He should probably offer her some conversation, but he was too content for words, the sexual lassitude blending with a sweetness words might disturb.
He was thus inordinately pleased when Letty’s hand stole over his chest to cover his heart. She rustled around in the covers until her head rested on his shoulder and her leg lay across his thighs. David wrapped her hand in his, and his arm around her shoulders, a feeling of such peace and rightness enveloping him that he almost told her about it.
Sleep, fortunately, came to the aid of his common sense, and he and Letty both drifted off, warm, content, and for the present, not lonely at all.
***
Letty woke alone, the covers tucked in around her and a pot of tea under a towel on a tray beside her bed. Her body was rested, contented, and pleased with its new knowledge of satisfaction and desire, but her mind was groggy and overwhelmed. David, no doubt the bearer of the tea tray, was likely downstairs, ordering Mrs. Newcomb about, and making himself at home in yet another household of women.
How could Letty face him? She’d invited him to share intimate pleasure with her, invited him to remain in her bed. Fatigue and pragmatism might account for ending up in the same bed with him, but loneliness, foolishness, and even wickedness had been involved in the passion that had followed.
Tea before further self-castigation seemed a good idea.
Letty sat up to pour herself a strong, aromatic cup. She was pleased to find the room uncharacteristically warm because David had also built up the fire. Oh, to be taken care of… David’s thoughtfulness was as seductive as his kisses, as his arms, warm and strong around her, as his voice, rumbling beneath her ear in the darkness.
Her musings were interrupted by a hard rap on the door, followed by David’s smiling presence in her bedchamber. He bore another tray, and wore a towel over his shoulder.
“I’ve brought you sustenance.” He set the tray on the night table, went to the window and pushed back the drapes to let in a gray, wintery light. “The weather is still foul, but the snow has slowed down. I expect you are hungry?”
“I am.” For food, too.
He sat on the bed at her side and shifted the tray to her lap. “I made you some pancakes, and there’s jam and butter, as well as a coddled egg. I couldn’t find the pepper, but salt should do. You have no fruit in your pantry, Letty. That will not serve.”
He was nervous. He had the peculiar competence to whip up pancakes and coddled eggs, he exuded his usual casual charm even unshaven and sporting a towel over one shoulder, and yet, Letty was certain he was nervous. “Thank you for breakfast, for the tea, and for building up the fire and for…”
Heaven defend her. She was nervous, too. More nervous than she was hungry.
“Hush,” David said, putting two fingers over her lips. “Eat your breakfast and drink your tea.”
No awkward discussions, then, which was fine with her. Letty began by slathering butter on her pancakes. “Where did you learn to cook? I didn’t think culinary skills were a prerequisite for becoming a viscount.”
“They aren’t.” David settled himself cross-legged at the foot of the bed, a posture Letty had not seen another grown male adopt. “But for the first quarter century of my existence, the viscountcy was the last thing on my mind. I traveled extensively and often had only myself or Thomas Jennings to rely on. One learns to make do, or to do without under those circumstances. And badly prepared food can kill as effectively as a bullet, and much more slowly.”
“Is that why you have three professional chefs at The Pleasure House?” Letty asked, adding strawberry jam—her favorite—to her pancakes.
“In part, also because I am self-indulgent with my wealth, and unlike most of my station, my palate craves variety. Then too, had I only one chef, that one would think he ruled the kitchen, and by extension, a part of me.”
Letty shied away from the ramifications of having one woman in his bed.
“You wouldn’t tolerate that very well,” she said. Nor would Letty, though chatting her up over pancakes didn’t bear much relation to controlling her—did it? She set aside philosophy long enough to take a bite of hot, scrumptious, buttery pancake. “I would say, based on my breakfast, that you could let all three chefs go and still make shift quite nicely. This has to be the best breakfast I can remember having.”
He glowered, like an enormous cat not pleased with his bedmate. “Does the kitchen really take such poor care of you when my back is turned, Letty? You could use more flesh, you know, not that I’m complaining.”
No discussion, but some innuendo at least. She misaimed the knife and got a smear of preserves on her wrist.
David uncoiled himself to prowl up the bed on all fours and kissed her cheek. “Letty, you mustn’t be self-conscious. Not with me. We’ve moved beyond that, haven’t we? I want us to move beyond that.”
His action and his tone suggested that in his mind, they’d arrived to some new arrangement, one that allowed him to prepare her breakfast and to give her orders.
“I am self-conscious.” She lifted her wrist to lick the jam away, then thought better of it and used the serviette. “A madam I can be, David, but this business of moving beyond… You’ve given me much to consider. I do not think I am suited to what you have in mind.”
“I beg to differ.”
Letty smoothed her hand over the blankets, and sought words both honest and placatory, because his lordship was likely already picking out the house where he’d keep her, and the coach he’d make available for her use—all without meaning her the smallest insult.
The very opposite, in fact.
So she tried to meet his version of respect with her version of truth.
“You are too much of a gentleman to say it, but we can both admit I don’t know what I’m doing. Having spent time with you in this bed, I must admit I am more confused regarding… copulation than ever.”
