She wasn’t so naive as to believe he truly admired her. Perhaps he found her on the palatable side, but surely not more than that. He’d been surrounded by beautiful women his entire life. No, he had done this to save his family honor. Everything else he’d said to her . . . no, she couldn’t afford to believe any of it.
He handed her a glass of champagne, then turned and said aloud, “Here’s to my beautiful bride, Susannah Carrington, who makes me very happy.”
“Hear, hear!”
That was from Toby, who was drinking two sips of champagne, slipped to him by his goddess, Charlotte.
They left the vicarage soon thereafter. They watched Mr. Byam snuff out the candles, plunging the vicarage into darkness. The candlelight had been lovely as well as practical. Rohan didn’t want anyone who happened to see them wondering what they were doing there. “It’s done,” he said to the carriage at large. “Well, Mother, what did you think?”
“I thought, dearest, that you have carried this off quite nicely. A splendid job, worthy of your dear father. He would have come around to being pleased, once he had gotten to know Susannah and Toby. Not to mention the little pumpkin.”
“Marianne the pumpkin,” Toby said and yawned. “I like that.”
“Yes, I did carry this off well. We must just remember that all we did was accept Mr. Byam’s invitation to dine with him at the vicarage. It was a dandy dinner. We all agree on that
. Now, it is a bit on the unusual side. But not so unusual that Fitz gave me that I know you’re up to something look of his when I informed him, thank God. Susannah, you must stop jumping when one of our people calls you ‘my lady.’ It is what you are now. No more playacting. It’s quite real. All right?”
She shrugged, not wanting to even think about what had just happened, about what she was now. And what she wasn’t. She said instead, clearing her throat, “Ozzy promised to bring me my racing kitten tomorrow.”
“I believe the monthly race is next Saturday. We might not be here for it.”
We. He was going to let her come with him to Oxford?
Her eyes flew to his face. He was giving her a fat smile. But he said nothing more.
“I told Mother not to let Sabine near you.”
She turned around slowly. All her things had been moved into the baron’s master suite, and he had just walked through the connecting door into her new room, wearing a blue dressing gown that looked old and comfortable, his feet bare, and she knew he was quite naked beneath it. But he seemed so easy, his voice so light, so unthreatening.
“Why wouldn’t I want Sabine here?”
She was still wearing her lovely gown, the one Charlotte had given her.
“Turn around,” he said, “and I’ll get you out of this thing.”
“Why?”
“What? Oh, Sabine.” He was staring at the back of her white neck, at the several lazy curls that lay against her flesh. His fingers were tanned, looking so very dark and alien next to that white skin of hers. “Sabine would have given you advice—that, or she would have told you that you wouldn’t be able to pleasure me properly.”
“What?”
“Well,” he said slowly, pausing but a moment, to lean down and kiss her neck, “Sabine likes me. She wants to have her way with me. In short, she would like to bed me.”
She turned stiffer than the oak sapling he’d planted just last year in the place of a dead maple at the foot of the gardens.
He kissed the new patch of white flesh he’d just uncovered as he unfastened another one of those tiny buttons. If he wasn’t mistaken—and he wasn’t—she shivered, just a bit, but enough to make him kiss her again and smile.
“Naturally, I would never sleep with one of our people. It is not done.”
“Naturally. Even if that person was quite lovely and French?”
“Oh, being French has little to do with anything. It is English ladies who delight in calling French ladies sluts. It isn’t true and English ladies know it. It’s just this game they enjoy playing.”
Three more buttons opened. He was down to her chemise—actually it had to belong to his mother. It was all lace and satin and slick and soft and a very pale yellow. Goodness, this was a feast for the senses.
He parted the gown, gently easing it off her shoulders. But he didn’t pull her free of the sleeves. No, he just let the gown hang low at her elbows, holding her prisoner. Then he lightly shoved the thin straps of the chemise, one and then the other, off her shoulders. He kissed every inch of flesh each of those soft straps had covered.
“Rohan?”