He reached out to smooth them down around her bottom half, his hand ghosting through the fabric against her hips and thighs, though the brushing motions were rapid and businesslike. He grinned against her narrow observation of every obnoxious little thing he was doing.
Mr. Zeller appeared at the door almost immediately, standing at attention as though to welcome them over the threshold.
“Do not try to carry me,” she warned him, holding a finger up. “The dress will explode like a dead dandelion.”
He chuckled, pulling back a little to observe the smoothed skirt, and quirked his head to the side in acknowledgement. “Yes, I think it actually might,” he agreed with a little sigh. “I shall have to do it some other time.”
“You certainly do not have to do it ever,” she snapped, spinning to her side and twirling past him in a flurry of skirts. “I can walk perfectly well.”
Behind her, as she walked into the house, she could hear Ambrose muttering to Mr. Zeller, “Iknow. She wouldn’t let me,” followed by an assortment of disapproving throaty noises from the butler.
She cursed her lips for twisting in reaction, and tried to pull her face back into order before Ambrose might see it. She noted, with satisfaction, that her trunks had arrived, even if her linens had been sabotaged.
She had half expected him to regretfully inform her that she had nothing at all to sleep in as well. She certainly wasn’t disappointed to see that her nightgowns were here.
Certainly not.
“We will take dinner in my chambers,” Ambrose was saying as he came up behind her. “The necessary particulars that must be unpacked for my wife should be handled at once, and the rest left for tomorrow.”
She blinked, trying not to let her knees buckle straight out from under her at the sound of his voice sayingmy wife. Instead, she turned her head to the side with a brief nod of approval. “Yes, and I will require some aid getting out of this dress and into something less constricting, if Mrs. Jenkins is still about.”
“She is, Lady Aster,” Zeller said, only to be immediately shushed by his master.
“I will assist you,” Ambrose informed her, sounding haughty as can be. “I’ve a talent for laces.”
“Is that so?” she said, giving a bored little sigh as she came all the way round to face him. “You claim to have talents for so many things, Ambrose.”
“Yes, I am a bit of a prodigy,” he confirmed, that smirk landing back on his mouth. “It is my curse. I am good at everything.”
She gave him a patronizing little glance. “Of course you are, dear.”
“Doubt if you must,” he replied smoothly. “I can always demonstrate my many talents.”
She had no response to that, which was in and of itself not something that Vix enjoyed. Rather than stand there, dry-mouthed and weak-kneed, she brushed around him toward the stairs, as though she were bored of standing about after such a taxing day and eager to take her leisure.
“I do not think I want dinner,” she said absently, because she knew that she would not be able to swallow a single bite. “We had so very much after the wedding.”
“Oh?” he asked, falling in line after her. “Appetites turned elsewhere?”
She made a little noise that she hoped registered as annoyance as she reached the top of the stairs and turned toward the bedroom, taking the doorknob in hand this time on her own rather than waiting to be flung bodily into the chamber.
She heard his footsteps falling after hers.
It seemed Mrs. Jenkins had already anticipated their needs for the evening, before they had even reached the townhouse. There, on the bed, was a satin nightgown, a comb, a ribbon, and a little pot of cream for Vix’s evening toilette.
Everything had already been accounted for. There was nothing that needed doing. It was almost enough to make her feel distressed.
The door clicked shut behind her.
He approached almost silently, with only the gradual presence of his body heat against her back to alert her to his nearness. He moved her hair from her shoulders with a gentle sweep of hishand, the tips of his fingers whispering against the back of her neck.
She closed her eyes. She did not know what to do or say and only hoped that he would take the burden from her now. He must, she thought. It was how these things always went in the novels.
The knot at the top of her bodice was worked gently loose, each lace pulled at with delicate but firm tugs until suddenly she could breathe a little easier again. He did not say a word, simply following down the passage of her spine, loosening carefully as he went.
Was he really not going to speak?
“Ambrose,” she said, gritting her teeth against how ragged she sounded, squeezing her eyes shut. “What did you mean before? When you said you wouldn’t take more than I was willing to give?”
