Leave a Widow Wanting More by Charlie Lane
Chapter 19
Henry had always been good at concentrating on one thing while doing another. He’d attended dinners with royalty while translating ancient texts in his mind. He’d planned an entire trip to South America last year during one of that idiot Tompkin’s dull lectures on orthography. Today, he’d applied the same principles. He’d done as Sarah had asked, showed up, participated, spent time with his daughters at the stones, at dinner, and for hours afterward. Physically, at least, he’d shown up. Intellectually, he’d been considering the problem of Ada and her suitor and how best to stomp—er—approach it. All day long, he had proven his superior ability to conquer two tasks at once.
Now, a naked woman draped across his bed reading a book dragged him into the present entirely. The suitor problem no longer existed. He forgot entirely his well-considered plan. The only things in the world were Sarah, a bed, and his own beating heart. Also, it went without saying, his lengthening erection.
Sarah looked up from her book and blushed prettily when she saw him. Everywhere. “Good. I’ve got your attention.” She laid her book aside and pulled the coverlet over her breasts.
“Wait just a mo—”
“I wish to have a conversation, but it was clear from your tantrum at the stones today and your silence at dinner you did not intend to allow me, or anyone, the opportunity. And this”—she gestured to her now-covered body—“was the best plan I could conceive to get your attention.”
Zeus, it had worked.
“But now I fear if I remain naked, you’ll not be able to pay me the kind of intellectual attention I desire at the moment.” She pulled the coverlet tighter around her breasts.
She had a point. Henry stepped farther into the room, making sure the door locked behind him, thinking only of the outline of her lithe body beneath the cover, the way her pale skin pinked under his gaze. “We talk and then …” He reached down and plucked at a corner of the coverlet, lifting it, peeking under. “Then we’ll get naked?”
Sarah snagged it from his grasp. “Yes. Now, sit and tell me what happened when you ran from the stones. You went to see that boy, I presume.”
Henry sat on the edge of the bed, frowning. How had she known?
He must have looked baffled because she said, “You were not at home when we returned from the stones. I half suspect you went to warn off that boy, Ada’s suitor. The earl.”
“Only half suspect?”
“Yes, well, you appeared angry enough to do something irrational. You often seem that way and yet still retain the control to not give into your irrational impulses. In my admittedly limited experience of you, you exercise a good deal of cold sense over passionate sensibility.”
Hmph. He hoped so. Only a fool would not. “You’re correct. I did not visit him.” But only just barely. He’d gotten halfway there before turning back. “I took a walk. I was thinking.”
“Will you share your thoughts?”
Why not? The sooner he did so, the sooner he could pull the coverlet down, down, down, and begin the conversation he truly desired, one of touches and sighs instead of words and logic. Besides, he liked talking to her. She listened, and she said things that made him think. He ordered his thoughts and marched them out one by one.
“My thoughts are these. Ada is special. The young Lucas, titled as he is, is not. A marriage between the two would be a mismatch on every front. The attachment began some two years ago, after the old earl died. I suspect Ada offered solace, a soothing smile for a grieving young man. It should have stopped with that, but somehow it hasn’t.”
“What if she loves him?”
“Impossible.”
Sarah’s glance suggested she thought otherwise.
Henry continued. “She needs a season in London. A real season. She can’t have that if she’s hastily engaged or worse.”
Sarah’s brows knit together. “Worse? Do you think they’ve—”
“Let’s hope not.”
“I think I’m slightly scared of that tone in your voice, Henry.”
“It’s Lucas who should be scared of it, not you. But this brings me to my next point. I intend to convince Lucas this courtship is wrong using solid logic and evidence. I wrote him a letter inviting him here for a little chat.”
Sarah inspected her nails as if their conversation was of no import. Ha. Merely a maneuver, that, one Henry often used himself.
He steeled himself for the coming barrage of “good points” she likely composed in her head that very moment.
“Convince? Not intimidate?” she asked.
If the boy required a little intimidation, what of it?
Sarah picked at a strand of hair falling over her shoulder. “Does Ada know?”
Henry shifted uncomfortably on the bed. “Does Ada need to know?”
Sarah looked thoughtfully up at the ceiling and the coverlet slipped an inch. “This is one of those moments, I think, where your sensibility is getting the better of your sense. I’m of the mind you do not have to worry about the matter overmuch. In my conversation with her, she seemed to desire a London season more than she did the earl.”
“Hmph. It’s all trouble.”
“That’s hardly articulate.”
“What will you tell him, the young earl?”
“To look elsewhere than Cavendish Manor for his marital prospects.” He waited for her to present him with his list of good points in favor of who knew what, whatever he least wanted to do, likely.
Sarah chuckled. “You’re making him come to you. Strategic. Tell me, did Wellington ever try to recruit you?”
He had. Once. Henry had politely but firmly refused the offer.
The coverlet slipped lower down her chest. “I’d like meet him. The earl. Not Wellington.”
Well, now, he’d not expected such a request and didn’t particularly welcome it with her dusky nipple almost bared to his gaze.
She pulled the coverlet tighter, higher. “I’ll be properly dressed, of course.”
She’d caught him staring. He shrugged. “I’m having a difficult time concentrating.” Time to be done with this conversation. “You can meet him when he arrives. If it pleases you.”
