The corner of his mouth quirked slightly. Close to a smile, not quite one. She found herself wondering what he would look like if he did smile. Truly smiled.
“I am an ogre then, in your estimation. Is there a bridge I was meant to be guarding?”
“Not an ogre,” she said with another laugh. “Ogres are ugly, for one thing, and you must know you aren’t that. And cruel. Which I know for a fact you aren’t.”
At that, his expression hardened a little. The walls came back up. “A dangerous assumption, Mrs. Huxley. I suppose I can be as cruel as anyone else.”
He turned away and walked to the fire. He stirred it, not because the dancing flames needed it, but she thought he might. He didn’t like the playful connection, it seemed. It made him nervous. An odd thought that she could do that to such a commanding person with just a little playful teasing.
It made her want to press her luck, but instead she let out a sigh. “At any rate, you owe me no apology. I understand how the past one shared with another can be…difficult. Discussing it delicate, as you put it.”
He pivoted at that. “Can you?”
She nodded. “My husband has only been dead a little over a year, after all.”
He moved closer. “You two were close.”
“What makes you say that?”
“Because you can’t stand to have me call you Mrs. Huxley when you’re talking about taking another man to your bed,” he said. “That indicates some level of guilt at doing so. A betrayal you are loath to make. Hence, I make the guess that you were close. Perhaps you even loved each other, as seems to be the fashion in Society marriages at present.”
There was something bitter about his tone, but she couldn’t address it. Not when his words pierced her heart. Earlier she had prodded him about his past with Louisa and had been frustrated when he dodged the answers, even if she wasn’t owed them.
Now he did the same and she felt a similar desire to push aside what her answers would reveal. But was that fair? In the privacy of this house, under these strange and trying circumstances…did she want to keep the barriers of polite lies between them?
It seemed her body would compel her to speak before she made a decision about that question, because she heard the words falling from her mouth. “I might as well complete my humiliation. Ours was an arranged marriage and it was…complicated.”
Complicated. What a word to describe the push-and-pull between her and Warren.
“How so?”
She refused to look at him. She didn’t want to see his face when she said the words that were perched on the tip of her tongue. “He had…many affairs,” she said softly. “Often very publicly and never with any sense of shame or apology. But I was told, by him and by others, that it was the way of our world. That I should accept it because our marriage gave me opportunities.”
Oscar’s voice was strained and filled with disdain as he spat, “Opportunities.”
She glanced at him then. His brow was low, his dark eyes penetrating as they focused on her. His lips were pressed hard together, making the full line of them thinner and white with pressure. He looked angry, but not at her. For her.
It gave her the strength to continue. “And to be…fair, Warren could also be affectionate. Kind. Passionate. Even loving when it suited him. We were not always unhappy. I often believed he did care for me, in his own fashion. And then he died.”
“And you were left with nothing,” he said softly.
“Yes. I was shocked.” She paced away from him, to the window and looked out over the street below. Carriages danced by, it was early enough that people still strolled in the lamplight in small groups. Life went on. It always had.
“It sounds as though his family took advantage,” he said. “From what you said this morning.”
She nodded. “They did. I was told that if I had been a good wife, he would have made arrangements. That his lack of planning had to do with me, not him.” Her jaw clenched as she ground her teeth. “And so here we are. He dug a hole and somehow I have managed to pull the earth down in around myself.”
He made a low sound in his chest, and as she pivoted to face him, he came across the room toward her in a few long steps. Her eyes went wide as she watched him do so, confident and certain as a king. He reached for her, like he would take her elbow or her hand, but then he stopped himself and yanked his hand back.
“You cannot truly believe that it is your fault. From everything you’ve told me, you were put in an impossible situation by him, by his family, by every circumstance. You were doing your best to save yourself. Perhaps the decisions you made weren’t perfect, but neither are anyone’s. This is not your fault, Imogen.”
Her lips parted. In all her life she had not ever had someone defend her so vigorously. Even Aurora, her closest friend and confidante, was not so bold. And yet this man, this near-stranger, demanded that she give herself grace. He sprinkled it over her without hesitation or demand.
“Oscar,” she whispered, her voice barely carrying.
But he heard her. It was clear by the way his posture shifted, by the way his pupils dilated. He moved even closer, and now there was nothing but a sliver of space between them. She looked up into his eyes as he loomed over her and lost herself in the solidness of him, both in form and in how in control he was.
It almost felt like she could let some portion of control go and he would hold her and not let her fall.
As if he heard that thought, he reached out, and this time he did touch her. His fingertips grazed her own, and it was like lightning rushed up her arm, flooded her senses, settled in every space in her body that was responsive or sensitive. She heard her breath catch, felt herself sway toward him almost without meaning to do so.
He slid his hand up her bare arm, leaving fire in his wake, and then his fingers curled around her bicep and he pulled her against him. She gripped his lapels for purchase, lifting to him as he lowered to her. Their mouths met. For a moment, everything froze, like time had been stopped.
But then his tongue traced the crease of her lips and an explosion followed. She opened to him, lifting against him, making a hungry sound in the back of her throat that she had never heard before. He growled a response, crushing her against his chest. His whiskers were soft against her chin, but that was all that was soft about the kiss. He was firm, hard even, demanding, and she surrendered what he claimed without resistance.
His fingers slid up her neck, across her jawline. He forced them into her hair, tilting her head so he could deepen the kiss. And she was lost in it, lost in him, from the scratch of his beard on her chin to the taste of wine on his tongue. She was drowning and she didn’t want to be saved.
She groaned again, and he froze. Time stopped a second time, and then he stepped away, balancing her gently before he released her and turned his back. His breath came short and hard, his hands clenched at his sides, and for a moment he said nothing. She couldn’t say anything, so silence stretched between them for what like an interminable forever.
“I think we best not confuse things,” he said at last, his voice lower and rougher than before. He faced her slowly and speared her with that mesmerizing gaze of his. “Do you agree?”
The words he said seemed very reasonable. And yet she didn’t agree. But there was no use in saying it, not now when her mind was addled and her heart was racing. Not now when she couldn’t come to her senses.