Page 34 of One Bed for the Bluestocking
“Your watercolors?”She could hear the bemusement in Nathaniel’s voice, could picture him tilting his head to the side in the way he so often did.Not that she dared to look.“Right now?”
“Yes!”Her voice emerged a little too chipper, but she supposed that was better than a lust-addled purr.“I need to commit the things we’ve seen thus far to paper before I forget the colors.”
Behind her, she heard a softthunkthat had to be his trousers dropping to the floor.“You don’t want to have a wash first?”
Yes!“No!”
Maybe?
Kate was feeling overly heated—a first, surely, for March in the Outer Hebrides—lightly dizzy, and thoroughly confused.She could admit that she was utterly infatuated with Nathaniel, with his handsome face, his beautiful body, and his even more beautiful mind.But she was entirely innocent.She’d managed to reach the age of two and twenty without having ever been kissed.And while the thought that the man who fueled her daydreams was standing naked behind her was appealing, it was also overwhelming.A small part of her wanted to peek, but mostly she wanted to bury her head in her hands and cry, especially when she considered that somehow, she was going to have to figure out how to share a room, and abed, with this man for the foreseeable future without revealing that she was not Kit, but Kate.
He must have sensed her unease, because his voice was gentle as he said, “Is everything all right?”
“It is.”A pregnant silence ensued.After a beat, Kate added in a small voice, “I think I suddenly realized just how far I am from home.”
She heard the soft pad of his bare feet on the floorboards.A warm hand touched her arm.Startled, she turned before she recalled the reason she had looked away in the first place.She was relieved to see that he had wrapped a towel around his waist.
Nathaniel’s warm brown eyes were immensely kind as he said, “I know precisely how you feel.I felt the same way after I left Jamaica.”He gave her arm a squeeze.“It gets better.And you’re not alone.We have each other.”
“Thank you,” she whispered, unable to tear her eyes from his.
He squeezed her arm one more time, then stepped back.“I’ll leave you to your work.I think I’ll head downstairs and ask around for some likely spots we can visit tomorrow.”
Kate heard him unlatch his trunk behind her, followed by a soft rustling as he pulled out a fresh change of clothes.She kept her eyes fixed on the colors she was mixing on her palette.
But when she heard the door click shut behind her, she allowed her head to sag into her hands.This was a disaster in the making.Nathaniel was handsome, clever, and so very kind.How was she supposed to share a bed with the man of her dreams without giving herself away?
She stared sightlessly out the window, wondering what on earth she was going to do.
Chapter15
The problem started the following morning.
It had not escaped Nathaniel’s notice that Kit was a modest sort of fellow.He had seemed uncomfortable while Nathaniel was washing up and had refrained from doing so himself until Nathaniel had left the room.When Nathaniel returned to fetch Kit for dinner, he found the young man freshly scrubbed and dressed in a clean set of clothes, with his shirt buttoned up all the way to his chin and his cravat impeccably knotted.
Kit had mentioned growing up in a tiny village.He had sisters, but no brothers.He hadn’t said anything about attending Eton or another one of the public schools.Nathaniel assumed he must have lived something of a sheltered childhood and that there hadn’t been many boys his age in the immediate vicinity.That would explain his unease.
Nathaniel had vowed to give him as much privacy as he could manage, but it would be difficult, given that they were sharing a room.
That night, Nathaniel took the side of the bed closest to the wall.He settled on his side with his back to Kit, careful to confine himself to his half of the bed.
Yet when he awoke the following morning, he was no longer in the place where he had settled.To his mortification, he found that sometime during the night, he had taken Kit in his arms.
And what was worse, he awoke, as he often did, in anindelicate state.
Although this was worse than his usual state of morning glory.
Significantlyworse.
Gracious, given how hard and throbbing and desperate he was for release, you would have thought he’d been in the throes of an erotic dream!Which he wasn’t.
He was merely lying in bed.
With Kit.
But he awoke with Kit’s back to his front, his arms cradling the younger man to his chest, the way you would hold a lover.At least, he assumed this was how one held a lover.Nathaniel wouldn’t know, as he’d never had one.He was a humble university fellow, with a strait-laced temperament and a modest budget.He did not lead the fast life of some London buck.
But the point was, he awoke to find his face buried in Kit’s hair and his cock pressing against the softness of his rump, which was an alarmingly pleasant sensation.A little voice inside him said that he needed to release Kit, to disentangle himself with all possible speed.
