“Oh.” She settled back on his lap, but more gingerly. “I arouse you?”
“You know that you do. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have ‘landed us in this mess in the first place,’ as you put it.”
She cast him a shy smile. “I don’t mind the mess so much.”
That made him breathe easier. He hoped she meant she wasn’t sitting there wishing he was Juncker. “If we do this right,” he said, his voice gravelly from the effort of restraining himself, “you won’t mind the mess at all. With any luck, you’ll end up enjoying it.”
“How do you know? Have you done this before?”
“A lady isn’t supposed to ask a gentleman that,” he said.
Her eyebrows lifted. “A gentleman isn’t supposed to do that, except with his wife.”
“Good point.” He ran his hand lightly down her still-clothed back. “Let’s put it this way—I have occasionally behaved less than gentlemanlike. Certainly less than saintly.”
He began unbuttoning the tiny buttons of her nightdress. There were several of them, going down to her waist. And undoing them with one hand was more difficult than he expected. Especially when her breath was coming in thick, shuddery gasps that resonated well below the waistband of his trousers.
“How . . . how often is occasionally?” She stared down at what he was doing. “Have you . . . ever had a mistress?”
“No. Can’t afford one.”
She stiffened. “Oh, trust me, if a man wants a mistress, he can always find a way to pay for her.”
As a shaft of ice pierced his heart, Sheridan halted the unbuttoning. “Do you know that from experience?”
With a sigh, she nodded.
He fought for calm. “Who was he? Juncker?”
She blinked at him. “What the devil are you talking about?”
“What the devil are you?”
For a moment, she just stared at him. Then a furious blush rose in her face. “I didn’t mean . . . I have never been . . .” She turned irate. “Why on earth would you think I’m talking about my becoming some man’s mistress? As if Mama would ever allow such a thing. As if I would ever consent to such a thing. Good Lord, what must you think of me?”
“No idea. I confess I’m thoroughly confused. You said you knew from personal experience about mistresses being paid. What else was I supposed to think?”
“Well, not that.” At his continued look of bewilderment, she added, “I was talking about Papa. He had at least one mistress.”
“How in the hell would you know that?”
She shrugged. “I did the books for him. There were bills from milliners, dressmakers, glovers, and none of the items matched anything Mama or I had purchased. It was obvious it all went to some other woman. Especially since after he died, a woman none of us knew wanted to pay her respects, but Mama refused to see her. It didn’t take much to figure out who she must be.”
“Ah.” He lifted his hand to caress her cheek. “I know exactly what you mean. I suspect my father wasn’t always faithful to my mother either. Theirs was a marriage between friends. They were not in love. We all knew that.”
“They argued a lot?”
“No. Actually, they almost never argued. They just lived separate lives. Father married Mother so he could sire an heir and a spare. And probably so he could advance his position in the diplomatic corps. Being married can be an advantage there, especially when you marry a dowager duchess. Once he’d sired me and Heywood, he and Mother were polite and friendly to each other, but it never went beyond that. Father’s best friend was Thorn’s and Gwyn’s father, so he knew that her heart would always belong to her second husband. And we knew it, too.”
“Did that bother you?”
“Not really. I didn’t know anything else.”
She nodded. “I don’t think my parents loved each other at all. They argued constantly. It was upsetting.”
“That’s understandable.”
They fell silent, both probably wondering the same thing. Would they fight? Or live separate lives?
He shoved those lowering questions from his mind. Those didn’t matter. He and she were married now, and as long as he could keep thinking of her as only his bedmate, he wouldn’t have to worry about going through another heartbreak.
Time to stop talking and seduce her. “Do you mind if I take down your hair?”
She looked unaccountably bewildered. “No. But you’ll have to remove the pearl comb.”
“Is that a problem?”
“You said you wanted to see me wearing nothing but the pearls.” A corner of her mouth lifted. “You can’t have it both ways, you know. Either I’m naked with the pearls on. Or the pearls aren’t on, but my hair is down.”
The thought of either made him randy as hell.
At the flirtatious gleam in her eyes, he smiled. “What a little parser of rules you are. But since I hadn’t even noticed that the comb was adorned with pearls, I’d rather see your hair down.” He whispered in her ear, “I’ll be seeing you naked eventually, anyway.”
She met his gaze. “I do hope I’ll be seeing you naked as well.”
That was all it took to send him over the edge. He covered her mouth with his, kissing her so thoroughly that she couldn’t possibly be left wondering about his intentions. At the same time, he slid his hand inside her unbuttoned nightdress to fondle one of her full breasts, relishing how the soft silk of her nipple tightened to a fine point as he thumbed it. When she moaned somewhere deep in her throat, it only heightened his pleasure.
His cock grew painfully hard.
He broke their kiss. He had to slow this, had to be the courteous lover he knew she would want for her first time. “You need to stand up, sweetheart.”
“All right.” She got off his lap, and he stood, too, not even bothering to hide his erection, though he doubted that she’d noticed it.
“Turn around,” he said thickly. Once she did, he took down her hair.
Good God. Doing that wasn’t likely to slow a damned thing. Her mass of shimmering, cascading curls just begged to be touched. How she—or more probably, Bridget—had managed to scrape all of this into a sedate coiffure was anybody’s guess.
He’d always thought of black hair as all one shade, so he was surprised to find hers a profusion of hues from a very dark brown to soft black to jet black to almost blue. It seemed to depend on the light and how the curls turned.
Filling his hands with the lovely weight of it, he marveled at how soft and springy it was. And long, too, coming down almost to her waist.
“Are you quite finished disordering my hair?” she said irritably.
He laughed. “Why? Am I taking too much time seducing you?”
“Seducing?” She faced him. “Is that what you’re doing? Because I could have sworn you were indulging in your need to find all my flaws.”
“What flaws?” He cocked his head. “If you’re referring to your hair, it most definitely isn’t a flaw.”
That uncertainty came into her eyes again. “Clearly you’ve never had to manage it.”
“No. Thank God. Because if I had my way, it would never get managed. I would have you wear it down about your shoulders forever.”