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His fingers tightened on hers before he led her out to the dance floor. They found a spot in the center, and although others had taken up their stances around them, Prue couldn’t help but feel as though they were in a world of their own. She realized, with a start, this would be their first dance. It made her fingers tremble as she laid them on his arm. The press of his palm on her back made her long to step closer, but they weren’t alone. They were in a room full of people, most of whom were watching for any hint of stumble or scandal. Prue clung to her composure by her fingertips as the music started to play. She and Oscar started to move in tandem as if they had danced like this all their marriage. As if they had danced even closer.
As Prue’s cheeks burned, mirroring the ache in other parts of her body, she was struck by how much she still wanted her husband.
If he was to take any woman to his bed, she wanted it to be her…and only her.
Chapter Two
Prue was still thinking about that dance with her husband, about his hands on her back and the fluid movement of their bodies together, long after the last of their guests had left. In fact, long after her maid had prepared her for bed, and she had slipped in between the cool sheets. The door directly across from her bed, the door that had always remained shut since she had been here in London, taunted her. That connecting door led to her husband’s bedchamber, where he would be readying himself for bed or perhaps already asleep. The way he’d looked at her tonight had made her want to be brazen. It made her want to open the connecting door.
Before she changed her decision, her bare feet kissed the carpeted floor. The sheets tangled into an unruly pile in her wake. Prue didn’t pause to glance at the vanity to check her appearance, but already had her hand on the latch by the time it registered to her that she should be nervous.
She opened the door before she lost her courage, though she didn’t release the latch.
Her husband was inside his bedchamber, bathed in candlelight, as his valet readied him for bed. Prue couldn’t recall the valet’s name—couldn’t recall much of him at all, at the moment—seeing as her husband was standing in the middle of the room in a state of undress.
Boots removed along with his stockings to show his bare feet, part of him she’d never seen before and found strangely attractive. His trousers concealed the shape of his legs, but his jacket was draped over a chair in the corner along with his cravat, waistcoat, and shirt. He stood in the room wearing nothing but his trousers. Prue’s hand tightened on the latch, rattling it. She’d forgotten how to breathe.
The valet took an uncertain step away from his master and stammered, “P-perhaps I’ll leave you to finish the rest on your own, milord. Countess.”
From the periphery of her vision, Prue noticed him give a hasty bow before scampering from the room. The latch clicked shut behind him, leaving the room enveloped in silence except for that of her own rapid heartbeat.
She still couldn’t remove her gaze from her husband. His shoulders were as broad as the jackets he wore had implied, fitted with lean muscle down a chest dusted in dark hair. That hair started to form a trail somewhere in the vicinity of his navel, only to be cut short by the fall of his trousers, still buttoned. She stared at those buttons for a good long while but wishes alone did not undo them.
“Why are you here?” Her husband’s voice was curt and gruff.
Prue drew in a breath, realizing only then from the spots dancing at the corners of her eyes that she’d still forgotten to breathe. She raised her gaze to his but couldn’t read the expression there. His jaw was tight, clenched, as were his hands by his sides. She half expected him to turn away in disgust, but his gaze was riveted on hers. Was he recalling the only other time she had entered his chamber?
Swallowing, she managed to find her voice and after it, a smidge of the confidence she’d felt in crossing her room. “I’m your wife. It is my right to open this door.”
A tic started in the corner of his jaw, almost shadowed by a hint of stubble. She wanted to kiss it away but feared removing herself from the threshold.
He found his voice first. “I’ll have to ask you to leave, madam.”
Prue clenched her hand until the metal of the latch dug into her skin.Madam?She was his bloody wife, yet he acted as if she were an aberration. Her face flushed with mortification, or perhaps fury. Even standing in the threshold of his bedroom in her nightgown was not enough for him to invite her into his bed.
Well, in that case, perhaps she simply had to be bolder.
She dropped her death’s grip on the latch to the connecting door and marched across the room. He didn’t move, though his eyes narrowed. Once in front of him, she steadied herself with her palms on his warm shoulders, the skin like velvet beneath her touch. Then she raised herself onto tiptoe and pressed her mouth to his in the fieriest kiss she could muster. His mouth was as hot as a brand, but that wasn’t the reason the kiss lasted mere heartbeats.
He didn’t kiss her back. His mouth was hard and unmoving above hers.
Mortification won over fury, and she released him as if scalded. Turning her back, she stormed from the room and shut the door so firmly in her wake it made her ears ring. Her mouth wobbled. She tried not to cry as she buried herself in the blankets of her soft bed.
But the truth now was inescapable. He hadn’t kissed her, hadn’t consummated their marriage, because he simply didn’t wanther. Should he take a mistress it would shatter her, and Prue might possibly take her rapier and challenge him to an honor duel—for breaking their vows, and the faith she had in love and the possibility of their happiness.
A laugh hiccupped from her. Challenge her husband to a duel indeed. That would probably see him banishing her to the country forever.
Oh, God, how do I fix this?
Burningdesire licked through Oscar’s body like a living flame and his damn heart felt as if it would burst from his chest. He had never wanted any woman more than he wanted his wife after that achingly chaste kiss. As the connecting door rattled in its frame, his knees weakened, and he sat heavily down on the bed, nearly landing on his sleeping cat. Cleopatra made a disgruntled sound and swished her majestic tail out of the way just in time. Oscar barely heard her.
He was still trapped in that impossibly brief yet perfect kiss.
What in God’s name had happened? The lady who had marched over to him, fire spitting in her lovely dark green eyes was not his wife. No, his wife was painfully shy around him, and usually lowered her eyes to her hands, the tablecloth, or sometimes her damnable shoes whenever she spoke with Oscar. She was certainly not the wife who had fainted on their wedding night, confirming he was an ogre of the worst sort.
Prue had touched him with more confidence than she had ever displayed in his presence before. Gone was the shy girl who often stammered in his presence, the one he’d known during trips home to Fairfax Manor. Somehow, when he hadn’t been looking, she had matured in body and in mind.
The skin of his shoulders felt impossibly sensitive after the press of her palms and the curl of her fingers. He’d barely felt the edges of her fingernails, but that didn’t keep him from imagining the bite of them into his back while he had her in the throes of passion. Her kiss was inexperienced, but oh so achingly eager. It had taken everything in him not to respond and pull her flush against him, to finally feel the press of her hips and breasts and soft belly against him. But, if he’d done that, she would surely have noticed the state of arousal she’d put him in the moment her soft lips crushed his.
