She didn’t wish to hurt the maid’s feelings, nor for her to think she had displeased her in some way. The maid dipped into a curtsy, finished with her tasks, and took her leave from the chamber.
When she had gone, Elizabeth let out the sigh she’d been holding all day. Then, she carefully removed all her garments, took the pins from her hair, and settled in the delicious warmth of the bath. She stared into the flames, contemplating the strangeness of her new circumstances—the impossibility of it all—when a tap sounded at the door. Assuming it was Culpepper returning, she called for her to enter without bothering to send a glance over her shoulder.
The door opened, but it wasn’t her new lady’s maid’s dulcet tones she heard next.
“Forgive me. I hadn’t realized you were at your bath.”
Instead, it was the deep, low voice of Torrington.
With a gasp, she swirled around in the bath to face him, sending water sloshing over the lip of the tub. She crossed her arms over her chest to shield her nakedness from his view, heart pounding hard. He was dressed simply and intimately in a banyan, his feet bare. And the realization of how little clothing he wore did nothing to calm her body’s shocked reaction to his appearance.
“My lord,” she said, finding her voice again. “Is something amiss?”
She hadn’t expected to see him so soon. He hadn’t implied he would visit her this evening. Or ever. Other than his kisses the day he’d persuaded her to marry him, he had been the consummate gentleman. She had convinced herself that his interest that day had been forced, that he had been the practiced seducer, wooing her into agreement out of pity rather than desire.
After all, she knew what he thought of her.
She’s a plain, plump little partridge, isn’t she?
She had been in such a rush to escape, humiliated by those words, that she had hastened from her hiding place and tripped over her hems, falling with the grace of a downed tree at the viscount’s feet.
The humiliating laughter of her fellow guests at Lord and Lady Althorp’s ball would forever haunt her. She had scrambled to her feet, ignoring the viscount’s offer of assistance, and run to the withdrawing room, her vision blurred by embarrassed tears. She’d never recovered from her mortification.
And all these years later, those words still stung. Not just stung; they were a visceral ache deep inside, the confirmation of her every self-doubt and the sound dashing of all her dreams.
Except somehow, here she was. Ironically, being married to Viscount Torrington had once been her sole aspiration. But not this way. Never as a duty he’d been forced into.
“Nothing is amiss at all,” he said calmly. “I merely wanted to make certain you were pleasantly settled for the evening.” His gaze dipped to the bath water for a moment before rising politely to hers again. “It looks as if you are. I must apologize. I didn’t intend to intrude on your solitude.”
What to say to him? He was her husband now, and he had every right to be here. Every right to watch her bathe, to consummate the marriage if he wished. Her mouth went dry, and to her shame, desire she should no longer feel for him unfurled.
“You needn’t apologize,” she told him, hating herself for sounding so breathless. For being so affected by him, even with the memory of that dreadful jibe echoing in her mind. “Thank you for arranging for the bath.”
That had been kind of him, she reminded herself. And thus far, the calamitous nature of their meeting in the library aside, he had shown himself to be patient and considerate. Hardly the unscrupulous rogue she expected him to be.
“I thought it might be soothing.”
He had wanted to please her. To calm her.
The knowledge made her stomach perform an odd little flip. What did it mean?
She couldn’t allow herself too much time to consider the question, for she was still naked in the bath, and he was yet hovering on the threshold of their adjoined chambers, flustering her. Making her hotter than the heated bath water was. Perspiration trickled down the back of her neck.
Elizabeth swallowed hard. “That was kind of you, my lord.”
“I do wish you would call me Torrie.” He flashed her a wry smile that somehow rendered him all the more boyishly charming. “Particularly now that we are wed.”
“Torrie,” she repeated, acutely aware of how vulnerable she was, scarcely any modesty to save her but her crossed arms and legs and the fact that he remained on the opposite end of the chamber.
“Elizabeth,” he responded, her given name in his delightfully rich baritone heightening the sensations already swimming through her. “Is that what you prefer to be called?”
No one had asked the question of her before. Not even Lady Andromeda, who had been, for all her faults, the more generous of the benefactors on whom she had found herself foisted. For a moment, she didn’t know how to respond. Everyone called her Elizabeth; more commonly, Miss Brooke. But here was her opportunity to shed both those sobriquets. One because she had married, the other because she could choose it.
And she recalled, quite suddenly and with a painful pang of remembrance, how once, long ago, she had been called Bess. She’d been nothing more than a girl then, head full of hopes that would never come to fruition, with loving parents and a wonderful home and a cat she’d adored, neither of which she had seen in years.
Mince Pie was likely long gone now, just like Mama and Papa.
“Bess,” she found herself telling Torrie.
