Ashton: Lord of Truth (Lonely Lords Book 13) (19 page)

“I was glad when Althorpe died. I didn’t wish him dead, but I was glad to be free of him.” The words might once have made her ashamed,
but in Ashton’s arms, she merely spoke a pathetic truth.

“I’m glad he’s gone too and will further admit I wish you’d never married him.”

The ultimate regret, and Ashton had had to say it for her.

This exchange was extraordinary in so many ways. Matilda was pressed against a half-naked man and wanted nothing but to press closer. She was being honest
about her past. She was exchanging intimacies she’d never thought to share with another, and all of this was transpiring while the sunshine poured
through the window.

Revenge wasn’t the right word for what Matilda was about to do, but neither was it entirely wrong. She would finally learn what it meant to be a lady
about her pleasures, to have a lover who was also a friend, however temporarily.

“Ashton Fenwick, will you be my lover?”

Ashton had made love with angry women, jubilant women, sad women, lonely women, lusty women, bored women, and everything in between. He’d been happy
to share an interlude of pleasure and comfort with each of them and hoped they recalled him fondly.

He did not want to be a mere fond recollection for Matilda Bryce. He wanted to be the man who showed her how lovely life could be when shared with a true
partner, and he wanted her to show him the same marvel. This was doubtless a form of dementia brought on by the London air, for Matilda wanted nothing to
do with partnership of the permanent variety.

“I will be your lover, Matilda, with joy and with pride. I will also be your lady’s maid.”

For a woman who’d been married, Matilda knew nothing about flirtation or bedroom protocol. Her idiot husband had much to answer for, but so did the
nonsense that passed for a genteel woman’s education.

“You can’t just get in bed, take off your breeches, and close your eyes?” she asked.

“Take off my—under the covers, you mean?”

A blush crept up her neck. “Or I could turn my back.”

“For God’s sake, woman. I long to bare all my treasures to you, and you want to turn your back?”

Matilda’s face was pink, and the sight of her discomfiture was anything but humorous.

“Turn around, then,” Ashton said, taking her gently by the shoulders.

She jumped when he began undoing the hooks down the back of her dress. The fit was loose enough that she might have contorted herself into the garment
unassisted, or maybe Pippa aided her. After the hooks came her laces, and then Ashton gave her a gentle push in the direction of the privacy screen.

“I’ll be under the covers, with my breeches
off
.”

She rustled away, and Ashton took a moment to lock the door to the stairway, secure the windows against any housebreaking ventures Helen might attempt, and
close the door to the bedroom. 

When Matilda emerged from the privacy screen in a worn, wrinkled shift, Ashton was sitting with his back to the headboard, the covers drawn over an
erection that wanted the merest hint of encouragement to come to full attention.

She took his breeches from where he’d draped them across the desk and folded them tidily. Next she folded his shirt, sleeves precisely matching,
collar tucked just so, cuffs smoothed flat. His waistcoat would doubtless divert her for another quarter hour.

“The sunlight coming in the window reveals more to me than you intend, Matilda.”

She scampered over to the bed with the speed of a startled cat. “I’m trying to figure out a way to explain something to you.”

“I know where babies come from.”

“That is not funny to a woman whose sole excuse for taking up space under her husband’s roof was her ability to reproduce.”

Well, hell.
“Matilda, have you any reason to believe the problem lay with you? Couldn’t the issue have been on your husband’s part?”

She sat on the bed, her back to Ashton. Why didn’t women grasp that every part of the female anatomy was delightful to behold? The nape of a
woman’s neck could inspire ballads, the curve of her spine could make a man ache.

“I suspect he was the problem. Althorpe was not enthusiastic about… That is to say, he put forth great effort…”

Ashton studied the angle of Matilda’s jaw, the set of her shoulders. She wasn’t embarrassed, but she was grasping for vocabulary.

“He couldn’t finish,” Ashton said. “He’d fuss about, heave and groan, flail away, curse, and probably leave you sore, but he
couldn’t finish.”

She snatched up a brocade pillow and hugged it to her chest. “Not often, and that was my fault too. I didn’t know what to do, so I asked
somebody more knowledgeable than I.”

The goose girl probably knew more about intentionally arousing a man’s interest than Matilda did.

“Who was this expert?”

“She maintained a common nuisance across the square from Althorpe’s town house. They do that, you know. Set up the bawdy houses in the decent
neighborhoods. The woman told me her employees were safer that way, made better money, and were more easily available to the men who could pay well for
their frolics.”

“I can continue admiring the lovely view of your back, Matilda, or I can put my arms around you while we hold this discussion. The choice is
yours.”

More than ever, Ashton understood that the choices must remain hers.

Matilda slanted a glance at him over her shoulder, then cast the pillow away and tucked herself against his side.

Ashton wrapped an arm around her shoulder, lest she wander off into the sunbeams. “What did the madam tell you?”

“That I was the bravest fool she’d ever met. I had often been called a fool, but never brave before. We talked for a long time, and when I
was…” She paused to pull the covers up over her legs. “When I was newly widowed, she was very kind to me.”

“She assured you the lack of a son was not your fault?” Whoever she was, Ashton silently thanked the woman.

“She assured me that despite what any physician or midwife might say, it was nearly impossible to tell for certain why conception hadn’t
occurred, but that my husband was likely to blame. I asked her what I could do about it.”

“And she suggested an affair?”

Matilda shifted about some more, until her head was resting on Ashton’s thigh. “Everybody knows more about this business than I do. Yes, she
suggested an affair, even going so far as to remind me that my husband’s close family members presented the best hope of siring a child who’d
look like him. She also suggested a few intimate…”

“Tricks,” Ashton supplied, searching for the pins in Matilda’s hair.