David’s expression became unreadable, and Letty hated that every bit as much she hated the blush creeping up her neck.
“Yet copulation is your stock in trade.”
She was apparently going to offend, nonetheless. “Not by my choice. I want to eat, to have a roof over my head, to put a bit by. That is a different agenda entirely from wanting men to desire me, and knowing what to do with that desire.”
Which competence, she doubted she would ever acquire.
David scooped up a half-eaten pancake with his bare fingers, took a bite, then put the remainder on Letty’s plate and sat back.
“But I do desire you, Letty-love. At the risk of sounding arrogant, I believe you desire me as well.”
“I won’t argue that.” More than ever, she could not argue that.
“Is it, Letty,” David said slowly, “that you think I will cast you aside? I always part friends from my liaisons, I can assure you, and I am generous, both in bed and out.”
The issue was now overtly under discussion, and David’s expression was perplexed. Very likely nobody, nobody ever, had declined an invitation to share erotic pleasure with David Worthington.
And for such good reason.
“You will cast me aside, or I will cast you aside,” Letty said, swallowing past a lump of pancake. “And I believe you are being honest when you attribute amicability and generosity to your partings, but I am not prepared to… to…”
And yet she nearly had, with no forethought at all. If he’d wanted to visit the risk of conception on her, she would have permitted it. Eagerly.
“I am trying to understand your reservations, Letty, and so far all I can come up with is that you are shy. I rather like that about you, but it hardly signifies as a reason to deny yourself the pleasure you deserve.”
“I don’t want to whore for you.” A pathetic, honest sentiment.
“Letty,” David said gently, “as young as you are, you would have to hold the po
st of madam at The Pleasure House for years before you have enough put by, as you say, and if someone else should own the business, you haven’t even that prospect to rely on. Would you not rather earn a comfortable life, sharing pleasure with a man who holds you in affection and a certain respect?”
A certain respect—a certain private, socially irrelevant respect. His argument boiled down to a miserable truth: she could whore for him, or whore for somebody else, but if she wanted to keep body and soul together, she’d whore for somebody.
Maybe many somebodies.
They’d attempted this conversation once before, in this very house, and had made little progress with it. But now, thanks to David’s single visit to Letty’s bed—at her not-very-well-advised-in-hindsight invitation—she had a glimpse of what he was truly offering her. Her reputation was gone, and her future precarious, as David had delicately reminded her.
But when she was in his arms, held, cherished, desired… the chill of that future receded. Letty sent up a short, heartfelt prayer for wisdom, and failing that, self-restraint.
“The issue, my lord, is perhaps that I hold you in a certain affection and respect, and that I would like to continue to do so. What if there’s a child? Have you children, that you can answer that question from experience, or will you simply make me more promises?”
He helped himself to a sip of her tea this time, which Letty took to be a prevarication rather than a presumption.
“You were subjected to Herbert Allen’s attentions on a regular basis for a long period, and you did not conceive. Perhaps children need not concern you greatly.”
“That is an ignorant answer.” Also mean, though he wouldn’t have intended it as such. “Particularly from a man with medical training. The problem could well have lain with Herbert, and you know it.”
The unassailability of her riposte, or perhaps the vehemence of it, had him rising from the bed.
“So we’d have children. I love children, and even had a child.” He crouched before a fire that was already blazing merrily. With his back to her, he poked at the coals, making sparks dance up the chimney. When he’d bludgeoned the fire thoroughly, he replaced the fireplace screen but kept his back to her.
“What became of the child?” She did not need to ask, because any extant child of his would have had his loving devotion, but he apparently needed to tell somebody.
“The child lived but a few hours. I will admit that I cared little for the mother, at least by that point, but for the child… In the few short hours of that child’s life, Letty, I found out what real heartbreak means. This business, as you refer to it, between men and women, it has never affected me the way that one tiny, wretched baby did. I don’t often speak of it.”
“But you tell me this now.” Inflicted it on her, more like. “Why?”
David turned to face her, the poker grasped in his fist like an old-fashioned claymore. “Were you to give me a child, I would treasure that child. Your baby would know no want, no deprivation, no hurt that a wealthy, titled father’s love and care could prevent.”
He had merely stated the obvious, for a man of his means would be expected to provide well for a love child.
“And would your love for that baby entail ensuring that his or her wicked mama have no contact with her own child?” Letty asked gently.
The intensity in David’s eyes cooled, and disappointment sank like a stone in Letty’s gut. Generosity he could well afford; nonetheless, he hadn’t thought through the consequences of his lust to any save himself, no different from any other man driven by the dictates of his cock.
David set the poker aside and leaned a shoulder against the bedpost. “Your question is valid. I will consider it.”
A more honest response than many other men would have given, and much less than Letty’s heart demanded.
“Well, don’t stand there glaring at me as you do,” Letty muttered, turning back to her breakfast. “You cooked enough for an army, and I can’t possibly finish these pancakes. I will take on the egg, if you’ll attempt to clean up the pancakes.”
He stayed leaning against the bedpost for a moment, while Letty hoped he wouldn’t refuse the only olive branch she’d been able to find.
