“I beg your pardon, my lord,” he stammered. “But—will you be wanting dinner?”
Dinner. I blinked at him. My stomach had gone all tight and achy. “No, just tea in my room,” I said wearily, and climbed the stairs.
The next afternoon found me staring at the wooden box that held my remaining potions, still weary and still sick to my stomach, and also red-eyed and lethargic from a night spent tossing and turning and trying to pretend I wasn’t listening for my husband’s footsteps. I never heard them. At dawn I’d finally succumbed to a few hours of total unconsciousness.
And now I faced the utterly humiliating necessity of asking a servant if my husband could be found in the house after his night out. My curse had started to seethe within me, twisting my insides, my skin prickling with heat. My magic had become stronger but more erratic. I’d been practicing the light globe the Lord Chancellor’s mage had taught me, and this morning it’d blazed in my palm, larger than before, and then deformed and exploded into mist when I tried to control it.
Despite the frustration, I’d never felt the way I did when my magic flowed out through my arm from that center Lord Benedict had found, my mind soaring and my veins singing. Losing it now would’ve been like losing the arm itself, not merely what the limb could do. But keeping it meant…
I opened the box and took out a bottle. One sniff of the contents made me retch.
My heart sank and gave a pathetic flutter at the same instant. Stefan would have to touch me. Take me. Spread my legs and fill me…
No point in putting it off. Although—I hadn’t bathed since last night. One of the books I’d found in the abbey library had a chapter on the use of magic for hygiene, broken down into sections for every one of the body’s various orifices. I’d read it with my hand half over my eyes, and I still couldn’t believe anyone would dothatto his own nose. But damn it, now I could see the possibilities of using magic to get perfectly clean.
But I didn’t have the skill for that yet, and so back to the bathtub I went.
Scrubbed, flushed, flustered, and damp, I emerged half an hour later. I’d wrapped myself in a dressing gown, as real clothing and nudity both seemed wrong. I rang the bell. Two seconds later, Aldrich knocked on the door, much more forcefully than usual.
But when I called out to him, it was Stefan who stepped through the door, shut it firmly behind him, and turned the key in the lock.
My shock must’ve shown on my too-expressive face. “Your valet’s prone to walking in and chastising me like he’s the lord and I’m his servant,” Stefan said, tone so dry I couldn’t tell if he was angry or amused. “Let’s avoid that this time, hmm?”
“What are you doing here?” I stammered, tugging the neck of my dressing gown closed. A burning flush flooded mycheeks and chest, shimmering down my limbs, pooling between my legs. “Why were you—” I cut myself off before I could finish the sentence.Lurking in the hallwaysounded both accusatory and insane.
His cheeks had possibly gone slightly pink too, but he shrugged and said, “I happened to be walking by. Saw the light. Thought you might be looking for me soon, what with…” He gestured vaguely, as if to encompass my curse, my needy body, the poisoning that had made my potions malfunction, and the way I stood there all sweaty and panting despite my recent bath.
The same rope that rang a bell in the kitchen also flashed a small alchemical light set over the door, a convenience for those times when a servant might be waiting in the hall and need a summons that wouldn’t wake the whole upstairs. Stefan certainlycouldhave been walking by at that precise moment. Although the lights over the bedroom doors weren’t terribly noticeable when daylight came in through the windows at either end of the corridor.
It didn’t matter. I could only be grateful that I hadn’t had to send a servant in search of him. “Yes,” I said. “It’s time. If it’s convenient.”
He sauntered forward, raising his eyebrows. “Convenience isn’t really a consideration, is it? I told you I’d be entirely at your disposal. And I am. I’d ask you how you want me to do this, but maybe you aren’t experienced enough yet to tell me?”
No, he was wrong about that. I knew exactly what I wanted: the Stefan who’d passionately overwhelmed me two days ago, knowing and curious and gentle and firm all at once. The Stefan I’d thought I could come to trust. Not a liar. Not this nonchalant, accommodating…gentleman.
When I met Stefan, I’d been horrified by his rudeness. Now I longed for it, along with all the other signs of the realman beneath the mask. I couldn’t argue with this man. This man wouldn’t cross the line I’d drawn to try to make an apology I’d accept.
This man was a stranger, the one I’d married. Not the one I’d started to get to know.
And even…start to like. Sometimes. For a moment or two. Before I knew how thoroughly he’d betrayed me.
The ache in the pit of my stomach ratcheted up to a pitch that vibrated my whole body.
“However you think is best,” I choked out. My hand tightened on the lapels of my dressing gown. “I can undress.”
Oh, gods, I couldn’t have sounded more stupid if I’d tried. Stefan’s eyes gleamed. With laughter? Or worse, desire that I couldn’t bring myself to acknowledge? Damn him!
“You could hike that thing up and bend over the side of the bed, instead,” he replied, with another of those maddening shrugs. “I won’t take more than a few minutes. As long as you’re comfortable, what?”
Comfortable.Comfortable?“Comfortable?” I demanded. “Bent over in a dressing gown? With my, my, exposed?”
“If you prefer it to being fully naked, then yes. As for the exposure, if there’s magic that lets me fuck you through fabric, you’ll have to make me aware of it.”
“Fine.” If he wanted to be difficult, not to mention sarcastic, then I saw no need to make it easier. Besides, if I buried my face in the bedding, he wouldn’t be able to see whatever it showed. Pain, or unhappiness, or pleasure, or wistfulness…no, I’d much prefer he didn’t see any of it.
I turned toward the bed. Now I had him behind me, still watching me, only now I couldn’t see his expression either. Not that I expected him to show much.
He remained completely silent as I bent over the side of the bed and awkwardly pulled up the dressing gown in the back.The cotton-lined silk hung in heavy folds and had to be bunched up around my waist, and I probably looked like a big lump of fabric with a thin ass and a pair of red-hair-dusted legs poking out. So alluring. Closing my eyes and bracing on my elbows, I did my best to relax, but as Stefan’s footsteps approached I was tense enough to snap in half. He didn’t even need to touch me. I’d break all on my own.
