She best forget about Max and formulate a plan. Her gaze drifted to where her armoire stood. The room was too dark for her to see its hulking shape, but she knew precisely where it was, and she knew what resided within it. Countless gowns all handpicked by Mama. None were suited for her shape or coloring. She’d always known this and yet had never cared enough to oppose Mama on the matter. That would have to change. Starting tomorrow, she would need new gowns. She would begin there. A small and yet necessary change if she wanted to secure a proposal this Season.
She had two months before Mama left for Aunt Daphne’s. And yet lying in the dark, the idea of marrying someone so that she could remain here only filled her with an aching bleakness. For the first time in years her drawings and the purpose they fed her soul didn’t seem enough. Perhaps it was greedy of her, but she wanted more.
A shaky breath slipped past her lips as her mind touched on Max’s face, his voice, the sensation of his bigger body so close to her own tonight. She’d felt him all over . . . against her, around her. Everywhere, right down to her toes. And he had not even laid a finger on her. How would it be, how would it feel, if he did?
Snuggling deeper under the covers, she slipped her hand between her thighs and touched herself, gently at first and then with growing pressure. Closing her eyes, she increased the friction and arched her back, envisioning it was someone else’s hand on her, someone’s body. Someone she wanted, someone she craved as desperately as her next breath.
As she brought herself to release, it was Max she saw in her mind.
Chapter 6
Max was not certain what he was doing in the crowded ballroom of Lady Chatham’s house. Perhaps it was to prove to his friends that he could walk the line of respectability and they needn’t fear having him around their families like some manner of infectious ailment. Even so, he hugged the shadows, sticking close to the potted ferns, where he could avoid being coerced into dancing with one of the several eligible young ladies in attendance.
“Come, Max, you did not attend simply to skulk in shadows, did you?” Someone queried behind him.
He turned and forced a smile for Declan’s wife, Rosalie. She eyed him with a twinkle in her eye. “I am quite certain there is at least one young lady to tempt you.”
“Oh, there are lovely ladies aplenty, to be certain, but none so lovely as you, Rosalie.” He pressed a hand over his heart. “I prefer to stand here and pine for the one that I let slip through my fingers.”
She rolled her eyes. “Poppycock. As though I would have tempted you from your steadfast bachelor status.”
He chuckled, rubbing a hand over his nape. “Well. No woman is capable of that, I fear.”
“Oh, I do not believe that for an instant. There is someone for everyone.”
What was it about those happily wed that made them hell-bent for everyone around them to wed as well? He held up both hands in mock surrender. “I would never be so disagreeable as to argue with a lady.”
She laughed. “And yet you argue with Aurelia. Incessantly.”
“Ah, yes. Aurelia. Well. We have a special relationship.” There was a gentle euphemism.
“Hm,” she murmured, lifting her drink to her lips and giving him a sly look. “We are in accord on that. Quite special, I think.”
He frowned, not liking the suggestive lilt to her voice. Especially after last week, when he had backed Aurelia into that wall, pushed his hips against her as though she were an eager tavern maid and addressed her so crudely. He had avoided her since then but had not forgotten the look on her face, the sound of her tiny gasp . . . or her tempting shape beneath that filmy night rail. It was not his custom to deny himself. Any other woman he would not have hesitated to touch. To kiss. If she had been anyone else, he would have had that night rail up around her hips in two seconds flat. The very notion was starting to make him hard with lust.