Vix laughed, passing over the bundle. “Thank you for coming today, Mr. Zeller. Thank you for being here for Ambrose.”
“Of course, of course,” he said, sniffing as though the sentiment tickled his sinuses. “Where else would I be?”
“You ought to congratulate him before you go,” she said, pressing a hand to the man’s wrist. “I think it would mean something to him.”
He nodded, one side of his mustache quirking up. “I’m so glad we have you with us now,” he said, “Lady Aster.”
Vix watched the butler and the puppy cross the hall to speak with her new husband, observed in quiet awe the way Ambrose’s face lit and changed when Zeller bowed to speak to him. It was the oddest thing, she thought, the way her chest clenched at it, the way something bubbled in her throat and stung at her eyes.
Very odd indeed.
When Ambrose stood to shake Zeller’s hand before he departed and then leaned down to drop a kiss on the puppy’s head, that bubble in her throat burst. It popped with a warm, salty gurgle and made her turn quickly to the window to blink away its escape from her voice and her eyes.
She stared out at the bench under the fig tree instead and took a few steadying breaths.
Unpredictable, she thought.
Yes, marriage certainly was that, so far. And it hadn’t yet even been a full day.
PART IV
THIS IS NOT A SEDUCTION
CHAPTER 15
“Why are you looking so smug?” Vix asked, watching with faint amusement from across the carriage. “You’ve been smirking like that all evening.”
“Smirking? Me?” Ambrose returned, his grin widening. “I would never.”
She gave him a flat-mouthed stare which made him chuckle, shaking his head.
“I just got married to a beautiful woman,” he answered with a shrug, adjusting to lean toward her across the bench. “Why shouldn’t I be smug?”
“It’s something else,” she answered immediately, withdrawing her hand before he could snatch it into his from where it rested on her knee. “I know you well enough to know when you’re up to mischief.”
“It is only …” he said, blinking and sighing as though he’d just been told something inconvenient, in this past handful of seconds alone in the carriage.
“Yes?” she pressed, her eyes narrowing. “Out with it.”
He clicked his tongue, then ran it over his teeth while watching her. “Terrible thing. The linens you sent don’t fit the mattress in your new bedroom. I’m afraid you’ll be stuck with me tonight.”
For a moment she was silent. His words landed in her chest, simmering and steaming like boiling water, little sizzling droplets escaping down into the pit of her stomach as the implication of both what he’d done and the very fact that he’d done it settled within her. “You think you’re very clever, I suppose,” she managed to say thinly.
“I am very clever, yes,” he answered. “Thank you for noticing.”
The carriage began to slow, turning the last corner before reaching the Aster townhouse.Home, Vix amended in her mind. It was the last corner before home.
“You shouldn’t fret,” he continued, choosing to take up a loose fingerful of the tulle skirt in the absence of her hand, winding the fabric through his fingers. “I won’t take more than you’re willing to give from you, even if you are in my bed tonight.”
Her skin erupted in gooseflesh, the traitorous little bumps skittering down her arms to her fingertips as she cut her eyes to him, holding herself still. “I never fret,” she told him, pleased that her voice was still unmarked by her nerves. “What are you gobbling about, anyway?”
He raised his brows as the carriage pulled to a halt. “Lying and feigning ignorance all in one breath? You outdo yourself, Vix.”
She opened her mouth to reply, the acid already burning on the tip of her tongue, but was interrupted by the carriage doorswinging open and Ambrose bounding out of it like he could not sit on the padded bench for a single second longer.
He turned and offered her his hand, the other tucked behind his back in a perfect posture of gallantry, and though she rolled her eyes at him, she did accept it.
“You are absurd,” she said as she hopped down onto the drive, allowing him to clasp her waist to steady her against the infinite layers of her skirt billowing out from the gravity of the motion.
