“Rubbish,” he said. “I would never have allowed it.”
“Perhaps,” she said, “I would not have allowed you to dictate to me what I could or could not do.”
“Are we back to bickering?” he asked. “But, really, Samantha, no gentleman would allow a lady to sleep on a chair in a private dining room while he enjoyed the luxury of a bed in a room with a view.”
“Ah,” she said, “the view. I had forgotten that. Undoubtedly, then, on this occasion I would have allowed you to have your way. An academic point, however. We do not have a private dining room and so neither of us is able to make the noble gesture of spending the night on a chair there.”
“We both, in fact,” he said, “get to enjoy the view.”
She smiled and he chuckled, and Samantha gazed at him, arrested for a moment. She had been very fond of her father, but she could not remember ever joking with him or talking nonsense with him—or bickering with him. And though she must surely have laughed with Matthew during their courtship and the first few months of their marriage, she could not recall ever being deliberately silly with him purely for their mutual enjoyment.
It occurred to her that she liked Ben Harper, even if he did make her bristle with indignation on occasion—and turn hot with longing at other times. It occurred to her that she would miss him when he had gone.
“He had a mistress,” she said abruptly, and then she gazed at him in some surprise. What on earth had prompted her to say that? She set down her knife and fork, rested her forearms on the table, and leaned toward him. “They already had one child when he met and married me. Another was conceived during the first months of our marriage. I took that to mean that he did not care much for me at all and that I was not much good in the marriage bed.”
She gazed at him, appalled. And she looked around furtively to make sure they were not within earshot of any other diners.
He looked from his knife to his fork and back again before setting them down across his plate and copying her posture. Their faces were not very far apart.
“I suppose,” he said, “you have spent longer than six years imagining that you are sexually inadequate.”
She half expected to see flames flaring up from her cheeks.
“No,” she said. “Why should I allow my spirit to be crushed by someone I did not respect? I lost respect for my husband four months into our marriage. That is a terrible admission to make, is it not, to a virtual stranger?”
“I am hardly a stranger,” he said. “And I am about to become even less of one. We are to spend the night teetering off the opposite edges of the same bed, are we not?”
“Have you ever had a mistress?” she asked him.
“Of long standing?” he said. “No. And never any children. And even if I had a mistress, I would dismiss her before marrying someone else. And no one would replace her. Ever.”
“Was the colonel’s niece very beautiful?” she asked.
He considered. “She was pretty. She was small and dainty, all smiles and dimples and blond curls and ringlets and big blue eyes.”
“Such a woman would surely have been unwilling to follow the drum with you.”
“But she was already doing so with her uncle,” he told her. “She looked like a porcelain doll. In reality she was as tough as nails.”
“Did you mourn her loss?”
“I cannot say I spared her more than a passing thought for at least two years,” he said. “By then I was very thankful we had not married.”
“I daresay she has grown plump,” she said. “Small, pretty blonds often do.”
His eyes laughed at her, and he reached across the table and took one of her hands in both of his.
“I believe, Sammy,” he said, “you are jealous.”
“Jealous?” She tried to withdraw her hand, but he tightened his hold on it. “How perfectly ridiculous. And how dare you call me that name when I have specifically asked you not to?”
“I think you want me,” he said.
“Nonsense.”
His eyes were laughing, but her stomach was clenched into knots. It was not true. Oh, of course it was true. He did not believe what he was saying, though. He was just teasing her. He was deliberately trying to make her cross—and was succeeding.
“I believe,” he said, “you want to prove that you are good in bed after all.”
“Oh!” She gaped inelegantly and jerked her hand from between his as she got abruptly to her feet. “How dare you. Oh, Ben, how dare you?”
Somehow she remembered to keep her voice down.
“You may have lost respect for your late husband,” he said, “and you may have refused to allow his infidelity to break your spirit, but he hurt you more than you realize, Samantha. He was a fool. And one day you will be given proof of your desirability. But not tonight. You are quite safe from me, I promise, despite the situation in which we find ourselves. I will not take advantage of you.”
She was almost disappointed.
“Go on up to our room now,” he said, “since you appear to have finished eating. I will stay down here for a while.”
She went without a word of protest, even though it could be said that he had issued a command.
He was a fool.
You will be given proof of your desirability.
I believe you want to prove that you are good in bed after all.
I think you want me.