“Bainbridge, are you well? You’ve gone pale all of a sudden.” Lady Boadicea’s voice lacked its customary sting. She sounded almost…concerned. For him.
Even more astounding.
“You are remaining in this chamber,” he ordered, still unable to remove his hands from her person. Instead, he moved them in a slow, upward caress, over her rounded shoulders. “Dr. Martindale insists you are to have rest, and rest you shall have.”
A vee furrowed her smooth brow, but did nothing to detract from the lovely picture she presented in her white nightdress, her hair loosened and trailing down her back in arresting contrast. “I can rest in my assigned chamber, Duke. If you will only see that my lady’s maid is sent to me, I will change and be on my way. I shouldn’t prefer to wander about the halls in my nighttime attire.”
“No.” His thumbs traveled the enticing ridge of her collarbone, and he wished it was her soft skin he touched rather than uninspiring cloth. He could not ever recall being so entranced by a lady’s clavicle. And why did her uttering of the phrasenighttime attiremake his mouth go dry again? “You will remain here, where you belong.”
As he said it, he realized the truth of the statement. Soon, she would be his wife. This chamber would be hers. If it would satisfy propriety, he would marry her tomorrow and have done with it. There was nowhere else he wished her to be.
Except perhaps in his bed. Beneath him. Or astride him. His cock went painfully hard, which was the devil of a thing to occur when Lady Boadicea was a bloody invalid and they had yet to wed.
“I do not belong here,” she argued, “in the chamber that belonged to your wife. I am sure there must be painful memories—”
“There are none,” he interrupted, irritated by the undertone of sympathy in her voice. “The room has been furnished anew, according to my mother’s tastes.”
Lady Boadicea wrinkled her nose. “She appears to have an unmerited affinity for all shades of yellow.”
He was grateful that she had not mentioned Millicent further. He had no wish to speak about her with anyone, and least of all his new betrothed.
His lips twitched at her insouciance, and he almost allowed himself to laugh before stifling it and removing his hands from her lest he grow any more deranged. Perhaps she was making him mad via osmosis. “It is a cheerful color. Like the sun.”
“If you stare at it, you shall go blind,” she said. “Also like the sun. Truly, Duke, we must have a dialogue about your drawing room. There is the matter of that salon as well. It’s rather akin to a venture into an old thicket, quite depressing.”
He gazed at her, thinking how odd it was that she had repeated his own thoughts, nearly verbatim. One long curl had fallen free from her loosely gathered hair, trailing over her cheek. He fought and lost the urge to tuck it behind her ear. His fingers lingered there on the silken shell, and a strange sensation seized him.
He withdrew his hand and straightened to his full height. Good God, what was the matter with him? “I am glad that your rapier wit has not been diminished by the fall you suffered. Have your rest, now.”
An expression of displeasure flitted across her fine features, but despite her fiery nature, he could see signs that the incident had rattled her. She remained pale, her vibrant sky-blue gaze seemingly tired, those lush lips drawn into a thin line. “I do not like rest, Duke.”
“Of that I have little doubt, princess.”
o took dinner in her chamber.Well, to be precise, she took it in theduchess’schamber, which was not currently hers but which—by actions rooted in her own foolishness—would be soon enough. Staring at it now from her perch on a horridly uncomfortable hard-backed chair, she couldn’t help but feel dazed by the realization that this unfamiliar room with its hodgepodge of excessive color and gilding would be where she slept whenever in residence at Boswell Manor.
That thought in particular gave her singular pause, for suddenly, ensconced in the duchess’s chamber, the ramifications of the last few days seemed real for the first time. She was marrying the Duke of Bainbridge, a stranger with a dark past she couldn’t begin to fathom, who looked down his haughty nose at her and yet touched her with such tender care that it took her breath.
What manner of man was he? Moreover, what sort of husband would he make? If Bo were to judge from his past, reason told her she ought to be worried indeed. Perhaps, she ought to even be overseeing the packing of her cases and her removal to the opposite end of the hemisphere.
A knock sounded at the door then. “Bo? It’s Cleo. May I come in?”
“Of course,” she called out.
She’d mustered the energy to battle the pain savaging her entire skeleton long enough to move from the bed to an escritoire from the last century. She was still wearing arobe de chambrebelted over a nightdress, but one hardly stood on ceremony with one’s beloved eldest sister. Cleo had checked on her after the duke’s visit, and again three times thereafter, clucking over her in concerned, mother hen fashion.
Cleo swept into the chamber, regal and elegant, her raven hair plaited in braided coils with a few wispy curls framing her face. She wore an evening gown of navy and aubergine silk, and she was lovely as ever, even with concern pinching her expression.
She swished across the carpet, arms outstretched. “Darling, you’re out of bed. What can you be thinking? The doctor said you must rest.”
“I could not remain in that bed for another moment more.” She tried to suppress the frown tightening her lips and failed.
Though Bainbridge had suggested his mother had been responsible for stripping the chamber of all remnants of his mad duchess, she still wondered whether or not that thorough redecorating included the bed itself. Exhausted, she had fallen asleep for most of the afternoon, but when she’d finally risen from the cocoon of slumber, she’d been plagued by the notion that Bainbridge had lain in that bed with his dead wife.
It had rattled her. An unworthy surge of jealousy had accompanied the unwanted thoughts, until she’d had no choice but to leave the bed behind in favor of the godawful chair.
“But dearest, how can you be comfortable in such an old-fashioned, ungainly beast of a chair?” Cleo demanded, taking Bo’s hands up and giving them a loving squeeze. “Why, you look positively miserable. What can you be thinking, torturing yourself so?”
Bo inhaled, pressed her lips together, looked at the bed with its garish drapery of yellow satin and golden tassels. “I dislike the bed.”
