“Oh, hullo there, Clio,” Aaron said, faintly surprised to find his sister when he’d gone searching for his wife.
Clio looked so pleased to see him that he didn’t have the heart to resume his search for Phoebe.
“Aaron,” she said, setting aside the novel that she had been reading. “Come, sit.”
He went and sat. Part of him distantly observed that he had a lot of people ordering him about recently, but another part of him… didn’t really mind. These weren’t the cruel, authoritarian orders that his parents had delivered to him. Phoebe and Clio just… wanted to spend time with him.
It was strange but not unpleasant.
Although… he might have to amend that determination, he thought, when Clio peered at him in a knowing sort of way.
“What?” he asked, immediately regretting the defensiveness in his voice. He’d once known the value of patience, of waiting an enemy out and forcing them to make the first move. Why could he do that when he was eye-to-eye with a cannon but not with his little sister?
She tilted her head in an assessing sort of way. “How are you?” she asked in a way that suggested more than a casual inquiry.
Aaron had once, before getting promoted to the admiralty, been forced to face down a panel of the highest-ranking members of the Navy. It had been a tableful of men who had spent their lives being commanding, tactically brilliant, and incisive—all in circumstances that had meant their deaths if they failed.
He had squirmed less facing them than he did right now, facing Clio. Then again, the senior admirals had only been asking about his military career. He was pretty sure his sister was going to ask about hisfeelings.
“I’m fine,” he said.
Clio tilted her head in the other direction.
“Are you?” she asked.
“I… am,” he said. He tried to remind himself that he could just stand up and leave—this was his own house, damn it—but something held him back.
There was a very worrying gleam in his sister’s eye.
“And how is Phoebe?” she asked.
That was… a very good question. His wife had given him a great number oflooksduring their carriage ride back from the soldiers’ rehabilitation home the day prior, but when he had asked what she was thinking about, she had insisted that she was thinking back on the games of whist she had played with a few of the men.
It had not been a believable lie, but he didn’t feel that he could demand she reveal her every thought to him, not when he’d recently told her that he would only let her in on rare occasions.
“She is also fine,” he told Clio.
She hummed consideringly.
“What?” he demanded again, then inwardly cursed himself again. What had happened to him at that altar that had made him lose his nerve when it came to the women in his life?
“It’s just that the two of you seemed to be getting along a bit better,” Clio observed.
Aaron tried desperately not to think of anything that had happened in any carriages or corridors outside ballrooms. He tried not to think of the strange, desperate hunger he felt for his wife.
In one way of viewing things, his longing made sense. He’d been married for weeks now, and they still hadn’t consummated their union. In another way, though, it didn’t make any sense at all.
He’d spent his early adult years following the same pattern: a brief possibility for pleasure, snatched upon various shore leaves, followed by months of celibacy enforced by close quarters, limited access to bathing water, and the unpleasant pitching and canting of a ship which Aaron had always found distinctly un-arousing.
But now, mere days after feeling Phoebe’s slim fingers around him—which, even with his trousers in the way, had been one of the most consuming sensual experiences he’d ever enjoyed—he was ravenous for more.
Ravenous to make good on his comment about using a bed for once.
But the part that unsettled him the most wasn’t his carnal desire for his wife. That part was normal. She was a beautiful woman, and he had eyes.
The part that bothered him was the… feelings.
He was havingfeelings. He’d felt them when he watched Phoebe laugh while playing cards at the soldiers’ home. He’d felt them when he had seen her walking through the icy garden arm-in-arm with Clio.
