One of the intoxicating things about Damon was the way he looked so interested in her opinion. “Really?” He pulled a blank. “What did you think the world would be like? It must have been rather remarkable, growing up with Mrs. Grope. I would hardly have thought you had a conventional upbringing.”
“Well, it wasn’t conventional,” Roberta said. She couldn’t fit any of her pieces onto the board. “We’re getting all cramped on the right side of the table.”
He ladled a bit more strawberry champagne into her glass and pointed. “One of us needs to start a spinner with that four.”
Roberta was feeling suddenly shy. She drew a one. “Mrs. Grope has only been a friend of my father’s for the last few years.”
“Before that?”
“Well, there was Selina…an actress.”
He looked up at her, startled. “You can’t mean Selina Trimmer, currently the lead actress at Drury Lane, not to mention inamorata of the Prince of Wales?”
She nodded.
“I gain a whole new respect for your father,” he said, snagging a three from the pile. “Selina is remarkably beautiful. Is she as temperamental in person as in reputation?”
“Oh yes,” Roberta said. “She found it very hard to live in the country and I’m afraid it had a wearing effect on her composure.”
“Then why on earth—” he said, and checked himself.
“She was in the grip of a passion for my father,” Roberta explained, feeling a little thrill of parental pride. “She met Papa when the Drury Lane traveling company visited our estate. He persuaded her to stay for a brief visit.”
“How brief?”
“Two years.”
“You lived with Selina Trimmer for two years!”
“She wasn’t a Trimmer at that point,” Roberta explained. “This game is so irritating, Damon. I don’t think I can move anything.”
“Yes, you can. Put your one there,” he said, pointing.
“We knew her as Selina Le Faye. But Selina felt that she would do better with a more English-sounding name, so when she decided to go to London, we concocted the name Trimmer.”
“You mean that it was an amicable parting?”
“There was no rancor. Of course, my father wept voluminously.”
“My dear Roberta,” Damon said, “why on earth are you the least bit surprised by the goings on in this house? To put it bluntly, you have grown up in a household whose attention to conventional mores seems to have been fragile, to say the least.”
Roberta had to think about that for a moment, which was just as well, because Damon had drawn a piece that he didn’t seem to know what to do with. “It’s not that I’m surprised by intimacy outside of marriage,” she said finally. “But my father was deeply in love with Selina, and then with Mrs. Grope. He loved them, both of them. It broke his heart when Selina decided that she could not continue to be happy in such a remote location as our home.”
“But he didn’t take her to London.”
“I believe that Selina felt it was time for something new, perhaps?”
Damon grinned. “Nicely put.”
“The truth is that I know something of what goes on between men and women,” Roberta said. She could feel herself going a little pink. “I hadn’t actually seen anything until the other night, but I have—”
She broke off, seeing the utterly fascinated look on his face.
“You have what?”
“I suppose that I am in possession of a rather unique amount of information about pleasuring men. At least for someone like me.”
“A virgin, you mean.”
She nodded.
He put down his piece. “It seems that I, Roberta, have drawn a double four, which I shall place as a spinner in the one available spot.”
“Oh,” she said, feeling her heart speed up again.
“What will you take off?” he asked. His grin was absolutely devilish.
But Roberta had already thought this through. She stood and pulled up her skirts in the back, where he couldn’t see. With a sharp pull, she untied the ribbon that held her hooped petticoat in place. It fell to the floor, and Roberta stepped neatly out of the frame.
Damon’s face fell. “That was sneaky,” he said, getting up. Before she realized what he was doing, he picked Roberta up in his arms and sat back down on his chair.
“What?” she yelped.
“I love holding a woman who isn’t wearing an iron-wrought frame around her body,” he said.
“My hoops aren’t made of iron,” Roberta said. He smelled so good that it was hard to think. Instead she just snuggled into his chest. It was soft, like velvet but not velvety. She ran a finger over the contours of his chest.
“Buttercup,” he said in a husky whisper. “It’s your turn to move.”
“In a moment.”
He busied himself by kissing her ear, and Roberta flattened her hand against his chest. He was warm, hot, in fact. And smooth chested.
“Will you grow hair as you age?” she asked, running her hand over his chest again. It was intoxicating. He had a nipple, which she wouldn’t have expected. His was flat, not like hers. She ran her fingers over it again. And again.
His voice sounded a little strained. “I don’t think so. Why? Do you hanker after chest hair?”
She giggled. “No. The only male chest I’ve ever seen belonged to a groom, and he had white hair all over his front.”
“I’m sure Villiers will have all the white hair you want,” he said. And then: “I’m sorry, Roberta. That was entirely uncalled for.”
She squeaked. “What are you doing?”
“Making up for my rudeness,” he said, his voice entirely serious. “It’s the least I can do.”
Roberta thought about that, but none too steadily because his fingers were sliding up her leg, and farther. It was as if she could feel her skin as he felt it, curved, smooth, rounding under his fingers. His breath was coming faster and his fingers—
She cleared her throat.
“Yes?” His fingers slid forward again.
It felt so good—too good. She jumped to her feet. “My turn to draw a piece!” She sat down hurriedly, avoiding his eyes. He uncoiled himself, leaning forward, all taut male muscle. She snatched a piece and then stared down at it.
His hand plucked the piece from her fingers. “Another double four,” he said. His eyes smiled at her, and suddenly that melting feeling Roberta felt from the touch of his fingers was there, even without being touched. She blinked at him.
“You’re going to have to make a spinner,” he said. Quietly. As if it were an ordinary invitation.
Roberta looked him over. In the candlelight, Damon was all golden skin and shifting muscles. Her father always said there was only one reason to act impetuously: if she really wanted something. Roberta had heaped scorn on her father’s maxim, given that following his whims was so frequently antithetical to the mores of polite society.
But now she saw the wisdom of it all.
What she wanted was to lose her inconvenient virginity to Damon. Then she would marry Villiers and embark on a life of reckless sophistication. But at the moment…