“Just in this,” she said. “If you were with me often. If we could sleep together often and lay abed in the mornings together. James is always complaining about how he cannot do this. I wish to enjoy it since I have the freedom to.”
I wished she wouldn’t talk about her brother in this moment, especially not her brother’s, erm, activities, but I did not chide her. Truly, I could not have said a single negative thing to her in that moment. “All right, we shall be scandalous, then,” I said. “At least today, of all days, I think it must be allowed.”
“Mmm.” She ran her small, delicate fingertips over my bare chest and I could not have imagined a sensation like that nor how much it would seem to rend my heart to feel her touch, feel the way she loved and accepted me, the way it felt to have a creature such as her find me pleasing. “You said we shall be in London for a few weeks. What shall we be doing?”
“Dinners, mostly,” I said. “We are invited to dine with my aunt and uncle, the Earl and Countess of Matlock, and we shall dine with my sister Miss Darcy a number of times. We have several more engagements and at least one last ball to attend, likely the last ball in London before everyone is gone for the summer. I wish to show you off.”
“Show me off?” This delighted her. “I shall do my best to be worthy of that.”
“Oh, you are,” I breathed. “I am in awe of you, Mrs. Darcy.”
“And you’re ever so much more swoonworthy when I am pressed here against you and your shoulders are exceedinglyintriguing bare, and I am enamored of that little trail of hair that goes straight over your belly button, all the way to your—”
I kissed her, partly because she was making me feel that floating feeling and partly because I felt she was being a bit too, erm, exuberant, and I was not certain that was the proper way a wife should be about it. On the other hand, perhaps I didn’t care. Perhaps I wanted her to use her fingers to follow that trail of hair to wherever it ended up. Perhaps I wanted simply to give in to the joy of her, give no care to anysenseof propriety.
She giggled into my mouth. “Oh, I think you are eager for me, are you not?”
I reached down and dislodged her hand, firmly but gently. “Mrs. Darcy,” I panted. “It is daylight. Your maid could walk in. We must not…”
“No?” she said, blinking at me. “Apologies, then.” Then she gave me her sunbeam smile. “You are ever so prim, are you not, husband?”
Prim.
I threw aside the covers.
“Where are you going?” she called.
“To lock the door,” I growled.
I was not prim.
My very winsome wife pointed out, when we arrived (rather late) at the breakfast table, that if she was to be shown off, she would likely need more dresses than the ones she had brought with her, and I smiled at her across the table.
“Would dresses please you?”
Her cheeks reddened in pleasure. “I do not need a number of dresses, of course, and I do not wish to be a bother or an expense—”
“That is not what I asked. I asked if my very beautiful wife would be pleased with dresses.”
She let out a laugh that was like the sunrise itself. “Yes.”
“Then dresses you shall have,” I said, and we set about making this happen.
I took her to the modiste, who took her measurements and let her ooh and ahh over fabrics, and whenever she said that something might be too much expense or too extravagant, I spoke up to contradict her and to say that my wife should have whatever it was that she wanted.
When we were on the way back, in the carriage, she kissed me, gasping against my lips that I was too good to her, and I had to stop her hands from where they wandered.
“Not in a carriage,” I told her, but I was gasping, too.
Why had I said that I had married her? Because she was fearless? Because I wished to be fearless too?
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Shewasfearless, my new wife.
When we went to the opera, she had read the libretto of it before we arrived, and she explained to me excitedly all about the story, and people around us gave us looks, and I shushed her.
In the carriage ride back, she asked me about it, her voice small. “It wasn’t during the performance or anything. Was I simply boring you with it? Sometimes I go on and on about things, I know. I’ve been told I should not, because no one else is remotely interested.”
