Page 25 of Bedding the Marquess
“I wish to be alone, Gideon! I—I am not feeling myself.”
“And that is why I wish to—”
“Go,” she snapped with a sob. Gideon was helpless to do anything other than obey her wishes, not wanting to upset her further.
And this was how he’d wound up lying face-down alone in his cold bed, growling his frustrations into the pillow.
The situation baffled him, her reaction concerned him; he’d wanted so damned badly to help her, but he hadn’t known how. Nothing in his life experience had prepared him to nurture and care for another human being, let alone a wife expecting his child. He was a flailing fish dropped onto the shore and flopping in the wrong direction. Gasping. Lost. Having one goal in mind—to cherish Caro—but unsure how to accomplish it. When he thought they might be making headway in their marriage, something like this happened to set him back on his heels and remind him that he truly did not know what he was doing when it came to relationships.
The lads he’d met at school had gradually taught him how to manage friendships, but a romantic attachment…one aspowerful as what he felt for his wife…that was something else entirely, and Gideon felt woefully unprepared for it.
Too frustrated and despondent to move, Gideon drifted off to sleep like that, still wearing his linen shirt and breeches, sprawled out across the coverlet.
He did not know how long he stayed like that, but he did not wake until a small hand grabbed his shoulder and shook him.
Chapter Twelve
“Gideon?” Another shake.“Gideon,” Caroline said more firmly. The man apparently slept like the dead.
She’d spent the better part of the last two hours alternately weeping, berating herself for weeping, then weeping because she was berating herself for weeping. It was a vicious—and embarrassing—cycle and, if she had one thing to be glad about, it was that no one had borne witness to it. She’d honestly been upset about the slip in her mental faculties, which had then fed into the feeling of betrayal over Gideon inadvertently revealing her pregnancy to the staff. As soon as he’d obeyed her and quit the room, however, her regret had been nearly instantaneous. Gradually, rationality had returned to her; what had seemed so upsetting and serious before melted away into something far less dire.
So, she’d forgotten where they were at in their game? They could have taken his suggestion and replayed the hand; it really would not have been that serious a situation and they were only playing for fun.
So the housekeeper knew of her pregnancy? The staff were often the first to know when the lady of the house was expecting. They’d already spent a month on this honeymoon trip. If they were afforded the benefit of the doubt, then it was plausible that she’d only just found out about it as well. Besides, she could scarcely believe Gideon had taken the initiative to investigate and procure remedies for her pregnancy-relatedailments.Gideon.The man who had no maternal figure and limited experience with enceinte women had proven to have impeccable instincts. She should not have snapped at him when he’d only been trying to do what he could to understand what she experienced and find a way to help her.
And he had been right. She was tired—she was always so bloody tired. She’d been putting so much of her energy into planning the party for Gideon and keeping it all a secret. She hadn’t realized how much it had worn her down until that blasted peg had fallen from her fingers. Gideon had been so kind and understanding, and she’d snapped at him.
The guilt only made her weep harder.
It took her far longer than it should have to free herself from the quagmire of emotions, but she’d eventually managed. She also knew that she’d never be able to sleep until she spoke to Gideon and apologized for her behavior—would he understand that it had felt perfectly rational and justified in the moment? She hoped so. They’d never quarreled before and it made her skin feel as if a thousand ants were crawling beneath it. All was not right with the world if she and Gideon were not on good terms.
Though splashing cool water on her face did little to counteract the redness and puffiness, she did it anyway. Not remotely satisfied with her appearance, she bit back more tears of frustration and made her way to Gideon’s bedchamber.
She hadn’t expected to find him so sound asleep, let alone still as dressed as when he’d left her. She was uncertain if she was disappointed at finding him in his loose linen shirt and breeches rather than gloriously naked.
“Gideon,” Caroline repeated herself even more loudly, trying to stave off the wave of images her excited imagination was attempting to conjure.
Finally, he groaned and rolled to his shoulder. He blinked up at her sleepily, his midnight hair tousled and flattened on one side where it had been pressed to the pillow. His angular jaw was already freckled with stubble. She wanted to test its roughness against her cheek…her impossibly sensitive nipples. He stared at her with one eye until his mind finally awoke enough to register that it was she at his bedside.
She didn’t know if she’d expected him to be cross with her for her earlier treatment of him or annoyed that she’d disturbed his sleep; what she hadn’t expected was his immediate alarm. Gideon snapped up and instantly reached for her. His eyes, once dark and hazy with sleep, were alert and dancing silver with concern. Still kneeling on the enormous mattress, he grabbed her hands and held them tightly, as if afraid she were an apparition.
“Caro! Are you alright? Are you ill? The baby—”
“I am fine,” she reassured him, squeezing his hands back with equal force to help ground him. For a man who was not usually so excitable, he’d been remarkably skittish when it came to her health.
Yet another reason she loved him.
And love him, she did.
Even if he might be too damaged by his parents to say the words aloud to her or recognize them in his actions and behaviors, she knew he felt the same.
A new wave of emotion began to clog her throat like a lodestone, and she struggled to speak around it. She should have known he’d read her distress in her eyes…
Immediately, he enfolded her into his arms in an embrace that was, at once, tender and bracing. His warm lips pressed to her hairline where he murmured reassurances and tender phrases. He called her his darling Caro, praised her strength, and told her to lean into him as much as she needed to. And shedid just that. Caroline wrapped her arms around his lean waist, feeling the firmness of his body, the heat that rolled off of it like a blazing hearth. Never had she felt safer, more supported, more cherished than when she was in Gideon’s arms.
It took some doing, but she regained her composure and leaned back enough to look up into his face. He was devastatingly handsome cast in shadows, her vivid memory filling in the gaps left behind by the night.
“I am better now,” she said, her voice so small when confronted by at least fifteen stone of man.
