Page 22 of The Widower Without a Will
“You mustn’t compliment me like that if you don’t intend to do anything about it.”
The man looked at her with such astonishment that Martha almost wondered if she had made the whole carriage ride up.She lifted her chin as high as when her mother used to stack books upon her head.
“You kissed me.Did you think I would forget?”
Lord Preston took a step backward.His hand clapped across his heart.“I owe you an apology.Multiple apologies.First, for the…and then, for handling the aftermath poorly.I am sorry.I am ashamed of myself, which is my best excuse for why I have been so eager to act as if…”
Martha waited.As ifwhat?As if he had never been so idiotic as to kiss her?As if he had never kissed a woman as old as she?Or as if he had never been swept up in a wave of feelings, as she had been?
He looked up instead of completing the sentence.Whatever he saw in her eyes made him straighten and he said more sincerely, “I have failed you.You are right; I should have explained myself.I’m sorry.”
Martha’s heart thudded a little painfully.What she had wanted was for him to have followed her up to her bedroom, not to have explained his reasons for not doing so.
But she would accept the explanation, if she couldn’t have him.“You may explain yourself now.”
He blinked at her, cheeks red.
“You need not worry about injuring my feelings,” Martha said, though it was a lie.“If you regret what transpired because I am unappealing, I will not run crying to the gossips that you have broken my heart.I only want to know the truth so I may reckon with it.”
“I do not find you unappealing.How could you think I find you unappealing?”Lord Preston fell to his knees before her chair and took her hand.“You are—that is to say—I find you very appealing, Mrs.Bellamy.That is why I must not impose myself upon you.We are not…I…” He stared down at her fingers.“This is the type of situation that fathers warn their daughters against.I do not want to do wrong by you.”
It was strange to hear herself referred to as a daughter, as if she were an errant youth swept up by unwise passion.
As if she were as reckless as Lucas.
“I did not find our kiss an imposition.”
Lord Preston’s breath landed in a rush on her hand.“But what does a kiss lead to?”
And Martha knew she was a fool for pressing on with this conversation.She was a respectable woman; her husband was only seven months in the grave; she knew better than to pursue an illicit love affair with a baron who could never marry her.
But, after all, that wisdom was for women who wanted husbands.“I am no virgin, sir, nor am I in danger of falling pregnant.Are you so faithful a man that you are shy of fornication?”Kenneth, who had prided himself on being a practical rector, had counseled that a little fornication before marriage kept bad unions from tying people together for life, and most people Martha knew did not actually pay too close attention to the boundaries of matrimony.
Then she remembered the mistress waiting for him in London.“Are you being faithful to someone else?”
His brow knitted together, and his gaze at last lifted to meet hers again.“I am a man who lives by my principles.What funds I do have go into Northfield Hall.I do not keep a mistress.I never have.”
There was an anger lacing his reply that suggested men who did keep mistresses lacked moral fiber.Which gave Martha enough hope to smile.“Is that it?I do not hope to be kept by you any more than you are keeping me already by hosting me at Northfield Hall.”
“You owe me nothing for that.”
“This isn’t about what is owed.This is about what is wanted.”She cleared her throat because even now, she wasn’t sure she was brave enough to say it aloud.“I only want to be your lover.”
He gripped her fingers as if the world would fall apart if he let go.“It isn’t the right thing to do.”
“But why not?”
His dark eyes flickered all over her face.“Everyone knows it isn’t right.A man should only do such things with his wife.”
“Why?”She let herself look at those lips, which she had spent so many hours daydreaming about.“Explain it to me, Lord Preston.Give me as cogent an argument as you made to Parliament for penal reform.”
His tongue darted out to wet his lower lip.He adjusted his fingers, his thumb sweeping across the bare expanse of the back of her hand.Martha felt every twitch to her core, but she waited.
“It skews the dynamics of a community.It upends who owes whom what.It will make me consider you in decisions in which you should carry no weight.”
“In other words, it threatens that great natural order that you wholeheartedly believe in?”
Lord Preston scraped his gaze across her face.“Why are you torturing me so?”
