Andrew Lord of Despair(23)

“We are friends,” he agreed, sitting up and looping his arms around his drawn-up knees. “But before we go back to that house, Astrid, we need to reach some kind of understanding regarding this… lapse of propriety. You, my dearest goose, refuse to see me for the scoundrel and blackguard I am.”

Why must he carp on this? “You are neither, Andrew. You are a kind, honest, if somewhat troubled man.”

And you do not want me to love you. You hardly allow anybody to love you. The irony, that she’d married a man who’d also been uncomfortable with certain varieties of demonstrative emotion, was not lost on her. Was she doomed to choose only troubled men?

“You,” Andrew said, brushing a finger down her nose, “would canonize Beelzebub.”

Astrid pushed him onto his back and swung her leg over to straddle him.

“I would marry him, Andrew,” she said, glaring down at him, “if he made me feel the way you do.”

These were the wrong words to say, though she didn’t know why. Such bleakness passed through Andrew’s blue eyes that she curled down onto his chest to hide her face.

“I won’t be marrying you, Astrid,” he said, his hands slipping around her back in slow sweeps down her spine. “If you weren’t expecting, I wouldn’t risk what we’ve done so far. You know this?”

“I do now, you awful man.” Though in fact, she appreciated he was gentleman enough to spare her the fate that had befallen Cousin Gwen. “And I most assuredly do not want to be marrying again myself, thank you very much.”

She would have to get into the habit of lying to him, because he physically relaxed at that pronouncement and let his hands trail down to knead her buttocks. Were she not wrapped in his arms, she’d likely find that worth crying over.

Instead, she kissed his chest. “I see now why wicked men are in such demand. You know things.”

Andrew’s hand on her backside paused. “It isn’t wickedness to pay attention to what pleasures a lady. It’s consideration and a bit of patience. These are courtesies your husband, more than anyone else, should have shown you. On his late and benighted behalf, I apologize, Astrid.”

He meant the apology, she thought in amazement. The idea that Herbert could not have even comprehended what Andrew was apologizing for showed Astrid in glaring relief what a mistake her marriage had been—as if she hadn’t suspected she was in trouble before the wedding night was over.

“And I should apologize to Herbert’s memory for not being the wife he hoped he was marrying,” she said, realizing—admitting—Herbert had probably sensed their mutual mistake too.

“On his late behalf, I accept your apology. Now, my friend, where do you see matters going from here? What are your terms, Astrid?”

The exchange, simple and odd as it was, settled something in Astrid that had needed settling. She and Herbert had meant well by each other when they’d agreed to marry, and maybe, in time, they would have been a better match. It helped, though, to realize they hadn’t intended to disappoint each other.

“Terms of what?” she asked, nuzzling Andrew’s ear.

He heaved a sigh that had her rising and falling on his chest like flotsam in the surf.

“Astrid, please do not fence with me. I ought not to be here with you at all, and yet, as usual, my better judgment is overtaken by lust. The decision to be made is what to do about that now.”

He did not sound disgruntled, he sounded martyred, and yet his hands were the embodiment of heaven on her naked flesh.

“I would not see you unhappy, Andrew. We can consider this afternoon a stolen pleasure, a moment out of time between friends, something not to be repeated.”

“Is that what you want?” he asked, toying with a lock of her hair.

He was brave. “No. I do not want one stolen moment. I want time with you, however much you are willing to give me. Perhaps you are a distraction from my grief and my worries. Perhaps you are reassurance after a marriage that hadn’t much promise when Herbert died. Possibly you are the best friend I will ever have or something in between all the foregoing. I know I do not want only one stolen moment with you.”

This virtuosic display of understatement had the intended effect of banishing more of the tension from Andrew’s body.

“I suppose we shall have a small affair then.” He reached his conclusion with his lips pressed to her temple. “For the duration of my enforced visit here, you may expect me to importune you for your favors, to bother you constantly with my base appetites, to jump out at you from odd corners, intent on seduction. And then we will consider our stolen moment to have run its course. Will that suit?”