Chapter Eight.

James studied Sunny's position on her bed, gold lights in her hair, the glow of the firelight upon her skin. He could picture her just like this, in some sordid rented chamber, waiting for her servant lover to arrive.

He came to her bedside.

She looked up at him and she stroked the stem of her wineglass with suggestive motions.

Christ.

She was attempting to seduce him?

I must treat her with honor.

Yet, he'd just gone bone hard.

"Will you take some wine with me?" she asked, her voice soft, lush.

He nodded, numbly accepting the glass she handed him. He could use a drink. God, he was lightheaded. Though with lust or with his confused feelings, he didn't know.

He'd taken a few drinks and then clarity returned. He gave her a stern look. "Sunny, what are you about, inviting me into your chamber like this? We will be spending a great deal of time together. We must keep some proprieties between us."

"This is what I am like." She took a deep drink of wine. She would no longer meet his gaze.

"You were never like this before."

"That's true. I was a good little girl. The pride of my Papa and Mama."

"So what happened?" He heard the sad note in his own voice.

"I grew up."

"This is not the result of maturity."

"Then what is it?"

"You were debauched."

Her brows shot up and she lowered her glass to the night table. "Debauched?"

"Yes, this footman. He was the one who debauched you, was he not?"

She laughed softly. "How chivalrous of you to place the onus on him."

Had he been holding on to the hope that she would deny having taken a lover?

He supposed he had.

She drew her brows together. "I have to be honest, with you and with myself. He didn't debauch me. He didn't seduce me. We were lovers, yes. But we both knew what we were doing."

"Sunny, you should not defend that blackguard. I was still away at sea and Freddy was dead. And your Papa was-"

"Ah, Papa." She looked even sadder. "What a disappointment I am to him. I was raised to live so sparingly. Don't consume too much flesh, don't eat or drink to excess. Don't make jests, don't waste your time playing at cards or dice or playing music or reading novels. Stay occupied in some useful activity every moment of the day."

She set her empty glass down on the night table. "Mama used to chastise me for laughing too much. Now she's in a total despair for the state of my soul. She doesn't write me letters. She sends me novels-whole volumes of her chastening by mail. I don't know how Papa affords to post them.

"Little good it does. I eat and drink just as greedily, maybe more so, after I have read one of her letters." She ran her hands down over the sides of her velvet covered breasts, down along her curvy, well-defined waist then over her full, well-padded hips.

He could all but feel the soft, sumptuous nap on his own palms.

"A woman doesn't gain a form like this eating sparingly of the roast beef and pudding."

Only through supreme self-control did he resist reaching out to grasp her and pull her closer. To touch those luscious breasts.

"One could say I am plump." Her hand rested on the soft curve of her stomach. "During those last two years of his life, Freddy was a little aghast at the changes in me. He couldn't hide it." She made a circular, caressing pattern over her belly and her gaze had turned quite smoky.

Lust surged into his groin with every beat of his heart. He couldn't tear his eyes from that small hand, so starkly pale against the dark green velvet.

"I think I frightened Freddy at times."

Of course she had. Freddy had been a perpetual boy, even before the fever that stripped him of his virility. Freddy had picked Sunny for the same reasons James had initially wanted her for a wife, all those years ago. For her delicacy. For her girlish air and ladylike ways.

All the while, Sunny had been a vixen in disguise.

This sensual, self-indulgent creature was driving James to the point of madness.

But she could only be a mistress to him. She wasn't the kind of wife he needed. He dared not do anything to bring shame on his family.

How terrible of him to doubt her in that way. What choice did he have until she proved herself different? It was still a dreadful feeling to doubt her.

"James?"

The inquiring note in her voice forced him to look her in the eye. "Yes?"

"What do you think of a woman who eats to the point of-" She ran her small, red tongue over her full, lush lips. "-satiety?"

He went hard as iron.

He hurt with it.

He glanced down.

She was still caressing her stomach. "I drink greedily from the cup of life. I take pleasure where I find it. What do you think of such a woman? Do you think I am wicked, evil...base?"

"I don't think a woman ought to deny herself to the point where she is always hungry. Certainly, she should eat until she's sated."

"Mama said a woman should never allow herself to grow plump. It is a self-indulgent thing. Taking more than one needs from God's bounty."

