“As you wish it, Your Royal Highness.” She rose from the bed, shaking out the banyan he had given her to wear, which was rather voluminous, given her size compared to his.
If he did not want her to pry in his affairs, then she would treat him with the formality she knew he despised.
“Eleanora.”
She moved across the chamber, intent upon finding one of her new dressing gowns and donning that instead.
“I’ve angered you.”
She said nothing. His voice was near. Eleanora turned back to find him hovering over her, his expression pained.
“Forgive me, please. It wasn’t my intention to speak so crossly. It is merely that I don’t wish to have such a serious discussion on a day that is meant to be nothing but happy.”
He was a man well accustomed to having his own way in all things. A prince, for heaven’s sake. Worry settled over her yet again. How would they make this marriage work? Would he eventually grow bored or tired of her? What would she do when his attentions inevitably strayed? She couldn’t bear to think of it. She ought to have known how far she was out of her depths with him. Only a fool would have agreed to this union.
“I forgive you, and you are right, of course. We should leave such a heavy conversation for another day,” she relented, forcing a smile.
He took her hands in his. “You are thinking again. I have not distracted you sufficiently. I don’t like to see you frowning so.”
Perhaps his plan was to distract her, to seduce her. To wash away her concerns.
I want you to be mine, he had told her when he had asked her to marry him. And at the time, she had been warmed by the possession in his voice, by the notion that Nando should want her with such ferocity. Now, she began to wonder whether he had simply wanted to marry her because it had been the only way he would be able to bed her as often as he liked.
He kissed her swiftly, chasing the lingering worries for now. Nando was the sun banishing the clouds, shining bright and hot. She wrapped her arms around his lean waist and held him tightly, hoping her worries were for naught.
Either way, she was going to have to make certain she kept a firm distance between them. She couldn’t afford to risk her heart with a man who would never give her his own.
Nando wokeup at dawn to Benvolio purring on his pillow and an empty place beside him where Eleanora should have been.
Also, to the glaring realization that he had been an arse the night before.
He had dismissed her concern—not because it was unwarranted, but because it was an unpleasant subject. One he didn’t want to think about on their wedding day, a day that was to have solely been devoted to making her come as many times and in as many ways as he possibly could. The thought did nothing to assuage the morning cockstand he was currently sporting.
“Benvolio, go sleep somewhere that doesn’t involve my head, won’t you?” he grumbled to the cat through the murky shadows.
Once again, there was errant fur tickling his cheek.
And, in typical feline fashion, Benvolio refused to move. Because as far as the cat was concerned,hewas the master of the house.
Eleanora had slept in her chamber last night. It ought not to bother him, the distance between them. He had never slept with any of his lovers unless he had been thoroughly sotted. Such intimacy was the sort that he avoided at all costs, even if he had no qualms about burying his face between a woman’s thighs.
Emotion, sentiment, a sense of familiarity too uncomfortable for him to allow—these were what he had managed to avoid for one-and-thirty years of carousing and wenching his way through life. Clinging women bored him. Women who told him they loved him—and there had been many—made him itchy.
Now, he was the one who had fallen in love. What an astounding turn of circumstances.
Benvolio stretched and yawned, leaving one of his paws draped indolently over Nando’s nose.
“Damn you, feline,” he muttered, gently removing the paw before sitting up. “You’re fortunate I’ve grown inordinately fond of you, else I would relegate you to the kitchens.”
Benvolio yawned, looking distinctly unconcerned.
As well he might. They both knew that Nando couldn’t live without the little beggar. Saving Benvolio from the street had been one of the best things Nando had ever done.
That and making Eleanora his wife.
At the renewed thought of her, Nando hastily donned a banyan, leaving Benvolio to further slumber on his bed without him. He knocked gently at the door adjoining his chamber to Eleanora’s, not wishing to wake her if she was still sleeping.
“Come,” she called softly.
