So great was David’s focus on the admission Letty’s honesty had provoked, that her dismay took a moment to penetrate.
“And if I am married?”
“Then we are not lovers.” Letty started to scramble off the bed, as if David were that deceitful, treacherous cleric from her youth, or something worse.
“My wife is dead.”
She stopped, one leg over the side of the bed. “Dead?”
And because he was desperate for Letty to get back under the covers, he added, “Neither she nor the child survived childbirth by more than a few hours.” The words no longer hurt the way they should, which was an entirely new sort of pain.
“They died nearly a decade ago and an ocean away. I’d finished my medical studies as a proper physician, and thought to practice in the New World. I was smitten, not with the lady herself so much, though she was a comely young widow, but with the idea that somebody might stand with me through all of life’s vicissitudes.”
That anybody might stand with him. Fortunately, he’d given up on that bit of foolishness.
Letty resumed her place beside him on the bed. “Lifelong loyalty and fidelity are quaint notions. Others have found them appealing.” She rubbed his bare back, the way a fellow rider might have after a bad fall in the hunt field, to help him regain his wind.
“Though her family hid it from me when I courted her, the lady had a fondness for the bottle, and all my efforts to limit her consumption only provoked her into drinking more. She’d already conceived by the time I’d admitted the magnitude of the problem.”
He managed to sound as if he recited a case history, but this small tragedy still didn’t feel like a case history. With Letty sitting on the bed beside him, he admitted he never wanted it to.
She mashed her nose against his arm. “You were not stupid. You were young, and she was wicked.”
Her misappropriation of his words gave him a reluctant smile. “Wench.”
The hand on his back slowed. “I’m sorry. I’m not sorry you’re free to be in this bed with me now, but I’m sorry you were hurt.”
“My pride was devastated. I was a physician, a healer, and my own child—” A tiny, beautiful scrap of life, who had fought hard for a few hours and then fought no longer.
Letty gently but firmly pushed him onto his back, then straddled him and settled herself over him. The fire burned down, the shadows grew deeper, and David fell asleep in the sweet, silent comfort of Letty’s loving.
***
“Marry me,” David coaxed. His hand was wrapped around Letty’s breast, the warmth of his grasp more comforting than erotic.
“Good morning,” Letty managed, “and not fair, that you have already used the tooth powder.”
“Of course I have. I have company in my bed. One observes the civilities under such circumstances.”
A proposal of marriage was a civility? “Well, let me up, your lordship, so I can observe the civilities and perhaps have a bit of privacy.”
“No privacy for you,” David replied, but he lifted off of her, and when she cast around for his dressing gown, he reached behind him and handed her her own brown velvet instead.
“I sent for some of your things.”
Letty bit back the castigating lecture that welled up, because David looked so… guilty. So vulnerable.
“You have every right to be angry,” he said, tugging the dressing gown closed over her chest. “I should have asked you first, but I gave the order, and didn’t think better of it until the footman had gone. I’m sorry, Letty. I know you asked for my discretion.”
She tied the sash on her own garment, though his was the more luxurious and bore his scent. “Once you ordered me a bath in your chambers, your staff knew we weren’t exactly discussing business up here.”
Though they needed to discuss business, because to all appearances, someone was stealing from him.
“I meant what I said, Letty.”
“About?” She left the bed to find her very own toothbrush by the wash basin.
“I want you to marry me.”
She glanced at him in the mirror over his dressing table, then slipped behind the privacy screen and set about brushing her teeth. Not “Will you please marry me?” but “I want you to marry me.”
Though bended knee and pretty phrasing would have made no difference to her answer.
“I’ll fetch breakfast,” David said, perhaps knowing Letty wouldn’t be pushed into the discussion he apparently meant to have. When he’d left, Letty tended to her more personal needs and set about rebraiding her hair.
What on earth had got into David now, that he was talking about marriage? For God’s sake, it would never do, never do at all, and Letty saw with brutal clarity that she was going to have to hurt him even more than was inevitable. And worse yet, as much as she was going to hurt him, she was going to hurt herself more.