“For want of a better word. The first time I acted upon one of those suggestions, my husband scolded me for being a slut. What are you doing?”

“Taking down your hair.”

She was silent for a moment, while Ashton freed her braid from a dozen hairpins. When he sank his fingers into her hair and massaged her scalp, she sighed.

“That feels sinfully good.”

“Matilda, if this is your idea of sinfully good, then your notions of sin are woefully unimaginative.”

Through the thin sheet, she bit Ashton’s thigh, not hard. “You inspire me, Ashton Fenwick. I wish I’d met you a year from now.”

He had no idea what she meant, but then, her mouth was inches from his cock, and his store of ideas was growing predictably focused.

“Are you fond of that chemise?” Ashton asked.

“I’m not fond of it, but it’s one of only two that I own. Why?”

“Because I’m not fond of it either. What must I do to persuade you to take it off?”

She rolled to her back and braced herself on her elbows. “One removes every stitch?”

Her question told him volumes, all of it sad. “Your husband came to you after all the servants were abed, probably wearing a nightshirt large enough
to double as a sail for the royal yacht, but no larger than the nightgown he never asked you to remove. He climbed under the covers, wedged himself between
your legs, and without so much as kissing you, started poking and thrashing about. If and when he achieved satisfaction, he heaved himself off of you
without a word and took himself back to his own bed.”

Matilda regarded the expanse of coverlet, which was white with embroidered sprigs of lavender. “Sometimes he said good night before he left.”

 Ashton wanted to howl, but Matilda had spoken quietly. No howling, no beating the pillows, no roaring and cursing in Gaelic, French, Latin, or Greek.

The bed shivered minutely. Matilda’s chin hitched, and Ashton braced himself for her tears. Her chin hitched again, then dipped and a snort escaped
her.

“He said… good night,” she repeated. “He made a complete, bleating, humping cake of himself, and then…”

She chuckled, she chortled, and then she was whooping against Ashton’s side. “He was ridiculous, pathetic, and sad. I ought to be angry at him,
but you’re right. Althorpe’s nightshirt could have been the tent over a Venetian breakfast, and he never brought so much as a single candle
into my bedroom. He was ashamed, I suppose. The poor man. If he’d once acknowledged the situation, if he’d set aside his posturing for an
instant….”

“But he didn’t,” Ashton said, getting comfortable on his back. “Any offer you made to help would have acknowledged that at least
part of the problem was his. No wonder he married an innocent right out of the schoolroom. A woman with experience would not have stood for his
bullying.”

Matilda curled up against his side, her head on his shoulder. “Bullying. That’s what it was. I was beginning to see the truth of that. Althorpe
never laid a hand on me in anger, else I might have seen his true nature sooner. Let’s talk of something else now.”

Excellent notion
. “Your chemise?” She had only two, and the one she wore looked too worn even for mending. No manly displays of disrespect for her apparel,
then.

Matilda dove under the covers, like a duck in search of food, then came up holding a wad of soft linen. Her expression was disgruntled, wary, and
determined.

I love her.
The thought emerged into Ashton’s mind whole, certain, and true. He loved Matilda’s courage, her resilience, her ability to laugh—he
adored hearing her laugh—and he loved that she wanted him. Not his title, not his wealth, not his lordly consequence.

Just him. This was not the infatuation of a young man for all the ladies, or even adult male approval for a woman of spirit and substance. Ashton loved
Matilda with a conviction no less permanent for being irrational and inconvenient.

He plucked the linen from her hand, strolled over to the privacy screen, and took his sweet damned time about hanging the nightgown over the top. His
return to the bed was just as leisurely, and thank the lusty cherubs, Matilda watched his every step.

“Turn around again,” she said, sitting up with the sheet tucked under her arms. “Slowly.”

Ashton obliged, arousal and joy roaring through him. “Look as much as you please, Matilda mine.”

She motioned toward the carpet beside the bed. “Come closer.”

An inspection followed and an interrogation.

“How did you get the scar on your foot?”

“Horse stepped on me.”

“Who broke your nose?”

“Same horse, neither injury on purpose. He’s retired, gentle as a lamb, but still clumsy.”

“Where is your favorite place to be touched?”

“My heart.”

Matilda patted the pillow. “You are awful. Come back to bed.”

Ashton was awfully aroused. She hadn’t asked about that. Maybe the evidence spoke for itself.

“Have you more questions, Matilda?”

“I’ve dithered enough. Do you have questions?”

Ashton hadn’t been expecting that offer. “I can ask them without words.”

He climbed under the covers and wrestled Matilda over him. She looked him up and down, then curled close, her hair tickling his chest.

“You are warm. I like that you’re warm.”

That bastard Althorpe had come to his wife with cold hands and cold feet. “Kiss me, and I’ll grow even warmer.”

Matilda obliged, and by degrees, she grew more enthusiastic about straddling an aroused man. Ashton kissed her in return, learned the contours of her naked
back, and began a gentle exploration of how she enjoyed having her breasts touched.

And all the while, she hovered above him, denying him her weight and even a brush of her sex.

“I like that you have callused hands,” she whispered. “And hair on your chest, and scars on your foot, and a broken nose.”

“Such flattery. Give me your weight, Matilda. I’m aching for you.” Her breasts filled his hands, and that felt lovely, and tasted lovely,
but it wasn’t enough. 

“I’m not sure—”

Ashton took her by the hips and showed her. “Like that. Say hello and stay for a wee friendly chat.”

“You want me to—?” She tried a slow glide, barely touching him.

A lightning strike would have been less of a shock to Ashton’s senses. “That’s a start. More would be nice too.”

Nice
was a monumental understatement. Matilda got into the spirit of the undertaking, sliding and wiggling, teasing and—she had a diabolical
streak—pausing.