"I wouldn't call you plump, Sunny."

"Wouldn't you? Frances does."

"I would say you are perfect." He put his hand on her hip, felt the soft lushness there. No bony angles on her. "I think you're beautiful."

He stared down into her face, noting her red, full lips. He could imagine his mouth covering hers. He bent his head, powerless to her allure.

Her eyes flashed with something-what? Anger? No, too strong. Defiance? Why but defiance? No, not anger nor exactly defiance, but challenge.

She was testing him.

It occurred to him that this whole evening had been a test.

A test he had been about to fail.

He had frozen with his mouth a fraction of an inch away from hers. He could taste her breath.

He pulled away from her. How he loathed feminine tactics such as this.

Yet, he could forgive her.

Firstly, because he knew her position. Everyone she had once trusted had betrayed that trust.

And secondly, this was not any woman. This was Sunny.

His pulse seemed to center in his cock, each beat increasing the sense of urgency. The hardest erection he'd ever known throbbed painfully against the confines of his trousers.

He mustn't give in to lust.

Taking a slow, deep breath, he tried to focus his thoughts on something else. A matter of importance between them. "Sunny, did you starve yourself in the past?"

"Goodness, I wouldn't term it starving myself."

He remembered her thinness as a younger woman and he felt a pang within himself to think that slenderness had not been her natural state but one born of self-denial.

"You left the table, night after night, intentionally hungry, not yet satisfied?"

"That was just how we were raised to be. To put the spiritual over the sensual. It was just our way."

"No, it was your parents' way."

"I chose to follow their beliefs."

"What choice had you? You were their child and children are to be obedient." He caressed his hand along the silken nap of the velvet. "And you fault yourself now, for not being able to live up to their idea of how a person should eat and live?"

She shrugged one shoulder and waved dismissively.

"Sunny, this is important. You take too much blame for things. Such as this footman of yours."

"Please, don't call him that. It makes him seem somewhat less of a person. As though he were a thing, like a carriage or a wardrobe."

"I don't know his name."

"Silas Chapman."

He had not wished to have a name attached to her lover. "He was English."

"I believe he was. Does that matter?"

It shouldn't have mattered.

It enraged him.

He took a deep breath then refocused on the conversation. "Shall we call him Silas or Mr. Chapman?"

"I think Mr. Chapman will suffice between you and me. But thank you for asking. Using his name makes me feel less as though I had taken advantage of someone who was so subordinate to me that he had no defenses. As though he were a dumb animal. Or-or..." She paused and he saw her swallow. "Or a thing to be used."

"I see your point. However, he took advantage of you."

"No, he didn't, and I wish you would stop saying it. I knew what I was doing."

"You were a sheltered, inexperienced young woman. A new widow."

"You don't understand."

"I do understand; I am a man. It gives me insight into this Mr. Chapman that you don't have."

"I lost control over myself. I know they told you."

"You flirted with this servant at some point in time."

Her shoulders sagged. "Yes."

"Afterwards, he knew he had some sway with you, and he used it to his ultimate advantage."

"No, it was not like that. I flirted with him, I crossed over the boundaries of propriety and tempted him. It was unforgivable but I compounded the sin by-by...I couldn't help myself. I know how dreadful and wicked and weak that makes me. But I could not-"

He had put his fingers to her lips. God, he couldn't bear to hear another word. The soft warmth made him linger, and it took all his control not to trace along the fullness of her lower lip. Finally, he had to lift his fingers. He cupped her cheek.

"Sunny, you're taking too much of the blame." He frowned. "Blame is the wrong word. Ah, what you do in private, with a lover-or yourself, how you care for the needs of your body. How you feed yourself. If you want to drink wine or eat sweets or titillate yourself with tales of drama and romance, all of this is your own concern. You have no one, not even a husband, to answer to now."

"But ladies shouldn't-"

"Ladies take lovers every day. Well, some ladies do. Many do." He couldn't help but caress the softness of her cheek. "But you were in a state of grief, confused after a less-than-natural marriage. Mr. Chapman was a man-older?"

She nodded. "But he was a servant." Sadness entered her look. "He wasn't even educated. Not too well."

"No, matter. He was a man, experienced in life, and you were an innocent, despite your age."