If Letty married David Worthington, Olivia would make good on every one of her threats, Daniel’s prospects with the church would be in ruins, and little Danny would suffer for the rest of his life—to say nothing of the mischief Olivia might wreak even on a viscount’s good name.
By the time David reappeared with breakfast, Letty had decided on an air of amused curiosity.
“Is there a reason you’re proposing now?” Letty asked, helping herself to a slice of buttered toast when David had seated her at a table near the window.
“Because I want to marry you,” he replied, his own breakfast apparently of no moment to him. “You are a vicar’s daughter, after all, Letty. It isn’t as if you were whelped in Seven Dials.”
And girls who were born in the slums didn’t deserve pretty proposals on that basis alone?
“I am a whore, David, and you are a wealthy viscount. We would never be received, and we will not suit.” Despite how convincing his little game had been, they would never suit.
He sat back, no longer the lover, but once again the shrewd, aristocratic negotiator. “We spent all night in that bed, suiting marvelously. I rather hope we suit some more in the near future. I don’t care two farthings for being received at court, and you do care for me, so what is the problem?”
Letty set down her toast and busied herself with the tea service—antique Sevres of course, the colors exactly matching his eyes. Amused curiosity was insupportable. “That was sex, and you know it.”
“It was more than sex, and you know it.”
She did. Even in her relative inexperience, she knew what had passed between them had been different. Special, God help them both.
“Please, can we not argue about this? I have reasons, David…” What plausible lie could she manufacture? What version of the truth wouldn’t have him galloping off to tilt her windmills into submission?
He eyed her teacup, which shook minutely in her hand. “What reasons, Letty?”
“There are things you don’t know about me,” she said, a safe enough truth. “And if you did, you would not be making this very generous, rash, unthinkable proposal.”
She managed a sip of tea, realized she’d forgotten to add sugar, and set it aside.
He looked, if anything, more determined. “Are you married then, Letty?”
“I am not now, nor have I ever been married,” she said, adding a silent thank God. Oh, there had been pressure on her to marry—very, very considerable pressure.
“Is it that you fear you could not bear me an heir?” he asked, a hint of the physician creeping into his eyes. “My opinion is knowledgeable, Letty, and I can assure you I’ve found no signs of problems with your reproductive health.”
This from the very fellow who’d suggested she might be barren? “Were you examining me?”
“Of course not.” He added cream and sugar to her tea, then poured himself a cup as well, and his hands shook not at all. “But I notice things, Letty, like the fact that all your parts are working, in the right location, and of the proper dimensions—and I observe with all modesty mine are as well. There is every likelihood we would have children—scads of them, in fact.”
Letty rose abruptly, lest she smash her teacup. She could not, could not allow her imagination to stray off into thoughts of what it would be like to marry David, to have his child. A single child, much less scads of children.
The sitting-room window overlooked a snowy back garden. All was bright and clean under new-fallen snow and sparkling morning sun, while inside Letty’s heart, all was gray, bleak, and dirty.
David’s arms slipped around her from behind.
“I do not want to hurt you, but you must see that I am not a suitable wife for you. For the sake of your children, David, you shall put this notion from your head.”
She sensed the shock that coursed through him at her words. He would understand, having been raised as a bastard, what scandal could do to a child’s world.
“I am disgraced, David,” she reminded him. “I have been seen at your establishment by many, many titled gentlemen. I may not have spread my legs for them, but that detail will not resurrect my good name.”
Nothing would resurrect her good name, but his good name was still hers to protect.
“Are you running away, Letty Banks? Are you saying my attentions were distasteful to you, and that I must let you go now?” She could feel anger boiling through him, but something else, too, something she was loath to hear in his voice—bewilderment.
“I’m not asking you to end our association. I am asking that you drop this notion of marrying me. In fact, I insist on it.” She had the power to insist because he’d handed it to her willingly, though now she wished he had not.
“You insist because you have been at The Pleasure House, or because of these things I do not know?”
Damn him, his tactical mind, and his gentle, unbreakable embrace. “Both.”
He stroked a hand over her hair. “I know more than you think I do, trust me.”
David Worthington knew entirely too much about too many things, but not everything.
