“Oh, I need to come up with a list first, rather than spring them on him whenever I think of something. But let’s see the stables just the same, and you tell me what you think.”
Mr. Sanford had a gruff voice that made Audrey feel like he put up with a mistress because he had to. But he seemed to listen respectfully to Robert’s military-orderliness suggestions,and they had a discussion about stable management that Audrey listened to but felt outside of.
Once they were alone again, she said, “Robert, those things could have gone on my list, the one I’m preparing for my discussion with Mr. Sanford.”
“Forgive me—was I not supposed to speak to the man?” he asked, amusement in his voice. “I was a cavalry officer, so I’m considered an expert on horses.”
“I want the servants to trust and listen to me, not you. You won’t be their master, although we’re letting them think otherwise.” She hesitated. “This is a valid consideration, and one I wouldn’t have to worry about if we call off the engagement now. There’s no need to keep up the pretense,” she hurried to add.
“That’s a mistake, Audrey,” he said in a low voice. “Come sit by the pond with me.”
“Where we can be alone?” she said just as quietly.
“Exactly.”
As they walked, he described the reeds around the pond, the little dock where a rowboat could be tied up.
“Or I could jump off the dock for a good swim,” she countered, just to shock him.
“ThatI would like to see.” Then he turned her about. “The bench is right behind you.”
She sat down as gracefully as possible, then noticed how small the bench was when she could feel the line of his thigh against her skirts. She didn’t quite touch him with her own thigh, but if she moved just a bit …
Oh, what was she doing? “Robert, the engagement was just to get me away from my family. That’s over. I won’t even write to them that we have called it off.”
“So they can learn from gossip?”
She said nothing.
“And do you know how it will look? Like I used the engagement as a ruse to get you alone, away from your family, for only one reason.”
She felt overly warm with a blush.
“And then after a night in the inn, maybe I already took all I wanted.”
For a frozen moment, she imagined that, his kisses, the seduction she couldn’t resist, his hands on her body. She was no innocent maid—she knew exactly what he meant. Yet the thought of being intimate with him seemed so exciting, even though as a widow she knew the reality of it. The heat in her face spread lower, languorously across her breasts and down her body, full of fevered need and desperation.
That’s what it was, desperation, she realized with a start. She was lonely already, lonely and uncomfortable and too needy. But she was under no one’s command but her own. Giving in to these treacherous, fleeting feelings would be a disastrous mistake.
But …
“You are right, of course,” she said at last, embarrassed at how soft and breathless her voice sounded. “I would never want you to seem like an unscrupulous rake.”
“I didn’t say this on my own behalf,” he insisted. “An earl can afford to care little about his own reputation.”
She thought of his scandalous past, and the man who’d killed himself.
“But you, Audrey, would be …” His voice trailed away.
She felt her lips twist into a wry smile. “A Society widow? Is that not what some scandalous widows do, take a lover once their husbands are gone?”
She’d expected him to laugh, but when he didn’t, she grew uncertain. “Robert?”
“Is that what you want, Audrey?” he asked in a husky voice.
She felt the pressure of his thigh, no longer just next to her skirts, but against her own.
“To have people think you a scandalous widow?”
