He was teasing, so Leah humored him. Many married men had no valet, and this was something she could do for him as his wife. She undid the buttons at the knees of his satin breeches and the garters to his stockings, slipped off his shoes, then took another step back. Nick reached forward, turned her by the shoulders, then eased her gown down to her hips and unlaced her stays. Leah balanced on Nick’s shoulder to step out of her gown and found herself facing him in chemise and petticoat.
He smiled down at her. “Now we’re getting somewhere.” He knelt to deal with her stockings, garters, and slippers, then unfastened the tapes to her petticoats, gathering the entire frothy pile and dumping it on the couch that faced the hearth.
Leah watched him pad barefoot across the room, and it was as if with each piece of clothing they shed, Nick became more himself and less that polite, well-dressed aristocrat she’d married hours ago.
“You are looking at me, Wife. I like that.”
“You are rather hard to miss.”
Nick walked right up to her and gathered her close. “I will blow out all the candles, sleep in my clothes, pledge to leave you in peace, but on our wedding night it will be expected that we share a bed. I’ll sleep elsewhere if that’s what you prefer.”
He offered her a reprieve. Nick, in his boundless kindness and perceptivity, was offering her a reprieve.
“Let’s begin as we intend to go on,” Leah said, though she could only manage it with her cheek resting against Nick’s chest. The fine linen of his shirt lay beneath her nose, and below that his beating heart. She pushed his shirt aside, put her ear over that heart, and listened to its steady rhythm while Nick’s hands caressed her back.
“It shall be as you wish.” He rested his cheek against her temple, and silence spread around them until Leah planted a tasting kiss over his heart.
“Lovey?”
“Nicholas?”
“What are you doing?”
Such a careful question. She dropped her arms from around him. “I honestly don’t know, though of this much I’m certain: I am not enamored of what passed between us earlier, when you pleasured me and I allowed it. We are to be married, though.”
He remained unreadable, watching her as she visually took in the tub, the bed, the flowers in a vase on the windowsill—red roses, of course, with maidenhair and baby’s breath.
“We are married,” Nick said, as if picking up the conversational shuttlecock and batting it to her.
Leah had thought about this, after he’d left her aching in her bed, when she’d dressed in her wedding finery, and on the coach ride out from London. Her husband was a stubborn, independent, shrewd rogue of a man, but he was also kind and the closest thing Leah had to a friend. She hadn’t been at ease with what had passed between them, but neither was she ready to toss all intimacies with him aside.
Which left only one course: “Nicholas, will you teach me what pleases you?”
Nick could not form an answer, for his mind was whirling, robbing him of coherence.
Why, why in the name of sweet, squalling baby Jesus, did his
Women who were intimate with Nick were safe with him; they could take and take and take to their hearts’ content, and that was how he wanted it. He’d learned, to his eternal heartache, that when he took, misery followed.
So he gave generously and skillfully, and got his pleasure that way.
He wanted to give to Leah—had planned on years of that very martyrdom—and here, she wanted to give as well.
For the first time, he experienced the subtle rejection of the pleasured by the pleasurer who would not yield to her own desires. She sought to make love
And between bewilderment and arousal, Nick felt fear licking through his veins.
He wasn’t going to be able to keep his distance from her, to offer her pleasure and companionship and the kind of fondness he offered most any woman who sought it. She was going to wind herself around his body, and around his heart, and he’d be reduced to begging, breaking a promise he’d made to himself on Leonie’s behalf, and regretting and regretting and regretting.
God help him, if he wasn’t careful he’d be falling in love with his own wife.
“Nicholas?” Leah peered up at him, concern in her pretty brown eyes. “Are you all right?”
“I will be fine, though tonight would serve us both best if we used it to get some rest,” he said, his voice sharper than he intended.
Leah peered at him briefly then stepped away. “If you say so. The day has been long.”
Before the hurt in her gaze had him howling on his knees for forgiveness, Nick turned and ducked into the adjoining dressing room.
“Here.” He held out a robe, a deep blue velvet, the smallest he had, but it still pooled on the floor at Leah’s feet, leaving inches of hem trailing on the ground. Leah shrugged into the robe, regarding him with puzzlement.
“Thank you.” She belted the robe as best she could. “Shall we to bed?”
He would rather have crawled over hot coals. “A capital notion.” And worse than hot coals was the uncertainty he’d put in his wife’s eyes. “The footmen will deal with the tub tomorrow.”
“A cricket pitch of a bed,” Leah remarked, eyeing the vast, dark, canopied wonder where Nick slept. “Do you prefer one side or the other?”
“I sleep in the middle. But we’re both probably so tired we won’t know we’re sharing. And tomorrow night, your things will no doubt have arrived in your chambers.”
“So we are not to share a bed regularly?” Her tone was perfectly casual; Nick wasn’t deceived for a moment.
“Our bedrooms adjoin,” Nick said, moving around the room to blow out candles. “I will be happy to accommodate you when you desire it, Leah.”
“I see.” Leah’s voice radiated with suppressed hurt, but Nick steeled himself against it and turned in the dim light to face her.
He was going to burn in hell for this day’s work. Slowly, while every neglected wife in the realm jabbed at his parts with a hot, rusty pitchfork. “Shall I pleasure you now, Wife?” he asked softly.
“I think not. Fatigue is catching up to me.”
“As you wish.” Nick took a candelabrum down from the mantel and blew out the last of the lit candles. He cursed himself for hurting his new wife, cursed her for being so damned desirable and good and lovely and married to him. He cursed marriage as an institution and the Creator for making conception so pleasurable for the child’s father, and he cursed himself again, because he hadn’t seen this disaster looming.
Val’s words came back to Nick as he eased the robe from Leah’s shoulders then accepted her chemise when she pulled it over her head. She paused for a moment, naked beside his bed, illuminated only by firelight.
“In you go,” Nick said. “I could lend you a shirt, but it would likely strangle you.” He did not dare pat her bottom, lest he then tackle her and doom them to further miseries.
Leah climbed on the bed, and Nick tried to recapture the admonition Val had left him with—something about Nick’s heart breaking when he disappointed Leah.
“You don’t sleep in anything?” Leah asked as Nick moved around to the other side of the bed.
“Typically, no,” Nick said, unbelting his robe. His cock was still more than middling interested in the woman sharing his bed, and so Nick mentally cursed his simpleminded organ for good measure too. “One of the characteristics of great size is an ability to conserve heat, so I’m more comfortable without yards of nightshirt around me.”
“Well, then.” Leah let out a soft, gusty, unhappy sigh. “Good night, Husband. Thank you for marrying me and keeping me safe from my father.”
She sounded so forlorn, Nick’s chest began to hurt.
Damn it, damn it, damn it…