“Perhaps you do. That doesn’t change the fact that sooner or later, you, or our children, would resent me and resent my past. When you marry, your wife must be above reproach in every way.”
“My sister, the marchioness, is a bastard,” he said, his hand on her hair heartbreakingly gentle. “Heathgate married her, not knowing if it was possible to whitewash that. The truth of Astrid’s birth was known to Greymoor when he insisted on making her his countess. Douglas had to face down the formidable Duke of Moreland to win Gwen’s hand. We are not saints, Letty.”
“And all of those secrets,” Letty replied, “are buried beneath the lives of their children. They could explode at any point, and the children would be among those who suffer. You know this, David. You’ve lived with the consequences of parental missteps, allowed them to separate you from your sisters, watched your mother suffer for them. You of all men understand my concern.”
Apparently the vicar’s daughter could deliver a convincing sermon. David turned her in his arms and held her while an eddy of cold air trickled across her bare feet.
“Stay here today,” he said. “I have matters to see to, but they won’t take me all day, and I would like it were you to remain here.”
His quiet suggestion was a strategic move, as if he knew she would not refuse him this request when she had just refused something of much greater moment. A ruthless streak, indeed…
“And what am I supposed to be doing,” she asked, looping her arms around his waist, “while you are off on the King’s business?”
“I have a well-stocked library, and you brought your ledgers with you. You can read, you can work on the ledgers, you can keep me company, or you can soak in your bath all morning. Or perhaps you’d like to visit the shops and indulge in a few feminine fripperies. Have you seen the Menagerie?”
“I have not.” Nor would she, with him, for seeing the sights was as public as attending the theatre together. “When one’s livelihood is in question, touring the sights doesn’t rate very high.” Then too, she’d no desire to gawk at caged animals, regardless of their species or gender.
And she really should spend time with the ledgers, because something was off about The Pleasure House’s accounting.
He kissed her cheek, bringing Letty a whiff of tooth powder and sandalwood. “And when your livelihood wasn’t in question?”
“If I ever reached a point where I felt all the work to be done was taken care of, I might like to see Richmond gardens, but until that day…”
“Your education,” David said, kissing her forehead, “has been neglected. Recreation is important, Letty, as is appeasing one’s curiosity, and getting out of ruts from time to time. You’ll find some of your clothing hanging in the wardrobe in the dressing room. When you’re dressed, meet me in the library.”
He stepped away and disappeared into the dressing room himself, and Letty had the sense of a fairy tale coming to its necessary, if not ideal, conclusion. With the quickness characteristic of him—when not in bed—David was moving into his day, their interlude in his bedroom taking its place under the heading “recreation,” no doubt.
Exactly where it should be.
When she arrived to the library, David was sitting at his big desk, impeccably attired in a gentleman’s informal day wear.
“Do you use a valet?”
“On occasion, but seldom in the mornings,” David said without looking up from his reading. Letty stood a few feet from him, feeling more than a little out of place.
David held out an arm, still without looking up from his reading. “Come here.”
Reluctantly, Letty stepped to his side, much of her joy in the past twenty-four hours draining from her. Marry me. Come here. Meet me in the library.
Their interlude hadn’t been recreation. She was the recreation.
David looked up from his reading and wrapped his arm around Letty’s waist.
“This morning, I will be busy. First, Thomas will come and harangue me about various business matters, ordering me to do this and that, and see to the other. He is quite the martinet, is Mr. Jennings. Then I will see to my correspondence until luncheon, which is usually served at one of the clock. I have two social calls to make this afternoon, between which I will ride in the park, but I should be back here by four of the clock to take tea with you.”
His recitation of the day’s schedule was rapid-fire, his diction precise. He had an empire to run, and run it he did. If he moved at this pace every day, and often stayed late at The Pleasure House, when did he sleep? When did he see his many nieces and nephews? When did he make use of this impressive library?
And why did Letty abruptly feel as if some of the tears aching in her throat should be for him?
“So what, Letty Banks, would you like to do this day?” he asked, pulling her onto his lap.
She’d like to marry him, of course.
“I would like to spend the morning at my house, and do some shopping this afternoon. I also have mending—Monday is for mending—though I can meet you for tea, if you like.”
