“Callie,” he said, matter-of-factly, “what are you really getting at?”
She wrinkled her nose. “I’m just having trouble understanding how she was—that is…what they were going to—I mean…”
He smiled a wry smile and waited for her to finish.
“Oh…you know what I mean.”
“I assure you I do not.”
“There were three of them and only one of her!”
“Were there?”
“You are insufferable! You told me you’d answer my questions!”
“If you were to ask a question, love, I assure you I would answer it.”
“Could she really be expected to…” she paused, searching for the word.
“Pleasure?” He offered, amiably.
“Entertain. All three of them?”
He began dealing the cards again. “Yes.”
“How?”
He looked up at her, and offered her a wolfish grin. “Would you really like me to answer that?”
Her eyes widened. “Uhm…no.”
He laughed then, a deep, rumbling laugh unlike anything she’d ever heard from him, and she was stunned by the way it transformed him. His face was immediately lighter, his eyes brighter, his frame more relaxed. She couldn’t help but smile back at him, even as she admonished, “You’re enjoying my discomfort.”
“Indeed I am, Empress.”
She blushed. “You shouldn’t call me that.”
“Why not? You were named for an empress, were you not?”
She closed her eyes and gave a mock shudder. “I prefer not to be reminded of the hideous name.”
“You should embrace it,” he said, forthrightly. “You’re one of the few women I’ve met who could live up to such a name.”
“You’ve said that before,” she said.
He turned a curious look on her. “I have?”
She met his eyes and immediately regretted bringing up the decade-old memory, so insignificant to him—so very meaningful to her. She spoke quickly, trying to end the moment. “Yes. I don’t remember when. Shall we play?”
His eyes narrowed on her slightly before he nodded. She was so flustered during the next round that he won easily, twenty to her twenty-eight.
“You should have held on nineteen,” he offered casually.
“Why? I still wouldn’t have won,” she said, grumpily.
“Why Lady Calpurnia—” she was certain he used the name to provoke her, “I believe you are a sore loser.”
“No one likes losing, my lord.”
“Mmm. And yet it seems you have.”
She sighed. “Get on with it. What do you want?”
He watched her, waiting for her to meet his gaze. “Take down your hair.”
Her brow furrowed. “Why?”
“Because I won. And you agreed to the terms.”
She considered his words briefly before lifting her hands and removing the pins that held her hair in place. As it fell in soft, brown waves around her shoulders, she said, “I must look silly, dressed in men’s clothing with all this hair.”
His gaze hadn’t left her as she’d released her locks from their tight restraint. “I assure you, ‘silly’ is not the word I would use.”
The words, spoken in the dark voice she was coming to adore, set her pulse racing. She cleared her throat. “Shall we continue?”
He dealt the cards again. She won. Attempting to sound cool and collected, she said, “Do you have a mistress?”
He froze briefly in collecting the cards, and she immediately regretted the question. She didn’t really want to know if he had a mistress. Did she?
“I do not.”
“Oh.” She wasn’t sure what she had been expecting him to say, but it hadn’t been that.
“You don’t believe me?”
“I believe you. I mean, you wouldn’t be here with me if you could be somewhere with someone like…” She stopped, realizing that her words could be misunderstood. “Not that I think you’re here to…with me…”
He watched her, his expression revealing none of his thoughts. “I would still be here with you.”
“You would?” she squeaked.
“Yes. You’re different. Refreshing.”
“Oh. Well. Thank you.”
“Mistresses can be rather difficult.”
“I don’t imagine you like difficult,” she said quietly.
“No. I don’t,” he agreed. He set the deck of cards down on the table. “Why are you so interested in mistresses and courtesans?”
Not mistresses. Your mistresses. She shrugged her shoulders. “They’re rather fascinating to women who aren’t so…free.”
“I’d hardly call them free.”
“Oh! But they are! They can behave however they’d like, with whomever they like! They’re not at all like women in society. We’re expected to sit quietly while men hie off and sow their wild oats. I think it’s high time that women have the chance to sow some oats of their own. And those women do.”
“You have an overly romanticized view of what women like that can and cannot do. They are bound to the men with whom they consort. They rely on them for everything. Money, food, clothing.”
“How is that different from me? I rely on Benedick for all those things.”
He was clearly uncomfortable with the comparison. “It’s different. He’s your brother.”
She shook her head. “You’re wrong. It’s quite the same. Only women like the one across the corridor get to choose the men to whom they are beholden.”