Read Online The Official Essex Sisters Companion Guide by Jody Gayle with Eloisa James - Free Book Online Page B

didn’t really want me, because I experienced precisely that with Draven. Draven was . . . perfectly willing.”
    “I too am perfectly willing,” Rafe said, desperate to take the shadow from her eyes. He grinned at her wolfishly. “Always.”
    She leaned over and dropped a kiss on the corner of his mouth. “I didn’t understand desire until you showed your version of willing.”
    “Thank God, my brother’s a blind dolt,” Rafe said, heartfelt.
    “Draven was rather cheerfully punctilious,” Imogen said. “And I imagine that had you not intervened, with your false voice and your mustache, Gabe might well have shown me the same favor.”
    “I’d have had to kill him.”
    Imogen looked at her husband-to-be and decided, calm though Rafe’s voice was, he really meant it.
    “Well,” she said hastily, “do you see why I should have known immediately? Because when we kissed in the carriage, on the way to see Cristobel—well, that was my first kiss. My first real kiss. Of course that wasn’t Gabe kissing me.”
    “But you didn’t realize,” Rafe said, looking ridiculously pleased with himself. “And I did pretty well in the inn, didn’t I? Did you notice that I knocked my wine on the floor?”
    She laughed. “No. I did notice that Cristobel had obviously met you before, though, and in the company of an earl. I’m quite certain I know exactly which earl that was: your closest friend.”
    “Damn Mayne,” Rafe said, putting on a tragic face. “I never had a chance with Cristobel, given that he was around.”
    “And even so I didn’t jump to the right conclusion,” Imogen said, as much to herself as to him. “What a fool I was. I thought it was remarkably odd that a Cambridge professor had found his way into Cristobel’s presence—and yet it made sense, in an odd way. How else would Gabe have known about her, if he hadn’t heard her sing before?”
    “He had no idea what he was suggesting. Saw a placard nailed to a tree and likely thought he was taking you to a revival meeting to listen to some rousing hymns. Well, then, when did you finally realize the truth?”
    She laughed. “It was a little thing, really. But you asked me what I thought of Rafe, in the carriage on the way home.”
    “So?”
    “Gabe would never have done such a thing. Never. It was akin to asking me to criticize his brother, and it simply isn’t in him to do such a coarse thing.”
    “So you realized on the spot?”
    “Oh, no. But I remember blinking at you—it was quite dark in the carriage—and thinking this isn’t right. There had been several points in which you sounded just like Rafe—well, of course you did!—and then there was an odd eagerness in your voice when you asked me that question.”
    “Why didn’t you say something?” Rafe said. He was looking remarkably happy. Almost as if he were bursting with it. “I can just imagine what you could have said.” He put on a fierce scowl. “ Dastard, thou are not whom thou sayest thou art! Avast, and ne’er darken my door again! ”
    “I didn’t want it to be you,” Imogen said flatly.
    The laughter faded from Rafe’s eyes. “Oh.”
    She looked down at the sheet and started pleating it with her fingers. “If Gabe had handed me to you, that meant I was a charity case again. Draven married me because I loved him so much. And if you had slapped on that mustache so that my feelingswouldn’t be hurt, that meant that even when I offered myself to a man, without marriage being part of the gift—he wouldn’t bed me.”
    There was a second’s silence, and then Rafe’s voice, as deep and tender as any man’s could be, “Sweetheart.”
    She shook her head, looking fiercely at the pleated sheet. A tear slid down her cheek. “I know that’s the case.”
    He tipped up her chin. The dark eyes that she loved so much were smiling. “You are indeed a fool. There’s not a man in all this country who wouldn’t bed you if you asked. But would you have preferred that