His wife stood with her back and shoulders to the door.
Herbareback and shoulders.
She had removed her bodice, skirt, and corset cover, and now stood clad in only her drawers, chemise, and corset.
All of it wet, clinging to her skin.
Beautiful.
So beautiful.
Her hair tumbled from its pins, and she had pulled the vivid mass over her right shoulder, using a towel to wring the water out of it.
Breathe, Tristan reminded himself. But as with the wild ocean they had narrowly escaped, the simple task proved a challenge.
She looked over her shoulder at him, eyes the color of a June sky.
Rain lashed the window to his left and cast shadows on the brown-and-russet tartan drapes of the box bed.
The dim light illuminated the gooseflesh pebbling Isolde’s skin.
“You’re cold,” he said and then promptly hated himself for stating the obvious.
“Aye,” she shivered, setting down the towel and presenting him with her back once more. “But I cannot undo my laces without assistance.”
Finally, Tristan noticed the problem. Her corset laces were a tangled mess at the small of her back—wet and snarled and impossible to untie by feel alone.
“Will ye help me?” Again, she glanced over her shoulder at him, gaze tentative, as if she expected him to deny her assistance.
It stung.
That she assumed the man he had been that morning would have refused such a simple request.
He had never been such a monster. But she obviously did not know that.
How was he to change her opinion of him?
He had never sought a lady’s good opinion. Or fostered a friendship with someone who liked him simply for . . . himself.
Perhaps he truly was aneejit,as she had said. To think that a woman as vibrant as Isolde would ever look on him with anything approaching affection.
The hope was likely dead before it even began.
“Of course,” Tristan murmured, stepping close and frowning as he tried to suss out untangling the jumble of cord.
She faced the wall once more, clutching the front of her corset to her bosom.
Neither of them said a word, the sound of the wind and his fingers tugging on the sodden laces filled the rain-pattered quiet.
But his hands were stiff and numb. Every few moments, he had to pause and blow on them, willing warmth back into his veins.
The frequent pauses gave him far too much time to ponder the beauty of her back . . . the sharp press of her shoulder blades, the tawny freckles dotting her pale skin. The strand of amber hair lying across the base of her neck, dripping seawater onto her shoulders.
His lips ached to kiss the drops off her skin.
He tugged at the corset strings.
The drawstring along the neckline of her chemise had loosened, sagging and exposing the creamy pearls of her spine.
