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“You may go to sleep now,” James whispered.
“That would be ideal, but I cannot relax.”
He let out a soft sigh and rubbed a hand over his eyes. “What is it that frightened you? Perhaps if you speak about it, you will be able to put it behind you.”
He seemed to entirely miss the point that it was not my fears that now kept me awake, but the man lying beside me. I’d forgotten already what had driven me into his room to begin with.
“Liss?”
“It was the book. Udolpho. I read it following dinner, and I should not have done so.”
“It put fear into your head?”
I nodded, and he chuckled.
“Every creak was a creature,” I whispered, “every shadow a specter.”
“Would you like me to light a candle so you can be assured that we are very much alone right now?”
“I assure you, James, I am deeply aware of how alone we are.”
He went silent, and I nestled down into the warmth he’d left behind for me.
“I do not know whether to berate my brother for introducing this novel to you, or thank him.”
“Whyever would you thank him?”
“Because of this.” His low voice rumbled into the darkness and drove prickles of awareness over my skin. “You were frightened, and you came to me. Nothing has made me this happy in days.”
“Not even falling into the fountain?”
“That was a close second.”
“Not even riding Solis today?”
He was quiet for a moment, and I wondered if he was considering his answer. “No, Felicity. Not even that.”
I turned to face him better and I could make out his profile in the moonlight that slipped through his window. “Thank you, James, for being a man I can trust.”
He looked at me, his hair disheveled and his jaw shadowed, but just as handsome in disarray as he was when he was composed. Reaching for me, he took my hand in his and closed his fingers around mine. The heat emanating from his skin very much made him feel as though he had recently basked before a fire, and I wanted to be enveloped in his warmth.
“Goodnight, my sweet wife.”
“Goodnight,” I whispered, and I fell asleep holding James’s hand.
* * *
I awoke the next morning to a bright room and a missing husband. The door between our chambers sat open, and I could hear the sound of bustling movement within my room. The clock on the mantel was too far to see clearly from this distance, but I was certain James had allowed me to sleep later than I typically did—and I had never slept so well in all my life.
The scent of James’s spicy cologne was muted on the pillow, but it enveloped me in a soft, hazy cloud. Would it be improper to remain in this bed all day?
Fanny’s head popped around the corner of the opened door, her wide eyes smiling beneath the white cap she wore. “Oh good, you’re awake, ma’am.”
My cheeks warmed from being found in James’s bed and what my maid was surely thinking now. I cleared my throat. “Is there a reason I should be?” Aside from determining how to manage the maid situation downstairs, there was nothing on my schedule today that I had been made aware of.
“Lady Edith would like to meet you in the drawing room at your earliest convenience. You are to go into Bakewell together.”
“Lovely.” I slipped out of bed and smoothed the blankets before following Fanny into my room. She dressed me swiftly in a gown of sage green muslin and my half-boots. She took little time securing my hair into a simple style.
