“It would have been ajointravishing, my dear sir.”
He laughed, the sheer joy of the sound making her laugh, too. He shifted her closer, his free hand twining with hers, his face tilted toward her so she could look deeply into those brown eyes flecked with green. This man who, against all odds, was her husband.
Surely there was no one anywhere as happy as she was now.
CHAPTER 17
Neither of them thought to set an alarm. It was past nine when he opened his eyes, and since there was no way to make it to Sunday services on time (with a grin, he imagined Pastor Hattington calling that “appalling but understandable”), he pressed closer to Beatrix and reveled in the luxury of lying in a bed she was in. Particularly since she was in the bed clothed in nothing whatsoever.
He wanted to trace the contours of her torso, arms, legs, to touch every part of her that had so long been off-limits to him. But he didn’t want to wake her, so he levered onto an elbow and looked instead. The room was warm and the sheets were down around her shins, leaving nearly all of her to gaze at.
“Mm,” Beatrix said after a while, her eyes fluttering open. She gave him a sleepy smile. “Good morning.”
“Yes,” he said, grinning back at her. “A very good morning.”
Her lips quirked in amusement but then she looked down, winced, and pulled the sheets to her neck. Clearly, he shouldn’t have left her uncovered.
“You’re cold,” he said apologetically.
“No, I—” She screwed up her face and sighed. “It struck me last night that what you saw dreamside was almost certainly a less flawed version of my body, and I wanted to put off the moment of truth. Which is ridiculous, obviously! But there it is. You have married a woman you thought had a dozen fewer moles than she actually has, and your wife, after taking pride in her lack of vanity, has discovered a deep store of it after all.”
“Hmm,” he said. He folded the covers at her feet. Then he bent to kiss a mole he recollected and three he didn’t, trailing down her right leg. “Do you know what I hated about dreamside?”
He sat up on his heels. She looked back at him, brow furrowed.
“I told you once, I believe,” he said. “I’d tried sleeping during the day to avoid it, and you asked me why.”
“Oh,” she said, her eyes unfocused, and he knew she was back in that moment at the brewing table when he’d said he wanted her. The real her, not the mirror-world counterfeit.
“I never thought dreamside was anything but artificial,” he said, taking her hand. “I mean, good God, show me a man in his thirties who’s ready for a second round fifteen minutes after the first one.” It suddenly struck him that she wouldhave no source of information on that score. “Uh—I hope you weren’t expecting?—”
“No, no.” The smile was back on her face, beautiful in its crookedness. “But how about … now? Would now be a good time?”
Twenty minutes later, he lay spent on the bed, fighting drowsiness by watching her dress. “Come here,” he said as she struggled with her corset. He pushed himself into a sitting position and laced her up. “Is this as uncomfortable as it looks?”
“Worse. And it’s all the magiocracy’s fault.”
He grinned. “Seriously?”
“Well, in a roundabout sort of way,” she said. “Corsets went out of fashion during and for a while after the World War, you know. Wizards’ wives and daughters brought the style back in the ’30s. Everyone wanted to look like them, I suppose, and by the time we were born, the alternatives were long gone.”
He kissed her jaw. “So the magiocracy is the reason you can’t ever take a full breath while clothed.”
“Or run up a hill. Or do anything more physical than walking without feeling as if I might burst. It’s a fashion conspiracy, I tell you.”
“Well, revolt,” he said. “Refuse to wear it.”
“Don’t think I haven’t considered it. But no dress fits properly without one. Also, Rosemarie and Lydia would hit the roof. ‘We must respect all the reasonable expectations of blah de-blah blah.’”
He laughed helplessly into her neck.
“And you know Rydell would notice,” she added gloomily.
He groaned. “Speaking of which, we’d better go see what he’s written.”
All four of the newspapers on their doorstep ran the story of their wedding on the front page. None of those pieces had any fodder for heartburn, but then, none were written by Rydell. He turned to Rydell’s column, bracing himself—and was surprised to find nothing about them. TheWILD WIZARD PARTYin the headline referred to an out-of-control bash a few days earlier involving students at the Academy in Arlington.
Beatrix stared at it. “Uh oh.”
