It was twelve minutes past two, Percy could see from the clock on the mantel, maybe thirteen. The fire was roaring up the chimney. He had a cup of tea at his elbow with two sugar-sprinkled biscuits in the saucer. And he was seated a short distance from the fire on one half of the love seat, as close to the center as possible, just as she was on her side. This sofa would accommodate four people in a row if necessary, especially if the middle two were pressed together, his arm about her shoulders, her head on one of his.
When he had mentioned a dressing gown, he had expected . . . well, a froth of lace and ribbons. Hers was of heavy velvet and at least a million years old. Its nap was worn almost threadbare in places, notably—and interestingly—in the region of her derriere. It was at least one size too large and had grown a bit shapeless. It covered every inch of her from neck to wrists to ankles. It ought to make her look like the veriest dowd, especially when combined with a pair of slippers that were surely half a million years old. She had not put her hair up or left it down. She had hauled it back to her neck and secured it there with a thin strip of ribbon.
She looked deliciously gorgeous—too good for dessert. She was the whole feast.
He was a trifle alarmed by the thought. She ought not to look appetizing at all, especially when compared with . . . well, with all his other women. And what the devil sort of performance had he put on upstairs in her bed? He had had her twice, and all within fifteen minutes at the longest. No, correction—they had had each other. But he had no complaint at all about her performance, though she had used no feminine wiles to prolong or intensify his pleasure. She had just . . . gone at it.
He took a biscuit from his saucer and bit into it.
“If you merely go to sleep on my shoulder,” he said, “I shall be peeved. It is conversation time, Lady Barclay. On what topic do you wish to converse? The weather? Our own health and that of everyone else we know, the more gruesome the detail the better? Bonnets or parasols? Snuffboxes?”
Hector had come closer while he spoke and plumped down across one of his feet. The cat, which had been comfortably disposed upon its own bed when he went into the kitchen, had jumped onto the empty space at the other side of the love seat and curled up there to recover from the exertions of walking all the way to the sitting room.
“Oh, I would love to know about the latest fashions in bonnets,” she said. “Large brimmed or small? Ostentatiously trimmed or elegantly unadorned? Straw or felt? Tied beneath the chin or perched on the head to tempt the wind? But I suppose that being a man, you cannot give me the answers I crave.”
“Hmm,” he said. “How about snuffboxes, then? I can perhaps acquit myself more knowledgeably upon them.”
“But, alas,” she said, “I have not the smallest modicum of interest in snuffboxes.”
“Hmm.” He chewed the rest of the biscuit and frowned in thought. “Quizzing glasses?”
“I am about to break into a snore,” she said.
“Hmm.” He picked up the other biscuit. “Must we come, then, Lady Barclay, to the regrettable conclusion that we are quite incompatible in everything except sex?”
“Alas,” she said with a huge sigh—and then burst into laughter.
It was a sound of sheer silliness, and the thought occurred to him with a jolt of alarm that he might just possibly be falling in love with this woman—whatever the devil falling in love was.
He silenced her with his mouth.
“Alas that we are sexually compatible, did you mean?” he asked.
“You taste sweet.” She raised a finger, brushed what he supposed was a crystal of sugar from the corner of his mouth, and put the top joint of the finger in her mouth.
The minx. She was sheer blatant courtesan at that moment, and he was not at all sure she did not know it. Her eyes were steady on his.
“Sweet?” he said.
“It was not you after all.” She smiled at him. “It was the sugar on the biscuit.”
“Hmm,” he said.
“Tell me more about your childhood,” she said.
“It was really quite dull and uneventful,” he assured her, stretching his legs out before him and crossing them at the ankles—Hector made the necessary adjustments. “The greatest adventure by far was that episode on the cliff face I told you about. Apart from that, I was a docile, obedient lad. How could I not be? I was constrained by love. My parents adored me, as did my nurse, who, to my chagrin, stayed with me until I went away to Oxford at the age of seventeen. My tutors too, even the one who liked to swish his cane to punctuate his instruction and did not hesitate to use it on my backside when I was particularly thick about providing the right answers to his questions or when in a piece of writing I attached a plural verb to a singular subject or some such outrage. He loved me. He told me I had been blessed with a fine mind and that he was being paid to see to it that I learned how to use it properly, but I do believe he was motivated by more than just money.”
“Did you hate your lessons?” she asked.
“Not at all,” he told her. “I was that rarest of all breeds of boy—I enjoyed learning, and I enjoyed pleasing the adults who had the care of me. You would not have recognized me in those days, Imogen.”