Christian snorted and they let that subject fall.
She kept pacing back and forth as the minutes ticked by.
He sighed. “You do realize that the entire purpose of this evening was to distract you?”
“Yes, I know. But I can’t get my mind off what, come Monday, we might learn. I have a very bad feeling about the Orient Trading Company’s business.”
So did Christian.
“I mean,” she went on, one arm sweeping wide as she turned, “why did Randall—and Trowbridge and Swithin, too—go to such lengths to keep the company so hidden? I can understand not wanting to be openly associated with any mercantile trade—they certainly wouldn’t have wanted that if their underlying purpose was to be accepted within the haut ton—but distancing themselves from any legitimate enterprise could easily have been done by appointing an agent, or man-of-business. Lots of others do that—why didn’t they? Why did they instead work so hard, with codes no less, to keep the whole enterprise an absolute secret?”
Sweeping up to where he sat, she halted dramatically and fixed him with an uncompromising stare. “The business of the Orient Trading Company has got to be something scandalous. That’s the only viable conclusion. You all think so, I know.”
He held her gaze. “As Jack pointed out, given the incoming sums are so large, it can’t be what we all thought.”
Folding her arms, she looked down her aristocratic nose at him. “The sums being so large might also be because whatever scandalous doings Randall and his cohorts were—are—involved in, and have now involved me in, is run on a grand scale.”
It was pointless to argue, especially wh
en she might well be right. Yet her restless energy was still building; unless it subsided, she’d never sleep.
He’d tried distraction. He’d tried talking.
That left…
She humphed and swung away, pacing once again across the room.
Soundlessly, he rose and followed her.
The next time she swung around, she turned into his arms.
He caught her to him, bent his head and kissed her. Given distraction was his aim, he didn’t hold back; he parted her lips, surged into her mouth and laid claim.
She was passive for all of two heartbeats, then her hands were in his hair, holding his head while she kissed him back.
Voraciously.
Her mouth was as hungry as he was, her lips pliant and wantonly seductive, flagrantly demanding. She stepped into him, pressed her slender body to his, wordlessly communicated her desire.
In that, at least, they were as one.
Letitia knew why he was kissing her—knew what his stated purpose would be—and even though she suspected he had a deeper motive along the lines of seducing her into loving him again, she didn’t in that moment care.
What she cared about was the heat, the instant firing of her blood—just because he was who he was, and he wanted her.
Tonight, for his stated purpose and for her, that was enough.
Enough to let her set aside her reservations and grasp—seize—him with both hands. Enough to have her moving against him, blatantly inviting, with her body demanding his heated attentions.
And more.
Tonight she needed more, as much as he could give her to hold back the tide of her unsettling thoughts, to bury the sense of something dreadful approaching that had burgeoned with each successive discovery about her late husband’s business.
Tonight she wanted to forget—to set it all aside and be at peace. And in Christian’s arms she knew succor lay.
Not peace, not yet, not while passion and desire, the flames and the fire, were upon them. But tonight they could let them burn, could surrender themselves to the conflagration and be consumed.
So she kissed him back, with her lips and tongue teased and taunted, then reveled as he took control, as his tongue found hers and stroked, then arrogantly explored, reclaimed.