Holding his lady as she’d slept had been a bliss beyond all telling.
But now the cold gray of a new morn crept ever deeper into the shuttered bedchamber behind him, its damp chill stealing the wonders of the night.
The time of reckoning was upon him, the first being the highly suspicious puddle in the middle of his pallet. The wetness winked at him the instant he’d slipped into the ante-room just moments ago.
Nay, limped, not slipped, for allowing his lady’s puddle-piddling pet to spend the night sprawled across his ankles had put his feet to sleep.
Such was his lot.
But with Lady Caterine as his prize, he wouldn’t complain. He did rumple his nose at the wet spot.
The little dog had a skewed way of showing gratitude, and he was of a mind to have a word with the wee beastie. But he had more pressing matters to attend, and he’d best be about them before his lady awakened and caught him at it.
Some things weren’t meant for a woman’s fair eyes.
Especially when the woman in question was the one a man sought to impress.
Thus motivated, Marmaduke tried to pretend he didn’t feel as if a thousand needle-footed insects marched over the soles of his feet, and knelt beside the large leather satchel he kept near his pallet.
A pouch that held a few of his most prized possessions.
His mouth pressed into a grim line, he rummaged through the pouch’s contents until he found what he sought: a bronze mirror of great beauty and antiquity he’d once recovered from the oozing mud bank of a Highland peat bog, and a plumpish earthen jar of Linnet MacKenzie’s special ragwort salve.
She called the bright yellow ointment a beauty treatment.
He liked to think of it as an anti-scar unguent.
By any name, after long years of daily use, the highly effective healing preparation had diminished the most frightening effects of his scarring, relaxing his facial muscles enough for him to re-learn the wholly underestimated art of being able to smile.
Though he’d never regain the handsomeness he’d once been so proud of, thanks to the miraculous workings of Lady Linnet’s salve, he no longer looked as if he’d been cross-bred with a toad.
Marmaduke curled his fingers around the little jar, his gratitude heavy in his heart.
He never went anywhere without an ample supply, and not a day passed that he didn’t rub a dollop of the precious wonder cream onto his blighted face.
This morn he’d splurge and use two dollops.
Bracing himself for the sight that never failed to smite him, he pushed to his feet and carried his treasures to the nearest window slit.
Once there, he used one hand to grip the mirror’s intricately worked triple-looped handle, angling its polished surface to catch what watery light spilled through the narrow window. Then he began massaging a generous portion of the ragwort salve onto his scar.
In two days he’d marry again, and he needed all the miracles he could get, for the same muscles that allowed him to smile, also enabled him to kiss well.
And he meant to kiss his lady very, very well at the nuptial ceremony.
He’d already won a goodly portion of her trust, even access to her sweet body.
Leastways through the precious, and stirring, glimpses she’d allowed him. Her willingness to abandon restraint, to be so free with him, was the greatest gift. Carnal heat, the intense, irresistible flame of passion, was potent, its pleasure undeniable, but…
He wanted more.
He wanted her heart.
And a curl-her-toes-and-steal-her-breath wedding kiss seemed a good way to begin laying siege to the one thing she’d vowed she couldn’t give him…her affections.
Her love.
The saints knew she already had his.
