Page 36 of A Deal With a Notorious Devil
“Chris?” she called again, a bit louder.
A small sound from within the room. A groan, she thought. She waited in patient silence for several more seconds, but apparently he had not elected to rise and to come to the door.
Another sharp rap of her knuckles. “Chris!”
A muffled thump, as of something soft hitting the door, followed by a slurry, groggy snarl of, “Go the hell away!”
Well, she had not expected to find him in an amiable mood. It was far too early for there to have been any hope of that. Shesupposed he must simply be one of those men who were surly upon waking. She had poked the bear once already, though it hadn’t been enough to truly rouse him—if one were to judge by the sonorous snore that had swiftly followed his order. But it was absolutely imperative that she wake him.
She drew in a deep breath and cracked the door open, nudging a pillow out of the way. That had been the missile he’d lobbed at the door, she supposed. At least it had not been something breakable. The snoring grew louder as she opened the door a few more inches. His bed came into view, the curtains drawn only against the side that faced the window.
Chris lay face-down in a nest of rumpled scarlet sheets, his face tucked into the pillow clutched in his arms, his gold-blond hair tousled and untidy, sticking up at odd angles. And he was entirely naked.
She’d seen his bare arse before, if only briefly. At least a glimpse of it—though it had been quite dark at the time. But it still felt like something of a violation to gaze upon it while he was sleeping. And snoring. Shading her eyes with one hand, Phoebe ventured into the room. “I’m sorry to disturb you,” she said as she maneuvered carefully toward the bed, avoiding the bits of clothing he’d left haphazardly strewn about the floor. “But you have got to wake up.”
The snoring ceased. He gave another groan, low and longsuffering, buried into the downy softness of the pillow he was crushing with the flex and bunch of the muscles in his arms. “I really do not,” he said flatly, turning his head upon the pillow toward her. And then, incredulously, “Are you peeking at me through your fingers? Like a child?”
She hadn’t meant to. “I had to see where I was going!”
“You might have remained on theoutsideof the door.”
Resisting the urge to stamp her foot like the child he had so baselessly accused her of being, she slapped her hand firmly overher eyes and said, “I would have, had you bothered to answer it.”
“Don’t look away now,” he said, and the ropes supporting the mattress creaked as he shifted. “I’ve got a nice arse. You should be so lucky as to see it.”
A hysterical bubble of laughter caught in her throat at the absurdity of the statement. “In whose opinion?”
“It is a truth universally acknowledged,” he said drolly, and she was reminded that he had not yet returned her copy ofPride and Prejudice. “Blast you, I’m awake. What the hell do you want?”
The churlish tenor of his voice suggested his mood had not substantially improved itself. She risked a peek through her fingers, pleased to find that he’d at least pulled himself into a sitting position, his legs slung over the edge of the bed, and had tugged a corner of the disordered blankets over his lap. But that icy glare—
She babbled inanely, “I doubt very much that the entire world has come to a consensus of opinion on the quality of your arse.” Particularly because she had not been polled, and she had seen no others to which to compare it, besides.
“If the entire world had been privileged enough to have seen it, they damn well would have.” He scraped one hand through his ruffled hair, only managing to ruffle it further. “Phoebe. What the hell do you want?”
“It’s just that—my family has come to breakfast,” she said, the words climbing over one another to escape.
He blinked once. Again. “What has that got to do with me?”
“They are requesting”—requiring—“your attendance.”
“Your family? Your entirefamily?” Strident notes of horror had sunk into the syllables he uttered, and his hands fisted in the velvet counterpane draped over his lap. “Thechildren?”
“No! No, thank God. Just the adults.”
“All of them?”
She winced. Nodded. Wrung her hands in mute entreaty.
“That’ssixteen bloody people!” His voice had edged toward a shout, and Phoebe could only give thanks that his bedchamber was so far removed from the dining room that it was unlikely he’d been overheard.
Phoebe offered a helpless shrug. “You married into a large family,” she said. “They do nothing by halves.”
“I wish to God they’d do something by quarters. Eighths, perhaps. Sixteenths, especially, would be quite welcome. I could possibly tolerate sixteenths.” As if the weight of the world had fallen suddenly upon his shoulders, he flung himself backward to land upon the mattress, casting one arm over his eyes with a dramatic flair to rival a woebegone damsel in distress. “Tell them I’ve taken ill,” he said. “Tell them—tell them I’ve got scurvy.”
Despite herself, Phoebe chuckled. “You’re not a sailor, and you’ve got your very own orangery. How are you meant to have contracted scurvy?”
“The plague, then.”
