determined she should hear him out.
“I know, Alice, you will not countenance marriage, and I suspect this relates to having been mistreated in your past. I do not account myself any sort of bargain as a husband, in any case, and would not offend you by presenting myself as a candidate for your hand. But I can offer you pleasure and joy and… friendship, or some version of it.”
“You are propositioning me.” She sounded astounded rather than offended.
“I am offering you a liaison,” Ethan clarified. “Though I can exercise enough restraint to assure you I would not get you with child.”
“And if I wanted a child?”
Ethan battled back joy that she’d even ask such a thing. “No bastards, sweetheart. I can’t do that to a child of mine, nor would you want it for our child either.”
He fell silent but remained beside her, giving her time to recover from what was clearly an unanticipated overture, while he tried not to contemplate their options if she did—despite his best intentions—conceive a child.
Such thoughts blundered perilously close to
“I’m not without experience,” she said softly, turning to rest her head on his shoulder.
If she’d expected him to stiffen, pull away, or physically display disappointment, he was determined to confound her. He pulled her closer and kissed her temple.
“God, Alice, neither am I. For you, I wish I could be.” It was an odd, heartfelt sentiment he would never be able to explain to her. “Were you mistreated?”
“No.” Ethan heard a silent “but” following her denial. “I was engaged, when I was sixteen, and could once again walk without much of a limp. My brothers had seen to it I was well dowered, and a young man I’d known most of my life offered for me. He was of decent family, and I saw him as my means of leaving Cumbria and its memories far behind. I accepted him, on the condition we’d leave the area and settle elsewhere. America would have done for me, or the Antipodes. I just needed to get away.”
“And this young man,” Ethan conjectured, “the one you refer to as decent, he took liberties, thinking you would not cry off after that no matter what, and then announced he had no intention of taking you anywhere.”
Alice’s smile was rueful. “More or less.”
“But you,” Ethan went on, “having a spine of Toledo steel, did cry off and left the poor idiot without a wife, her dowry, or a semblance of his honor, which was exactly what he deserved. I am proud of you.”
“Proud of me?”
He had surprised her, and he was damned glad of it. “There is no explaining the courage it takes to face down the judgments and expectations of Polite Society. Did your brothers try to dissuade you?” Ethan tried to recall where his dueling pistols were stored in the event he did not approve of her answer.
“Benjamin knows the whole of it, and he understands my decision.”
Bastard. “He never told you he was proud of you, that he admired your fortitude and integrity? He never told you the scoundrel wasn’t good enough for you in any regard?”
Alice looked away. She scuffed her half boot against the dirt. “He brought me South. He keeps an eye on me.”
He had kept that eye from a distance, when the man by reputation was well able to provide a roof over her head. Ethan made a note to locate those dueling pistols.
“Mr. Durbeyfield thought he was doing me a favor.” Alice turned her head, and Ethan thought she might have