“You are a good sport, Letty.” He accepted the plate from her and resumed a place at the foot of her bed.
“And you are a good cook. We must still work together, regardless of what else goes on between us—unless, of course, you fire the women who eschew your attentions?”
Her question was far from casual, though it merited her a smile.
“I wouldn’t know. None have ever refused me, except present company.” He put a forkful of pancake into his mouth, chewing thoughtfully. “I really am a competent cook, aren’t I?”
“You are frightfully competent at any number of endeavors,” Letty muttered.
“Am I, now?” he said softly before taking another bite of pancake.
He kept his attention on his pancakes, though Letty had the sense her comment had pleased him. As they concluded breakfast in companionable silence, it occurred to her that even a man as competent as David Worthington could still have insecurities.
The thought was equal parts intriguing and confusing.
***
David took himself home that afternoon, dealt with some correspondence, slept fitfully, achieved no clarity of thought whatsoever regarding his madam and her place in his life, and then—after a detour to Lord Ridgely’s rooms—came back to Letty’s to check on his patient. And if he happened to run into the lady of the house, and happened to blame her for his night of poor rest, that was pure coincidence.
“Is Portia going to be all right?” Desdemona asked when she’d closed the sickroom door.
The concern on Desdemona’s face had been absent on young Ridgely’s, though David had made sure his handsome lordship had worries aplenty before parting company with him.
“She’s holding her own,” David said, “but infection could yet take her. Every hour she doesn’t run a fever, doesn’t start bleeding more heavily, or otherwise get worse, is an hour closer to restored health. You can stay with her, Des, but don’t agitate her.”
Desdemona slipped back into the sickroom without another word.
David saw no evidence of Letty’s excuse for a housekeeper, so he took himself to Letty’s private parlor and found Letty ensconced on the sofa, a tea tray before her.
“May I have a cup?” he asked, dropping down beside her. May he have her intimate attentions for an hour, a day, or a lifetime? Because that question now haunted his every waking hour, driven by equal needs to safeguard her welfare and secure her interest.
“Of course.” She fixed his tea, while he kept to himself an uncomfortable truth: he’d slept better when he’d shared a bed with her.
Well, damn and drat the luck.
“Am I a managing, overbearing, interfering lordship?” David asked when he’d taken a bracing sip of strong tea.
“Very.” Letty tucked a brown-and-red knit afghan more closely around her. “But well motivated and charming about it. I doubt most people even know you’re manipulating them.”
Manipulation was worse than managing—more honest. “Portia said the way I go about looking after people is as bad as a fat customer who can’t finish… As smothering and annoying.”
She didn’t laugh, which suggested Portia had expressed herself delicately. David hadn’t laughed either, because if he was not to manipul—manage Letty into accepting his protection, then how was he to overcome her reservations?
For he assuredly wanted to. A man needed his rest.
“I don’t see your tendencies as a bad thing, necessarily,” Letty said. “You are frightfully intelligent, generous to those under your protection, generally practical, and reasonable. Why shouldn’t your world be ordered to your preferences?”
“B
ecause I apparently don’t limit myself to ordering my world,” David replied, and why did tea have to taste better when consumed in her company? “You may scold me for further interfering in Portia’s affairs. I’ve had a chat with Ridgely, and he’ll be sending along some funds to assist Portia in opening her dress shop.”
“Recovered his sense of Christian charity and decided to support free enterprise, did he?”
Letty approved of David’s actions, which was a relief. “Either that or he wasn’t keen to meet me at twenty paces. I award the boy a few points for prudence, for I would have felt no compunction whatsoever about blowing his feeble brains out.”
Yes, over a whore. David had taken particular pleasure in emphasizing that point, for Ridgely had given Portia the funds to go to Old Meg, and her direction—after making plain that Portia’s offer of carte blanche depended on making use of Ridgely’s funds in the manner prescribed.
“If he ever sets foot at your establishment again,” Letty said, “our dear little Musette will gut him like a fish. You, however, would have blown a hole through his hat, David Worthington, or at worst winged him, and you know it. More tea?”
“Thank you, no,” David said, rising. “I will take my leave of you, and return on the morrow to endure more verbal beatings from my patient.”
And frustration regarding his madam, whom he wanted to bed, protect, and scold in equal measure.
“Before you go,” Letty said, her expression becoming guarded.
He did not want to argue with her, and he did want to sleep with her. Also to swive her silly. The sooner he was on his horse, the better. “Just tell me, whatever it is.”
“It’s about money.” Letty remained seated, and rearranged the tea service on its tray. “I am having trouble with your books. I cannot be sure, but I think some expenditures are overstated for the quantities purchased.”
He had hired her to manage his establishment. That she’d take this aspect of her position seriously should not have surprised him. “Are you certain?”
“No. I have totted things up for this month only. I want to go back through January and create a budget for March. We keep a file for receipts, you see, but everything is crammed in there, no order, no method. I’ll have to sort through all of that before I can say if the problem is simply a matter of misfiling or mislabeling an expense.”
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