Page 90 of The Marquess Wins a Wife
“Now, if you like. I can send for the carriage.”
“Really?” The breathless anticipation in her voice faded into disappointment, her face falling as her eyes landed upon his paper-strewn desk once more. “But I’ve interrupted your work.”
Luke would have done anything, promised anything, to recapture that brief moment of delight. So easily won from her only with the assurance of his presence—and she had no idea it was nosacrificehe made to offer it. She thought she had demanded a portion of his time, when in fact she had offered him the pleasure of her company. “It can wait. All of it can wait,” he said, and there it was once more. That small, tentative smile, fragile as the bud of a new flower, waiting to grow.
∞∞∞
If not for the rain pattering the windows, the room would have been far too quiet. The house had settled for the night, and Lizzie had retired at least a half an hour ago, to a room she had never before entered. One that did not yet feel like her own.
Not that the one she had recently occupied had felt much her own, either—but she felt particularly like an intruder in Luke’s bedchamber. Of course, the servants had been there before her to light a fire in the hearth in an effort to stave off the chill of encroaching winter and to turn down the covers. Still, the furnishings were undeniably masculine. Dark colors, muted tones; the bed tall and wide. Imposing.
She had felt too much like an interloper even to go searching for her own nightgown, which a maid had retrieved for her instead, and too lost in the vast expanse of the room which the firelight did not come close to illuminating in its entirety to attempt anything more than to brush out her hair and climb into bed.
The bed curtains had been drawn on the side of the bed that faced the window already, but at least once she had settled in bed, it made the room feel smaller. Less like she might hear her voice echoed back to her if she shouted. The sheets were crisp, freshly-changed, and the pillows plump beneath her head. The velvety counterpane was thick and heavy. She lay looking up at the ceiling, watching the flickers of firelight that had struggled across the room paint shimmery splashes of gold across the gilt-rubbed decorative molding set there.
Sleep was not soon to be forthcoming. Her body simply would not settle into it. Perhaps she had grown accustomed to late nights, to social engagements that saw her climbing into bed at midnight or later.
Perhaps it was just that the covers had yet to warm to her body, and the fire was too newly lit to have vanquished the chill. Perhaps she was simply unaccustomed to Luke’s bed. Or to the reality of sharing it with him.
Over the tapping of the rain, there was the faint creak of the door opening and the spill of light into the room from the hallway. Luke stood there, silhouetted in the doorway, already tugging at the knot of his cravat—which still bore the stain of some bit of food that Joanna had surreptitiously lobbed at him during dinner.
Awkwardly, Lizzie shoved herself upright, her elbows pressing deep into the plush mattress beneath her. “I didn’t expect you quite so soon,” she said.
His brows lifted. “Did you require more time to prepare for bed?”
“No,” she said. “No, it’s only—” It was only that she had expected to be fast asleep by the time he arrived. “I just thought you would be in your study.” Her fingers curled into the counterpane, sinking into velvet softness.
“I was.” The door closed softly behind him, the room going dim once more. In the shadows at the far edge of the room, he removed his coat, slinging it into a chair. “I had some business to which to attend—but nothing so pressing that I could not attend dinner.”
Or to waste the majority of the day spiriting her all across London. To look at samples of paper hangings and to order furniture—and even to stop for peppermint sticks to send off to Eton for Georgie, and copies of Latin and Greek texts for Jo that Luke himself had studied as a boy. It was only the rain that had chased them inside at last; first to a tea shop, and later, when it had become apparent that the rain had no intention of letting up, home at last again, in time for dinner.
Which he had attended, bearing up beneath Willie’s grumbling and flinging peas at Jo whenever Lizzie’s attention had been occupied elsewhere. A purely juvenile pursuit that she oughtn’t to have encouraged—but it had made Jo laugh, and they had had so little to laugh about just lately.
There went his waistcoat, and then his shirt came off over his head, landing in a crumpled heap upon the carelessly-discarded coat.
“Your valet is going to have fits,” she said.
“Radcliff frequently has fits, but he is paid well enough to have them in private,” Luke replied. “It’s the cravat that will plague him the worst, and a few minor wrinkles are negligible in comparison.” He braced himself against the arm of the chair as he bent down to remove his boots and his stockings, tossing them aside as well.
Lizzie fidgeted uncertainly. Should she have averted her eyes? His hands were on the buttons of his trousers as he moved unerringly toward the bed, clearly without intention to avail himself either of his dressing gown or any sort of nightclothes. Lizzie flopped back, turning onto her side away from him before he could let fall his trousers. She concentrated instead upon the flowers embroidered onto the fabric of the bed curtains in a vain attempt to turn her mind from his unclothed state—or what was near enough to it.
A low chuckle slid across the space that separated them, tingling in her ears. “Coward,” he accused gently, and there was the rustle of fabric, followed by the depression of the bed as he sat at the edge of the bed and peeled back the counterpane that Lizzie had rumpled dreadfully. “Shove over, then. You’re dead in the middle.”
How could he tell? The bed wasmassive. “Sorry,” she said, sliding toward the opposite side as her nightgown bunched up around her, intimately aware now that there was simply no graceful way to perform such an action. “I suppose I should have asked which side of the bed you prefer.”
“I have no preference. At least, I don’t think I have,” he said.
Cold air had preceded him beneath the covers, giving rise to chill bumps along her legs. “How can you not have a preference?” she asked, baffled.
A shrug that she felt even if she couldn’t see it. “I’ve never shared my bed. There’s never been a particular reason for a preference. My bed has always been just mine.”
“Really? My bed has almost never been. Quite often one of the twins—usually Georgie—would climb into bed with me after a nightmare. So long as I slept on the side farthest from the door, they didn’t have crawl over me to do so.” Too often she’d awakened to the advent of a bony knee straight to her middle. “You’venevershared your bed?”
“Never mine, no. Separate bedchambers—and beds—arede rigueuramongst theTon. Quite honestly, it never occurred to me to do otherwise. Butthis,” he said, as he turned onto his side and draped his arm over her waist, “this is quite nice, I think.” Lizzie felt a slight tug on her hair, heard a brief inhale. “Your hair smells like rosemary.”
“It’s my soap.” Her feet twitched beneath the covers, which had begun to warm to the heat of his body. The weight of his arm was oddly comforting, and with the skirt of her nightgown bunched up, the crisp whorls of hair sprinkled over his legs teased her calves.
Another inhale, slow and savoring. “It suits you.” He sighed, his breath stirring her hair. “How would you feel about going to Hatfield for Christmas?”
