“I need to let down my hair,” Rosalie murmured as they entered their bedroom. “My pins are rather tight today, and my head hurts. I should ring for Clara.”
“Clara is asleep by now,” he said. “Here, let me do it.”
She looked at him uncertainly. “But… you don’t know how?”
He folded his arms. “How hard could it be? It’s just hair.”
She laughed, and he could tell she was still unsure, but at last, she relented. “All right then,” she murmured, and very slowly, she turned around.
Nathan moved closer. There were only a few candles lit in their room, and in the dim light, it was difficult to see all the pins. However, he moved very carefully as he raised his hands to her hair and began to pull them out.
“There are so many of them,” he said, laughing softly. “How many pins does one woman need?”
“You’d have to ask Clara,” Rosalie murmured. “She insists this is how she makes me beautiful.”
“You don’t need pins for that,” he said, and he felt her body tremble slightly.
One by one, the pins came out of her hair; one by one, the curls of auburn fell down, landing softly against her milky white skin. He couldn’t help but follow them with his eyes and wonder what it would feel like to touch that skin on the back of her neck and on her upper back. He was careful to try not to touch her, but of course, he couldn’t avoid it entirely. And as he reached for a pin near the base of her neck, his fingers grazed her skin.
As they did, he felt her flinch slightly.
“Did I hurt you?” he asked quickly.
“Not at all,” she replied, her voice choked.
His throat was very dry. Her skin was soft to the touch, like silk, and warm. He cleared his throat and reached for anotherpin, careful this time to make sure his fingers didn’t accidentally touch her again.
“There you go,” he said at last. “All done.”
She turned around slowly. She wasn’t smiling, but there was a hard, fierce look on her face that he couldn’t fully interpret. His heart was in his throat, and he had to fight every instinct to reach out and trace his fingers across her lips.
They changed behind their respective screens. His movements felt clumsy; his brain felt clunky; he couldn’t think straight.
At last, they were both in their nightclothes, and then they slipped beneath the sheets. He blew out the candles, and then they lay together in the dark, the weight of everything they had shared heavy between them, charging the silence.
“Do you think…” her voice came like a whisper out of the shadows, and he turned toward her.
“What?”
He couldn’t see her, but he could feel her heat; he could hear her gentle breathing; he could smell her scent.
“Do you think you will ever want to give this marriage a real shot?”
He stared at where he thought her eyes must be, and for a moment, he was tempted to answer her, to say,Of course. I think we should do it; I think we should live together as man and wife; I think we should let ourselves be happy.
But then Redfield’s final words came back to him, like a punch to the stomach:No wonder she married you.
Rosalie had prayed her whole life that she wouldn’t marry a man like her father. And she had ended up with him—a man who was worse than her father, if she only knew the truth.
He swallowed and tried to think of something to say to reassure her. But what could he say?I’m not good enough for you? You’re better off not being my true wife?She wouldn’t understand, not unless he told her everything, and he wasn’t going to do that.
Her breathing soon became slower and deeper, and he allowed himself this one tenderness: as she was falling asleep, he reached out and held her, letting his arm dangle over her shoulder, his hand playing with a lock of her hair.
Much later, after she had fallen deeply asleep, Nathan got out of bed and crept back downstairs to the study. Only then did he take a bottle of ink from the desk and a quill and open up the card that was tied around the bottle of scotch.
There were three lines written there. The first was the date of his 18th birthday, next to which he’d written,Nathan & Ethan, Nathan’s 18th birthday.Below that was another date six years later then,Nathan & Ethan, Nathan’s return from the Army.
Below that was another date from just a few weeks previously. Written next to it was,Nathan, on the occasion of my wedding.
