Seven Minutes in Heaven(74)

He leaned a trifle closer; the children were squabbling and not paying attention. “Are you trying to remind me that you, and not I, are the expert in child-rearing?”

“Yes.” Her eyes had a shimmer of desire.

He could have pointed out that he was an expert in the behavior of polite society, but he found he didn’t care. “I want you,” he growled, leaning still closer so that his words traveled only as far as their mingled breaths.

“Are you going to kiss Mrs. Snowe?” Otis’s interested voice asked.

“No!” Ward said, straightening.

“Of course they’re not kissing,” Lizzie said scornfully. “When people kiss, they hold their heads like this.” She flopped her head to the side like a wilting dandelion.

“That’s stage kissing,” Eugenia said. “It’s different in real life, Lizzie. Your brother and I have no interest in kissing.”

“I told you,” Lizzie said, nudging her brother with her elbow. “They’re not married.”

“Be careful! You almost poked Jarvis,” Otis protested. “Anyway, you don’t have to be married to kiss.”

“You’re not supposed to kiss unless you are husband and wife,” Lizzie stated.

“An excellent point,” Ward said, feeling that a parental affirmation was required.

“Mother kissed Mr. Burger all the time, and they weren’t married,” Otis said.

“That’s private!” Lizzie snapped. “You were never, ever supposed to tell!” She burst into tears.

Ward managed not to flinch at the revelation that his mother apparently had a lover named Burger. He reached down and picked up his weeping sister. “Time for bed. Come along, Otis.”

“Would you like to say goodnight to Jarvis?” Otis asked Eugenia.

“Certainly,” Eugenia said, in an obvious lie.

Ward watched as Otis hauled Jarvis, who seemed eager to be part of the party, from his bag and put him on his shoulder.

Jarvis nudged Otis’s cheek with his nose, a rattie kiss, and began combing his hair.

Eugenia tentatively reached out and rubbed Jarvis on his head with one finger.

Ward turned, settled his sobbing sister against his shoulder, and walked on.





Chapter Thirty




At bedtime, Eugenia tried to decide whether she should undo the braid that Clothilde had put in her hair after her bath. She was fairly certain that fallen women greeted their paramours wearing diaphanous nightdresses, hair flowing around their shoulders.

Her nightgown was made from sturdy cotton, just what a respectable widow ought to wear to her solitary bed.

In the end, she undid her braid and slipped between the sheets to await a discreet knock. The next she knew, her hair was tangled around her shoulders. And she was no longer alone in the bed.

Ward was lying on his back beside her, head turned away and one strong arm under her, embracing her. She was snuggled against him, for all the world as if they were man and wife.

Lovers were intimate, of course. But she had thought that lovers didn’t sleep together; rather, they engaged in sinfully thrilling debauchery, and then parted to sleep in their own chambers.

Now, though, pearly light was stealing into the room, signaling the dawn. Somehow they had slept through the hours for thrilling debauchery, and it was time for her bedfellow to make his way to his own chamber.

“Ward,” she whispered, running her fingers over his naked shoulder and then his neck, and along his jaw. He had finely drawn cheekbones for a man, but they didn’t feminize him.

He was the opposite of her godfather, the Duke of Villiers. Villiers was at perfect ease in glittering attire. He insisted on scarlet heels, even as younger men eschewed that fashion for Hessians.

Of course, Villiers’s grip over London society was such that red heels still regularly made appearances everywhere from the queen’s drawing room to Vauxhall.

Ward’s deep bottom lip opened and her finger slid inside a warm, wet mouth.

“Good morning,” Eugenia said huskily, pulling her hand away. “Whatever are you doing in my bed, Mr. Reeve?”

He blinked sleepily and ran his free hand through his hair. Chestnut locks tumbled into an arrangement that a valet would need an hour to achieve. “I’ve never liked to sleep alone. My father says I used to roam the house at night, joining people in their beds.”

“What people would those be?”

“Relatives, for the most part. Although on one occasion I made my way into my future stepmother’s chamber and wet her bed.”

“I’m glad you outgrew that tendency,” Eugenia said, heartfelt.

He was wide awake now, his eyes gleaming. He took her hand and placed it on his chest. “Please return to what you were doing.”