“Good night, Wife. Thank you for marrying me and allowing me to keep my promise to my father.”
And thank you, he silently went on, for even asking what pleases me. He shifted on the bed, and with one more hearty curse directed at his whole, stupid life, Nick linked his fingers through Leah’s and gently squeezed.
He fell asleep like that, cock throbbing, heart aching, fingers entwined with the hand of the wife he would protect with his life, but whose body he would never fully know.
Only slightly comforted by the feel of Nick’s fingers closed around her own, Leah struggled with her thoughts long after her husband had drifted off. What had she said; what had she done? Something had put Nick off, had shifted his mood from playful and intent on marital intimacies of some kind, to remote, edgy, and out of sorts.
At least Nick didn’t intend to torment her by sleeping beside her each night. No doubt, this initial night of sharing a bed was for the sake of appearances, to further ensure their marriage was unassailably valid.
Leah eased her fingers from Nick’s. This marriage was going to be long and lonely, probably for them both. She’d be safe from Wilton, at least. But his pure, unrelenting malevolence was a simple source of pain compared to the complication that was Leah’s marriage.
Morning arrived with sunlight bursting through the bed curtains and a pervasive sense of warmth flooding Leah’s awareness. Nick’s scent enveloped her, bringing with it associations of safety, affection, and… frustration. Opening her eyes, Leah eyed the room in which she’d spent the night. The world’s largest tub in the middle of the room was the only jarring note in an otherwise elegant and luxuriously appointed bedchamber.
Nick’s scent, Nick’s house… Nick’s
“You’re awake.” Nick’s voice rumbled from behind her, and Leah realized she was wrapped in his arms, tucked on her side against his chest. His lips grazed her neck, and then she felt those arms withdraw. “I’ve been down to the kitchen.” Nick’s bulk shifted as he bounced over to the far side of the bed. “Our breakfast is being brought up. This is the smallest shirt I could find.” He passed her a linen shirt that could have fit four of Leah inside it, and lifted his velvet dressing gown from the foot of the bed.
“One doesn’t want to scandalize the help,” Nick said, shrugging into his dressing gown while he presented Leah with a fine view of his muscular backside. “Do you need help with that shirt?”
“I’m fine,” Leah reported just as her head emerged from the shirt. “But if for any reason I can’t locate my arms, please notify them that a search has been started.”
Nick smiled and tugged the shirt down. “Arms in sight, and all is well.”
Their eyes met, and Nick’s unfortunate word choice reverberated in the silence.
He sat back. “About last night?”
“What about last night?” She tied the shirt closed at her throat, but it still dipped below her collarbone.
“I have a very clear idea how I do
“What is it that you
“Gentlemen.” Nick raised his voice slightly. “If you could wait until my wife and I have absented ourselves from the chamber?”
“Very good, my lord.” The head footman bowed and waved the other three away.
“They all wanted a peek at you,” Nick groused when the room was once again devoid of servants. “Let me prepare you a plate. There’s more food here than Napoleon needed to reach Moscow.”
“As much as all that?” Leah gathered the shirt up and craned her neck to see the tea cart Nick had wheeled to his side of the bed. Luscious, bacony, toasty breakfast scents assaulted her nose, and her stomach reminded her audibly that she hadn’t eaten much on her wedding day.
“Eggs and toast,” Nick said, “bacon, ham, scones, butter, jam, fresh oranges, forced strawberries, kippers, sweet rolls, muffins, and what’s this? A pot of chocolate for my lady, and perhaps for my lord, if she’s willing to share. What can I get for you?”
He was back to being his smiling, charming, agreeable self, but there was something off about the performance. For it was a performance, a very good one, in a role Nick adopted as easily as a second skin, but a performance nonetheless.
“Let’s start with bacon and eggs, toast with butter, and some of that chocolate,” Leah replied. “What will you be having?”
“All of the above.” Nick filled a plate for her, the portions generous but reasonable. “And some ham, and an orange or two, as well as the inevitable cup or three of tea.”
Leah built her breakfast into a sandwich.
“I take it,” she began between bites, “we shared this bed last night to create the appearance of consummating the marriage?” Her tone was casual, but she had the sense it took Nick a heartbeat or so to comprehend the substance of the question.
“Just so,” he said, studying the chocolate pot. “I trust my staff, but they do gossip, and Wilton can hire spies as well as the next person can. I wouldn’t want Wilton using any doubts to his advantage.”
“If I am asked,” Leah said, pausing in her consumption of the sandwich, “I can honestly say I made love with my husband.”
He bristled beside her, the chocolate pot returning to the tray with a sharp little clink. “Meaning?”
“Aaron Frommer assured me he was my husband in fact,” Leah said. “I made love with him, or consummated the marriage, in the necessary fashion.” She took a sip of her chocolate, keeping her expression placid. “I think every marriage takes some getting used to, just like the first time you ride a new horse or sail a new boat. I will not render all you’ve done for me pointless, Nicholas.”
Her words did not have the intended effect of putting him at ease.
“Nor will I allow my efforts to keep a promise to my father be shown as an empty exercise,” Nick said. “So like the good English folk we are, we will maintain appearances, but, Leah?”
She was Leah this morning, not lovey, not lamb, not sweetheart.
“I hope we can do more than that,” Nick said. “I don’t know how, not when the entire business of the marriage bed is going to be complicated, but please know I want us to be at least cordial.”
“Cordial.” Leah blew out a breath, hating the word. “I can manage cordial, if that’s what you want.”
“I think it for the best. Shall I peel you an orange?”
A cordial damned orange. Despair reached for Leah’s vitals with cold, sticky fingers. The sandwich she’d eaten abruptly sat heavily in her stomach, and the chocolate less comfortably still.
“No, thank you,” she said, feeling her throat constrict again. She didn’t cry, as a rule, not when Wilton insulted her before guests, not when her brothers lectured her about finding a husband, not when Emily was thoughtlessly cruel in her parroting of Wilton’s positions and sermons and criticisms.
She hadn’t cried when her mother died, hadn’t cried when her father warned her Hellerington would offer for her.
If she cried now, Nick would hold her and stroke her back gently and murmur comforting platitudes, all the while oblivious to the fact that he was breaking her heart with his very kindness.
“I suppose our dressing rooms connect?” Leah asked, her voice convincingly even.
“They do,” Nick said, watching her from the corner of his eye as he buttered a scone. “And you have a sitting room between your bedroom and the corridor, though I do not. I had my bedroom redesigned to encompass my sitting room as well.”
Always helpful to know the architecture of one’s husband’s rooms.
“I think I’ll find my things, then.” Leah tossed back the covers and threw her legs over the side of the bed. “I can’t very well review the staff in your shirt.”
She managed to get free of the room without facing him. The next challenge was closing two doors quietly, calmly, and then the third challenge—barely any challenge at all for her—was to sob out her heartbreak without making a single sound.
