Page 18 of Loving Mister Stratford
Odette’s head fairly spun with the rapid-fire conversation flying like sparrows darting back and forth across the dining table. There was such a comfortability—such an ease—that was unfathomable to her. She had difficulty keeping up, let alone chime in with any regularity. She was content to sit back and watch, basking in the unmistakable familial affections borne of years together, but, my, was she exhausted by the end of the evening.
*****
Simon remained locked in his rooms until long after he was certain the rest of the household was asleep. And still, he sat in the overstuffed upholstered chair in his bed chamber.
The food deposited on a table by a helpful maid many hours prior had long since grown cold and congealed beneath its silver dome. It remained untouched and forgotten except for the lingering odor of cooked meat and vegetables.
The room had grown too dark to read, but that didn’t stop his eyes from focusing solely on the fine print on the paper in his hands. Unusually, he didn’t skim the page and lose himself amongst the numbers and letters. No. Simon’s mind was unnervingly, steadfastly occupied by the kiss he and Odette had shared hours earlier in the nursery.
There, amongst the sunny wallpapering and the books and toys of his childhood, he’d experienced one of the most stirring kisses of his eight-and-twenty years. Her eager, untutored excitement stirred him deep into the marrow of his bones, made his skin tingle, caused his hands to ache with the overwhelming urge to hold her. What had begun as relatively innocent contact quickly became consumed by a desire of which Simon hadn’t known himself capable. So disconcerted was he by the experience that he’d dashed away, pulse thrumming deafeningly in his ears, and hidden like a coward in his rooms to do what he did best: think.
The first quarter of an hour was spent attempting to calm his body; slowing his breathing and willing away the pounding ache in his groin.
The next hour was spent ruminating over every interaction between himself and Odette over the past several weeks.
There was simply no denying that he’d been drawn to her in a way no woman had ever held his attention before. He was no stranger to slaking his lust when the roar became impossible to ignore, though those occasions were few and far between. But this…
This was different.
Odette was different.
He couldn’t recall ever having wanted—nay,needed—a woman with such sudden intensity as when he’d seen her in that pale pink gown tailored to perfection to accentuate her graceful curves and generous, flawless bosom; when he’d gazed down into her doe-like crystal-blue eyes and touched the petal-softness of her cheek; when he’d tasted her…
God…when he’dtastedher…
He’d been lost.
And it terrified him.
If the kiss in the nursery had taught him anything, it was that Odette was even more inexperienced than he might have believed—so much for Rafe’s suspicion that Odette had followed in her mother’s scandalous footsteps.
Of course, any lady might claim she’d never been kissed before out of a sense of propriety or to inflate a man’s ego, but there was no pretending when it came to the act itself. A deep, primal part of his soul had roared to life when he’d tasted the truth of Odette’s inexperience. It had shocked him to his core, sent tremors throughout his body, smothered every last rational thought buzzing in his brain.
It was unnerving how little he cared about anything else in the world when she’d begun to take his lead and kiss him back…
Simon jumped to his feet and began to pace from one corner of the rectangular room to the other, stopping only when he heard the crunch of parchment. At first confused, he glanced down to his hands gripping the sheets of text in a white-knuckled grip. Heaving a heavy sigh, he dropped the papers to the desk set beside one of the windows on the far wall and made several futile attempts at smoothing them against the sharp edge of the tabletop. He abandoned them after his efforts proved fruitless, choosing instead to stretch his arms high over his head, allowing the movement to free up each vertebra after his prolonged sedentary state. His gaze turned to the darkened window but caught only his own golden reflection limned in candlelight against the pitch blackness of the moonless night outside.
The wedding was a little less than two weeks away.
The date stood out in his mind with a very strange mixture of anxiety and…excitement?
It was confusing.
It set him off-kilter.
This was why a world of orderly words and numbers and logic was far preferable to this; at least that made sense to him.
And he decided right then that he had to find a way to move past whatever this was that had slowly ebbed into his consciousness and attempted to nudge aside his usual mental faculties.
He undid his cufflinks and blindly tossed them onto the desk as well before shoving up his ink-marked shirtsleeves.
Twelve days.
He had twelve days of bachelorhood and freedom before he undertook the responsibilities of a spouse and household.
Draping the length of his cravat across the back of the chair, he scrubbed the starch from his neck and froze.
Maybe all he needed to do was get Odette out of his system.
