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Surely he would have mortified her sensibilities and sent her back to that shy, stuttering girl who had served as a reminder he married someone barely out of leading strings. Someone unable to manage his insatiable passions and the primal and ungentlemanly way he could tup sometimes.
Oscar didn’t realize that he had been fumbling for the buttons on his fall until cool air washed his thick, overheated erection. He ran his palm over himself and shuddered at the thought of replaying that kiss a little differently. Gathering her close, stripping her of that flimsy nightgown and pressing her back into the bed—
He released himself as if he’d touched a flame. “What in the blazes am I doing?”
He stormed away from the bed and to the basin of water and splashed himself with it. It was lukewarm, not cool enough to douse his ardor.
Gripping the sides of the basin, he growled, “That lady is going to drive me mad.”
Behind him, he heard the soft pad of the Siberian cat hopping from the bed to the floor. A moment later, she twined herself around his legs, purring.
He sighed and reached for a towel to dry his face and chest. “I must wait until she is bloody mature enough to take a lover.” And even then, he would have to be very mindful of how he took her to his bed.
Oscar tossed the towel aside, not really caring where it fell, and undressed the rest of the way for bed. Cleopatra followed and when he sat on the edge of the bed, she joined him and rubbed against his nightshirt. He stroked the cat absently. Something heavy and uncomfortable sat inside his chest. Oscar looked at the closed door that connected their chambers. In her eyes just now, he had spied emotions that were not normally present. In truth, she had hardly met his regard over the years for him to assess her feelings to even comment on them. However, hehadthought her content with the state of their marriage, and comfortable at the state in which their relationship meandered along.
“What more does she want from me? I’ve been a good husband to her. I talk to her every night over dinner, I take her out to Hyde Park to show everyone that I’m loyal and doting to my wife. I have never taken or thought of another woman since I saw her that first night in the ballroom. I have honored my promises to her and vowed to wait until she no longer seemed so damned fresh faced and innocent!”
With a sigh, he dropped his head into his hands. Cleopatra butted at them, disgruntled that he’d stopped with his ministrations. He patted her with one hand and tried his damnedest to forget that his wife had ever been in here.
“She can’t want love from me. We both know we married for convenience. I saved her from the bloody scandal.”
Cleopatra gave him a condescending look and turned her back, her tail waving through the air.
He grunted. “Yes, I know, and she saved the estate from ruin. It was a fair exchange.”
And because her dowry had helped to take the estate out of the red, to give his sisters respectable dowries and to give him the money he needed for the investment that had started to turn a tidy profit, he had tried to be a good husband. Being a good husband had nothing to do with fooling his wife into thinking he was in love with her. It wasn’t that he didn’t believe in love, he just didn’t think about it, neither to yearn after it nor to bemoan the lack of it in his marriage. More important was to fulfill his duties and responsibilities to his title and to his family. That was what he had been doing these past few years.
Well, that, and trying not to think of how damnably young a wife he’d married. He had not been able to consummate their marriage, not with her so young, her breasts and hips barely formed. Not when on their wedding night, she had stood in the center of his bedroom looking like a little waif and trembling like a leaf. She had been frightened, but had lifted that pointed chin in brave invitation, her lush mouth firming in determination.
Then when she had tentatively touched him and he had allowed his hunger to show, his bride had fainted. Oscar had caught her, then carried her back to her bedchamber, tucked her into the bed, and returned to his own chamber knowing the entire encounter must have been an ordeal for someone so young.
He had taken a young bride who was painfully shy. So, he’d done the honorable thing and waited for her to grow up. Her sweet shyness and the way she avoided looking at him had made it feel like he would wait forever. She only became animated when she laughed and chatted with his sisters. He still recalled that dark feeling which would sweep over him whenever he entered a room, and her smile would dim. He had felt like a monster stealing the sunlight.
Oscar stood and padded over to the connecting door. A peculiar regret twisted in his gut, and he pressed one of his palms against the oak panel. Was she already asleep or had he hurt her just now with his gruff rejection? That was the last thing he wanted to do. Hurt her.
The memory of the unfathomable emotions swirling in her eyes rolled through his thoughts. What had she been thinking when she stormed inside his chamber? His hand dropped to the knob almost as if it had a will of its own, and he gripped the knob, tempted beyond measure to open the door.
And what would he say to her? What would he do?
Her actions tonight rattled him far more than he realized. Was his wife discontented with their marriage? Never before had any protestation about their arrangement fallen from her lovely mouth. With a wry twist of his lips, Oscar admitted her young age, shyness, and delicate sensibilities had prevented him from breaching certain topics with her, such as consummating their marriage, and the matters of having their heir.
Well, the woman who had kissed him tonight had certainly seemed far more mature. “Why?” He muttered aloud. “Why now?”
Forgive me if I wounded you just now.
Instead of opening the door, Oscar turned around and went back to his bed.
When he lay back and settled himself in, Cleopatra took her customary spot on the pillow next to his head. By morning, she would be suffocating him, but he didn’t mind. It made his bed a little less lonely. It made the door between the adjoining chambers a little less alluring.
“I should get that thing a bloody lock,” he whispered in the darkness of the room.
How he had managed to hold himself in check tonight, he didn’t know. But he’d made himself a vow when he’d married her. Oscar would not take her to bed until she appeared mature enough. Physically and emotionally. Perhaps when she was two and twenty, an age his sisters had seemed to have matured significantly into the lovely ladies they were today. Once, after firmly pointing out to his mother that he was waiting to fill his home with the patter of little feet, she had caustically mentioned that she had married at sixteen and had given birth to him by the time she was eighteen.
I will damn well wait!
If he went back on that promise, what honor would he have left? If he ravished her before she was ready, what the hell would that make him but a man not in control of his needs? He was not a damn rutting animal led by his cock.
Idly, he scratched at Cleopatra’s stomach. “I can wait. As long as she doesn’t do something like that again.” His heart couldn’t take it if she did. Because he bloody well did not like the questions rearing inside of him. Oscar was not a jealous man, but something savage moved through him. Where had his wife learned this new sensual confidence? One did not go from a bloody shy, stuttering virgin who fainted when she saw the lust in his gaze to a spitfire who flung open doors, planted fierce and defiant kisses on their husband’s mouth, and then slammed the door on her magnificent departure.
