“Thank you for Angel,” she said, such tenderness in her voice and in her eyes, directed toward him alone.
For a moment, he found it difficult to find his tongue. But at last he did, giving her a teasing smile first.
“I still think we should have named her Lady Razor Claws instead. It’s far more apt.”
His wife’s musical laughter was her only response, and he tucked this memory—the two of them surrounded by pillows on her bedchamber floor, a sleeping kitten in her lap—into his heart. For it was one that he bloody well never wanted to forget.
CHAPTER14
Torrie had made a vast, inexcusable mistake in encouraging Bess to procure an entirely new wardrobe. He could see that now.
Because from the moment he’d first spied her in that frothy green frock with her breasts spilling temptingly over the decolletage several weeks ago, he’d been walking about with a perpetual cockstand. Bess in a snug new riding habit? Cockstand. Bess in a fetching morning gown with the sunlight gleaming in her mahogany hair? Cockstand. Bess in a transparent night rail trimmed with lace, her hard nipples poking the linen in sinful invitation? Cockstand.
Cockstand, cockstand, cockstand.
And the devil of it was, there was not always a convenient empty chamber, bed, or carriage in which to debauch her. Often, he had towaitto have his wicked way with his wife.
Times such as this evening as he stood on the periphery of the ball they had planned together in her honor, watching her dance with another man.
A man whose thorough drubbing he was imagining with vivid detail. Was the bastard looking at her breasts as they spun about in time to the Scotch reel? Torrie was alarmingly close to stalking onto the dance floor and demanding the Earl of Rearden name his second.
“If you glare any harder, you’ll incinerate poor Rearden on the spot,” drawled a familiar voice at his side.
Torrie turned to find Monty, glass of lemonade in hand, wearing a vexing grin he wouldn’t mind punching off his old friend’s face.
“My mood is rather a dark one at the moment,” he warned grimly.
“I never could have guessed,” Monty returned with an irritating amount of cheer. “You appear so calm and unruffled. A veritable ray of sunshine.”
He ground his molars. “I don’t suppose you could take your lemonade and your jokes elsewhere?”
“I could,” Monty said agreeably. “But watching you drown in jealousy is a damned fine sport, old chap.”
“Jealousy?” He laughed, the sound bitter even to his own ears. “I’m hardly jealous of a sad clod like Rearden. Look at him, his hair is beginning to thin.”
Monty made an elaborate show of squinting toward the sea of dancers. “His hair looks thick as ever to me.”
“It’s thinning,” he insisted, though he wasn’t sure why. It was petty of him, and he didn’t like to think he was susceptible to such an unworthy sense of spite.
“Admit it,” Monty said quietly, his countenance sobering. “You’re falling in love with your wife.”
Falling in love?
Hardly.
That couldn’t happen with such haste. They had been married for mere weeks. Glorious weeks, it was true, but that was hardly sufficient time for such a vast development.
In lust? Yes, and decidedly so. And he was incredibly fond of her; their lovemaking and the tender moments they had shared were unlike anything he’d experienced before. Like the greedy bastard he was, he wanted more of them. Wanted more of her smiles, her kisses, her laughter, her touch.
But in love? It wasn’t as if he spent his every waking hour either with Bess or thinking about when he could return to her side…
Oh damn it, very well. Hediddo that.
“His nose is far too long,” he grumbled, still insulting Rearden, this time to deflect from Monty’s alarmingly valid assertion.
It wasn’t that he didn’t want to fall in love, or that he believed himself incapable of that finer emotion. It was merely that love felt heavy. It felt as large as the sky above them. It felt like something he was wholly unprepared for. Christ, he could scarcely recall most of the years of his life. What did he know about love?
“His nose looks reasonably proportional to me,” Monty said.
