“I shall sleep on the settee,” he offered.
She gave him a withering look, then turned away and, without saying another word, set off down the corridor. He hurried after her, but she didn’t acknowledge his presence again until they were inside their bedchamber. Only then did she round on him.
“You should have told me that we would be sharing a room,” she hissed, her hands on her hips. “I wouldn’t have insisted on coming with you if I had known.”
“But I didn’t know we would be sharing a room,” he pointed out. “I cannot control how many available rooms the inn has.”
“But you are enjoying this situation,” she accused.
“What makes you say that?”
“I can tell. Your face betrays you when you are enjoying teasing and tormenting me.”
James felt his temper flare. Not only was she right that hewasenjoying this, but he didn’t like that she could read him so well. He felt his walls go up.
“I didn’t even want you to come!” he snapped. “If I had my way, you would be safe at Bolden House, instead of an inn that is frighteningly vulnerable to attacks, and we wouldn’t be sharing a room at all!”
She ignored that part, though. “And now you tell me that you will have to go alone to face the gang boss who organizes the dog fights?! You should have disclosed all this information before I came with you.”
James shrugged. “I’m not worried about having to face Farrell alone. I would much prefer the protection officers were here to protect you than me. However, I still maintain that you would have been safer at home. And I certainly had no intention of tricking you into sleeping in the same room as me, since I didn’t expect you to be here.”
Violet pursed her lips. “Very well,” she said at last. “I suppose that’s true. But I would kindly ask you to be less amused bythe situation we’ve found ourselves in. After all, it was your idea that we don’t share a bed as husband and wife. If we were properly married, as I expected us to be, then this wouldn’t be an awkward situation.”
He couldn’t argue with her about that, so he nodded, and she gave him a very imperious look.
“Now, turn around.”
He did as he was told, turning around to face the wall while his wife changed into her nightclothes behind him. As she did, the soft sounds of fabric slipping off skin seemed to echo in the quiet space…
Distract yourself!he told himself sternly.You are a gentleman!
What lovely curtains! Indeed, the patterns are wonderful and the… fabric is also wonderful. How do some gain joy in decorating?
Is she grunting? Sounds like she is fighting with her dress… Curtains, think of the curtains… Surely she would ask if she needed help, right? The floorboards!
They are a nice kind of wood. What tree is it? Could be oak. Could be, errr, mahogany…
“Pardon my intrusion, wife, but is everything quite all right?”
“I… I think I need your help.”
James turned back around to see Violet stuck in a very funny position, with her arms over her head as she tried to take off her stays without untying them first. They were stuck, of course, and wouldn’t slip over her shoulders.
“Yes, you most certainly need help,” he tutted. “May I?”
He nodded towards her stays, and she hesitated but then nodded. Carefully, he walked over to her. She tugged her stays back into place over her shift and then turned around so that he could unlace them.
James’s hands had never felt so clumsy as they did at that moment as he tried to unlace her stays. They were surprisingly complicated, and he kept pulling in the wrong direction.
“That’s tighter,” Violet said as he pulled on the laces. “Not looser.”
“I’m sorry,” he grumbled.
It was hard to focus on the laces when his fingers kept grazing her shift, through which he could feel the warmth of her skin. There was only a thin layer of cotton between his hands and her bare back, and it was making him clumsy and flustered.
At last, he managed to undo the laces enough that the stays came loose.
“Raise your arms,” he commanded, and she obeyed.