The mending would keep, or Fanny could see to it—the woman had done little enough since making plans to leave Letty’s household—though stitching together what had torn was an oddly soothing undertaking.
“You don’t want to laze about naked in my chambers all day, on the off chance that I might enjoy your favors rather than the occasional cup of tea?” David nuzzled her breast, but when Letty made no reply, he stopped.
“Letty, I was teasing.”
“Were you?”
“Mostly.” He rested his brow against the fullness of her breast. “I am new to this… situation, just as you are. Be patient with me, Letty, please?”
Had any man, ever, asked for her patience?
“You would have me set up in a tidy little house in a quiet neighborhood. All my bills sent to you, and my schedule always open for your pleasure?”
And what was wrong with her, that she hadn’t allowed it?
“If asked a year ago,” he replied, sitting back, “I might have said that is exactly what I wanted from a mistress. I wanted a pleasant convenience and value for my coin. But you are not my mistress, are you?”
“No. I am not.”
And she could not be his wife, which left a vast, cold desert of unfulfilled wishes and frustrated longing between them.
“I want as much as you are willing to give me, on your terms and at your convenience. This is an affair, Letty, not an arrangement. By your order, it cannot yet be more.”
“Yet?”
“You have refused my suit,” David said, dropping his arms from around her. “I do not give up easily on my objectives.”
“I am not an objective.” Not a convenience, not a wife. What on earth was he doing with her?
He stroked a hand along her cheek. “You are so serious. We are involved for the sake of mutual pleasure. If you want to spend the day at your house, then we’ll have the carriage brought ’round, and I’ll see you at four. It needn’t be complicated.”
“A plain coach.” A sop to her dignity. “And I will see you at five.” She’d see to her mending, knowing it was a kind of penance imposed by the vicar’s daughter on the woman who would never be anybody’s wife.
“I’ll wait tea for you. And know that you will be distracting me as mightily with your absence as you do with your presence.”
He smiled at her, a smile Letty had rarely seen from him: sweet, warm, quietly radiant. It filled her with a sense of well-being, of connection to him, and contentment. This smile wasn’t for show, but was instead a genuine reflection of his private joy.
“I’ll be thinking of you as well.”
And she did think of him as she went about the mundane tasks of keeping her rented house in usable condition, as she took a solitary luncheon in her own kitchen, and as she patrolled the shops, making very few purchases but satisfied with what she’d bought. By the time she returned to her house and took up her mending, she was tired—she and David had kept each other up late the previous night, and he’d been awake early, eager to get to his library and the work that awaited him there.
As David’s unmarked coach rumbled through the streets back toward his town house, Letty came to the realization that her emotions—uncertainty of his regard, a sense of being neglected simply because he had other matters to deal with, resentment of his other responsibilities, and unwillingness to surrender her day to him—they were old feelings, familiar to her from her childhood.
At the vicarage, her father and mother had always been available to members of the congregation, regardless of the day or the hour. The vicar’s children understood that service to God could not wait for a child’s nightmares to be comforted or her artwork to be admired.
How odd, that a viscount’s unpaid mistress and a vicar’s daughter should have that much in common.
***
When Letty joined David in the library, he took foolish satisfaction from the fact that she was twelve minutes early.
“I’ve missed you, Letty-love.” And those were foolish words, also true. He drew her against him, wondering if she’d notice he’d doubled the number of roses placed about his house.
“You’ve had a busy day, I’m sure.”
Not the words he’d wanted to hear, though she seemed in no hurry to leave his embrace; but then, “I’ve decided to accept your proposal” wasn’t a likely greeting.
“I had good news today.” And because he’d had no one, not even Jennings to share his news with, David kept his arms around Letty, lest she see the glee in his eyes. “A ship I’d thought lost came into port today, six weeks late. The captain was blown off course in a storm, and laid over in some obscure little bay to make repairs.”
“That is good news indeed,” Letty said, hugging him gently. “You must be especially grateful, having weathered storms at sea, and knowing how dangerous they can be.”
