Page 51 of In Compromise with the Earl
She laughed. “I fear the day they find your Achilles Heel.”
“There isn’t one,” he promised. With her head resting his chest, Oswald took the liberty to play with her hair. “And you, what is your deepest secret?”
“I stole a kiss from my neighbor once,” Aphrodite replied. “Well, I should not say stole, I asked him to kiss me. I was thirteen and he was seventeen. As he was older, he gave me all the smoldering half-lidded eyes, and tingling from expectation. When his lips touched mine, it was a refined kiss, very smooth, and skilled. I have no doubt he made other ladies swoon, but to me, it was exciting as tepid tea.”
“Whoever he was did not know how to kiss properly,” Oswald said. “Even if you were young and did not know how to respond, he should have made sure you enjoyed it.”
“Maybe I was not supposed to enjoy it,” she murmured. “Maybe I needed to wait for the true kiss.”
Realization struck through Oswald, sliding a hand under her hair, he asked, “That day at the lake, was that your first true kiss?”
“Yes,” she tilted her head up to rest right under his chin. “And I do not regret it for a moment.”
Savage pride at knowing he had given her such pleasure had the corner of his lips ticking up, “No need to stroke my pride.”
“Take a compliment when it’s due,” she replied sleepily. “False modesty isn’t becoming on you.”
Chuckling, Oswald said, “I’ll remember that in a few days’ time.”
After a few muttered words, Aphrodite fell asleep and Oswald felt the pleasure of holding her. He knew there were so many things they had to talk about, including how she would take to the role of Countess and be able to immediately handle her duties.
He knew his mother held a firm hand on running the Hall, but with Aphrodite’s arrival, there were bound to be some changes and, inevitably, clashes. He had to be there to negotiate and possibly diffuse the tension that would be between them. Aphrodite would not have an issue appearing with him at society events, but what about children?
One thing at a time.
* * *
Enjoying a pleasant dream in which she was dancing in an open balcony under the moonlight with a glittering ball a few steps away, Aphrodite did not appreciate being shaken awake.
“No,” she murmured, trying to retreat from the hand squeezing her shoulder. “Go away.”
“No,” Oswald’s baritone made her eyes slit open to meet a face within inches of her own. “We’re at the posting inn. It’s getting to dusk and we have our chamber waiting for us. I can carry you if you want.”
“What? No, no. Just let me…” Scrambling a bit, she shifted and rubbed her eyes, “get my faculties in order.”
Oswald shifted and a rich waft of his drugging smell of musk and spice gave her definite proof of her connection with Oswald, as if the ring on her finger was not enough.
The arousal effect it had on her was one she could not consider at the moment as it was not the time or the place to do so. She fixed her dress and found her shoes and donned her coat.
Ready, she gave him a nod, waited for him to exit the carriage, then allowed him to help her down. After Oswald went in, she waited while he had a word with the man at the front desk, then footmen were directed to get their bags and carry them upstairs and down a narrow corridor to their chamber.
Trailing on their heels, the two followed behind and took a corridor to the chamber. “Get comfortable,” Oswald said. “I’ll arrange for dinner to be sent up.”
Once alone, Aphrodite removed her coat, then took a moment to look around the decent chamber with, as Oswald had said, a narrow bed, barely enough for two. There was a bathing chamber with a copper tub, and a washbasin with a stack of clean towels sitting beside it.
“We’ll have our meals soon,” he said while removing his jacket with a grunt of relief. “Would you like to wash up first?”
“I would, actually,” she stood and, after rifling through a valise for her dressing gown and robe, went to the bathing chamber. After closing the door, Aphrodite let out the nervous inner breath she had held since the wedding.
They wouldn’t be consummating that night and it was a secret relief. She wanted to lead up to that point, she wanted to know Oswald, know how to please him as he had done her so many times. A host of brazen, seductive, ideas crowded her brain, but she did not know how to make them come about.
What if I just ask?
Going back to the chamber, she saw that dinner had been delivered but felt her throat close off—if she ate anything it would be a miracle. Oswald was down to his trousers with a robe thrown over, but he hardly touched his food and drank the wine instead.
Valiantly, she tried to eat but his warm stare—sometimes burning—had her stomach in knots. Finally she gave up. “I cannot eat now.”
“Why?”
