29. Hardness. Softness. Contrariness.

29

Hardness. Softness. Contrariness.

He might have been rotten to her earlier—when all she sought was to grant relief from his aching, contracting muscles—but Aphrodite could not imagine being rotten right back. So, after a retreat of a couple hours, with energetic dog and restful book, she busied herself in the kitchen that afternoon, her efforts eased by the bounty she had procured that morning as well as the surprising extent of the butcher’s delivery Richard had told her about.

Nay, not Richard. Lord Warrick. If he was going to yell at her for no apparent reason, then she refused to have any warm feelings toward him.

But he did bid you to return and apologize.

She snorted, as though to stifle the small voice of reason.

Mercury shuffled closer, his nose—determined to know what she was about—bringing his mouth closer than she wished.

“Move aside, young man.” She used her lower leg to nudge him away from where she sliced a good-sized roast before adding it to the already waiting vegetables. “You shall get yours when we get ours.”

Richar Lord Warrick.

She hadn’t seen him for hours.

You mean not since you touched him and stroked him and your insides became all heavy and damp and ? —

She picked up the remaining hunk of roast and slammed it back on the counter. Glanced at the vegetables already cubed and sitting in the kettle, above the fire she’d blazed in the firebox.

No matter that they did not need another, she foraged a parsnip and two more carrots—the biggest ones she could find—rinsed off any dirt and retrieved a fresh knife.

Chop. Chop. Chop-chop-chopchopchop!

The rough actions might not be making her feel any better, but the sound of the blade thwacking into the block beneath was satisfying indeed.

She wanted to stay hurt. Frustrated with him. She wanted not to care how hard, how painfully he had landed on the floor beside the music bench. She wanted to stop lov— liking him.

Needed to stop liking him. Because doing so made her forget herself.

But she could not seem to forget anything about him… Nor about the letters she had glimpsed so recently.

Mistress? Good God, man…to suggest I gain a mistress for my dagger? And as a treatment to heal that portion of my anatomy?

I can scarce believe you would put that notion so plainly onto the page and into my head. For shame! What would your lady wife think should she know you had written thus?

Bidding me to find a mistress to handle—my handle?

There had been more. Enough for Aphrodite to grasp the suggestion hadn’t been as tawdry as it seemed.

For her uncle’s prescripts were helping. According to the overheard conversation between Lord Redford and his wife (a rare one of hers and not one conveyed by Harri), Lord Warrick had managed to regain some sensation in his lower limbs and now worked to increase their strength. Something she now had her own, visible, confirmation of.

But a lord needed to produce an heir. Some might say ’twas their reason for existing.

And without a working “dagger”, a man couldn’t very well sire such.

Since spying that wretched, thought-provoking letter, she had wavered like the wind: ought she wash her eyes out with soap or pen and post a response posthaste, daring to offer her hands to handle his handle?

And now she was here, with him and no one had any inkling.

You could offer to help him now.

Help… How?

Rub his legs. And things in between.

The knife clattered from her fingers and the back of her hand hit her lips.

Shush!

Tempting, is it not?

Vastly so. But not something she could, despite desires to the contrary, offer so very blatantly.

But when he shuffled in moments later, surprising her with both his presence as well as, “Miss Primrose, I am gladdened to see you downstairs again, and after my unpardonable overboiling. My sincere apologies for that. May I assist your efforts with dinner?”

“What of the waters?” The question was out before she thought it through.

He gained the nearest chair and took his seat with a thump and a frown. “What of them?”

“You mentioned taking them upon my arrival. Did you find them beneficial?”

“I would not know. I have not taken them.”

“Why ever not? You’ve been here over a sennight. I would have thought…” She allowed her words to falter when he stiffened, glowered.

“Have you forgotten? Abandoned by your dear uncle to mind his bitc—his dog . And after he dismissed my servants too. Not exactly in a position to escort myself from here full into town.”

“I’m sure we could manage it together.” As though to mock the very notion, the fire burning behind her shot sparks when one log crumpled. She jumped forward, ignoring the slow-to-boil kettle behind her as his dark brows flew skyward, then lowered, the skin of his brow pinching. “Do you hear what you are proposing? To be seen with me?” Asked as though the very notion wasn’t to be borne. “ Unchaperoned” —as though only a dolt would not have realized—“ and in public? ”

“Really!” she huffed, as she gave him her back and knelt to poke at the fire. Once she had it back to rousing, she stood, turned and snapped the kitchen towel she’d grabbed between them. “You need not sound as though the idea is so unpalatable.”

“Prim. Think, woman.”

She was, and she only wanted to help him. “You’re already here. I can help you get there .” Though how, without his chair?

And offering to escort him to the Bathing House had to be monstrously better than offering to handle his ? —

When his frown only grew, embarrassment flamed her cheeks. “If you suspect I seek to trap you into matrimony, that had not crossed my mind until this very instant. With you seeming so abhorrent of the idea of being seen together.”

