"No, I don't think that's possible."
"Oh, it is, believe me. Young men do the most ridiculous things, you know, like drinking themselves into unconsciousness, singing at the top of their lungs even while they're falling flat on their faces under a table."
He was smiling at her charmingly, laughing, seducing her with the best weapons in his arsenal. It wasn't working.
"You're tired, Sophie?"
'Yes," she said, then realized the import of her words and actually jerked back in her chair.
"How are your ribs?"
"They hurt dreadfully as do my feet and—"
"You're a very bad liar. You didn't use to be, but you are now, now that I know you."
"You don't know me, Ryder. You truly don't."
"I will come to know you. It is something I want very badly. It's unfortunate we will be separated. I will give you a letter to present to my brother the earl once you arrive at Northcliffe Hall. Also I will give you sufficient funds so that you and Jeremy can rent a carriage at Southampton and several guards. Promise me you will hire guards."
She promised.
He was looking at the swell of her breasts above the soft lace over her bosom. "You're thin at the moment, but I don't mind. I'll fatten you up."
"Since I am with child, that will most certainly happen."
Lies, Ryder thought. It was damned difficult to keep up with them. Still, he said easily, "The child, as I've told you, isn't necessarily a foregone conclusion. It's possible that you're pregnant. I hope that if you aren't pregnant you won't be too disappointed."
"I don't feel well. I must be pregnant."
That was interesting, he thought. He sat back in his chair, twirling the stem of his champagne glass between his long fingers. "You know, Sophie, there's no reason for you to be embarrassed around me. No, please don't waste my time or yours denying it. I told you I know women. Please strive to remember that you're not a virgin since I took you. And I did look my fill at you. I even kissed that very cute birthmark of yours behind your left knee. So, you see, there is no need at all for embarrassment."
"That's true, I guess, but still—"
"Still what?"
"I wasn't really there when you did all those things to me."
"You will simply have to trust me."
"Trust you the way you trusted me?"
"All the past lurid machinations are over, all the druggings are over, though I still admit to a burgeoning of rage when I think of you and your uncle stripping me and offering me up to that other girl. What was her name, by the way?"
"Dahlia. She looked at you and said you were a treat."
When Ryder grinned she quickly added, "But not enough of a treat for my uncle not to pay her
."
"Did you watch me with her, Sophie?"
"Just for a moment because my uncle said I had to, that you were the kind of man to share intimacies with his mistress and thus I had to be prepared to be intimate in my speech back to you, but I couldn't bear it, and left the cottage."
"It was a very nasty game. Now, my dear wife, you and I are going upstairs."
Not ten minutes later, she was staring at him across the bedchamber. He'd shut and locked the door. Then he was striding confidently toward her, smiling, looking at her with the victor's gleam in his blue eyes.
She did look like a virgin sacrifice, he thought, staring at her. He supposed it was at that moment he accepted the fact that she was indeed a virgin, that all her supposed lovers had enjoyed Dahlia, that Samuel had been right when he'd said that she simply wouldn't play the whore, no matter the cost.