He rubbed a hand over his sweating face, imagined he smelled the alcohol oozing from his pores, and wiped it on his breeches.
“I don’t want wine, no. Nor do I want to . . . to do . . . well, that’s not true,” he admitted. “I do want to—very much,” he added hurriedly, lest she think him insulting, “but I’m not going to.”
She looked at him openmouthed.
“Why not?” she said at last. “You’ve paid well over the odds for anything you want to do. Including buggery, if that’s your pleasure.” Her lip curled a little.
He flushed to the scalp.
“You think I would save you from—that, and then do it myself?”
“Yes. Often men don’t think of something until another mentions it, and then they’re all eagerness to try it themselves.”
He was outraged.
“You must have a most indifferent opinion of gentlemen, madam!”
Her mouth twitched again, and she gave him a look of such barely veiled amusement that the blood burned in his face and ears.
“Right,” he said stiffly. “I take your point.”
“Well, that’s a novelty,” she said, the twitch breaking into a malicious smile. “It’s generally the other way round.”
He breathed deeply through his nose.
“I . . . it is meant as an apology, if you like.” It was a struggle to keep meeting her eye. “For what happened last time.”
A faint breeze came in, ruffling the hair about her shoulders and filling the fabric of her shift so it billowed, which afforded him a glimpse of her nipple, like a dark rose in the candlelight. He swallowed and looked away.
“My . . . um . . . my stepfather . . . told me once that a madam of his acquaintance said to him that a night’s sleep was the best gift you could give a whore.”
“It runs in the family, does it? Frequenting brothels?” She didn’t pause for a response to that. “He’s right, though. Do you really mean that you intend for me to . . . sleep?” From her tone of incredulity, he might have asked her to engage in some perversion well past buggery.
He kept his temper with some difficulty.
“You can sing songs or stand on your head, if you prefer, madam,” he said. “I don’t propose to . . . er . . . molest you. Beyond that, your actions are quite up to you.”
She stared at him, a small frown between her brows, and he could see that she didn’t believe him.
“I . . . would go,” he said, feeling awkward again, “but I have some concern that Captain Harkness might be still on the premises, and should he learn that you are alone . . .” And he somehow couldn’t face his own dark, empty room. Not tonight.
“I imagine Ned’s disposed of him,” she said, then cleared her throat. “But don’t go. If you do, Madge will send somebody else up.” She took off her petticoat, with no display of coquetry or artifice in the motion. There was a screen in the corner; she went behind this, and he heard the splash of her using a chamber pot.
She came out, glanced at him, and with a brief wave at the screen said, “Just there. If you—”
“Uh . . . thank you.” He did in fact need to piss fairly badly, but the thought of using her pot, so soon after her own use of it, caused him an unreasonable amount of embarrassment. “I’ll be fine.” He looked round, found a chair, and sat down in it, ostentatiously thrusting out his boots and leaning back in an attitude of relaxation. He closed his eyes—mostly.
Through slitted lids, he saw her observe him closely for a moment, then she leaned over and blew out the candle. Ghostlike in the darkness, she climbed into her bed—the ropes creaked with her weight—and drew up the quilt. A faint sigh came to him over the sounds of the brothel below.
“Er . . . Arabella?” He didn’t expect thanks, exactly, but he did want something from her.
“What?” She sounded resigned, obviously expecting him to say that he’d changed his mind about buggery.
“What’s your real name?”
There was silence for a minute, as she made up her mind. There was nothing tentative about the young woman, though, and when she did reply, it was without reluctance.
“Jane.”
“Oh. Just—the one thing more. My coat—”
“I sold it.”
“Oh. Er . . . good night, then.”
There was a prolonged moment, filled with the unspoken thoughts of two people, then a deep, exasperated sigh.
“Come and get into bed, you idiot.”
HE COULDN’T GET into bed in full uniform. He did keep his shirt on, with some idea of preserving her modesty and his original intent. He lay quite rigid beside her, trying to envision himself as the tomb figure of a Crusader: a marble monument to noble behavior, sworn to a chastity enforced by his stone embodiment.
Unfortunately, it was a rather small bed and William was rather large. And Arabella–Jane wasn’t trying at all to avoid touching him. Granted, she wasn’t trying to arouse him, either, but her mere presence did that without half trying.
He was intensely aware of every inch of his body and which of them were in contact with hers. He could smell her hair, a faint scent of soap mingled with the sweetness of tobacco smoke. Her breath was sweet, too, with the smell of burnt rum, and he wanted to taste it in her mouth, share the lingering stickiness. He closed his eyes and swallowed.
Only the fact that he needed desperately to pee made it possible to keep his hands off her. He was in that state of drunkenness where he could perceive a problem but could not analyze a solution to it, and sheer inability to think of two things at once prevented him either speaking to her or laying a hand on hers.