Page 64 of From Unwanted to Duchess
“Can I interest you in something else to drink? Or some other entertainment?”
“My friend here is interested in entertainment,” Gideon said.
James looked up at him.
“Is that all?” the maid asked and took two steps toward James.
She wrapped one arm around his shoulder and ran her other hand through his hair, ruffling it. She smelled of vanilla and orange, a combination he usually found alluring but found disagreeable now.
“And what is your name?” she asked.
“James,” Gideon supplied.
“James. If you are interested in a little entertainment, I do have a chamber upstairs that is very private. What do you say?”
James looked at Gideon, who grinned at him.
“If nothing has changed, then why not?” Gideon smirked.
Curse him to hell.
James couldn’t very well send the maid away and insist that nothing had changed, or he would never hear the end of it. Besides, nothing had changed.
So why shouldn’t he go upstairs with the maid? Why shouldn’t he enjoy himself? Surely Frances did not expect him to remain celibate for the rest of their lives.
He finished his glass and slammed it down on the table.
“Do not wait up,” he told Gideon, and wrapped an arm around the blonde woman.
Together, they walked out of the back door, and she took his hand, leading him upstairs. The alcohol already made his head swim as he stumbled up the stairs.
At the landing, the maid attempted to pull him toward a door, but James found himself standing still. Every part of his body resisted going with her.
This wasn’t right. This wasn’t what he wanted. He couldn’t go with this woman. He couldn’t spend the night with her. It didn’t feel right.
He had never been so hesitant before. Under normal circumstances, he would’ve been through that door and in her bed already, but he couldn’t stop thinking about Frances.
They had decided on the matter of taking lovers during their time together. He had told her she couldbut it didn’t feel right. In fact, the very thought of her being with anybody else made him feel quite ill.
What was wrong with him? Was he falling for her?
That couldn’t be. He couldn’t allow himself to.
No, he should press forward. He should spend the night with this maid, take his mind off things. And yet his feet refused to move.
He couldn’t do this. He wouldn’t be able to live with himself in the morning. He already knew this. He was a man who tried to always center his morals, to live by a moral code he had imposed upon himself, and that moral code would not allow him to go into the room with the maid. He was not a cad. He would not dishonor his wife thus, arrangement or not.
No, he wanted to go home to Frances, even though this was foolish, for he wasn’t going home to her at all. But he wanted to go home. To the home that they shared. To the home where he knew her head rested on a pillow in the east wing, down the hall from him. To the place where she was. Toher.
This was madness. He was a married man. The fact that their marriage was in name only seemed suddenly insufficient justification.
Frances deserved better than this. And so, strangely, did he.
“Excuse me,” he said and stuffed his hand into his pocket. He pulled out a few guineas and handed them to the maid. “Take the rest of the night off. If anyone asks, I was here all night.”
“Have I done something to cause offense, Sir?” she asked.
He shook his head. “Not in the least. But I must go.”
“Sir?” the woman called after him, confused.
But James was already gone, fleeing down the stairs as though the hounds of hell were at his heels.
He turned and walked away, out the back door. His carriage had already left. No wonder—he had told Gideon not to wait for him.
Quickly, he borrowed a horse from the groom around the back, promising that he would return the beast on the morrow, and then rode home, his heart and mind more confused than ever before.
