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‘I didn’t realise things would be so bad. As I said, it’s obvious that it’s too late.’
‘So you’re giving up?’
‘No! I’m saving you the effort of getting involved in something that is next to useless.’
‘Giving up, in other words,’ Ainsley said.
His face was quite white. The handle of his teacup snapped. He stared at it, then put it carefully down. ‘I don’t give up,’ he said.
She bit her tongue.
‘I’m not accustomed to— It’s been difficult. Seeing it. Not having answers. That’s been hard.’
Ainsley nodded.
‘They are all judging me.’
She sighed in exasperation. ‘Innes, you’ve been gone a long time. They don’t know you.’
‘I don’t see how you can help.’
‘I won’t know if I can, if you don’t talk to me.’ Ainsley tried a tentative smile. ‘At the very least, I would be on your side.’
‘Aye, that would be something more than I have right now.’ Innes smiled back. ‘I’ll think about it.’
‘Please do. I have plenty of time on my hands.’
He tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, looking at her ruefully. ‘You might want to use some of it to partition this place off into his and her domains. I’m like a bear with a sore head these days, though contrary to what you might think, I quite like having you around. And that’s your cue, in case you missed it, to tell me you feel the same.’
Ainsley laughed. ‘Would I have suggested helping you if I had wanted to avoid you?’
‘True.’
‘Perhaps you should consider having some sort of welcoming party.’
‘Even though I’m not welcome.’ He shook his head. ‘No, I’m sorry, don’t bite my head off.’
Ainsley frowned, thinking back to the letter she had been reading that morning from Desperate Wife. ‘Sometimes traditions can be a comfort. Sometimes they can even help heal wounds,’ she said, making a mental note to include that phrase in Madame Hera’s reply.
‘Sometimes you sound like one of those self-help manuals, do you know that?’
‘Do I?’
‘“Engaging in marital relations,”’ he quoted, smiling. ‘“Undergoing a husband’s ministrations.” No, don’t get on your high horse, it’s endearing.’
‘It is?’
‘It is. What were you suggesting?’
‘Didn’t you say that there ought to have been a ceremony when we arrived?’ There was a smut of mud on his cheek. She reached up to brush it away.
‘A ceremony. I’m not very keen on ceremonies.’ Innes caught her hand between his and pressed a kiss on to her knuckles.
Was it just a kiss, or a kiss? It felt like more than just a kiss, for it made her heart do a silly little flip. But his mouth did not linger, and surely knuckles could not be—what was the word, stimulating? She wanted to ask him, but that would give too much away, and he might not have been at all stimulated. ‘A celebration, then,’ Ainsley said. ‘Lots of food and drink. Something to mark the changes. You know, out with the old and in with the new.’
‘Mmm.’ He kissed her hand again. ‘I like that,’ he said, smiling at her.
‘Do you?’ She had no idea whether he meant her idea or the kiss.
‘Mmm,’ he said, pulling her towards him and wrapping his arms around her. ‘I like that very much,’ he said. And then he kissed her on the mouth.
It was definitely not just a kiss. He tasted of spring. Of outdoors. A little of sweat. And of something she could not name. Something sinful. Something that made her heat and tense and clench, and made her dig her fingers into the shoulders of his coat and tilt her body against his. And that made him groan, a guttural noise that seemed to vibrate inside her.
One hand roamed up her back, his fingers delving into her hair, the other roamed down to cup her bottom and pull her closer. She could feel the hard ridge of his arousal through his trousers, through her skirts. She touched her tongue to his and felt his shudder, and shuddered with him, pressing her thighs against his, wanting more, wanting to rid herself of the layers of cloth between them, wanting his flesh, and then thinking about her flesh, exposed, thinking about him looking at her. Or looking at her and then turning his head away. Then not wanting to look at her. Like John. And then...
‘Ainsley?’
‘Your bath,’ she said, clutching at the first thing she could think of. ‘Your bath will be ready.’
‘Is something wrong?’
‘No,’ she said, managing a smile, forcing herself to meet his concerned gaze, hating herself for being the cause of that concern, frustrated at having started something she had not the nerve to finish, frustrated at how much she wished she could. ‘No, I just don’t want the water to get cold.’
‘The state I’m in, I think cold is what I need. What happened? Did I do something wrong?’
She flushed. Men were not supposed to ask such questions. Men hated discussing anything intimate. She knew that it was not just John who had been like that, because Madame Hera’s correspondence was full of women saying that their husbands were exactly the same. Why did Innes have to be different!
‘Nothing. I changed my mind,’ Ainsley said, mortified, not only for the lie, but for knowing she was relying on Innes being the kind of man who would always allow a woman to do so. And she was right.
‘A lady’s prerogative,’ he said, making an ironic little bow. ‘I’ll see you at dinner.’
‘Come and sit by the fire.’ Innes handed Ainsley a glass of sherry.
‘I thought it was warm enough to wear this without shivering,’ she answered him with a constrained smile, ‘but now I’m not so sure.’
Her dress was cream patterned with dark blue, with a belt the same colour around her waist. Though it was long-sleeved, the little frill around the décolleté revealed her shoulders, the hollows at her collarbone, the most tantalising hint of the smooth slope of her breasts. She sat opposite him and began to twirl her glass about in her hand, a habit she had, Innes had noticed, when she was trying to work up to saying something uncomfortable.
Her face had that pinched look that leached the life from it. Earlier, he’d suspected that she had pulled away from him because of her memories connected to McBrayne. Lying in the cooling bath water in front of the feeble fire in his bedchamber, Innes had begun to wonder what, exactly, the man had done to her. It was more than the debts, or even the fact that they were incurred without her knowing. He couldn’t understand how she could be kissing him with abandon one minute and then turning to ice the next, and he was fairly certain it wasn’t anything he’d done—or not done. When she forgot herself, she was a different person from the one opposite him now, twisting away nervously at her glass and slanting him timid looks.
Innes threw another log on the fire. ‘I think I’ve solved one problem, at least,’ he said, picking up the magazine that he’d been flicking through while he waited on her. ‘This thing, the Scottish Ladies Companion. There’s a woman who doles out spurious advice to females in here, and she uses that very same phrase of yours.’ He opened the periodical and ruffled through the pages. ‘Aye, here it is. “Make