“I am.” Though ebullience figured into his emotions, too, as did exultation and profound relief. She’d put her finger on a truth: all of his commercial endeavors earned his attention, but the seagoing vessels held a place in his heart that harked back to the terror and wonder of his adolescence. “Are you falling asleep, my dear?”
“I’m enjoying a nice, cozy hug. They come my way with lamentable infrequency.”
“I’ll speak to your employer about remedying that oversight.”
She pulled back and frowned up at him. “You’re jesting. I’m never certain with you.”
“And you’re tired. I kept you up last night.” Though he himself did not feel tired, he felt… pleased to see her. “Shall we sit? I don’t like the idea that you’re uncertain with me.”
And yet, he liked that she’d admit as much.
Letty allowed him to walk her over to the sofa, but when they sat, she took a place a good two feet away from him. “My uncertainty isn’t something you can address.”
“How can you say such a thing when—” A knock interrupted his rejoinder, which was a good thing. Faint heart might not win the fair maid, but lecturing her was likely to send the lady pelting for the door.
David waved off the footman who’d wheeled in the tea cart, and set the tray down on the low table before the hearth. “You’ll pour out?”
“Of course. Your staff takes excellent care of you.”
The tray sported more than tea fixings and a few pieces of shortbread, David’s usual late-afternoon fare. Small sandwiches—no crust—crisp apple slices, and pretty little frosted tea cakes graced the platter—silver, rather than the everyday Sevres.
Downstairs was rallying to the lady’s cause—or perhaps to David’s.
“They’re paid to take good care of me,” David said, taking a seat closer to her. “Two sandwiches, please, but I’ll hold off on the cakes.” The sight of her fixing him tea soothed something in him, not an anxiety so much as a tension.
She passed him a plate, and poured herself a cup, holding it under her nose for a moment before sipping. “Even your tea is difficult to decipher.”
“It’s a blend. I went on a gunpowder spree for a while, but this suits me better in cold weather. Am I difficult to decipher, Letty?”
“In some things.”
She took a sip of her tea, and because her expression suggested she was truly savoring it, David savored the pleasure of watching her.
“When you greeted me, for example,” she said, “I was somewhat at a loss.”
He’d hugged her, plain and simple, though the pleasure of it had been neither plain nor simple. “That was complicated?”
She set her teacup down and picked up a sandwich, but didn’t eat it. “You held me, and I could not tell…”
“I was glad to see you.” Surely that had been obvious?
The sandwich went back on her plate. “But were you in a state of inchoate arousal? I felt… you, but I haven’t the experience to know what contours are consistent with—that is, whether even in an unaroused condition, a man might be…”
David had never had occasion to study a woman’s blush so minutely. Color rose up Letty’s neck and washed over her features and even her ears.
“Letty, would you oblige me for a moment?”
“Of course.”
He drew her to her feet and wrapped his arms around her, bringing her flush against his body. “I’m not now aroused. This is what I feel like when I’m merely glad to see you and not anticipating erotic pleasure. Any more questions?”
She ducked her heated face against his neck. “A madam would have known. Any woman of experience would have known.”
A wife would have known, at least by the end of the first week of marriage.
“Not unless she and I were regular partners.” He didn’t turn loose of her, but rather, nuzzled her ear. “For the past year, I have found myself possessed of significant self-restraint where the ladies are concerned, a nearly alarming amount of self-restraint. If you need to sleep tonight, then sleep you shall.”
He allowed her to resume her place on the sofa, though the source of her upset was… endearing. Touching, even, and a bit silly. Men could not tell if women were aroused under any but the most intimate circumstances, and yet, the species survived.
She passed him his plate, which still sported a sandwich and, now, a single tea cake. “You’ve been self-restrained with women or indifferent?”
A bite of sandwich allowed him a moment to ponder the distinction. “At some point, excesses of self-restraint can feel like indifference.” Or boredom?
Letty’s blush faded, though she still didn’t pick up her plate. “Caution, then. After your sister nearly died delivering twins, you became cautious. Would you like more tea?”
He held out his cup, and yet, Letty had served him another insight: Felicity’s harrowing delivery of the twins had affected him, and not in any positive sense.
