Verity kept her eyes on the pear she was peeling. It was unusually juicy, she was dismayed to find. Her hands were soon wet with juice. And her heart was thumping. Suddenly, and quite inexplicably, she felt as if she had waded into deep waters indeed. The air fairly bristled between them. She licked her lips and could think of no reply to make.
His voice sounded amused when he spoke again. “Having peeled it, Miss Heyward,” he said, “you are now obliged to eat it, you know. It would be a crime to waste good food.”
She lifted one half of the pear to her mouth and bit into it. Juice cascaded to her plate below, and some of it trickled down her chin. She reached for her napkin in some embarrassment, knowing that he was watching her. But before she could pick it up, he had reached across the table and one long finger had scooped up the droplet of juice that was about to drip onto her gown. She raised her eyes, startled, to watch him carry the finger to his mouth and touch it to his tongue. His eyes remained on her all the while.
Verity felt a sharp stabbing of sensation down through her abdomen and between her thighs. She felt a rush of color to her cheeks. She felt as if she had been running for a mile uphill.
“Sweet,” he murmured.
She jumped to her feet, pushing at her chair with the backs of her knees. Then she wished she had not done so. Her legs felt decidedly unsteady. She crossed to the fireplace again and reached out her hands as if to warm them, though she felt as if the fire might better be able to take warmth from her.
She drew a few steadying breaths in the silence that followed. And then she could see from the corner of one eye that he had come to stand at the other side of the hearth. He rested one arm along the high mantel. He was watching her. The time had come, she thought. She had precipitated it herself. Within moments the question would be asked and must be answered. She still did not know what that answer would be, or perhaps she did. Perhaps she was just fooling herself to believe that there was still a choice. She had made her decision back in the greenroom—no, even before that. This was a tavern, part of an inn. No doubt he had bespoken a bedchamber here, as well as a private dining room. Within minutes, then…
How would it feel? She did not even know exactly what she was to expect. The basic facts, of course…
“Miss Heyward,” he asked her, making her jump again, “what are your plans for Christmas?”
She turned her head to look at him. Christmas? It was a week and a half away. She would spend it with her family, of course. It would be their first Christmas away from home, their first without the friends and neighbors they had known all their lives. But at least they still had one another and were still together. They had decided that they would indulge in the extravagance of a goose and make something special of the day with inexpensive gifts that they would make for one another. Christmas had always been Verity’s favorite time of the year. Somehow it restored hope and reminded her of the truly important things in life—family and love and selfless giving.
Selfless giving.
“Do you have any plans?” he asked.
She could hardly claim to be going home to that large family at the smithy in Somersetshire. She shook her head.
“I will be spending a quiet week in Norfolkshire with a friend and his, ah, lady,” he said. “Will you come with me?”
A quiet week. A friend and his lady. She understood, of course, exactly what he meant, exactly to what she was being invited. If she agreed now, Verity thought, the die would be cast. She would have stepped irrevocably into that world from which it would be impossible to return. Once a fallen woman, she would never be able to retrieve either her virtue or her honor.
If she agreed?
She would be away from home at Christmas of all times. Away from Mama and Chastity. For a whole week. Could anything be worth such a sacrifice, not to mention the sacrifice of her very self?
It was as if he read her mind. “Five hundred pounds, Miss Heyward,” he said softly. “For one week.”
Five hundred pounds? Her mouth went dry. It was a colossal sum. Did he know what five hundred pounds meant to someone like her? But of course he knew. It meant irresistible temptation.
In exchange for one week of service. Seven nights. Seven, when even the thought of one was insupportable. But once the first had been endured, the other six would hardly matter.
Chastity needed to see the physician again. She needed more medicine. If she were to die merely because they could not afford the proper treatment for her illness, how would she feel, Verity asked herself, when it had been within her power to see to it that they could afford the treatment? What had she just been telling herself about Christmas?
Selfless giving.
She smiled into the fire. “That would be very pleasant, my lord,” she said, and then listened in some astonishment to the other words that came unplanned from her mouth, “provided you pay me in advance.”
She turned her head to look at him when he did not immediately reply. His elbow was still on the mantel, his closed fist resting against his mouth. Above it his eyes showed amusement.
“We will, of course, agree to a compromise,” he told her. “Half before we leave and half after we return?”
She nodded. Two hundred and fifty pounds before she even left London. Once she had accepted the payment, she would have backed herself into a corner. She could not then refuse to carry out her part of the agreement. She tried to swallow, but the dryness of her mouth made it well nigh impossible to do.
“Splendid,” he said briskly. “Come, it is late. I will escort you home.”
She was to escape for tonight, then? Part of her felt a knee-weakening relief. Part of her was strangely disappointed. The worst of it might have been over within the hour if, as she had expected, he had reserved a room and had invited her there. She felt a deep dread of the first time. She imagined, perhaps naively, that after that, once it was an accomplished fact, once she was a fallen woman, once she knew how it felt, it would be easier to repeat. But now it seemed that she would have to wait until they left for Norfolkshire before the deed was done.
He had fetched her cloak and was setting it about her shoulders. She came to attention suddenly, realizing what he had just said.
“Thank you, no, my lord,” she said. “I shall see myself home. Perhaps you would be so kind as to call a hackney cab?”
He turned her and his hands brushed her own aside and did up her cloak buttons for her. He looked up into her eyes, the task completed. “Playing the elusive game until the end, Miss Heyward?” he asked. “Or is there someone at home you would rather did not see me?”
His implication was obvious. But he was, of course, right though not in quite the way he meant. She smiled back at him.
“I have promised you a week, my lord,” she said. “That week does not begin with tonight, as I understand it?”
“Quite right,” he said. “You shall have your hackney, then, and keep your secrets. I do believe Christmas is going to be more…interesting than usual.”
“I trust you may be right, my lord,” she said with all the coolness she
