Perhaps he was accustomed to finding strange women in his bedchamber. A powerful, wealthy man like him—handsome, no less—likely had women pelting themselves at him at every turn. She distinctly recalled what the woman downstairs had said to her.
Most women who are looking for Silas Masters know what he looks like. That is why they are looking for him.
That was when she knew exactly what to do. As scandalous and shameful the notion. She had to do it.
“Hello,” he murmured. He managed to even look . . . bored. Apparently her presence here did not merit a noteworthy reaction from him. “Lost, are you? This is not the ladies’ retiring room. Was that not where you were going earlier? I think you mentioned that.”
She nodded and made a mild sound of agreement. “I am not lost.”
“No?”
“No,” she affirmed with a fortifying lift of her chin. “I am right where I want to be.” Her voice sounded pleasingly coy even to her own ears.
He canted his head and crossed his arms over his chest. “And where is that?”
Must she say it directly? She swallowed thickly. He certainly did not make seduction an easy matter. Or perhaps she was just very bad at it. She winced a bit at that possibility.
She considered him for a moment, wondering if she was really doing this. Was she really willing to offer herself on a platter to him so that he did not discover her true purpose in his rooms?
She did not fool herself into believing it would be a small matter. If he accepted her invitation she would be in that bed with him. At least she assumed it would happen on the bed. Her experience was limited, but she knew things. She might be from the country, but she was no sheltered maid.
She grew up on a farm and spent a goodly amount of time around livestock. She understood the mechanics involved. Not to mention, she was well-read. More well-read than she ought to be. In fact, her choice of reading material would horrify all of Shropshire. No one would expect it of her and perhaps that was part of the thrill of finding herself in this moment, in this place . . . with this man.
Her gaze fixed on the bed for a prolonged moment, visualizing herself there with Silas Masters. It was not a terrible imagining.
If he took what she was offering him, she would be a maid no longer—not that she was saving herself for marriage. There was no prospect of matrimony on the horizon for her. She had no inclination toward marriage when she had been eighteen. Now at six and twenty, she especially was not so inclined. Marriage suited some people. Very well. Most people. She had long ago decided, however, that it did not suit her.
Wrong or right, that made the notion of an affair with this man more than palatable. She would finally learn what it was like, what all the fuss was about . . . and in the process she would provide herself with an excuse for her presence in his rooms.
He moved deeper into the chamber, past her, stopping before a tray with a decanter and glasses. She eyed his lean length as he poured himself a drink and lifted it to his lips with easy, languid movements.
She continued to watch him as he drank, his throat working in an appealing manner before he turned his attention back to her. “You don’t want to be here.” He stated this very matter-of-factly. “You don’t even know me.”
Frowning, she glanced down at herself. Did she present as a demure, chaste lady that needed ushering away? “Do I have to know you?”
He took another drink and considered her again slowly, pensively. “So we were introduced downstairs and now you are here to what? Seduce me? Am I to believe that of you?”
Yes. She had to make him believe it. Otherwise he might start looking for other reasons to explain why she was standing here, and that could not happen.
“Is it so very unbelievable?” Her smile felt nervous and shaky on her face and she willed it away. Willed her expression into something mild and relaxed . . . the countenance, hopefully, of a bold woman at ease engaging in casual peccadilloes.
“Must we be longtime acquaintances?” she added as she took a steadying breath. “Would that be so shocking? There is”—she paused, searching for the word to best explain what she was feeling, what swirled thickly on the air around them—“heat between us. Surely you feel it, too.”
“Heat,” he echoed, the word rolling off his tongue as if it were something alien.
“Yes. I thought, well . . . downstairs . . .” Her voice faltered and she hated that. She sounded unsure and without confidence. Two ingredients that did not fit with the persona she was attempting to project. If she was playing the role of seductress she should be more comfortable with herself and the words she was spouting.
“You thought there was heat,” he finished, a thread of skepticism still humming beneath his words.
“Yes.” She nodded slowly, propping one hand on her hip. “Did I imagine that?”
He eyed her slowly, up and down, and she managed not to fidget under his regard. “I am sorry if I misled you. You are not . . . to my taste.”
She flinched.
There was no not reacting to that.
It hurt. It stung. She could not help wondering what was to his taste. If not Mercy, what then? Who?
She had not considered the chance of rejection, and she should have. How blindly arrogant could she have been?
She was no model of charm. She was no raving beauty. Oh, she was not hideous, but she knew beautiful and she was not that. She had never had suitors beating a path to her door.
Of course a man who looked as Masters did was accustomed to beautiful women. Women who far outshone her. Now she felt a fool. A great fool.
“Oh.” She smoothed a shaky hand down the front of her gown. “I see.”
Indeed, she did see.
For all she knew he was a married man. Or attached romantically. Perhaps he believed in fidelity. Some men did. Her father had been one such man, faithful and devoted every day of his life to Mercy’s mother. That would make his rebuff sting less.
She suffered an internal sigh. Now she was simply looking for a way to spare her own feelings.
“I am flattered.” He smiled a pitying smile and that was salt in the wound.
It was really too much.
“Very well. Your loss.” She hoped that sounded flippant. Like a woman accustomed to casual liaisons—to the occurrence of them and the rebuffs. “I am sorry to have invaded your space,” she murmured and made to exit, her face still burning with the sting of rejection, a part of her relieved and a part of her not. That other part of her, the part of her not relieved, was markedly disappointed.
So much for her gown. Her fist twisted in her skirts, eager to be rid of the scandalous frock. She would burn the thing when she reached home. She supposed it was not tempting enough after all. Or rather the woman inside it was not.
She had to pass him to leave and she hated having to do so with this shameful heat crawling up her face and the air trapped tightly in her chest.
It would be awkward, however, to take another route—a less direct route. She was not going to circle around and walk between the sofa and fireplace. That would hardly appear the behavior of a confident woman. She would look more like a skittish animal.
She struggled for a careful breath and advanced, walking inches from him where he stood.
They were not touching. Not so close as that, but close enough. Their arms brushed, the fabric of his jacket a whisper against her skin as she walked past.