“Yes, though I’m still afraid sometimes of what we’ve done.” What you’ve done, reckless girl. “You won’t have your coming-out. You won’t have your season and you would have enjoyed it. Every gentleman in town would have fallen over himself to pay you court.”
“I wouldn’t have liked the attention.”
“All young ladies like the attention. How do you know you wouldn’t have liked it?”
She regarded him with one of her dreamy smiles. “I only ever wanted attention from one gentleman.”
“You inveterate flirt.”
“It’s not flirting, it’s the truth.” She sniffed, rearranging the cards in her hand. “Anyway, the gentlemen only would have courted me because my father is rich and powerful. You actually care about me. We’ve been friends our whole lives and our families are thick as thieves.”
He grimaced as she discarded more cards. “Your father must lie awake at night even now, thinking of ways to murder me when we return to England. I’ll be fortunate if he doesn’t have me thrown in jail, and marry you to Brittingham anyway.”
He saw her go tense. “Could he do such a thing? Dissolve a marriage between us?”
“He might try if he had any hope our union remained unconsummated.”
“Unconsummated? What does that mean?”
Sometimes he forgot what an innocent she was. “An unconsummated marriage is one in which the husband and wife haven’t, ah, lain together yet.”
He felt some of her tension ebb away. “Then we must lie together at the earliest opportunity. I won’t mind that at all, though I’d prefer to use your bed. Mine is smaller.”
“Hmm.”
“I’ve slept alone my whole life except when I visited Elizabeth as a child, and we used to giggle under the covers together, and stay up quite late after we’d been put to bed. I think sleeping with a gentleman must be fun and exciting also. The married ladies I’ve known always blush when it’s brought up.”
Marlow looked past her shoulder to the mattress where he tossed and turned at night, thinking of her. Of course his innocent future wife’s idea of the marital bed was something akin to childhood cuddles beneath a blanket. How very Rosalind of her.
“I share your conviction that we must lie together as soon as it’s proper for us to do so, but that time is not yet. I don’t believe your father will try to end our marriage, anyway. It would cause a greater scandal. Better to pretend we were already secretly married before you left with me. That’s probably the tale that’s been put about. Brittingham will be angriest. Your marriage would have been an excellent connection for him. He’ll doubtless insist upon a duel when I return, in hopes of making you a rich widow.”
“A duel?” She shook her head. “You’ll have to refuse him.”
“A man cannot refuse. It’s a matter of honor.”
“Perhaps we shouldn’t go back,” she said after a moment. “Not for a while, anyway. There are plenty of English people living in the East now.”
“You’d want to live in India?”
“For a while. Perhaps.”
He knew from her voice she didn’t want to do such a thing, but that she would, for him. It was touching, how much she was willing to give up for him. If only he deserved such sacrifice and devotion…
They were down to the last three cards in the draw-pile and he was winning. Again. Rosalind picked up the top card, then put it down before she completed the motion. Perhaps she thought he hadn’t seen her tip up the edge behind her delicate fingers, peeking at the card before deciding against taking it.
“Gentlemen play with a rule,” he said, giving her a chance to correct her behavior. “If you touch the card, you can’t put it back.”
“Well, I’m not a gentleman, am I?” she said lightly. “I changed my mind. You may draw the card if you wish.”
“Draw the card you’ve already looked at and rejected?”
She dropped her gaze, brazening it out. “How was I to look at it? I barely touched it.”
“I know you looked at it, little cheater. Cheating is wrong to begin with.” He gave her a dire look. “When you’re so bad at it, it makes it even worse.”
“Well, I’m tired of you winning every time. It’s very tedious.”
She made it too easy. The one spanking he’d dealt her so far had only stoked his appetite to give her another, and here she was, giving him a perfectly legitimate excuse to redden her bottom. Cheating at cards? It was as if she wanted him to spank her.