She’d been sharing a chaise longue with Millie and Mrs. Queensberry, who greeted Hastings with great cordiality, then, as if by conspiracy, both rose to mingle elsewhere in the room.
Hastings sat down and braced his arm along the back of the chaise, quite effectively letting it be known he did not want anyone else to join them.
“You look frustrated, Miss Fitzhugh.” He lowered his voice. “Has your bed been empty of late?”
He knew very well she’d been watched more closely than prices on the stock exchange. She couldn’t smuggle a hamster into her bed, let alone a man.
“You look anemic, Hastings,” she said. “Have you been leaving the belles of England breathlessly unsatisfied again?”
He grinned. “Ah, so you know what it is like to be breathlessly unsatisfied. I expected as little from Andrew Martin.”
Her tone was pointed. “As little as you expect from yourself, no doubt.”
He sighed exaggeratedly. “Miss Fitzhugh, you disparage me so, when I’ve only ever sung your praises.”
“Well, we all do what we must,” she said with sweet venom.
He didn’t reply—not in words, at least.
The vast majority of the time, she dismissed him without a second thought. But then he’d gaze upon her with that slight smile about his lips and a hundred dirty thoughts on his mind, and she’d find herself fighting something that came close to being butterflies in her stomach.
He’d rowed for Eton and Oxford and still possessed that powerful rower’s physique. The night he’d confronted her about her affair, when she’d allowed him to press her into a wall and kiss her, she’d felt his strength and muscularity all too clearly.
“I’m looking for a publisher,” he said abruptly.
She had to yank herself out of the memory of their midnight kiss. “I didn’t know you were literate.”
He tsked. “My dear Miss Fitzhugh, were Byron to come back to life today, he’d take a club to his good foot, out of jealousy of my brilliance.”
She had a horrible thought. “Please don’t tell me you write verse.”
“Good gracious, no. I’m a novelist.”
She breathed a sigh of relief. “I do not publish fiction.”
He was undeterred. “Then consider it a memoir.”
“I fail to see what you have done in your life that is worth setting down in print.”
“Did I not mention that it is an erotic novel—or an erotic memoir, as it may be?”
“And you think that’s something suitable for me to publish?”
“Why not? You need books that sell, to subsidize Mr. Martin’s histories.”
“That does not mean I am willing to stamp the name of my firm on pornography.”
He leaned back, a look of mock consternation on his face. “My dear Miss Fitzhugh, everything that arouses you is not pornography.”
Something hot swept over her. Ire, yes—but perhaps not entirely. She leaned in toward him, making sure she dipped her chest enough to give him a straight line of sight down her décolletage, and whispered, “You are wrong, Hastings. It is only pornography that arouses me.”
As his eyes widened in surprise, she rose, swept aside the skirts of her dress, and left him on the chaise longue by himself.
May I have a moment of your time?” asked Fitz.
Helena had gone to her room the moment they’d returned. Fitz’s wife, after speaking to their housekeeper, had also started up the stairs.
She turned around. “Certainly, my lord.”
He liked her slightly arch tone. When they first married, he’d thought her as bland as water, whereas Isabelle had been more intoxicating than the finest whisky. But he’d since come to realize that his wife possessed a dry wit, a quick mind, and an ironic view of the world.
“Do you suppose it has ever occurred to Hastings,” she asked, as she descended the steps, “that cynical mockery might not be the best way to court our Helena?”
Pearls and diamonds gleamed in her hair: His countess was not at all averse to some glamour in the evening. “I dare say it occurs to him daily, but he is too proud to alter his approach.”
She ran the house from her sitting room one floor above. But when they received callers on matters of business, or when they had something to discuss, they always used his study.
She sat down in her customary chair on the opposite side of his desk and opened her fan, a confection of black lace over tortoise shell slats. Her taste in personal adornment sometimes surprised him—the fan was more than a little seductive. But he could hardly fault her for enlivening her usually prim wardrobe with an unexpected accessory or two.
She ran a gloved finger across the slats. “You want to see me about Mrs. Englewood?”
Of course she’d have guessed. “Yes.”
Did her fan tremble? He couldn’t tell, for she closed it in a crisp motion and laid it across her lap. “So you plan to reestablish old ties?”
He must have been quite transparent. “We would like to.”
She tilted her face toward him and smiled slightly. “I am glad for you. It was terrible that the two of you had to be apart for so long.”
“About our pact—” he began.
“Don’t worry about it. The last thing I want is to come between you and Mrs. Englewood.”
“You misunderstood what I was about to say: I am not embarking on an affair with Mrs. Englewood—not merely an affair, in any case. It will be a permanent arrangement and I intend to be her faithful companion.”
“I did not misunderstand anything,” she said quietly. “I expected no less of you. And I wish the two of you all the best.”
Something in her sympathetic agreement made him ache to hold her. She rarely came across as lonely, but now she did.
“Before Mrs. Englewood and I begin our arrangement, I intend to honor our pact first.”
The fan slid from her fingers and hit the floor with a hard thud. “What do you mean by honoring it first?”
He retrieved the fan and handed it back to her. “It would be a dereliction of duty on my part otherwise. It also wouldn’t be fair to you and your family—for me to accept this great fortune and then not even try to give you a son to inherit the title.”
Her usual keenness seemed to have deserted her. “You want to give me a son,” she echoed slowly.
“It’s only fair.”
“But we don’t know how long it would take for me to produce an heir. You might have to wait for an indefinite period of time.” She came to her feet. Her voice rose two octaves. “What if I am infertile? What if I am one of those women meant only to have daughters? What if—”
She broke off in midsentence, as if realizing that she was reacting in a most uncharacteristic manner. He was transfixed: He hadn’t seen her display this much emotion since their honeymoon—and then it had been because he’d been in danger of ruining both his health and his mind.
She swallowed. “My assessment of the matter differs from yours.” Her voice was once again modulated—under control. “I understand perfectly that your arrangement is to be a lasting one and I applaud it. And I think that after all the years that have gone by, you should not waste any more time.”
An appalling realization stole upon him: She didn’t want him to touch her. Even with their marriage transformed by friendship and affection, the thought of sleeping with him still upset her as much as it had when she’d first proposed their pact.
“It won’t be very long,” he said. “Six months. It doesn’t matter whether you conceive or not and it doesn’t matter whether the child is a boy or a girclass="underline" six months and the rest is the will of God.”