The fear of not knowing what she looked like was eclipsed by something hot and disturbing. No wonder she’d run away with him.
He licked his lips and then shook his head. Released from the intimate moment, Tabetha’s heart slowed back to its normal pace when he crossed to the bureau. When he returned with the handheld looking glass, despite his reassuring words, she hesitated before taking it from him.
“Doctor Finch charged me with keeping you calm. I wouldn’t allow you so much as a peek if I thought this would upset you.” He nudged it into her hand.
Believing him, she raised it to her face.
She exhaled the breath she hadn’t even realized she’d been holding.
“It’s a wonder you haven’t run screaming from the room.” She grimaced. “And the cat too.”
Because her hair did look as though a nest had been built in it. But it was a pleasing color. And although she’d have preferred her eyes to be blue, they were wide and fringed with thick lashes. Not an offensive nose, pert, rather, and full lips with a cupid’s bow—almost too full but acceptable. All in all, she could have discovered much worse.
“Satisfied?” He stood watching her, shifting his weight from one foot to the other, showing a restlessness that struck her as being familiar.
“Have you always teased me so?” But she smiled up at him. His jesting, rather than provoke her, made her feel special. A memory flickered—a voice telling her that boys only teased the girls they preferred—but then melted away like mist in the sun.
“I like teasing you.” He sat at the foot of the bed, keeping his hands to himself—distant.
“You seem… distracted. Is it because you are worried? I promise I’m going to recover. I can feel it. My memories are there, I just can’t reach them.” Tabetha smiled, hoping to bolster his mood.
By the look on his face, it was easy to see that he was still blaming himself—wrongly. But it was her fault. She was the one who’d left their room. She looked down at her gown and frowned. “Why did I attempt to go downstairs in my dressing gown?”
The thought had bothered her a few times when she’d woken up during the night.
“We had an argument.” He closed his eyes. “And you wanted your own chamber.”
She sat silently. What was so horrible that it would have sent her running from the room after being married only one day?
“What were we arguing about?” She wished she could summon the reason herself.
The cat, Archie, hopped off the chair where he’d been perched, and then jumped onto the bed and settled on Rock’s lap.
Rock’s hand looked large and strong as he stroked the cat’s loose but downy skin. “You are determined to dress Archimedes like a baby. I told you it was emasculating.”
“We were arguing over the cat?” This was hard to believe.
He moved Archie onto the bed and then crossed the room to a pile of packages stacked in the corner. After rummaging through a few of them, he lifted out a lacy gown, made for either a doll or…
A cat.
And the cat did appear almost indecent in his nakedness… It was not that outrageous for her to have wanted to clothe him.
“You can be obstinate when you want to be…” Her husband pulled out a second garment, this one a delicate pink.
“Oh…” She blushed. “Still, it seems petty of me.”
Rock’s eyes shuttered as he rose, the lacy costumes looking conspicuously feminine in his capable-looking hands.
“Not petty. I never should have let you leave the room like that.”
“I’m sorry. For arguing with you over something so ridiculous. Will you forgive me?”
He tossed the little dresses onto the table and then rubbed a hand through his hair. “You’ve nothing to be sorry about. Tabetha. You need to know…” He returned and lowered himself onto the bed again.
“Then we will put it behind us.” Her hand went up to halt any more apologies.
She glanced down at the floor where the cat was grooming himself and swallowed hard. Rock was all she had for now. He was her entire world.
