“You don’t like the idea?” he asked. There was a strange insolence in the tone of the question. Or was she just imagining it?
Hope raised one shoulder slightly as she affected a amusement. It was hard to pretend the heartless jade when she threatened to combust with feeling. “You’d not be able to afford me.” She tried for a trill, or at least a lighthearted tinkle of a laugh, but it sounded hard and mercenary. Just as he believed her to be.
He rolled onto his side, full length on the bed, and regarded her from this semi-recumbent position, naked on the vast expanse of white linen. What an exquisite vision he was. She turned her head to look through the window, blinking away the scalding tears she must save until later.
“A man of my means and station is almost expected to take a woman to please his carnal needs. I’m confident we could negotiate a price.”
This was not the Felix she knew. There was a brittle edge to his words she’d not heard before. Had she truly not known him? Was her love based on a false effigy? It would be easier if she did believe that.
She glanced at him, trying to read him, and found she could not. Flailing in uncharted waters, she was unsure how to respond. “I don’t think Annabelle would like that.”
“We are talking about what I want, not Annabelle.”
“Would you be so cruel that you’d do that to her within…within a month of marriage?”
“I was thinking now might be a good time.” He smiled at her. “A good time to take a mistress, that is. If Annabelle learned of it and wished to seek a husband elsewhere, then I would not try to persuade her otherwise.”
Hope almost felt sorry for Annabelle. But then, it would be rough justice.
“I’ve been under pressure to take a wife,” Felix went on. “I’ve been contemplating the prospect of Annabelle with no real joy.” He regarded her stonily. “Now that you’ve reentered my life in the guise of a woman of pleasure, I like the idea of taking you as my mistress and marrying Annabelle.”
She had no response. Was he really so base and shallow that it made no difference she was a whore just so long as his desires were fulfilled? But she knew he wasn’t like that. He was testing her.
He cleared his throat. “Or do you have objections?”
Hope turned away. She could be his mistress. The idea was agonisingly appealing. She could never be his wife, after all. And she’d be the exclusive property of the man she loved. Not shared around by those who could pay for her.
“Or would you miss the variety?”
Stung, she turned on her heel. How could she agree? Wilfred would never sanction it. It would demean his sister and, in turn, himself.
“I don’t know how to answer you,” she whispered.
“Come closer.” His command was uttered in little more than a whisper, but she was like a toy in his hands, unable to deny him.
Except where her sister’s future happiness lie.
She approached him warily.
“Sit on the bed.”
She sat and he came up behind her, kneeling to twine his arms about her neck, dipping his hands into her bodice and kneading her nipples. She breathed in deeply. Was he going to punish her now?
She still couldn’t read him.
His mouth was hot on her neck. “Do you want to be my mistress?”
She exhaled on a sob, inclining her head the slightest fraction as she whispered tearfully, “I never thought you the kind of man to take a mistress.”
“I never thought myself the kind of man to take a mistress until I realised it was the only way to have you.”
The harshness in his tone was at odds with the gentleness of his loving for his hands were roaming beneath the bodice of her cuirass as he nipped her earlobe. “How do I take this off?”
She guided his hands to the fastenings, and he unclasped her skirt, taking obvious pleasure in f
ollowing its progress to the ground, kissing his way down the length of her thigh then removing her bodice and, finally, her corset, before he lay her on the bed.
When he leant over her, looking into her eyes, he murmured, “You know nothing of me. Do you expect I’ll be generous?”