Chapter 28

28

NUMBER FIVE, NUMBER SEVEN AND NUMBER NINETEEN

Isabella had almost shaken her head when she had seen Leo's lifted eyebrow, the significance of which was quite plain to her, though, she hoped, to nobody else. She wasn't feeling particularly amorous that evening, and although there might be ladies who would be titillated by the idea of a man spending the evening paying public court to other women then coming in secret to her bed, she didn't seem to be one of them. She wasn't quite sure why she hadn't refused him when she easily could have done so. It wasn't as though he expected her to give herself to him, on this or any other occasion; it had been a question, not a demand. He never demanded anything of her. She knew that if she declared to him that number nineteen, the next item on her list, consisted of him reading her a chapter of a novel by Mr Scott or Madame D'Arblay, he would ask her, Which chapter is your pleasure, ma'am?

And yet that wasn't what she intended to require of him. Tired and out of humour as she was, the prospect of him coming to her chamber still ignited a treacherous little spark of desire inside her. She knew that when he lowered the latch and turned to face her, she would find a way to tell him what she needed from him. She always did.

It was the best part of an hour later when he came to her. He leaned back against the panelled door and said, ‘I thought you might not wish to see me tonight. You must be tired, and it is very late. Are you sure…?'

‘I have no cause to be tired,' she said, hearing the sharpness in her voice and instantly regretting it. ‘I did not dance so very much.'

‘I saw, and was so sorry,' he replied, crossing the room and sitting down beside her on the bed. He took her hand and held it loosely in his. ‘You must know I would have danced every set with you if it had been possible. Of course it was not possible, but I would have hoped for two, and was bitterly disappointed when I could not take you in my arms again.'

‘You could have asked me,' she said, hating the weakness in her voice.

‘I could,' he conceded. ‘My mother disposed of my person this evening according to her wishes and those of her friends, not mine, but that is a poor excuse, I am aware. My indulgence of her led me into a disregard of you, which was the last thing I wanted. Can you forgive me?'

‘You don't owe me anything,' she said. ‘There is certainly nothing to forgive; the idea is absurd. No doubt it was best that you did not single me out for any particular attention in so public a place. It would have raised speculation which must be unwelcome to both of us.'

He did not seem to be satisfied with this. Some demon of perversity prodded her on to add, before he could say anything else, ‘On the contrary, I was glad to see you enjoying yourself.' This was a flat lie and Isabella was aware that it was as she said it.

‘I wasn't enjoying myself.'

‘You appeared to be.' She could feel a quarrel brewing, like the rumble of a distant storm, and knew that it would be entirely of her making. All at once she could not bear it – how many more nights would they have together? And she was wasting one. She said with a little break in her voice, ‘I'm sorry. Let's not pull caps. Make love to me, Bear, and then we will part, and sleep, and tomorrow I will not be so out of reason cross with all the world.'

‘I think you have some reason to be cross, with me if not with all the world. But you know I can deny you nothing. Is it to be number nineteen?' Clearly he'd been keeping count.

‘It is.'

Perhaps it was unfortunate, what number nineteen was, she was later to think. There had been times in their past encounters when a sort of animalistic urgency had seized them both, and then the idea of him bending her over the bed and taking her from behind – at her command, always at her command – would have thrilled them both, left them breathless and sweaty and afterwards languorously sated. He pleasured her with his mouth and his fingers before he took her, with the intense concentration he always lavished on her, and she came; she came again when he held her tightly between his roughened hands and thrust into her with his own intense compulsion that always seemed to draw an equal response from her. Her body, at least, was satisfied. Their union was powerful, primal, but it left her shaken, a little tearful.

But tonight somehow this did not feel quite right; she could not see his face nor he hers, and it was too impersonal. Perhaps that was it: he could have been anybody, she could have been anybody, which after the events at the assembly was ill-timed. She wasn't sure why it should matter, but it did.

Maybe it shook him too, she could not know, maybe it made him incautious, but as they lay entwined afterwards, bodies touching, minds lost in their separate unknowable thoughts, he said, ‘You didn't like to see me tonight, dancing with Susannah, then taking her in to supper.'

‘I told you, I was happy to see you enjoying yourself. With Susannah.'

‘And I told you, I wasn't. She's a cousin of sorts, and even if she hadn't been, I couldn't have spurned her publicly. She's less than nothing to me, but she doesn't deserve that. The fault was my mother's, not hers, and most of all mine for not finding a way to stop it.'

She said grudgingly, ‘I don't actually know how you could have stopped it. I too have a mother, as I think you said to me once. It's very hard to say no to them when they are determined on something. I know this all too well.'

He kissed the top of her head. ‘Thank you for understanding.' But his voice still showed constraint, he plainly had more to say, and a moment later he said it. ‘It almost seemed to me, earlier and just now, that you were unhappy.'

She stiffened in instinctive rejection of the thought. ‘Why should I be unhappy?'

‘Perhaps you might think it in poor taste, that I avoided you all evening, if you thought I did, while all the while I knew, or hoped, that I would end up here, in your bed.' His voice was low and full of emotion she did not want to be forced to identify.

‘I said it would have been unwise to show me too much attention in public.'

‘You did, and it's true, I suppose. We do have to be careful. So if it wasn't that, if you knew I had little choice in how I behaved this evening, it seems to me that it must have been jealousy that was making you miserable. I must confess, I hope it was.'

Her heart was thumping now. ‘Why would you hope such a ridiculous thing?'

‘Because I love you.'