“Nothappy, no,” he acknowledged, setting his glass aside. One hand circled around her, flattening against the small of her back to draw her closer. “I am trying my best,” he said, “to be rational about this. To ask you only for reasonable accommodations for the sake of your safety.” The fingers of his free hand slid into her hair, knocking a few pins loose as he dragged her closer to press her head against his shoulder. “But you cannot expect me to behappyabout it.”
“I promised I would tell you,” she said, breathing in the oddly comforting scent of his shaving soap, which clung to his throat. “I don’t want to be at odds with you.” Not with only a week left between them.
“We’re not at odds,” he soothed, and pressed a kiss to the top of her head. “When will you leave?”
“After the theatre,” she said, her fingers curling into the soft fabric of his coat. “It will be late enough that no one will make note of it should I retire for the evening. Your mother and the girls will be changing and taking down their hair; they will not notice if I should slip out of the house.” They never had before. “By the time I return, they’ll be fast asleep.”
“What time do you expect that to be?”
“One,” she said. “Perhaps two, at the very latest.”
“You will take the carriage,” he said, his fingers sliding down the nape of her neck to massage the muscles there which had grown tight with strain.
Perhaps half of the tension she had been carrying came loose with her sigh, and Mercy relaxed against the expanse of his chest. “I don’t know that the coachman will agree to take me,” she said. To Cheapside, after dark? It seemed unlikely.
“He will if I ask it of him,” Thomas said. “He’ll remain nearby, of course. I don’t want you taking a hack home again.”
He truly wasn’t going to stop her, despite his disapproval. “Thank you,” she said. “I promise I’ll come straight home again.”
“You had better, for the coachman will be instructed of the same,” he said, and she could hear the threat of a frown in his voice.
Mercy choked on an unwise flutter of laughter. “And I will remember my key.”
“It will make no difference whether or not you do. I will be up to see you off, and so I will remain until you return.” He sounded a bit cross, as if he had conceded this much against his better judgment. But still hehadconceded.
“You don’t have to do that,” she said.
“Yes,” he said. “I do.” Though he softened the grim tones of the words with the stroke of his hand along her spine. “I have known you’ve been sneaking out for weeks. I’ve had more than one sleepless night over it. At least I know, approximately, when this one will end.” He heaved a sigh, his arms tightening around her. “Is that all that troubles you at present?”
No. What troubled her most now was the thought of surrendering this in potentially as little as a week’s time. What troubled her was the prospect of never again feeling his arms around her, of nevermore laying her head upon his shoulder. Never to feel so safe, so protected, so cossetted and cared for. She could do without the balls and the dinner parties and the social events at which she had never truly expected to be welcome.
But her life would be so much emptier for his loss. So muchcolder. One warm memory, she told herself as she lifted her head from its place upon his shoulder. Just one. It wasn’t so very much to ask. Only one warm night to heat the cold ones which lay ahead of her.
“No,” she said, turning her face into the curve of his throat. “Thomas, if I ask something of you—something significantly less than proper—will you think less of me for it?”
“Hmm.” His soft huff of amusement skittered past her ear. “Less proper than sharing a carriage without a chaperone? Or playing billiards alone?”
She supposed he had, in fact, already made a few concessions in regard to propriety. The sort of things that no one would have noticed. They might be sharing the same house, but so were his mother and sisters. No one would have assumed her to be unchaperoned—even if she had. “Less proper even than—than our evening in Cheapside,” she said.
Beneath her fingers, she felt the escalation of his heartbeat, the steady pulse rising to a pound. “Mercy, what are you asking?”
Too late to retract it now. And she would never forgive herself for letting the chance pass her by, otherwise. “I am asking,” she said, clearly, concisely, “for you to come to bed with me.”
∞∞∞
Thomas had never been so tempted to indiscretion in his life. For a long moment it felt as though he had imagined those words, invented them,wishedthem into being. Because she couldn’t possibly have suggested—
But this was Mercy. Of course she could have done.
He’d stood in his stunned silence too long. “You do think less of me,” she accused, an odd fragility trembling in her voice as she bestirred herself from her prior comfortable drape across his chest to draw away from him.
“God, no.” His arms banded around her, and that tension that had risen in her at his apparent rejection faded in seconds. “No, of course I don’t think any less of you.” He never could. She was always going to be bold, to be adventurous and brave and forthright. A leader, charging headfirst into the unknown with enthusiasm rather than dread. How could he possibly stand firm against the wishes of a woman like her? Still a general, if presently vague, sense of honor compelled him to say, “It would be best”—proper; correct; moral—“to wait.”
“I don’t want to wait,” she said, and the sulky petulance within her voice provoked a short, strained, laugh from him.
“We are in your father’s house. You are being chaperoned by my mother. Anyone would assume I’d pressed some advantage,” he said into her haphazardly-pinned curls. “For God’s sake, Mercy, I am doing my damnedest to be honorable about this.”
“I don’t want you to be honorable about it, either. No one will know. Please, Thomas,” she said, and lifted herself onto her toes to brush her lips to his. “Won’t you be just a bit wicked with me? Just this once?”
