Night of Pleasure by Delilah Marvelle Page A

me.”
    She tightened her hold on her reticule and made her way after him.
    He said nothing more.
    The silence was unnerving. They always had plenty to say to each other in letters. He, more than she. But now, their letters and the ten weeks they had spent together in their youth didn’t seem to exist. Face to face, they were strangers. A man and a woman who were meeting for the very first time.
    “How many rooms are there?” she offered, hoping to break the silence. She knew, of course, how many rooms there were in his house, given she had spent enough weeks in it, but a respectable woman had to start the conversation somewhere.
    He cleared his throat. “Twenty, not including the servants’ quarters in the upper attic. The country estate in Essex is twice the size of this and has twice the staff. The upkeep has been tedious, especially given all the renovations throughout the years. Something is always peeling, breaking, or leaking.” He walked up the main stairwell, his bare hand smoothly trailing up the mahogany banister. His hand was large, those male fingers extending well beyond the shape of the banister itself. The effortless movement of his hand against the banister hinted at a playfulness he was clearly withholding.
    Gathering her skirts, she made her way up the stairs after him, lowering her gaze to his backside hidden beneath his morning coat. She pinched her lips together, knowing she shouldn’t be staring at his backside and lowered her gaze to his leather boots instead. His black boots had been polished to such perfection, she could see light refracting from them. Not even her father, who was notorious for wanting everything mis en place , kept his boots that polished.
    Upon reaching the top of the stairwell, Banfield stepped aside and waited.
    She came onto the landing, noting a long wall of ancestral gilded paintings. Nothing had changed. She remembered almost everything about the house after spending weeks going in and out of it. She didn’t expect to miss it, but a part of her had. For it had been her home away from home for ten weeks. Ten incredibly overwhelming weeks of realizing at the age of fourteen she was going to be a wife to a very eager and very passionate young man who had no qualms about announcing what he wanted and needed. Be it in person or in his letters. He’d terrified her with his enthusiasm and the way he always charged at life. And at her. Over the years, although she’d come to admire that take-no-prisoners attitude, she had still decided she wouldn’t let him make her a prisoner.
    He gestured toward the right. “The receiving room is this way. It’s where Mother and I welcome all of our guests during calling hours.”
    “I remember the receiving room quite well,” she chided. “You certainly tried to hold my hand enough times in it.”
    His brown eyes captured hers. He shifted toward her. “Are you flirting with me?”
    Annoyingly, her face grew hot. “No. I was merely stating a fact.”
    He tilted his head, searching her face. “You’re blushing.”
    He was never subtle, was he? “Yes. I know. I can feel it.”
    He smiled. Still searching her face, he added, “You haven’t changed, Miss Grey. Not one bit. The only difference between now and then is that you don’t appear to be panicking.”
    What little he knew. Over the years, she had simply learned to control the panic.
    He dug into his pocket and with his thumb, opened the lid off a tin she knew all too well. His eyes brightened and his tone softened. “Want one?”
    She remembered three things about the day they first met. The way his finger had pushed itself into her mouth in a most ungentlemanly manner, the way his candy burned her tongue for life and the way he kept getting into her face which ultimately led her into shoving him and dashing a welt into his forehead. And that was all within the first hour of them knowing each other. “No, thank you.”
    “Are you certain?”
    “Quite. I’m still