Of course the notion of snaring herself a husband had not occurred to her. Why would it? He was not exactly catch-match.

“If not me,” she said, her exasperation with him plain, “we could hire someone else to escort?—”

“With what funds?” Warrick asked. “I would not be in this difficulty now if I did not owe your uncle for the past several months.”

She bit down on her lips. Pinched those plump beauties his tongue wanted to trace until they flattened. The color that already flared across her cheeks blazed to cover her forehead and down her neck. What was she thinking of now? What would cause her blush to deepen so?

And how far did it descend? Did that deep hue reach between her breasts? Color her nipples?

Now he feared he slathered like a starving dog faced with a juicy steak. “What?” he all but barked when she glared at him in disappointment, her skin heated to such a state he wanted to devour her whole.

“What…of the other?” Voice suddenly subdued, her gaze drifted from his face, down his torso, to center about his groin. Remembering what he looked like earlier? Standing before her in his birthday gear?

His skin tingled. “What other?”

And why did she insist upon staring at his loins? He glanced down, made certain his falls were secured. Then faced her with narrowed eyes. “What other , Prim?”

When she remained stubbornly silent, he goaded, “You stare at my lap. Comparing me to past lovers?”

She wheezed. Sucked in her cheeks before blowing out a breath that whooshed the sunset hair from her forehead and danced strands past her cheeks. She stepped closer, lowered her voice. “I saw letters.” He had to strain to make sense of the whisper. “Inadvertently. Open letters in Lord Redford’s desk when Lady Ballenger bid me to find paper for lines to punish Harri. Lord Redford offered some in his top drawer.” Her arm waved between them, gestured toward his groin. “Do you still need assistance working…um, those muscles?”

By the time she finished, ’twas near a squeak.

He struggled. Mightily. To comprehend what she was saying, but more—her meaning.

The letters he had composed late at night after the girls were abed? The ones he and Ed had bantered about the last month or more, mentioning mistresses and who remembered exactly what else?

But her fast gasps and the darker pink upon her face made the hinge of it clear enough. “Primrose. Do my ears deceive me or are you offering to fondle my bauble and pair in the guise of exercise?”

“You need a wife. An heir.”

Heir?

Air was absent. For both of them, it seemed.

“An heir ess ,” she emphasized, ensuring neither forgot his destined fate.

He couldn’t breathe. His chest was tight, as though trampling elephants perched upon him in a squat with no intent to move. As to Prim? Despite her bold words, if she panted any faster, he feared shortwindiness would soon see her horizontal on the floor.

How could he think, even remotely so, of wedding another, when she had just suggested stroking him to a stand? “So you read of his suggestion I find a doctor to work my phallus? Or, failing that, a mistress to do the same? Are you offering?”

And did he want her to say yay or nay?

Would he be disappointed either way? Or beyond gleeful?

You really ought to tell her ’tis no longer necessary. You have managed a stand on your own, twice now ? —

Blast it. Silence!

Too entranced, not so much with the notion itself—although, aye, that could certainly snare a man’s attention—but with the very thought that his prim Aphrodite would offer such.

Her mouth worked, but no sound emerged.

Matched how he felt: shocked. Nonplussed. Both exalted at the very idea, yet disappointed in himself…

Shamed that he would even consider such. Especially given the events of the last few hours…

From her throat, a single squeak emerged.

“Sounds as though you have swallowed a mouse. I suppose that tells us both.”

“Tells what?”

“That despite whatever nonsense you have just sputtered, you mean not a single word.”

“I do!” That came shriekingly. “I very much do. I know I could help.”

“ You ?” Disdain dripped from his voice. Only because he dredged it up from somewhere. Trying to halt the madness.

“Yes, me. Just what do you think I did before becoming a governess?”

“How in blazes would I be privy to that?” He bit down on his lips. Refused to allow what hovered there freedom. But damned if it didn’t escape on its own. “What would you have me know? That before you excelled at assigning young Harri lines, you offered to palm pricks?”

“When I wasn’t away at the Young Ladies Improving Academy, gathering knowledge and ‘town polish’, I was here, helping Uncle Silas.”

“He let you put your innocent, dainty hands on rough-hewn soldiers?”

“Not everyone he helps is a virile soldier. Or male. Or young and careless enough to be inappropriate and intentionally crass about the idea.”

“The idea of what? You touching me? Intimately?”

Heart pounding with illicit excitement for once, and not frustration or exhaustion, he couldn’t help but grin. “Did you just call me virile ? Again?”

“If I did…” She surprised him by grinning back, grumbling beneath her breath as she turned to the firebox and checked the boil. “I was obviously deranged. Delirious. Decisively wrong?—”

“Wrong?” He barely contained his mirth. “Do you not mean decisively dunder headed? Flows much better, do you not think, my proper, anything-but-prudish Prim?”

