Pippa tilted her head. “Are you certain? As I said, I would be willing to pay her.”
The idea of Pippa Marbury paying to learn Sally Tasser’s trade made Cross want to destroy someone. First Bourne, for allowing his sister-in-law to run untethered throughout London, and then the Marquess of Needham and Dolby, for raising a young woman who was completely lacking in sense, and then Castleton, for not keeping his fiancée properly occupied in the weeks leading up to their wedding.
Unaware of the direction of his rioting thoughts, she said, “Lord Castleton has never attempted to compromise me.”
The man was either idiot or saint.
If Cross were Castleton, he’d have had her a dozen different ways the moment she’d agreed to be his wife. In darkened hallways and dim alcoves, in long, stop-and-start carriage rides through the crush of midday traffic, and outside, quickly, against a strong, sturdy tree, with none but nature to hear her cries of pleasure.
To hear their mutual cries of pleasure.
But he was not Castleton.
He was Cross.
And this was thoroughly, completely wrong.
He took a step back, his thoughts making him guilty—making him look around the dim casino floor in sudden fear that someone might see them. Might hear them.
Why was it that she was always where ladies should never be?
“Last night, I attempted to indicate to him that I was happy for him to touch me. Kiss me, even.”
He hated the earl with a wicked, visceral intensity.
She was still talking. “But he didn’t even seem to notice me. Granted, it was just a touch on the hand, but . . .”
Cross would pay good money for her to touch him so simply.
Her big blue eyes were trained on him again. “Do you know why he hasn’t attempted to seduce me?”
“No.” Again, sainthood seemed the only logical answer.
“You needn’t feel that you must protect me from the truth.”
“I don’t.” Except he did. He didn’t want her to know the truth of his own thoughts. Their sordid nature.
“It’s because I am odd.” And then she looked up at him with those enormous blue eyes, and said, “I can’t help it.”
God help him, he wanted to kiss her senseless, odd or not. He wanted to kiss her senseless because she was odd.
“Pippa—” he said, knowing he shouldn’t speak.
She cut him off. “Don’t tell me it’s not true. I know it is. I’m strange.”
“You are.”
Her brows knit together. “Well, you don’t have to tell me it is true either.”
He couldn’t help it. He smiled. “It is not a bad thing.”
She looked at him as though it was he—and not she—who was mad. “Of course it is.”
“No. It’s not.”
“You’re a good man.”
He was nothing of the sort. And there were several key parts of his body that wanted to prove that to her. One of them in particular.
“It’s fine that he is not interested in seducing me,” she said, “but it cannot go on forever.”
“Perhaps he is trying to be a gentleman.”
She did not believe it. “That hasn’t stopped Tottenham.”
A thread of fire shot through him. “Tottenham has attempted to seduce you?” He’d murder him, next prime minister or not.
She looked at him as though he’d sprouted a second head. “No. Why would Tottenham seduce me?”
“You said it.”
“No. I said he’d tried to seduce Olivia.”
She hadn’t said any such thing, but he let it go.
“Not tried to,” she pressed on, “did. Has done.” She closed her eyes. “I’m the only Marbury daughter who has not been seduced.”
He could rectify this tragic wrong.
Except he couldn’t.
She looked up at him. “Can you believe it?”
He did not know what to say. So he said nothing.
“You can, I see.” She took a deep breath. “This is why I required your help from the beginning, Mr. Cross. I need you to show me how to do it.”
Yes.
He swallowed back the word. Surely he was misunderstanding. “How to do what?”
She sighed, frustrated. “How to attract him.”
“Whom?”
“Are you even listening? Castleton!” She turned away, heading for the nearest table, where a roulette wheel stood quiet in its thick oak seat. She spoke to the wheel. “I didn’t know that he should be attempting to seduce me now. Before our wedding. I didn’t know that was a part of it.”
“It’s not. He shouldn’t be doing any such thing.”
“Well, you’ve clearly never been engaged because it seems that this is precisely the kind of thing that happens between to-be-married couples. I thought I had two weeks. Apparently, I don’t.”
There was a roar in his ears that made it difficult to understand her, but when she turned to face him again, shoulders back, as though she were about to do battle, he knew he was done for. “My research must begin immediately.”
He was being punished. That was the only explanation.
“I need someone”—she paused, then reframed the statement—“I need you to teach me how to be normal.”
What a travesty that would be.