“Eat, Letty-love. I didn’t tell you about the emeralds.”
She took a nibble of her sandwich, and even that—the plainest food David’s kitchen could muster—seemed to please her tremendously. This cozy tea tray was different from the first one they’d shared, and yet, not different enough.
“What emeralds?”
“If my ships are traversing the tropics, I send them out with extra stores of netting.”
She paused between bites. “And you will tell me why?”
“Infants, in particular, seem to do better if their beds are under netting. They get fewer fevers, and that is a profound advantage—it also keep the mosquitoes away.”
The library had never struck him as a cozy room, but rather, as the place he worked. Books were found here, and a sizable desk, upon which sat the largest wax jack in the house. The walls held art—art was supposed to go on walls—but the space had had no sense of… haven to it, until Letty had served him tea here.
“What has the netting to do with… emeralds, did you say?”
She was more concerned with the tea tray than with jewels, and more concerned with his day than the tea tray.
What man wouldn’t love—
David jammed the tea cake into his mouth, knowing it was chocolate and raspberry, not tasting either flavor.
Something about some gems…
“Emeralds, a bag of emeralds, and they appear to be excellent quality. My captain left some netting behind at this obscure little bay, as a token of his thanks for the hospitality. Apparently, it’s the custom in that region to repay a token with a token.”
“And your token was a bag of emeralds?”
“Enough to make every tar on that ship comfortable into a ripe old age.”
She dusted crumbs from her fingers, poured herself a second cup of tea, and studied him. “You enjoyed the practice of medicine, didn’t you?”
The human body, man might eventually understand; the mind of woman, never. “How do you reach that conclusion?”
Letty passed him a second tea cake and kissed his cheek. “Your secret is safe with me, David. I saw you with Portia, and I can promise you, there isn’t another ship owner in all the realm who’s sending his ships out with extra stores of netting for purposes of goodwill with the locals. Emeralds are worth more than rubies, aren’t they?”
“More, even, than diamonds.” He munched his second tea cake, sweetness and a hint of lemon gracing his tongue. Her question brought to mind a line from Proverbs: She is more precious than rubies: and all the things thou canst desire are not to be compared unto her.
“Would you like another sandwich?”
“No, thank you.” He wanted simply to sit with her as the day slid into darkness, to bask in her company, and that would not do. “If you don’t object, I have reading to do. You’re welcome to grab a nap while I finish up down here.”
“And then I won’t be able to sleep tonight,” she said, pushing the tea tray to the side. “Do your reading. I’ve brought work.”
Because he employed a number of fallen women, David could conclude with some confidence that not another such lady in all of London would turn to work and tell him to get back to his reading. Letty’s counterparts at The Pleasure House would have pouted, flounced, fumed, tantrumed, and otherwise extracted vengeance for a man’s neglect.
Letty produced a cloth bag—she’d brought it in with her apparently, and he had been too busy greeting her to notice.
Too busy hugging her.
He ran his hand over a patchwork of blue and brown velvet. “Pretty bag.”
“You see here the mortal remains of the curtains in my father’s study,” she said, drawing out an embroidery hoop. “Sun is hard on velvet, but few fabrics will check a draft or a sunbeam as effectively.”
Velvet blocked air and light, in other words, and she’d kept a version of those curtains as a memento. Her stitchery, by contrast, was full of colors.
“My mother used to embroider flowers on everything,” David said, though he’d forgotten this about her. “Handkerchiefs, pillowcases, my shirts. Her flowers were not as delicate as yours.” He touched a rose that shimmered as if illuminated by real sunbeams. “Will you embroider a handkerchief for me?”
She poked the needle up in the middle of a pale pink bud, gilding its edges with golden thread. “Of course. Is your mother’s love of flowers the reason you keep flowers here in your house?”
Letty had bent her head near her hoop, and she drew the needle up and down, up and down, in a rhythm so fundamentally feminine David might have been watching a Renaissance tapestry come to life. When he didn’t answer her question, she paused and studied her initial efforts.
“I thought you had reading to do?”
“I do.”
And yet even when David moved to his desk and picked up his pamphlet, he merely held it and watched her making tiny stitches with golden thread.