She nodded. “And Ada?”
“I don’t see why she should know anything about it. Especially if, as you say, she harbors no real feelings for him.”
“But that is exactly why you should leave the matter alone. And you should tell her because it concerns her life and future. And possibly her heart.”
“Not her heart.” He wagged a finger at her. “You said so yourself.”
“Henry. You can’t know that. I can’t know that. It’s merely a possibility. That they love one another is just as possible.”
Henry exploded off the bed. “You think I do not know my daughter? Do you think my absence is the same as ignorance, as apathy?”
“No, Henry. I—”
“She’s … she’s …”
“Quite pretty.”
“Yes.”
“And witty.”
Something inside Henry calmed a bit. He remembered Ada’s comments at the stones this afternoon. They’d enraged him then. He chuckled now, though, rage long gone. “Yes, very witty.”
“And you can’t be witty without having a brain.”
“Exactly so.” Henry sat back down on the edge of the bed, but this time leaned against the headboard, folding his hands behind his head and gazing up at the ceiling. It startled him when he felt a warm body curl into his side, a small head and silken hair lower onto his chest and into the crook of his arm.
Sarah’s voice rumbled into him. “You are her father. I’ve barely known her a day. I concede my points. But how well do you know the Ada she’s become in your absence?”
“She’s no different than before.”
“She is. She’s a woman now. Not the girl you once knew.”
He waited for her to say the words. Stay. Do not leave. Get to know your daughter. They never came. Smart woman, Sarah Pennington. No, Sarah Cavendish.
He gathered her close. “How is it we’ve only known one another three days?” Henry felt as if she’d been there, in the shelter of his arm, all his life. Or should have been.
She pressed her face into his chest.
Henry hugged her closer. “In some places, people believe that souls live on after death, taking new forms. Maybe our souls have met in some other form in some other lives.”
She pushed up to sit. “That sounds lovely. Henry, can I ask you a favor?”
“An abrupt change of conversation. But ask away.”
“I shouldn’t ask you for anything else. You’ve already given me all you have to give.”
He’d given her time, attention for the children, picnics, outings, risking his heart with each request he complied with. But he didn’t want to deny her, not with her rosy, vulnerable, nakedness protected only by the thin coverlet.
“Ask, Sarah.”
She chewed her bottom lip, and he reached out with one finger and pulled the lip free. She scowled but found her voice. “I do not wish to take a lover after you leave.”
The hair on Henry’s neck bristled.
She rushed on. “I know it’s old-fashioned of me, but I believe a husband and wife should remain faithful to their vows of marriage, no matter how convenient. Or maybe I mean inconvenient.”
Henry relaxed, nodded. “I know what you mean, and I agree with you.”
“That’s nice, but I’m rather concerned about how much I enjoy our bedroom encounters. And … and I feel there’s so much still to learn and explore.”
“Indeed, there is—”
“And so very little time before you leave.”
“Ah. You’re afraid I’ll leave you wanting.”
She shrugged. “There’s no use denying it.”
No, there wasn’t. He’d be left wanting, too.
“It’s why I want to request one final favor. While you’re here, before you leave, teach me all you know.”
Henry’s body tightened all over all at once. He rolled her off his chest and lowered himself over her. “That is a favor to me, too.”
“Another mutually beneficial arrangement, then.”
“Indeed.”
“One more thing.”
“Oh?”
“We must take precautions.”
“Precautions?” Henry lifted himself minutely, enough to look into her eyes. “Against what?” His brain felt foggy. His body sent signals of her softness, her curves, her warmth, and these signals blocked all else from entering his brain.
“A child, Henry. What else?”
That did the trick. Burst right through his lust-addled walls and sent alert signals ringing throughout his head. “A … child …?”
“It’s not unheard of for a woman of even my advanced years to conceive, you know.”
Zeus! She might already be … his blood ran cold.
Her hand on the side of his face startled him. “Henry. Are you all right? Where did you go?”
To hell, that’s where. How could he touch her now, make good on his promise to teach her all he knew of making love? If he did, she’d grow large with his child, and if that happened, well, the odds were against her.
Henry leaped from the bed, shaking his head. “There was a flaw in the plan. I didn’t see it. But I do now, gaping like a crater in the earth.”
“Henry, your logic is leaping away from me again. Do slow down or take me with you.”
“I married you to take care of my current children. If you become pregnant and die, they’ll be left alone again.” He’d be left alone again.
“Henry, that’s—”
“I know I said the bedroom was to be a benefit of our union. I depended on it as a major selling point of my proposal. But now I see it will never do.”
“What are you saying? That after two days of marriage you’re leaving my bed for good?”
“I’m sorry, Sarah. I’ll still do as you asked in all other ways—spend time with the children—but … we can’t.”
He turned from her bewildered eyes and left.
She’d understand, surely. She had to. But what did it matter if she didn’t? What did it matter if she hated him for this? He didn’t need her to love him or even like him to take good care of his children. He just needed her alive. And if that meant living in a state of constant, unsated desire from the mental image of Sarah reading naked in his bed, so be it. As she said, he had mastered control long ago. If anyone could keep celibate for the few weeks despite constant temptation, he could.