The bottom dropped out of Alice’s stomach. He always did this to her, made her forget about whatever it was she’d been worrying about. Now all her earlier tension returned with a vengeance.
“Uh . . .” She tried to swallow. There was a giant lump in her throat.
His brows rose. “Yes.”
“I’ve been thinking . . .”
He inclined his head and waited.
“About . . .” She could feel her cheeks heating.
“About ‘um’?”
His euphemism for bedroom activities. She nodded. “Yes, I’ve decided to . . . to try it. Again, I mean. With you.” There, she’d said it. She waited for his reaction, her stomach hollow and her pulse racing.
His eyes darkened. His brows drew together in a slow frown. He didn’t say a word.
Did he not understand? Had she not been clear enough? Lord knew, her nerves were playing havoc, and she might not have made her meaning plain.
She took a deep breath. “I am willing to become your mistress.”
The furrow between his brows deepened. “My mistress,” he repeated in a flat voice.
“Yes.”
“I see,” he said after another long pause.
She waited, fidgeting nervously with the fabric of her skirt. The longer the silence stretched, the more she knew she’d made a terrible mistake. But she couldn’t unsay the words. And even though she felt as if she might throw up at any minute, she wasn’t going to back down from her decision.
After an age, he cleared his throat. “So, you won’t be my wife, but you will be my mistress.”
Put like that, it sounded terrible. Bald and blunt and ugly. And scandalous. But it was how she felt.
“Yes,” she croaked.
“Even though you dislike ‘um.’ ”
“I always disliked it with my husband.” She swallowed again. “But perhaps . . .”
His frown darkened. “You’re thinking that perhaps it might be different with me.”
She nodded, her cheeks aflame. “You did say as much,” she reminded him. Turn “um” into “yum.”
“I did, didn’t I? Well then.” He rose abruptly, his expression grim. “I’m going to have to think about this. I will return in an hour to collect my children. I’ll give you my answer then.” He strode from the room.
Alice stared at the empty doorway, confused by his reaction. She thought he’d be pleased, thought he’d jump at the chance, but he seemed neither pleased nor eager.
The drawing room felt chilly. Childish laughter floated in from the garden.
Was he shocked by her forwardness? It was hard to tell. But the way he’d so abruptly departed, without either accepting or rejecting her proposition, must tell her something. Though what?
She smoothed the fabric of her skirt and frowned. It was a mass of wrinkles. She’d made a mess of it, twisting and crushing it without thinking. Nerves.
Did he think her offer revealed her as a strumpet? Many men would think so.
But Alice refused to be ashamed. It was her body to offer: she was a free agent now and owed fidelity to no one. If he condemned her for it, well, she would be disappointed in him—more than disappointed if she was honest with herself—but she wouldn’t go back on her offer, nor would she apologize.
Lady Peplowe was right. It was time Alice discovered for herself what most other women found in the activities of the bedchamber. She wasn’t prepared to spend the rest of her life wondering.
* * *
* * *
James strode away from Alice’s house, oblivious of where he was going. He was as tense as a wound spring.
I am willing to become your mistress.
He pounded along the pavement, his fists clenched in hard knots, wanting to punch somebody—no, not somebody: her thrice-damned arse of a husband.
Her face haunted him, so taut and pale when he’d arrived, then later blushing and hesitant, offering herself as if she were . . . he didn’t know what. All he knew was that he was boiling with frustrated rage at what had been done to this sweet and giving woman.
He wanted to marry her with all honor, but she couldn’t bring herself to do it: she thought she had to debauch herself first.
The hesitation in her eyes, the uncertainty. The courage it must have taken after refusing his offer of marriage, to then offer her body, to lie down with him in an act she was sure she would loathe. Had loathed. For eighteen long, blasted years.
And she didn’t even know how to kiss!
That bastard!
There were times when James caught glimpses of the hopeful young girl that she must once have been. All innocence and bright expectation. Before her pig of a husband had driven all the youthful confidence out of her.
But he hadn’t managed to kill off her sweetness. Alice had every right to be bitter, but there wasn’t a trace of bitterness in her.
If only James had met her back then, before she’d married that oaf. He would have married her—no, because then he wouldn’t have met and married Selina, which he could never regret, and they wouldn’t have had their precious girls.
But someone should have protected her from marriage to such an uncaring swine. He added her father to the list of dead men he itched to pound to a pulp. The man had been more interested in saving the souls of unknown—and probably unwilling—denizens than the welfare of his only daughter.
Crossing a road, he paused to let a wagon rumble past and realized where he was. Turning a sharp right, he headed down Bond Street to number 13, where he could get exactly what he needed: a furious bout of fisticuffs to work off his anger.
Entering Jackson’s Boxing Saloon, he encountered the great man himself, who bowed. “Lord Tarrant, how may I help you?”
“I need to go a few rounds with one of your men, Jackson, but I’ll warn you now, I’m in a foul mood and need to pound on someone.”
Jackson chuckled and said with dry irony, “You can certainly try. Follow me, my lord.”
* * *
* * *
Forty minutes later James was stripped to the waist, sluicing his heated body down with cold water. Several fast and furious bouts with one of Jackson’s best men had certainly loosened some of the fierce coils of anger inside him. He was feeling calmer and more clearheaded, not to mentioned bruised and aching—but in a good way.
He’d been a fool to walk out on her like that. More than a fool—an insensitive brute. What must she be thinking? At great cost to herself, she’d offered him a very precious, deeply personal gift, and what had he done? Walked out on her. Saying he needed to think it over.