“I have been a troublesome wife,” she agreed.
He curled his fingers around hers, holding them captive. “Let’s hear it.”
“Amelia told me about the carnival at the end of the month, and I should like to attend.”
Hugh knew all about the carnival—he had attended as a boy. It was more of a fair, really, given a grand name to entice more people to it. ‘Grancott Carnival’ sounded far grander than “Grancott Fair.” And many people traveled in from across the county to attend. He recalled enjoying it as a boy.
As an adult, he had not attended.
The people feared him.
“Chris,” he said gently.
“I know you don’t like it, but please.” She slid to her knees before him, perhaps in supplication, but it wrought entirely different results. He prayed she wouldn’t look down to see the rather obvious tent in his trousers. “How long can you hold us separate from the common people? If this is my home, I would like to be accepted in it.” To make matters worse, she brought his fingertips to her lips and kissed them gently, the way he had with hers on more than one occasion. He tried to ignore the way desire thundered through him. His cock ached, pressed so firmly as it was against his breeches. “And if you would do me the honor, I would like to have you by my side.”
Though it shouldn’t have, the request gratified him. “One appearance will not change their minds.”
She smiled a little against his fingers. The sight made his blood burn. “It’s a start. Please, Hugh. I know you don’t want to go, but if you don’t attend for your own sake, will you accompany me for mine?”
What choice did he have? “Conniving woman,” he said gruffly. “They will take one look at my face and run.”
She reached up to cup his face as she had done before. “The only person who is afraid of you isyou, Hugh.”
“I’m afraid experience has proven that to be patently false.”
She traced the lines of the terrible melted skin of his deformity. “You do not look so very bad.”
He caught her wrist, bringing her hand away. “Don’t.”
“Does it hurt?”
What hurt was having her so close and yet, while he was seconds away from laying her on her back before the fire, pushing up her skirts and having his way with her, she looked utterly unaffected.
Sympathetic. Affectionate. But not lustful, not the way he was. Something about her presence turned him more animal than man.
“Not as such,” he said, but he moved her hand farther away. “Are you sold on this course of action, Chris?”
“I am. Will you do it?”
“If you wish it.”
She rose, moving closer, and he found himself opening his legs to accommodate her, wondering if she knew what she was doing. She made for an unpracticed seductress, and yet he could not doubt her skill. “Thank you. We will make an appearance and spend money and remind people that you are but a man.” She placed her hands on his shoulders. “And, if you can, endeavor to have fun with me. Can you do that?”
The kind of fun he wanted to have with her was likely not what she had in mind. Particularly not at a carnival of this nature.
The idea of presenting himself in front of the general populace for judgment made his skin crawl. They would find him wanting—he knew it. The rumors were too longstanding, and the worst part of it was, they were true. Hedidhave a nasty temper. Years of self-control had brought it under management, but hehadbehaved badly and destroyed people’s livelihoods.
Yet when Christiana looked at him like that, he found it harder to believe himself the monster he had always taken refuge in considering himself to be. She looked at him as though he were flesh and blood—as though he were more than the Beast of Somerset.
For her, he wanted to be more.
His reclusive life had brought him a modicum of relief when he’d needed it the most. But perhaps he no longer needed it. Perhaps he had done his time in the dark; he could now contemplate following Christiana into the light.
He had the feeling he would follow her anywhere, so long as she took his hand to lead him there.
“It seems,” he said, “I can deny you nothing.”
Chapter Twenty-Three