“Or when we wish to make the beast with two backs inside a carriage.”
The back of her knees hit the bed side. Thebrute beast!
“Wait.” She flashed him a warning look. “Before we get to the…theindescribably joined, I need to know something.
He lifted his brows. “Something besides improper words and matters of clothing?”
“Have there…” She laid a hand on his shirt. He wasn’t going to like this, she knew. “Have you done this with others?”
His chest deflated. He closed his eyes.
“Well?” she prompted.
“Mustyou ask?”
She probably shouldn’t. Decent wives wouldn’t. But she’d never been entirely decent. “I need to know. I don’t know why, but Ineedto know.”
“I suppose, were our roles reversed, I might wish to know, too.”
He understood what she hadn’t—roles. “Yes, that’s it. I cannot not be a passive vessel.” The recipient of knowledge he acquired heaven only knew where.
“Yes, there have been others.” He sighed. “Please don’t look at me so reproachfully. I’mmoral, not a saint.”
“That much, I knew. A saint would not have such an…enriched vocabulary.”
“I wouldn’t be so sure,” he replied. “I knew most of those words far before I understood what they meant.”
Millie frowned.Boys.“How many others?”
“I’ve known two women…in the biblical sense.”
Two.Two was not as daunting a gap of experience as she’d feared. “Courtesans?”
He glanced heavenward and shook his head. “First, my mother speaks blithely of pros—” He caught himself. He cleared his throat. “Ofladies of the night, and now my wife talks freely of courtesans?”
“I could have used a more…disrespectful word,” she reasoned. “I don’t like to think of you with…with…”
His gaze softened. “If you recall, I told you I had never paid for a woman’s company.”
He had, hadn’t he? “Tell me a little about the two.”
“Now?” He turned his head slightly to the side and glanced askance.
“I will feel more easy if we have no secrets.”
He moved his head as if his options were weights on opposite sides of his mind. “Very well,” he agreed. He brought his hand to his forehead. “Harriet, my first, was a woman who lived in the parish where my uncle had his first living.” His hand slipped down over his eyes. “I think she liked the idea of corrupting the vicar’s nephew. I was all of eighteen at the time.”
Millie’s brows went up.Harriet.She’d never met a Harriet she’d liked. “And the other?”
“The other was a barmaid with a taste for lusty young men—a single, bad choice, born of ale and self-pity I made in the year I came into my majority. I felt myself fortunate to have escaped the pox. After that experience, I decided if I did not—” A deep, red flush blossomed up from beneath his collar. “I feel like I can’t breathe.”
Oh, dear. Had she broken him?
Quickly, she loosened his simply knotted cravat. What a cumbersome bit of cloth. How silly men’s fashions were! She parted the sides and set to undoing the tiny ties that held hisshirt together. Without such confining garments, hopefully he’d be able to breathe.
His hand dropped from his forehead to her waist.
She glanced up and into a gaze so perfectly heated she thought her knees might buckle.