Letty Banks kept handing him pieces of himself, little insights, small appreciations, connections that he, in his headlong, self-important sprint through life had missed. Of course the flowers were a tribute to his mother; of course he had enjoyed the practice of medicine; of course Felicity’s difficult delivery had affected him deeply…
“I want to make love to you,” he said quietly. “Now.”
Letty looked up at him again, and then, without a word, put down her embroidery hoop and rose. She didn’t wait for his escort; instead, she preceded him up the stairs, walked into his bedroom, and took off her shoes and stockings. David followed her a moment later, and taking his cue from her, also started disrobing.
He wasn’t particularly aroused, though he was aroused enough. He knew only that he wanted closeness with Letty, significant closeness, and he hadn’t any means other than his body to bring this about.
This joining was also erotically unremarkable. Again, they kissed, he mounted her, and then eased into her body. She was ready for him, her body welcoming, her hands roaming his skin with eager curiosity. She moved with him, let him set up a slow, lazy rhythm, and didn’t seem to need anything more than him, moving inside her.
He held back, determined to savor the lovemaking, the sound of Letty’s sighs, the feel of her mouth on his skin. And he sensed that she comprehended his mood, his need to join with her, for her caresses were easy, her touch light.
She comforted him in a way he hadn’t realized he needed comforting.
He’d thought himself beyond infatuations, though surely, this upwelling of tenderness toward her could be only that?
Her caresses became lavishly caring, imbued with tactile lyricism as she stroked him everywhere, as if she were unwilling to lift her hands from his flesh. Her body hummed with the silent pleasure of loving him, of being loved by him, and David’s awareness of where he stopped and she started, blurred.
He moved languidly in her, sending a sweet, relaxed pleasure through his body, one slow, deep thrust at time. His hands brushed at her forehead and then into her hair; his mouth brushed over her features. Every caress, every undulation of his hips, every kiss they shared surrendered into her keeping some burden he’d felt but never named.
She cared for him. She said it in her sighs and caresses as clearly as if she’d printed it in The Times, but she said it as a woman would. Such tenderness could come only from the heart, from the soul. From the good places…
“Elizabeth,” he whispered, moving yet more deeply inside her. “My sweet Elizabeth…”
He uttered her name, the name she’d trusted to him alone, and felt her desire take flight. The pleasure shimmered through her, through him, and back again, in endless cycles of satisfaction and sentiment. He took her with him into a place of light, oneness, and communion, and held her there, as she held him.
Resting on his forearms above her, David gradually returned to awareness of his surroundings. Something numinous had happened to him in Letty’s arms. Something indescribable, transcendent, and unprecedented.
Something he was wise enough to accept without attempting to analyze, label, or take apart. But this loving left him feeling as if all of his considerable sexual experience put together was so much folly, compared to what he could share with Elizabeth Temperance Banks.
***
Letty dragged her hands through the silky abundance of David’s hair, his undone queue a metaphor for her emotions.
“You have the sweetest touch,” he said, resting his cheek against her shoulder.
“And you are the sweetest man.” She turned her face to kiss his cheek. “I never want to leave your bed.” Or his embrace, or the ambit of his soft, private smile.
How had she landed in such trouble so quickly?
He inflicted that particular smile on her, the one that made her insides hop about like robins at a puddle on the first spring day. “The sentiment is mutual, my love, but I forgot to set dinner back, so we will shortly be dining on cold victuals if somebody doesn’t bestir himself.”
My love. That was part of her trouble right there. “Lucky me, I do not qualify as a himself.”
“Letty?” He brushed her hair back, and studied her with beautiful, serious eyes. “You are… special to me.” He held her gaze for only a moment before leaving the bed and moving to the other room.
“And you are special to me, too,” Letty murmured to the empty room.
Special was likely a sophisticated man’s way of warning her that he might care for her, but he was not smitten. Prudent people did not become smitten, and for all her mistakes—because of her mistakes—Letty had thought of herself as prudent.
She sat up and found her dressing gown at the foot of the bed. As she crossed the room, she caught a glimpse of herself in David’s dressing mirror and was astounded at what she saw.
