Ariadne traced her hand over the covers that were piled high, and as she touched them, they felt and smelled freshly laundered. She meandered through the room, peering through the windows at the land beyond. She spotted the coaching stable and a pasture where some horses roamed and foraged.
She absently heard when the footmen deposited their bags inside, and he bid them a good evening.
“I’ve arranged for your meals,” Cedric told the coachman. “We’re leaving off early on the morrow as well. I aim to get back to my home by noon.”
“Yes, Your Grace.” The coachman bowed.
He closed the door, and she began to pull her gloves and coat off, then turned to see Cedric pulling his shirt off. Her breath stopped in her lungs. His skin was a mosaic of scars, some silvery and faded, and some not.
Shocked into silence, her eyes roamed over the permanent grooves, welts of his scars on his back, and a long, discolored swatch from his left shoulder down to his hip. She could not imagine how one could bear such atrocious pain that made those scars.
She swallowed. “Your G— Cedric? Do you usually disrobe before women so easily?”
He turned, and a twinge of regret flickered over his face, but it soon vanished. She gazed in awe at the muscular breadth of his shoulders, the granite slabs of his chest, and the strip of hair over his sectioned abdomen. He was taut and sinewy everywhere; not an ounce of fat anywhere on him.
“I apologize. It’s an old habit of mine.” He hauled his bag onto a chair and rifled through it to pull out a banyan.
Ariadne asked. “How long were you in the sickbed after the fire?”
He tugged his lapels together and belted the robe. “Much longer than I’d wanted,” he said. “It took me almost half a year to recover.”
From the stiff tone in his voice, she knew she had rubbed a still raw nerve and decided not to press the issue. Busying herself pulling out the garments that she intended to wear after her bath. Apprehension spiked in her at the thought of sharing a bed with a man when she had never done so before.
She rested her things down just as someone knocked on the door. Cedric answered it and had a small conversation with what she assumed was a worker for the inn. “Thank you.”
He crossed the room and pulled open a door that led to a small bathing chamber. The room was plain except for the two large tubs in the middle of the room, the shelves for towels, and two stools.
Waves of steam rose from the hot water, and she turned to him, “Who will go first, you or shall I?”
“You will,” he said as he nodded. “Don’t worry, little mouse, you will not be bathing in my presence, and I will not be bathing in yours.”
“Thank you,” she replied while scooping her towel and night clothes off the bed and then stepped into the bathing chamber, locking the door after her.
While nursing a glass of wine sent up before the meal, Cedric considered his next move on how to manage this marriage with Ariadne and hunting down his snake of a brother.
What to do about Ariadne when he found her too attractive for his own good? After Helena’s lies and betrayal, he truly had no desire to marry and had a difficult time trusting women’s true intent.
Did she really end up on Leander’s bed by mistake? She was still ill the next day, though. It could have been a real illness.
The door to the bathing chamber opened, and Ariadne appeared dressed in a shapeless night rail—Good god, which circus tent did she steal that from? The hideous thing was voluminous with a battalion of buttons down her chest, safeguarding her virtue.
She smiled, “I did my best to wash quickly so your water would still be warm.”
“Why, thank you for such consideration,” he threw back the rest of his drink. “The serving girls will come soon with the meal. Please keep an eye out for them.”
After shucking the dressing gown, he paused to roll up a small towel to rest on the lip of the tub before sinking inside the warmwater. Closing his eyes, his head resting against the towel, his sinewy arm draped along its edge.
Despite her painful innocence and fresh beauty, Ariadne was a creature of strong passions. There was no way he had mistaken the way her bosom had risen and fallen, those pillowy lips of hers parting with each breath. Though she might not recognize the welcoming signs of her own body, he did.
His gut knotted as he thought of Helena, the woman he’d once thought he loved. The woman whose betrayal had destroyed him inside and out. An undoubtedly blond, blue-eyed angel, but beneath her charming exterior, she’d been a manipulative gorgon.
Day in and day out, while she had increased with his child, she had accused him of infidelity with any woman who crossed his path. It did not matter if she was a Marchioness or a milkmaid—only for him to find out that she had held a lover herself.
The one question that lingered for years—who was that man?
The letter Allan had found had told him she was planning to leave him to run off with her lover… but not once had she mentioned the man’s name.
It was the cooling water that stirred him to finish washing and then step out and dry. Donning a loose shirt and trousers, he stepped out to find Ariadne resting a tray of plates on the small round table in the corner of the room.
