The Governess Affair

handed her a clean handkerchief.
    “Uncomfortable memories?” he finally asked.
    Those. Impossible emotions, too. Guilt. Fear. Anger. All the things that she had put off like so many unpaid bills had returned to hammer on her door, insisting on immediate collection of all amounts owed.
    Serena blew her nose. “It’s nothing. Don’t worry about me. Just—can you just get on with it?”
    “No, sweetheart. I have to be aroused to get on with anything, and I find nothing to desire in laboring over a woman who wishes herself elsewhere.” He touched her nose. She was sure it must have been red. But he didn’t comment on her looks. “Even if she is you,” he said.
    “I’m well now.”
    He shook his head. “I don’t think this should happen.”
    He started to stand, but she set her hand on his arm. “You don’t understand. I only have the one memory of Clermont. I need…” She gulped air. “When I wake up at night, remembering his weight upon me, I want another memory I can hold to, so that I might banish the thought. I need you to drive him out.”
    She gathered all her nerve and stood. The bodice of her gown was already undone. All she had to do was slide the sleeves off her shoulders and let the fabric fall. Like that, she was left in corset and chemise.
    She had hoped that disrobing would do the trick. But he was not overcome by lust at seeing her in dishabille. He simply walked to her.
    He was warm against her, warm and close; he parted her hair briefly and then, pulled a hairpin free.
    “We’re not going to be doing this that way, Serena,” he said.
    She swallowed. “Which way is that way?” Her voice was unsteady.
    He removed another hairpin. “Whichever way you’re thinking of right now. Your hands are shaking.”
    “What—how—I don’t know—” She choked on her uncertainty, on the dark fears that rose up inside her.
    But he kept removing her pins, one by one, scarcely touching her as he did so. Her coiffure tilted alarmingly, and then, as he freed a particularly crucial bit of iron, her hair tumbled down to her shoulders.
    “What do you intend?” she asked.
    “I am not going to consummate this marriage.” He found one last pin, dangling in her curls, and set this against the others that he’d gathered. He arranged them in his hand, a neat row of gray metal.
    “You’re not going to consummate the marriage,” she repeated.
    “I’m not.” He held out his hand, and when she reached out to take it, he dumped the hairpins in her palm. “But you are.”
    The heat of his body had warmed the pins. While she was staring at them in confusion, he closed her fingers around them.
    “This is how it works,” he said. “You may trade a pin for a favor. If you want me to unlace your corset, you can give me a pin. If you want me to give you a kiss, it will cost you a pin. But until you ask, I can’t touch you.”
    Serena swallowed.
    “Once I have a pin from you,” he said—and this time, he gave her that long, slow smile that she remembered so well—“I can trade it back.”
    “For a favor?” Her voice was still shaking. “You could trade a pin for the right to—”
    “Ah, yes. You can make me touch you. But I can only make you touch yourself.”
    “That hardly seems fair.”
    His smile quirked up at one end. “I’m not known for fairness.”
    Safe. Safe . It was coming back, that impulse—slowing her heart, driving her darkest fears from the odd corners of her body. He didn’t move. The dark images that had begun to infest her slowly dissipated. And in their place was…confusion.
    Still, she knew where to start.
    “Take off your coat.” Her voice shook as she did.
    He held out his hand. “A pin, please.” She handed one over. Her fingers brushed his palm as she did.
    He undid the buttons down his front and then shrugged out of the dark brown material in one smooth motion. His shirt was white underneath; it clung briefly to muscle as he wrestled his coat to the side. He let it fall to the floor in an untidy mess, and turned to face her in his shirtsleeves. Somehow, taking off that outer layer made him seem bigger than before—perhaps because all that impressive breadth of shoulder was that much closer to her.
    Serena’s pulse beat harder, but still he didn’t move.
    “Aren’t you going to ask for anything with your pin?” she finally managed.
    “No,” he said, with infinite casualness. “I want to build up a store of them first.” He didn’t elaborate,