Until Fox pressed a trembling kiss to the pulse in her wrist and said, “Come, wife. Allow me to take you home.”
21
Four hours later, Leah paced the floor of her bedchamber, nerves stretched taut to breaking.
After their cold, wet walk home, they had parted in the great hall. Leah had retreated to her bedchamber where she had bathed and warmed her chilled body.
And still the memories of Fox’s kisses clung to her, filling her mind and choking out all other thought.
He wanted her, too.
Enough to make her his wife in truth.
She could kiss himwhenevershe wished.
Part of her felt drunk on happiness, on the glittery sunshine running rampant in her chest.
Another part of her recognized that Fox, despite their discussion earlier, still kept much of himself from her.
But, for now, what she had and what she knew were enough.
More than enough, she supposed. More than she had ever dreamed.
To have his attention. His name and ring on her finger.
And tonight, his body against hers.
She had refused dinner, too nervous to eat. Her fingers knotted in the sash of her dressing gown.
A knock sounded on her door.
“Come,” she called.
Fox stepped into the room, clad in an oriental silk banyan—hair damp from his own bath, cheeks freshly shaven.
She half-expected him to arrive drunk. To come to her whisky-soaked and slurring. As if he needed to dampen the memory of finally—finally!—consummating their marriage.
But he had not.
No, his clear gaze eagerly took her in, skimming up and down her body and igniting gooseflesh everywhere his eyes touched.
“You look beautiful, wife.”
Oh, how she loved the sound of those words. Every one of them.
He crossed to her, gaze intent.
As he moved, Leah’s eyes dropped to the ‘V’ of chest not covered by his banyan and then to the purple welt of a scar peeking out from the right side of his body.
He paused in front of her, hands reaching for her waist.
Emboldened, Leah stepped into his embrace and touched her fingertips to the scar, to the evidence of how close he had come to death. The morbid part of her had to know, to understand precisely how harrowing it had been.
She pushed his banyan off his right shoulder, exposing the scar in all its hideous glory.
And it truly was hideous, a ghastly gouge into his muscles from ear to pectoral. She traced it with her fingertips. As if needing to assure them both that he had lived, that she saw the strength it had taken for him to be here. Now. With her.
At that moment, she hated every person who had been careless with this man’s heart. Every person who had added another scar to it, whether through a steely saber or an emotional dagger.
