“Are you certain you did not injure something?” he asked.
She seemed fine, but he had spent the last few years of his life with a band of guerrilla soldiers. He had seen inebriation before. Many times. And he knew from experience she may not even notice if she had been hurt.
“I am fine,” she assured him, still smiling. Another giggle escaped her lips. “I am sorry. I cannot seem to stop laughing.”
He did not mind. He liked the way she laughed. Indeed, he liked the way Catriona did a lot of things. He also liked the silken strands of her hair in his hands. He had not noticed before the sheen of copper glinting in the warm depths of brown. The urge to pluck the pins from her luxurious tresses, to let them fall down around her shoulders, was strong.
“I fear I allowed you too much brandy,” he told her.
As for his excuse? He had none, other than he had been too long without a woman. Perhaps the combination of once more having a wife and his self-imposed celibacy in England had taken their toll upon him. Perhaps it was merely the reaction he had to Catriona.
“I should not have drank so much.” She giggled up at him, then startled him by catching his face in her hands, pressing her palms to his cheeks as if she were admiring him. “You are beautiful, even when you frown at me.”
“I do not frown at you,” he denied. “I frown at the world.”
“Then perhaps you will smile with me,” she murmured, her thumbs tracing over his cheekbones. “Whilst you are here. Whilst I have you.”
She was not laughing now.
And he was not frowning either.Perhaps you will smile with me. Cristo,such innocence. Such goodness. He was staring at her, bemused. She was hiswife.
He wanted to say it.
So he did, but in the language he preferred. “Mi bella esposa.” But he could not find it within him to smile. “Come. We must get you to bed so you may rest. A long day of travel awaits us tomorrow.”
Her fingers traveled to his lips then, stilling over them. Her touch was a brand. An uncontrollable bolt of desire licked down his spine, settling in his groin. The effect she had on him was almost damning.
“Will you smile for me first?” she asked, her voice little more than a hushed whisper. “Please, Alessandro.”
Inside him roiled a foreign concoction of want, of desire, of frenzied need, of unwise affection. But of guilt, too. Of pain. He could not separate the anguish from the joy, the grief from the hope. All he knew was this fierce woman was making him feel things he had no longer believed he was capable of feeling.
“Please,” she said again. “I know it is foolish. I know you do not like me.”
And then she issued a half-laugh, half-snort that was somehow even more endearing than all the others preceding it.
The strange urge built to a crescendo within him. He smiled.
And then he kissed the fingers lingering over his lips. Kissed them because this was all he dared. “I like you too much,querida,” he confessed against her gentle touch.
One more kiss was all he dared, lest he start making love to her here on the library floor. For there would be no lovemaking tonight, and he understood that. She had over-imbibed and was not herself. And he… He was not himself either. Their nuptials had left him shaken.
But not just their marriage.
Something had shifted this evening. They had crossed boundaries he had not believed could be trespassed against. He understood that as he gazed down upon her, her fingertips still pressed over his lips in a parody of the kiss he was determined to deny them both.
“I have beendearfor some time,” she observed.
He noticed how long her lashes were.
“Yes, you have.” Only he had not realized it himself until now. Until she had pointed it out to him.
Dios.
“I need something to call you,” Catriona murmured, her gaze searching his.
“Alessandro,” he supplied, grim.
She shook her head. “If I am your dear, you shall be my darling.”
