The Offer (Baron 2)

He didn’t move. “How did she look?”

“She looked as if she was trying to forget something unpleasant, perhaps. I heard her laugh, and she was smiling, but none of it was real, do you understand what I mean?”

“I’ll thank you not to pry, Martine.”

She displayed herself on the bed. He still didn’t move. “I’m not prying, Phillip. It was you, after all, who did the asking.”

“I told her not to have anything to do with Charles. She wanted to send him a message, on the second day of her marriage to me, she wanted to be with another man. But since you saw her, then she disobeyed me. Not that I’m surprised, of course.” He began to pull off his clothes. Suddenly he stopped.

“The little one, she has very unusual eyes. A soft violet. Unique. Just imagine what your children will look like. They will be magnificent.”

He didn’t move. The firelight played behind him, framing him. He was utterly silent.

“Ah, yes, her eyes are very vivid.”

Suddenly he began again to pull off his clothes. “Dammit, I’ll always have my freedom. I’ll not be tied to her, not to anybody, it’s nonsense. I’m too young. I don’t want my hatches battened down. I know she wanted me to come to her last night, she as good as admitted it, but I also know that the moment I touched her, she’d be terrified to her toes. No, I won’t do it. But I’ll do exactly what I wish. Yes, I’ll always have my freedom. I don’t care if I have to keep proving it to everyone—both to her and to me. It just doesn’t matter.”

He was nearly naked. She just smiled at him, not really understanding him. He’d changed, she knew that, and he’d changed so very quickly, and he was fighting it with all his might. Men, in her experience, had a lot of might.

Then he was naked and he was on top of her, kissing her, caressing her fiercely.

Then he stopped. He looked up at the headboard. Then he rolled off her and out of the bed. He didn’t say a word, just walked back to the fireplace and began dressing himself again. He said as he was pulling up his britches, “You know that Rohan Carrington had the reputation of an utter womanizer.”

“Yes, it came as a shock when he turned up with a wife and a daughter four years old. He is faithful, it’s said. Completely faithful. It’s said too that he loves his wife and he’s besotted with his little daughter.”

“Yes, he is, but he was different from me, Martine. He never worried about freedom, losing it or gaining it. We’re very different men.”

He raised his head and looked over at her. She was lying on her side in the most s

eductive pose a woman would manage, but he really didn’t notice. He said, “Yes, I’m very different from Rohan. It seems I must cause hurt where there was none before.”

He finished dressing. He walked to the bed and kissed her lightly, passionlessly, on the mouth.

“I’ll see you again, my lord?” She lightly caressed her palm against his cheek.

“Of course,” he said.

“Ah yes. It’s all a matter of your freedom, isn’t it?”

He stared at her hard for a long moment. “Perhaps,” he said finally, then he left her, not looking back.

She stared for a very long time into the fireplace.

The small ormolu clock on the mantel chimed out midnight. Sabrina lay wide awake in the darkness, waiting to hear Phillip’s footsteps on the stairs. She wasn’t at all certain how one went about seducing one’s husband, but she was confident that if she managed to kiss him, he would kiss her back. Surely that was enough to get a man started down the road of lust.

She stiffened suddenly at the sound of footsteps outside the bedchamber door. She heard him pause and then his footsteps sounded down the corridor until they were lost to her hearing. Very well, he’d given her enough time to recover from her fear of men. She forced herself to lie quietly for some minutes longer to give him time to remove his clothing and settle into his bed.

She rose finally and walked to her dressing table to light a candle. She looked at herself in the mirror. It wasn’t a frightening sight. Her eyes looked larger than usual and very bright. As for her clothing, she was wearing the embroidered nightgown. Her hair was shining clean, free down her back, and dark as burgundy in the candlelight. She slipped out into the corridor and walked to his temporary bedchamber.

She inched the door open and paused, blinking at the sound of his loud snoring. But she hadn’t taken all that much time. Goodness, he was fast asleep. It was time to wake him up in a very unexpected way. She grinned in the darkness and walked on bare feet to the bed. He was lying on his back, still dressed in his evening clothes. His arms were at his sides. It wasn’t the scene she’d imagined, she thought, as she bent over to touch him.

She stiffened suddenly and whipped her hand back. She smelled brandy. She wondered how much he’d drunk. Probably a lot. Maybe he had passed out and really hadn’t just fallen asleep. She sniffed again. She smelled the rose scent this time and she strongly doubted that he’d splashed himself with it to smell more manly. No, it was his mistress’s perfume. He’d been with her again this evening.

To spare his virgin bride.

Enough was enough. It didn’t matter if he was drunk enough to float away. She was still going to seduce him.

Very slowly, she slipped the soft nightgown from her shoulders. It fell in a gentle pool at her feet. Now that she was naked, she realized that he wasn’t. What to do?