Page 54 of Tremaine's True Love
“Do you typically wear your robe and stockings under the covers?” His voice was different in the lower light, maybe more French or more Scottish, but definitely less English.
And certainly more naughty. Nita shifted back, swinging her legs onto the mattress. “I do not. Aren’t you cold?”
Mr. St. Michael took Nita’s foot in his hands and drew her stocking off slowly, so the soft wool caressed her calf, ankle, and arch. She gave him her other foot, assailed by the certainty that anatomical labels and stubbornness would not see her through what came next.
“Your robe, my lady?” He folded her stockings on the night table casually, as if women’s clothing were familiar to him—though they werewoolstockings.
Nita shrugged out of her robe, an awkward undertaking that involved scooting her hips and rocking from side to side. He waited patiently, his nudity a visual lure immediately to Nita’s left.
“My guess is you’ve seen the male body before,” he said, folding the robe across the foot of the bed. “Are these maidenly vapors for my benefit?” He sauntered around to the other side of the bed, the meager light of the banked fire revealing only outlines and shadows.
“I’m not a maiden,” Nita said, flipping the covers back so he could join her between the sheets.
He stopped, one knee on the mattress. “Do I have a rival for your hand?”
His tone was merely curious, as if a rival might be an interesting twist to a complicated negotiation, though Nita also had the sense a wrong answer might send him right back into his boots and breeches.
“No rival. You’re not disappointed?” Had she hoped he would be?
He settled on the bed. “We have a word in English to describe a woman without sexual experience—she is a maiden. We have no word for a man in a similar untried state. The general term—virgin—sits awkwardly on the male, and he has no specific term of his own. I’ve found this curious.”
Mr. St. Michael was comfortable sharing a bed, lounging on his side as if he and Nita shared a blanket in a meadow.
“You’re curious about the terminology?” Nita was curious about his anatomy, but also about the passion he’d seen in her—and she sensed in him.
“That too. Come here, please. Some discussions are better undertaken in close quarters.”
Nita scooted under the covers—the room would soon grow chilled—and wished she’d kept a candle lit. “What are we to discuss?”
He arranged himself around her, so Nita was on her back, Tremaine St. Michael draped along her side.
“Wereyoudisappointed, my lady?”
A lump rose in Nita’s throat, inappropriate, inconvenient, and unwelcome. The question was insightful and quietly tendered.
“I was young. He was a dashing fellow in his regimentals, handsome, charming, and newly down from university. I’d known him most of my life, but he’d gone away a boy and come back a man.”
Or so she’d thought. He’d gone away a boy and come back a scoundrel, in truth.
Mr. St. Michael pulled Nita closer and kissed her cheek. “Did your handsome cavalier have the bad grace to die in service to King and Country?”
“He did, of dysentery. Disease carried off nearly as many soldiers as enemy fire on the Peninsula, and he was one of the casualties.”
How cozy and comforting to drop her forehead to Mr. St. Michael’s sturdy shoulder and share a regret with somebody who would not judge her for her indiscretion.
“Did his death inspire your campaign against illness and injury?” A warm hand settled on Nita’s nape, fingers massaging away tension, regret, and even self-consciousness.
“My mother trained me regarding herbs and nursing. That feels good.” Nita’s mother had also trained her to carry an unrelenting sense of responsibility. Would marriage offer a cure for that affliction or make it worse?
Silence stretched for a long, sweet moment, while the sheets warmed, and Nita relaxed into the novel comfort of sharing a bed with a man who knew his way around the female body.
“Are you still in love with your young soldier?” Such was Mr. St. Michael’s sophistication that he wouldn’t have begrudged Nita a sprig of willow for a young man long dead.
“You are not as pragmatic and unsentimental as you want the world to think,” Nita said, kissing his shoulder. “I’ve since realized I was not in love with Norton. I was in love with romance, with the notion of having my own household, of a place where my brothers weren’t always leaving and my mother’s ill health wasn’t increasingly obvious.”
Norton Nash would have made a very indifferent spouse. Nita had long since admitted that. He’d been shallow, vain, and without higher principles that might have inspired him to make something of himself. Part of her antipathy toward Edward was a result of the same attributes, allowed to flourish in expectation of a baronetcy.
“Gloomy talk,” Mr. St. Michael said, kissing Nita’s temple. “What say we relieve you of this shroud you’re wearing? Conversation will grow more cheerful as a result, I promise.”
