Lady Eve's Indiscretion

She hadn’t seen her husband completely naked before either, but Deene doubted she’d inspect him quite as assiduously as she was peering at the titles of the books on the shelves in the corner. He came up behind her and put his arms around her waist.

“Evie, have mercy upon me and help me get undressed.”

She turned, and he did not step back, so they remained in a loose embrace. “Haven’t you a valet, Deene?”

“I’m married now. Many married fellows make do with a handy and accommodating wife, the last I recall the arrangements.”

“My father…” She paused and started working the sapphire cravat pin loose from all the lace at his throat.

“Your father is old-fashioned in the extreme. I’m not. What was St. Just whispering in your ear about in the receiving line?”

By virtue of one question after another, one article of clothing after another, she eventually got him out of all but his knee breeches. He took pity on her enough to slip into the dressing room between their bedrooms and exchange the last of his wedding finery for a dressing gown and loose trousers, by which time a quantity of food had arrived in the sitting room.

“We are certainly getting the royal treatment,” Deene observed. “Belt himself wheeled that cart in, did he not?”

“Belt.” Eve shoved a book back onto the shelf. “I will recall his name because butler and Belt both begin with B.”

This was important to her. Getting out of her wedding dress was apparently not.

“Let me be your lady’s maid, Evie.” He wanted to take her in his arms and whisper this in her pretty ear, but she was looking quite… prickly.

“I thought my maid came down from Morelands to join this household?”

“And she’s no doubt in the kitchen, partaking of the general merriment occasioned by our nuptials. Hold still.” He moved around behind her and started divesting her of all the layers of clothing hiding her from his view. When she stood only in a sheer white chemise—with a hem lavishly embroidered in gold, blue, and green—Deene took a step back and shrugged out of his dressing gown.

“Take this. The fires aren’t lit yet, and until my naked body is draped over your delectable and satisfied person, it will keep you warm.”

She looked like she wanted to say something off-putting, so he kissed her on the mouth—a swift, no-you- don’t kiss that worked only because he kept his hands to himself rather than pull her tight against his body.

His lady wife took her revenge by shutting the dressing room door when the bath had been delivered. Deene let the wine breathe while he stared at the door and pictured his naked and curvaceous wife all rosy and delicious in her solitary bath. By the time she emerged an hour later, Deene had lowered the level in the champagne bottle by more than half, and the sun had set.

“Shall we light some candles?” Eve asked—perhaps a shade too cheerfully.

“Let’s not. Let’s light the fire and enjoy the shadows.”

She pulled his dressing gown closer around her, but Deene’s lust had been riding him hard, and he could tell she wore nothing beneath the velvet and silk of his clothing.

“My bath revived me,” Eve said, still standing in the dressing room doorway. “I’m quite famished.”

Deene said nothing. The food was before him on the low table in front of the sofa, and Eve was across the room. Unless he was to toss strawberries at her, she’d have to approach him.

“I’ve started the first bottle, Wife. Shall you imbibe?”

“Just a bit, if you please.”

While she perched on the first three inches of the sofa cushion, Deene held his wine glass up to her mouth. She sipped about as much as would inebriate a small Methodist bird.

For a few minutes, he tried—he honestly did—to feed her. She responded with an increasing number of agitated and unhappy looks, until Deene realized the situation was growing desperate.

And between when a man thinks he needs to say something and when the words start spilling from his idiot mouth, insight befell him: Eve’s nerves, her quiet hysteria, whatever she was grappling with, it had to do with her accident.

There would be no teasing her past it, no getting her just tipsy enough, no cajoling or tickling her into more confidence than she honestly possessed. Deene set the wine glass down and rose.

“Come to bed, Evie.”

“To… bed?”

If she’d been pale before, she was a wraith now.

“Going to bed is a signal part of the wedding-night festivities, unless you’d rather spend a few moments before the fire?”

“I would. I very much would. My hair, you see, is still damp, and it goes all to a frazzle if I don’t…” Her voice trailed off, and Deene kept his hand extended to her. When she put her fingers on his palm, they were again—still— ice cold.

It was time to end this. Not because banked lust was beating a physical pulse in Deene’s brain, but because Eve deserved to put these nerves, this lapse of faith in herself—whatever it should be called—behind her. When she came to her feet, he kissed her.

He kissed her the way he’d been longing to kiss her for three weeks, with tenderness and passion and even a little frustration—anger, maybe?—that Eve would bear any lingering burden from a situation she could not have been responsible for.

“Come.” He took her by the hand and led her to the hearth, pausing to retrieve a pair of thick quilts from the dressing room before settling beside her before the fire. “You are nervous, Wife. I would have you explain to me the basis for your disquiet.”

“Wife.”

“That would be you.”

She drew her knees up and laid her cheek on them. “I am not nervous.”

He had the sense she was being honest, which was not encouraging. If she was not nervous, then she was afraid. “There is not one damned thing to be anxious about, Eve Denning. I am the one who has grounds for worry, for it falls to me to ensure your experiences are wholly pleasurable.”

“You do not appear to suffer doubt on this score.”

Her voice was calm enough, but he’d seen her start when he used her married name. “I suffer a proper respect for the challenge before me. Perhaps a kiss for courage won’t go amiss.”

Her hesitation was minute, but then she went up on her knees and kissed him on the mouth. Deene took her by the shoulders and let himself topple back so she was sprawled on top of him.

“That is not a kiss such as would encourage a horny flea, my love.”

“A what?”

“Horny, which indelicate term means a Mister Flea who is hot for his Missus.”

“You are being vulgar and ridiculous.”

Her tone was prim, but his vulgar ridiculousness was working, because she hadn’t moved off him, and her expression bore a hint of curiosity. Deene wrapped his arms around her and started rubbing her back lest she take a notion to retreat.

“Allow me to demonstrate, Marchioness.”

He set his mouth to hers and his will to her seduction. By slow degrees, he investigated her mouth and invited her to do likewise with him, to taste and tease, to explore, to indulge. Somewhere in that kiss, he positioned her so she was straddling him, and he arranged their clothing so he was naked beneath her and they were pressed breasts to chest.

“Deene.” She pulled back and closed the dressing gown.

“I don’t know what you’re fretting over, Evie. We’ve two enormous, fluffy beds to choose from when it comes time to consummate our vows.”

“So we’re just to indulge in these courageous kisses?” By the firelight, her skepticism was evident.

“Precisely so. Kiss me. I was beginning to feel somewhat encouraged.”