She accepted his arm with all the stateliness of a queen. “Should anyone lay so much as a finger upon the marzipan rose, I shall be obliged to issue a formal challenge.”
“Truly, you are the most alarming woman of my acquaintance.”
“And to think you married me.”
“Willingly,” he returned, steering her deftly past a footman with a teetering tray of syllabub. “Though I begin to suspect that matrimony with a Tolliver ought to be ranked amongst the more perilous pursuits of mankind.”
“Consider it your initiation,” Hetty said with a smile. “You have married into chaos, my lord. There can be no retreat.”
Chapter 22
Theo had prepared himself for a measure of nerves from his virginal bride on their wedding night – perhaps a becoming blush, a bashful silence, or a delicious tension after their most improper interlude in the library. What he had not prepared himself for – though, in hindsight, he supposed he ought to have – was the sight of his new wife standing at the foot of his enormous bed, staring at him as though he had sprouted antlers. She did not appear fearful so much as profoundly perplexed, as though she had been presented with a very large and exceedingly complicated parcel for which she had not the least idea where to begin.
“Is something amiss?” Theo inquired at last, schooling his voice to grave civility though his lips were near betraying him with laughter.
Hetty’s gaze travelled down his body once more, until it came to rest with trepidation upon the rather large evidence of his arousal. “And you are quite certain,” she said faintly, “that it is meant to go… inside me?”
Theo’s composure wavered; he had solemnly resolved not to laugh at her innocence, but the effort very nearly proved his undoing. “Well… yes,” he said, his tone as even as he could contrive. “With a measure of preparation.”
She swallowed visibly. Her eyes flicked back up to meet his with an expression caught between alarm and scientific curiosity. Clad only in her shift, she lingered at the foot of the bed as if uncertain whether to advance or take immediate flight.
Perhaps disrobing had not been the wisest course. The better strategy, Theo thought ruefully, might have been to remain clothed and resume the slow, coaxing touches of their unfinished interlude in the library, easing his new wife into comfort rather than confronting her with the full magnitude of his intentions. “Come here,” he said gently, extending a hand in invitation. “There is nothing to fear.”
She did not move.
“Hetty,” he tried again, softening his voice further, with much the same tone he had once employed in coaxing her closer to the riverbank as a boy, just before he pushed her in. “Come to me.”
After a silence that stretched long enough to suggest either the gathering of courage or the final bracing before calamity, she approached him, cautious as a naturalist inching towards some exotic beast of dubious temperament.
“Closer,” he murmured as she reached the edge of the mattress. “Come and sit with me.”
She rounded the bed slowly and climbed onto it like a maiden ascending an altar of sacrifice. “You have never been trustworthy when you speak in that tone.”
He smiled. “True. But I give you my word I have no intention of pushing you into icy water this time.”
She made a sound and swatted his arm as if she could not quite prevent herself. He caught her hand in his, kissed her knuckles lightly, and then bent to press the softest of kisses against her lips.
When he drew back, she bit her cheek. “You know, I never truly considered I should arrive at this particular station. I thought it quite certain I should contrive to avoid it entirely.”
“Marriage, you mean?”
“Marriage,” she confirmed, with a look of such solemnity that he nearly laughed. “And all its… attendant duties. One hears the most dreadful things, you know.”
He arched a brow. “What, precisely, does one hear?”
“That one’s husband may very well smother one beneath his weight and leave a lady gasping for air,” she said gravely, “or else that he will make demands of a nature no lady of delicacy could possibly endure.”
Theo’s lips twitched, though he strove valiantly to appear sympathetic. “You believe me capable of suffocation?”
“I should not put it past you. You are, after all, rather tall. And broad.”
“Some ladies, I am told, find a certain satisfaction in being rendered breathless.”
Her eyes widened in horror, then narrowed into suspicion. “You are inventing that.”
“Not at all,” he said innocently, though the wicked gleam in his eyes betrayed him. “It is, of course, a matter of taste. And I assureyou, I shall be the most obliging of husbands. You must only tell me what you crave, and I shall endeavour to provide it.”
She coloured, shifting where she sat. “I do not know what I crave,” she admitted, her tone more irritable than meek. “Only that I cannot help but notice your… your member remains alarmingly large. You told me it was not always so!”
