Page 44 of Miss Dauntless
“My hooks, please.” She thought he’d step away and move behind her. Instead, he kept his arms around her as he worked his way along the fastenings that ran down the middle of her back. He paused at the halfway mark and kissed her.
“Peppermints,” Matilda said. “I will always have happy associations with peppermints.”
She said nothing more as Tremont alternately unfastened hooks and kissed her. As he loosened her clothing, her worrieseased their grip on her as well. The idea that she might conceive was a remote concern. The more immediate anxiety—that she’d fail to impress her intended—also faded as Tremont knelt to undo her boots and garters.
“You need new boots,” he said, easing off a very humble example of winter footwear.
“I need a new wardrobe,” she replied. “No more pastels and lavender, all in sturdy fabrics. I want flowered borders, Tremont, bright colors, and soft textures.” When he rose, Matilda felt shorter than ever next to him.
“You shall have them, madam. I want out of this coat.”
She assisted and then took his sleeve buttons and cravat pin in a sequence that was at once familiar and strange. Harry’s worn, wrinkled attire bore no resemblance to the Bond Street finery Tremont wore, and Tremont was a very different specimen from Harry or the youthful Joseph.
Tremont’s broad shoulders were real, not the result of padding. That flat belly rippled with muscle, and his back could have been the model for one of Canova’s sculpted gods.
None of that mattered, Matilda told herself as she stepped out of her dress. Tremont could be the most humble specimen, thin on top, thick in the middle, and his honor, his kindness, and his decency would attract Matilda just as powerfully.
Not, of course, that she was complaining about thigh muscles that gave her the flutters, or… Matilda fixed her gaze on the painting hanging over the fireplace.
“I’ll warm the sheets,” Tremont said. “You get first crack behind the privacy screen. Help yourself to a dressing gown.”
He wore only his breeches, and Matilda was in her shift. She should have been chilly, but she wasn’t, and Tremont’s smile said he wasn’t either. Perhaps army life had knocked any modesty out of him, or perhaps he was allowing Matilda to look her fill.
That exercise would take the rest of her life. She scurried behind the privacy screen, made use of his lordship’s toothpowder, and began taking down her hair.
CHAPTER TEN
As Tremont ran the warmer over the sheets, he heard the little sounds of a woman at her toilette—a flannel cloth sopped in a basin, the rap of a toothbrush against porcelain. Fabric rustling… He wanted to peek and knew he must not.
Matilda was shy, and her previous experiences had been disappointing. What happened in the next hour could determine the fate of Tremont’s suit, and thus the matter required thought.
“I excel at thinking,” he muttered, giving the pillows a sound thwack. He’d been pondering this interlude—the advisability of it, how to suggest it to Matilda, how to proceed with it—since Matilda had granted him permission to court her.
And yet, rational processes yielded nothing in the way of inspiration. Tremont was fairly confident he could give Matilda pleasure—one had read about such matters, listened to fellow officers boasting, and tested theories with willing partners. When Tremont had come home from Spain, the ladies of St. Giles had also been mercilessly articulate about the particulars of their trade.
But what he wanted to give Matilda was more than pleasure, more than a sweet memory of an afternoon anticipating marriage vows they might never take. What did she need fromhim? What did she crave badly while refusing to acknowledge the longing even to herself?
What do I crave?
Not the obvious, or not only the obvious. Tremont was still pondering that odd question when Matilda emerged from behind the privacy screen. She wore his brown velvet dressing gown, and the sight of her—her hair in a thick braid over her shoulder, her bare feet on the carpet…
I am smitten.The literal sense of the word, to be smacked hard, physically applied, but so did the symbolic. Matilda in dishabille delivered a blow to Tremont’s heart.
“The dressing gown bears your scent,” she said, nuzzling the lapel, then rolling back a sleeve. “I like that. Please don’t stare at me.”
“My dressing gown has never been as happy as it is at this moment. That is a good color for you.”
“Brown?”
“Chocolate, mink, like your hair.” He rose and held out a hand when he wanted to snatch her up and toss her onto the bed.
Matilda took his hand and kept coming until she was wrapped around him. “I’ve said we needn’t impress each other, but I want this to go well.”
“You impress me, Matilda. With your courage, your tenacity, your determination. You impress me with your love for your son, with your ability to keep a household of louts and ne’er-do-wells in some sort of order. You impress me.”
Tremont’s intended bore up under that fusillade and returned fire with a smile.
“You impress me too, my lord. You are unfailingly considerate, thoughtful, and tolerant. Your humor is subtle and never unkind, and you do look a treat without your shirt.”