Rising to her feet, she whirled toward him, the added heat from the fire deepening the flush already pinkening her face. A fine sheen of sweat dampened her forehead. “Dunderheaded, the both of us, I am sure. Let us never speak of that again.”

“That?”

“You know full well what I refer to, you fiend of a philander.”

He laughed. “Thank you.”

“’Twas not a compliment,” she growled at him, such that Mercury awoke from his doze in the corner and growled back.

They both laughed at that.

“Compliment or no, conversation to be blotted from memory or not, I do not know what to make of this new and brazen Aphrodite Primrose. One I like very much.”

He startled her with that. For she took a nervous step backward, toward flame and danger.

“Your skirts,” he explained when he braced himself on the table, gained his feet by leaning forward over it and grabbed hold with one hand to tug her closer to him and away from the cooking fire. Sitting back down, relieved that was where his arse landed—and not the floor, the small ache in his back niggling at him since that morning’s harpsichord-and-hand calamity, he debated whether to continue conversation down the provocatory direction or guide them into something safer. Something less likely to rouse that part of him that had been slumbering for months, suddenly wakened now that Prim was near.

“I’m surprised I have had no word, no letters from neither brothers nor sisters. I expected surely they would have written by now.” Especially the girls.

“Do not forget the mind of a youngling.” Like him, she seemed grateful to grasp on to the neutral topic. “Away from home and what they know, whatever is right in front of them will command their attention to the exclusion of all else. Particularly if they are happy and playing with other equally excitable and distractible children.” She paused, her expression turning thoughtful. “What of yourself? How many times have you written them since you arrived?”

“That is not a clear answer. As your hound made off with both a completed letter and another only half begun, neither of which made it to the post.” The dog in question received a meaningful glower. Too bad the cur remained oblivious.

“Well now. Perhaps they have a letter-hungry canine thief in their midst as well?” So nearly had she regained her composure, as she gave him a small smile, he could almost imagine she had not just offered to fondle his phallus. Almost. Doubtful it was something he would ever forget.

“You seem different than you did two years ago. More assured.”

Did she? “I do?”

And how could he say such a thing, given what she had just proposed? How, how in the world had her thoughts of escorting him to take the waters ended with her offering to rub…

His…penis?

Oh glory. Her hands came up to slap her cheeks. She still gripped the towel? Fine, then. She blotted the fire’s sweat from her face. Even the sound of that word in her mind was naught but a whisper.

Penis?

Aye, that.

Penis. Penis. Penis! P-E-N-I-S!

Heavens. Stop it!

But now that the thought was there, ’twas lodged. Secure as certain, in her garret and not leaving. Not so much the idea of touching Richard, and more than just his hands and wrists, but the idea of touching what she had seen mere days before.

He sat, with a relaxed posture, at the table. Held himself with ease, she was pleased to note. Had only frowned twice, something she noticed he did when tired or hurting. Was that from the effort to come in here from his room, where he had occupied himself when she came down earlier? Or had he injured something when he fell?

“Exactly so.”

Exactly so… What? Her thoughts were a complete muddle.

You. Different. Assured, that is what he said.

Oh. Right. “I am two years older.”

“Are not we all? Nay, ’tis something more than four and twenty months.” He brought one of those strong-fingered hands up to cup his jaw, his thumb and index finger grazing along the curve of his chin as though how she behaved now versus previously was a troublesome quandary he sought to solve.

You are beautiful to me. More stunning tonight than ever before. What happened to make it so?

In the scant days since, she still hadn’t discerned quite whether what he’d said that first night had been an insult or high praise indeed. So she asked. “Right before you claimed I was a vision and crawled off to your room, you asked me what happened, why I was more attractive to you than before. What did you mean?”

He groaned. The contemplative gesture changed to a slap upon his forehead before he rested his chin upon his palm, elbow so very casual upon the table. “Please tell me I did not ask you ‘What happened?’”

“You did.”

“Do you remember everything I said?”

If she confessed to how very much she did, he would think her a loon. “The pertinent parts, I admit.”

A stirring Mercury drew his attention, and he abandoned his stance to snap his fingers, drawing the dog to him before he responded.

“You are…not as rigid as you were at the Larchmonts’,” he explained. It was then that she realized, since the summer before last, she had left off binding her breasts as she used to, simply let her stays do their job, keeping her waist trim and bosom from bouncing overly much. Nor had she thought to bind them once since her arrival, even whilst under the same roof with a man . A peer. “Mmm… softer .”

Softer, indeed.

But then he continued, not commenting on her physical charms at all.

“It is…not so much how you look .” He kept one hand on the table as he gave Mercury a vigorous side scratch with the other, but his midnight gaze stayed on her. “’Tis how you…comport yourself now. Your manner . It’s more…I do not know… Confidence, perhaps?”

“I was courted, you know.” Why are you telling him this? “Since I saw you last.”