Her eyes were luminous, her hair falling around her in soft waves. Her skin glowed, and her smile was secret, knowing, and altogether feminine. Her father would have said she looked wicked, and her father would have been wrong.
This is how David sees me? Does he ever see himself as I see him?
For long moments, she regarded the woman in the mirror, amazed at the beauty, grace, and mystery she saw in her reflection.
And observing her folly was David, propped against the doorjamb and smiling faintly. “Her name is Elizabeth Banks. She is a woman more precious than rubies.”
How easily he flirted. “More precious than netting?”
“More precious than a good meal after a fantastic loving,” David replied. “But only just, so get in here and let me feed you.”
To Letty’s amazement, the mood didn’t dissipate when they left the bed. It lightened, but the tenderness and regard still hummed between them as they dined in his sitting room. Between one bite of trifle and the next, Letty had the thought: this is the kind of harmony and closeness in which children should be conceived.
She choked on her sweet, which provoked David into whacking at her back, then pressing a glass of wine into her hand.
“Stop fussing, Dr. Worthington.”
Her form of address startled him into retreating to his side of the table. “My apologies. Perhaps you’d like more wine.”
She’d like him beside her throughout the meal, throughout the day, throughout…
“So what,” Letty asked between more bites of trifle, “did your treatise have to say about childbed fever?”
He watched her chew the way a new mother watched her firstborn fall asleep on a winter night. “The topic isn’t appetizing, Letty.”
“I asked because I am curious, but if it will put you off your feed, then I can ask later. Will you finish this for me, please?”
He accepted the remains of her dessert. “The author’s suspicion is that the illness is preventable, if proper precautions are taken.” Before her dessert was gone, he was summarizing theory and giving examples of practice, complete with proper Latin terms and medical phrases.
“You should hear yourself,” Letty said, recalling the bumbling attentions she’d endured from Little Weldon’s medical practitioners. “One would think you were rooting for your team at a cricket match, you’re so convinced of your position.”
David used a tiny spoon to stir the salt in the cellar, as if stirring tea leaves. “I know I get carried away, but people die over this—women die—and when the mother is gone, the newborn stands little chance of surviving without her. Most families don’t have the luxury of wet nurses and nannies, and endless supplies of clean nappies. This topic matters.”
“It does, and it matters to you.”
“I have endless respect,” he informed the salt, “for women, you know.”
Letty regarded him patiently, rather than mention that owning a brothel might contradict his words, because in some sense, he was speaking the truth.
“When Felicity had such difficulty with the twins, I was tempted to take Heathgate to task,” David went on. “A woman doesn’t get herself pregnant—not once in recorded history has a woman impregnated herself—and so I blamed him. He and Greymoor have both indicated clearly, though, that while they are capable of restraint, their wives are not keen on it. My sisters are cursed with bravery and faith in life, beyond what I could muster in their circumstances.”
How that must bewilder him. “And,” Letty said, taking the salt spoon from him and setting it aside, “they are both carrying again. You are very worried about them.” Worse yet, he did not know how to share his worries in any way that would lessen them. Merciful heavens, Letty knew how that felt.
David looked away, toward the fire blazing merrily in the hearth. “Felicity especially, though Astrid, being the more diminutive, could also have difficulties.”
“So who is attending them?”
He turned a thoughtful gaze on her. “I don’t know.”
“I’d find out, if I were you.” Letty helped herself to a spoonful of the remaining trifle. “If you aren’t satisfied, then suggest someone you have faith in. This is too important, David, and your family looks to you for guidance in this area. So guide them.”
“As simple as that?”
He’d lost a wife and child; he probably hadn’t shared that with his family either. “It is simple,” she admonished him as she passed him a spoonful of dessert. “You know what you suffered when your sister had difficulties. Imagine what her husband and children would suffer were she to die. They will listen to you, David, and you are in a position to choose more wisely than they can.”
“And when”—he took the bite from the spoon Letty held—“did you become an expert on me and my abilities?”
Letty put the empty spoon down. “You chose to read a medical treatise rather than nap with me.”
“I’ll talk to Heathgate,” David said, “and Greymoor, and Amery.”