“Vivi, tell me,” he urged.
“You promised.”
But she looked so damned helpless, alone in her ivory chemise.
“I’ll not go when you’re in such a state,” he told her. “Something is amiss, and I want to know what it is.”
“It’s the water,” she blurted, her eyes gleaming in the gaslight.
And suddenly, instantly, he understood. Understood because he’d suffered the same crushing fears when he had traveled across the ocean after Percy’s drowning.
“You’re afraid of it,” he guessed.
She bit her lip, looking conflicted, wrapping her arms around herself in a protective gesture. “Water makes me think of Percy. Of how he would have suffered. When the tub is too full, it haunts me. I feel as if I can’t breathe, and my heart gallops. Nelson knows. She fills the tub with only as much water as I’ll need for bathing.”
Christ.
All this time he had been away, thinking himself the broken one, fearing he was all wrong for her, and he should have been here at her side, helping her to heal. Because he saw all too clearly now that Vivi was every bit as shattered inside as he was.
Without further thought, he stalked to the tub, turning the tap that called for hot water and letting it splash into the mostly empty basin. And then he turned back to her, plucking his own buttons from their moorings, shrugging his wet coat to the floor.
She watched him with wide eyes. “What are you doing, Court?”
He held her stare. “I’m getting into that tub with you, and I’m going to hold you in my arms and show you that you’re safe with me. That I’ll protect you always. That I—”
He had been about to say that he loved her, but he cut himself off, emotion churning inside him with a rawness that he didn’t trust. This was only his second day home from abroad. There would be time aplenty for emotions, and he had promised himself that he would be patient with her.
“That you what?” she pressed, still lingering by the threshold, looking so bloody alone that he could scarcely bear to look at her.
“That I suffered from the same fear,” he confessed instead. “I drank myself half to death when I crossed the ocean for the first time after Percy’s drowning. But succumbing to our fears doesn’t help us to overcome them. Facing them does.”
Worry lined her face. “I don’t know if I’m ready to face them.”
He removed his waistcoat, toed off his boots, methodically stripping himself before her. “We’ll do it together.”
CHAPTER9
Vivi stared at Court, drinking in the glory of his masculine frame as he stood next to the rapidly filling tub without a stitch to hide his body from her avid gaze. He had shed all his wet garments down to his smalls. She had thought for a moment that he might leave them on for modesty’s sake. But then, his long fingers had been flying over the last of the buttons keeping him clothed, and he had dropped his damp smalls as well. He stood before her now, as perfectly chiseled as any antiquity.
But alive instead of fashioned from cold, lifeless marble. Oh, so very alive.
He was lean and strong, his chest broad, lightly dappled with dark hair that trailed down his flat stomach as if it were an arrow pointing directly to his cock. Good heavens, he was a beautiful man. Feeling wicked, she allowed her gaze to follow that arrow, finding him long and thick and stiff. She felt an answering ache between her legs, the lingering memory of how he had felt inside her.
And for a moment, she forgot her fear of the water. But then he turned off the tap and slung a long leg over the side of the basin and then the other. He was standing in the tub, waiting for her to join him.
Her mouth went dry.
Court extended his hand to her. “Come.”
“I…” Her words trailed off, and she licked her lips, her errant gaze once more lingering on a certain portion of his anatomy that leapt to attention beneath her eager regard.
“You,” he prompted gently.
What had she been saying? His nudity robbed her of the ability to speak. Her fear of water thieved her capacity to properly think. Altogether, she was lost.
“You’re safe here with me,” he said soothingly, his voice low and deep and poignantly familiar. “You can trust me, sweetheart. Take off the rest of your garments and place your hand in mine.”
Could she trust him?
