He allowed himself a faint smile. “You would have objected loudly.”
“Violently,” she muttered.
He moved to the hearth, warming his hands. “We will share it. It is not the first time we have lain beside each other.”
Color crept into her cheeks. “That was different.”
“Very,” he agreed, his mind unhelpfully conjuring an image of her in his arms, breathless and undone. “All the same, the bed is more comfortable than the floor. We are both human. We both sleep. The arrangement is simple.”
“Our arrangement is over,” she said quickly. “You agreed. I reminded you. You are honor-bound.”
“To what?” he asked. “To throw myself on the floorboards in order to preserve the last scrap of a modesty you believe already ruined?”
She lifted her chin. “I will sleep on the floor.”
“You will not,” he said, amused despite himself.
“I will,” she insisted. “You may have the bed. You are taller. You will complain more loudly in the morning if you do not sleep.Your Grace.”
The sound of his title, crisp as a slap, did it.
Victor barked a laugh, the sound surprising even him.
“As you wish,” he relented. “Sleep on the floor if the idea of sharing a bed with me offends you so deeply. I will occupy the bed and try not to be crushed beneath the weight of my own selfishness.”
She glared at him. “You are insufferable.”
“So I am often told,” he quipped.
She set about making herself a nest with the stubborn efficiency he was coming to recognize. She dragged a small blanket near the fire, spread it over the rug, and folded her cloak into a thin pillow.
Victor watched her from the bed, boots off, coat draped neatly over a chair, cravat loosened for the first time that day.
“You need not attempt to be noble, you know,” he drawled.
“This is not nobility,” she replied. “It is practicality.”
“Thin, uncomfortable practicality.”
She turned her back to him pointedly and lay down.
He snuffed one candle, leaving only the one on the mantelpiece and the low fire. Shadows danced across the low ceiling.
The bed was not luxurious, but it was wider than his boyhood cot, and he had slept on worse. He lay back, hands tucked behind his head, and listened.
The inn settled gradually. The voices below hushed. The tankards thudded less often. The occasional burst of laughter rose and faded. Hoofbeats sounded in the yard, then stilled.
On the rug, Gwen did not move, though she too was awake.
He heard her restless shifting, the catch of her breath when some hard bit of floor dug into her flesh.
He closed his eyes. Counted slowly. One to fifty. To one hundred. At one hundred and thirty-seven, he opened them again.
“Gwendoline,” he said into the dimness.
No answer.
He waited. She shifted again, trying to find a spot that did not exist.
