Page 25 of Road Trip With a Rogue
“Childhood sweetheart?” His tone wasn’t as cynical as it had been.
“No. But we’d known each other for a long time. He was fun. Good company.” Daisy smiled as fond memories flooded her, tinged with a bittersweet sadness.
“Did you love him?”
The soft question jolted her back to attention. She searched Vaughan’s face for any hint of mockery, but he seemed sincere. She turned her head and studied the raindrops snaking their way down the windowpane, and decided to be ruthlessly honest.
“You know, people always talk about love as if it’s a single, fixed thing, but I don’t think that’s the case at all. I think there are as many kinds of love as there are people. Millions.” Her breath fogged up the inside of the glass and she traced a pattern in it with the tip of her finger.
“That’s not a yes.”
She sighed. “I loved Tom as someone I’d grown up with, as a dear, cheeky friend. He was handsome, and strong, and when I heard that he’d be leaving to fight Bonaparte, I liked him enough to lie with him.”
She’d desired Tom. Not the way she’d desired Vaughan, with that dark, heart-wrenching, pulse-pounding intensity, but in a sweeter, gentler way. And mixed in with the physical attraction had been a kind of pathos, an earnest desire to make him happy before he left for war.
It sounded strange, to call giving Tom her body afriendlygesture, but in a way it had been. It was as if they’d both had a premonition that their time together would be short, that they should grasp those brief moments of pleasure while they could.
“Did he make my heart beat faster when I thought about him?” she asked quietly. “Not really. I certainly never felt all giddy and foolish, like the poets describe people ‘in love.’ I never dreamed of being his wife. But he didn’t know if he’d ever return. So I said yes.”
She swallowed and braved a glance over at Vaughan—thereasonshe’d said yes. That evening with him had ignited a terrible curiosity inside her, a need to see if he was the only man who could make her feel that way, or whether she could replicate those sensations with another. A part of her still felt guilty for using Tom as an experiment, a comparison, but it had been a mutually beneficial arrangement. He hadn’t wanted to leave for Portugal still a virgin.
Vaughan was watching her, his expression indecipherable, so she decided to continue.
“We discovered what pleasure was together.” She sent him a challenging look. “And itwaspleasurable. Despite the fact that neither of us really knew what we were doing.”
Vaughan still said nothing, and her throat grew tight with emotion as she looked back out at the rain. The drops ran like tears down the outside of the glass. Oddly enough, the weather outside made it feel even more intimate inside, a safe, enclosed space, like a confessional.
“I cried when I heard he’d been killed. He was only nineteen. I cried for the fact that he’d never grow old, never sleep with another woman, never marry and have children. I cried at how stupid and unfair war is.Lifeis.”
Daisy blinked, suddenly realizing how much she was sharing. She’d barely articulated these feelings to her friends, and now here she was, exposing herself to this man who was practically a stranger. And yet it felt easy. Right.
She clenched her jaw and sent him another defiant look. “And I was glad I’d given myself to him. I don’t regret it one bit.”
Vaughan nodded, but she still couldn’t tell what he was thinking. She made a mental note never to play him at cards.
“Is the fact that you’re not a virgin another reason you don’t want to marry?” he asked. “Are you worried your secret will be discovered on your wedding night?”
Daisy suppressed a smile. Tess’s wedding-night dilemma had been the complete opposite of that: she’d had to hide the fact that she was still a virgin to Justin, her second husband, after the first duke had failed to consummate the marriage.
“Not really,” she said. “I doubt most men would even notice, especially if they were in their cups.”
His lips quirked. “You think a man who’d just married you would need liquid courage to bed you?”
She scowled at his teasing. “No. I just think men are far less observant than women.Especiallywhen they’re thinking about their own pleasure.”
“You wound us,” he chuckled, clutching his chest as if she’d pierced him with a blade.
She refused to be charmed by his levity. “That’s enough about me. I’ve answered your questions. Now it’s your turn to tell me something personal. It’s only fair.” She raised her brows in challenge, just waiting for him to refuse, but he tilted his head.
“Very well. What would you like to discuss?”
She was so surprised that she said the first thing that came into her head. “Tell me aboutyourfirst love.”
“You mean the first girl I ever took to my bed?” His tone was softly mocking. “I’m sorry to say that love had very little to do with it. Not the way the poets claim it, at least. My father paid for a whore to ‘make a man of me’ on my seventeenth birthday.”
Daisy blinked back her shock. “Oh. That’s…”
He grinned at her expression. “I was delighted, believe me. But I certainly can’t claim to have loved her. I don’t even remember her name.”