Their mother narrowed her eyes. “Well, one thing is for certain—you’re not going to torment her any further.”
She grasped Robin by the shoulder and led him away with surprising strength. All Robin could do was cast a pleading look over his shoulder.
Rosalie stood by the door, trembling. Part of her was relieved that she hadn’t been forced to hear about whatever dastardly thing Lucian had done.
But part of her also thought that perhaps she ought to have listened.
“Rosalie?”
She looked up to see Lucian standing before her, his arm outstretched. He looked almost absurdly handsome in his wedding finery.
Oh, God. What had she done? She was married to this man, and suddenly, she felt as if she didn’t know him at all.
Giving him a tight smile, Rosalie accepted his arm and allowed him to lead her out the door and into an uncertain future.
Chapter Twenty-Five
They did not leave the master bedchamber for four entire days.
For all that they had done together over the years, Rosalie had never seen her husband fully nude. Needless to say, Lucian remedied this within the first minute of their entering the master bedchamber at Deverell House. He looked like one of the sculptures at the British Museum, not overly bulky, but with beautiful, well-defined muscles covering every inch of his body. She hesitated even to touch him at first, so much did he resemble a living, breathing work of art. Lucian would have none of that, of course, and demanded to have her hands all over him. And when he pulled her naked body to him and pressed it against his… Rosalie had no words to describe the pleasure.
Rosalie had thought Lucian skilled before, but their previous encounters were a pale shadow of what he was capable of doing when he was not confined to a closet or a cold stone bench. Lucian was everything that was solicitous, both during and between the marriage act. It seemed that he took the “With my body, I thee worship” portion of the marriage vows veryseriously indeed, and he brought Rosalie to climax, with both his mouth and his cock between her legs, over and over again.
But even when they were not in the throes of passion, he was everything she could have hoped for in a bridegroom. He held her in his arms. He told her over and over again how delightful he found her, and how happy he was that they were married at last. Rosalie could detect no trace of insincerity. He hung on her every word, laughed at every ridiculous story she told about her childhood, and asked her hundreds of questions, as if he wanted to know everything about her. He even bathed her and washed her hair, literally waiting on her hand and foot! Although he may have had ulterior motives for his ministrations ended in yet another vigorous bout of lovemaking.
They should have been the happiest days of her life. And yet, she found herself unable to relax, unable to fully trust him. She had believed he cared for her once before, only to have him utter the cruelest words imaginable a few days later. How could she be certain he would not do it again? And what had Robin uncovered?
Speaking of Robin, he called upon them every day. Lucian’s butler, Collins, let them know each day when the servants entered the room with a breakfast tray and to put fresh sheets on the bed.
Sitting at the table by the window, dressed in his banyan, Lucian always laughed. “It’s good of him to check on his sister. But we’re not yet ready to receive callers.” He swept Rosalie with a lurid look. “Please reassure my brother-in-law that I am seeing to his sister’s every need.”
Rosalie always forced a laugh. But inside, her heart pounded. What could Robin be so desperate to tell her?
On the fourth day after their wedding, Rosalie awoke early. Pale light filtered from around the edges of the curtains. The thought crossed her sleepy mind that it was Valentine’s Day.
She tried to roll over and go back to sleep, but she couldn’t seem to settle. That was when she detected a faint tapping sound against the window.
Slipping from the warm cocoon of the bedclothes, she tiptoed across the room. She drew the curtains back an inch and peered outside.
Snow had fallen overnight. Robin stood in the garden below, his arm drawn back as if to throw something. A pebble, Rosalie realized. That had been the tapping sound that had awoken her.
She opened the window. “Robin!” she hissed. “What are you doing here?”
“I need to speak with you,” he said. “It’s urgent!”
Rosalie glanced across the room. Lucian was still abed, looking rumpled and somehow even more handsome with the dark stubble that had formed upon his jaw.
She turned back to Robin. “I can’t just leave.”
“Come down,” he pleaded. “Just for five minutes.”
She blew out a breath. “Oh, all right. But just for five minutes!”
She shut the window, then slipped through the connecting door that led to the viscountess’s chamber. She hastily pulled on the simple white cotton morning dress her maid had laid out for her. Her everyday cloaks were downstairs in a closet near the front door, but she found an evening cloak of pale blue velvet in the wardrobe that would do in a pinch.
She did not yet know her way around Deverell House very well, but she found the back servants’ stairs easily enough. She managed to slip downstairs and out into the garden without encountering anyone.
Her feet turned to ice immediately in the thin slippers she had stepped into, but she hurried over to her brother. “Quick,” he said, taking her hand and leading her to a little gazebo set away from the house.
