That would make him celibate for at least two and a half years after he'd left her. “Why? Why were you faithful to me?” she marveled.
“Oh, I had no time. Within weeks after my arrival in America I'd taken on such astronomical loans I could scarcely eat or sleep for fear of defaulting. I was up at five every morning and never went to bed before one.” He grimaced a little at the memory, then smiled at her. “You could also say I had no intention. I wanted you. I wanted to stomp back into your life one day, twice as wealthy as you, if possible. I imagined decadent, histrionic reunions and wasted a river of sperm masturbating to these fantasies.”
She knew what the word meant—it was what the Muscular Christians were trying to prevent, through a regimen of rigorous sports that would leave English men and boys too exhausted for anything but dead slumber—though she was sure she'd never heard it spoken aloud before. She'd thought it a dirty word, but the way he said it, as if it were the most natural thing in the world, made voluptuous images dance before her eyes.
If she weren't already naked, she'd rip off her clothes and throw herself at him. She took one of his hands and rubbed the moist inside of her lower lip against the calluses of his palm. “Tell me one of those fantasies.”
He leveled a dirty look at her. “Only if you promise to act your part in it.”
She bowed her head with becoming humility. “Well, I did tell myself that I would be the most obliging wife who ever lived.”
He smiled wickedly, pulling her to him. “Oh, this is getting better and better.”
In between fulfillment of his inventive—at times highly unorthodox—fantasies, Gigi and Camden talked about the children they would have and all the things they couldn't wait to do together. At Christmas they'd visit his grandfather in Bavaria. Come spring she would show him the gorgeous West Country of England and Wales. And in summer, if she wasn't already too far gone in her pregnancy, they'd sail the Aegean and the Adriatic on the Mistress.
“Take me somewhere to ride,” she said. “I haven't been on a horse since you walked out on me the first time.”
“I've a country house in Connecticut, on a pretty piece of land. We'll sail up tomorrow.”
Thinking of the arrangements made her remember Beckett. “Your butler . . . do you know that—”
“I was the one who told him to go far away. We were both shocked when three years later he came for a position I'd advertised. He immediately begged pardon and turned to leave. I stopped him. To this day I don't really know why.” Camden shrugged. “By the end of the year, he'll have worked for me for seven years.”
Whatever his reasons, she was grateful. “It's a well-run house,” she murmured. “And what of his son?”
“He was in a Liverpool jail for a year or two, then went to South Africa when gold was discovered. He married last year.”
She breathed a further sigh of relief. It was most agreeably humbling to learn that her sins hadn't stopped the earth from spinning or other people from getting on tolerably with the rest of their lives.
He traced her spine from her neck down to her tailbone and back again. “Tell me about Lord Frederick. How did he take your decision not to marry him?”
“With much better grace than I deserved, to be sure. I only wish I could arrange for him to be happy always. But don't worry,” she added hastily. “I will leave him alone to live his own life. I've learned my lesson.”
“Hmm, have you?” He kissed her shoulder. “That's what you said the last time we were in bed together.”
She turned onto her back and placed his hand between her legs. “Feel for yourself. Nothing there anymore between you and me.”
She lost count of how many times they made love. Too much and still not quite enough. Some time in the small hours of the night, he ran her a bath and laundered her thoroughly, making her giggle and squeal with all the naughty things a playful man could do with a willing woman, a tub of hot water, and a piece of fragrant soap.
When it was his turn to wash, she looted the kitchen for food. He was in his dressing gown toweling his hair dry when she returned, carrying with her a haunch of roasted pheasant left over from the dinner, a half loaf of bread, and a bowl of morello cherries.
“My God,” he said, tossing aside the towel to take the tray from her. “I had no idea you did things other than turning profits and enslaving men.”
She laughed as he set the tray down atop the large cedar chest at the foot of the bed. “Allow me to shock you by knitting you a pair of socks this Christmas, then.”
He smiled, tearing off a chunk of bread. “Then I shall be forced to build you a rocking chair. Alas, my carpentry is quite rusty.”