Harris drew back. “Alas, I’m afraid we’re finished, sweet,” he said, setting her off of him.
“Just like that, you’ll stop, darling?” She wrapped a determined arm about his waist and took him again in her more-than-capable hand.
“Just like that,” he said, effortlessly disentangling her cloying grip from his person.
With a pout, she immediately flopped onto her back, bouncing on the mattress, her breasts bobbing. “You are as cold as they say.”
Colder. But then, being trapped in marriage at eighteen by a mercenary, title-grasping woman and then left a widower at nineteen had that effect upon a fellow.
Harris shoved his right foot through the pantleg of his breeches and then the next.
She rolled onto her stomach and kicked her legs up behind her. “When will you return?”
Never. “I cannot say.” He offered that vaguest of answers meant to put off what flowers and a note would ease the way of.
Scowling, she sat up and swung her legs over the side of the bed. “You’re breaking it off with me, aren’t you?”
Knock, knock, knock.
“I’ll be there shortly,” he called to the impatient servant, sharing in the fellow’s frustration.
“I could have chosen Rothesby,” Lady Sarah said, her tone creeping up a fraction. “He is a duke, but I chose you.”
Bloody hell, she’d not make this parting clean.
Harris grabbed for his shirt and gave it several snaps before tugging it over his head. He joined her at the side of the mattress. “We’ve had a good time, love.”
Lady Sarah immediately twined her arms about his neck. “The best,” she whispered, kissing his neck and suckling that flesh.
There was no best. Hell, there wasn’t even a better.
All these encounters, all these exchanges, were the same. Based on gratification and satiating a physical urging.
Like a cat in heat, she rubbed herself against him. “I let myself get too clingy, didn’t I? They say that is the rule. Never get clingy.”
Harris leaned down and kissed her mouth, once more giving her some of what she sought until a breathy sigh slipped out. “It was good,” he said, infusing a parting into those three words.
This time, as she sank back on her naked haunches, she gave a sigh of resignation grounded in the reality of the end of their agreement. As a rule, he preferred to keep company with those women who had absolutely zero expectations of anything more than a sexual relationship. Every single woman—the innocent, the debutantes, the bluestockings—was to be avoided at all costs.
He’d learned his lesson the hardest of ways.
Harris made quick work of tying his cravat.
“Someday, you are going to meet the woman who thaws your jaded heart and makes you forget your heartbreak,” she said.
His heartbreak.
He stared off as memories slipped in of Clarisse’s cries and screams as they’d grown weaker and weaker. He gave his head a hard shake, thrusting back those memories. There’d been no love between him and his late wife, but the horrors of her passing would haunt him forever.
It still stunned him that the whole of Polite Society had made his marriage into something that it wasn’t.
Harris tugged the chair out from the lady’s vanity and sat to draw his boots on.
But then, the only thing more titillating than gossip to the ton was a perceived aggrieved widower. Everyone wished to craft those fellows into tragic figures in need of saving.
“If you ever change your mind, Ruthven—”
He wouldn’t.
“—and are looking for a bed to warm…” She smoothed a palm over the rumpled satin sheets, her meaning clear.
There was no doubt he’d be looking for a bed to warm, but it would not, however, be hers.
“I thank you, my lady, for these wonderful weeks.”
She’d taken the news of their breakup amicably. Better than he could have expected, given her recent clinginess.
Without a backward look, Harris quit the lady’s private suites and greeted the servant standing at the entry “Stebbins.”
His godmother’s favorite footman sprang to attention.
The young man held over a folded note. “Her Grace has—”
“An emergency?” he asked, taking the sheet, the words on it dashed in a flourishing scrawl that could belong only to a self-possessed woman confident in her rank and place in this world.
They started through the narrow halls.
“Indeed,” Stebbins said as they walked. “I took the liberty of calling for your carriage.”
“Thank—”
“Because you know how Her Grace quite detests being kept waiting.” The other man gave him a pointed look.
The moment Lady Sarah’s butler spied them, the fellow, one arm tucked behind his back, drew the door open.
Harris would wager his favorite mount that the duchess’ favorite footman had also ordered the head of this household to remain at the door, prepared for when Harris and he came so they might make a quicker escape.
Bounding down the steps, Harris headed to his carriage.
A short ride later, he found himself inside a different household.
“What took you, boy?” his godmother, the Duchess of Arlington, demanded as soon as he entered the parlor.
She paused in the middle of snipping away at a peculiar, potted tree.
“I came as soon as I could, dear Duchess,” he greeted. Crossing over, he bent and dropped a kiss on her smooth, impressively unwrinkled-for-her-years cheek.
She grunted, waving her scissors about. “Trying to butter me up.”
“With a woman, he was,” his godmother’s closest and dearest friend called over from around the gossip sheet held up before her face.
Harris swiftly shifted course. “Ah, it is ever a joy to see you, my ladies,” he greeted.
As one, the identical twins, Lady Medeira, the Countess of Cowpen and Lady Astrid, the Countess of Cavendish, told apart by only the favorite turbans they wore, lowered their newspapers a fraction,
