Chapter Six
One month later
Nothing could haveprepared Alistair for the moment when he crossed over the threshold separating his chamber from the duchess’s quarters and saw Freckles for the first time.
His wife.
Breathtaking perfection.
She wore a demure whiterobe de chambreadorned in lace, belted loosely at her narrow waist. Her lovely auburn curls—coiled in an elaborate affair for their wedding ceremony earlier that day in St. George’s—was unbound and hung down to her waist in striking contrast against the light fabric. Her feet were bare, her nicely turned ankles barely visible beneath the hem. Her face was pale, arresting. He could not stop staring at that full, pink mouth. Those gray-blue-flecked eyes, her elegant cheekbones, the delicate arches of her brows.
His mouth went dry.
He stopped where he was, drinking in the sight of her, and a realization hit him with the force of a rampaging stallion, straight in the chest. The odd sensation that rushed through him whenever he was in her presence, the anticipation from the moment he left her side until he could be back again. The pounding of his pulse, the restless need to be with her, to have her in his bed, to make her his once and for all…the reason no other lady would do as the Duchess of Warwick…everything made sense. It was as if someone had lit a lamp in a dark cellar and he could now see with perfect vision.
Helovedher. He loved Freckles.
Damn and blast. He could not move. Could not think. She was his at last, standing nervously before him in her wedding night finery, his to touch, his to kiss.
His to take to bed.
Nothing had ever seemed so right, and yet he remained trapped. Rooted to the Aubusson in wizened old oak tree fashion, brain wildly fumbling to make sense of what he felt and what he knew. Could it be true? Did he truly love her? He, who had not ever imagined he possessed the capability for such an emotion? He, who had always rather imagined love to be the sort of rot more suited for plays and operas than real life?
That strange sensation whenever he thought of Freckles? The way he could not get enough of her scent, or how the sound of her voice thrilled him to his bloody toes? Or how he longed to kiss her every time he saw her, the utter torture he had suffered these last two months in waiting for this very moment, this precise night, when he could at last make her his. As she ought to be. In every way.
Why, then, could he not move?
“Husband,” she greeted hesitantly into the awkward silence he had created by lingering at the threshold like a lumbering oaf.
One word from her, and his cock went rigid.
Ridiculous though it was, she seemed more composed than he, a seasoned rake who had charmed more than his fair share of females in his day. “Freckles,” he returned, his throat thick with unspoken emotion and pent-up need. Good God, what if she didn’t love him?
She fidgeted with the ends of her lustrous hair, the only sign that she was at all discomfited, and that only because he knew her well. Her luscious pink lips formed a smile, and he wanted to feel it beneath his mouth. “Will you not call me Lydia now that we are wed, Warwick?”
She had always been Freckles to him, from the moment she had been a spirited little hoyden running wild up until now, when he understood that Freckles would no longer do. That chapter of their life had closed. She was his duchess now.
She was Lydia.
His love.
He cleared his throat, feeling as if he were hopelessly adrift in a boat on the ocean that he had only just learned was taking on water. But he would have to do something, would he not? Say something, certainly. She gazed upon him expectantly, her beauty almost ethereal in the chamber’s soft light.
“Lydia,” he said simply before thinking better of it and trying again. “Lydia, my love.”
Her eyebrows arched at the endearment, and he wondered for a brief, breath-stealing beat whether she would ever return his feelings. She had not agreed to this union with the keen enthusiasm one might have expected of a bluestocking facing a future as a companion to a cantankerous old curmudgeon. He had gone to Oxfordshire to spend Christmas with her, followed her about like an obedient pup, and she had still rattled off a list of requirements before reluctantly pledging her troth.
He did not begrudge her the requirements, for they were reasonable and every bit of it was quintessentially Freckles, but he rather fancied she could have been a trifle more thrilled at the prospect of marrying him. He was considered a good catch, after all, and neither his face nor his form had ever met with feminine disapproval. Quite the opposite, in fact. More than anything, he wanted, with a ferocity that shook him, for her to love him back.
Sweet Christ, he was besotted.
“May I call you Alistair?” she asked, her voice hesitant.
She sounded so unlike her ordinary, authoritative self that it was enough to nudge him at last from his impromptu vigil on the threshold. His hands itched to hold her, to acquaint themselves with her lithe curves and learn her every dip and swell. In just a few strides, he stood before her, the tempting scent of violets teasing his senses. With Herculean effort, he checked the urge to take her in his arms and throw her to the bed before ravishing her senseless.
Lydia was not one of his usual conquests. She was innocent and perfect, and unlike every other woman he had bedded before her, she mattered to him in a way that humbled him to his very toes. He drew an arm around her, pressing his palm to the gentle curve of her spine just before the flare of her bottom. With his other hand, he traced a featherlight touch over her cheekbone, savoring the silken smoothness of her skin.
“Yes,” he murmured, falling into her riveting gray eyes. “Call me Alistair, my love.”
