Page 107 of Notorious
“Hmmm?” He lay beside her with his eyes closed, holding one of her hands on his bare chest and absently moving it in circles.
“When will you tell your mother about Samir?”
He groaned.
They’d discussed the matter earlier in the evening, but he’d not given any indication of when he would go.
“I will go to her in the morning.”
That was exactly what she’d wanted to hear. “Good. I want to go with you today.”
His eyes opened, and he turned. “I thought you said you didn’t wish to be there for that conversation?”
“I don’t.”
“So where do you wish to go with me?”
“I want to go with you today when you fetch Samir.”
“Oh, Drusilla, that—”
“These women—Giselle and Maria.” She had to force herself to say their names. “They are part of his life and he speaks of them with great affection. I can hardly pretend they do not exist.”
“No.”
“Why?”
“Because it is—” He muttered something she could not hear. “Because it is not done; that is why.”
“A lot of what we are doing is not done. Besides, I have never given any credit to not doing things simply because they haven’t been done in the past.” The bed shook, and she realized he was laughing silently. “What? Why are you laughing?”
“I’m laughing at the sheer understatedness of your words.”
“I don’t believe understatedness is a word.”
He laughed outright this time and kissed her shoulder.
“I am serious—I will not be distracted on this subject.”
He leaned onto his side and kept kissing, over her arm, and down, twitching off the sheet that covered her, his lips settling over one hard nipple.
She groaned. “Gabriel . . .”
“Mmm?” His mouth was full of her breast.
“I will not be distracted,” she said, far less emphatically.
And then he raised himself up over her and demonstrated—once again—his exceptional skills when it came to distraction.
Chapter 23
The last ball of the Season—and it hadn’t come soon enough in Gabriel’s opinion. He felt an almost childish excitement when he thought about taking Drusilla and Samir to the country.
“Your costume will be delivered today at noon, sir.”
Gabriel glanced up from the mirror at the sound of his valet’s voice, surprised to see that his hands had managed to tie his cravat into a respectable knot without any direction from his brain.
“Costume?” he said as Drake handed him a stickpin in the shape of a plain gold bar.
