“How may I be of service, Your Grace?”
“Where is my wife?”
“The duchess?”
“Have I another wife, Humphrey?”
A dull flush crept up from under the butler’s impeccably knotted tie. “No, Your Grace. You do not. I... I believe she remains in her bedchamber.”
In bed.
After their unexpected kiss (and more) in the blue room yesterday, Ambrose would have very much liked to see Mara in bed. And leaning over the bed. And pressed against the wall. And draped over the dresser.
He hadn’t been lying when he told Lord Calvern that Mara was cold as ice. While their embraces during the courtship had been warm, occasionally bordering on hot, their actual wedding night had been a lake in the middle of March after a snowstorm. She’d lain unmoving in the middle of the mattress with her eyes pinched shut and her brow furrowed, as if she were calculating difficult sums instead of enjoying the lovemaking of her husband.
Given that his experience in the bedroom was generally matched in the experience exhibited by his partner, Ambrose had found himself at somewhat of a loss as he’d attempted to coax his virgin bride to relax and return his kisses. In that loss, he’d been flooded by old familiar feelings of ineptitude and failure that had culminated in him storming from the chamber and slamming the door in his wake. A childish act that he’d regretted ever since, and he now felt better for having apologized... albeit belatedly.
After their failed wedding night, he’d left the next morning and had allowed four months to lapse before he paid Mara another visit.
They’d sat as strangers in the parlor, their hands clasped and their sentences short.
He’d inquired if she was liking her accommodations.
She had remarked that the weather was pleasant.
Any camaraderie, any sense of familiarity that had sparked between them before their wedding, was gone, and in its place stood a wall covered in frost-tipped thorns. A wall placed there by their mutual inability to discuss what had transpired on a night that had laid their insecurities bare.
Every month that passed, the wall grew higher.
The thorns grew sharper.
The frost spread.
Until last night, when he went looking for his missing cufflinks... and found his duchess in a dressing robe instead. But for all the heat that he’d coaxed out of her, and despite her wet quim closing like a vice around his fingers as she came, had she recanted her absurd plan to have an affair?
No.
No, she bloody well hadn’t.
Which in turn had driven him to strike a bargain with terms evenmoreabsurd!
“Have Mara brought to the solarium,” he ordered through clenched teeth. “My wife and I have matters to discuss.”
*
Unaware that shehad been summoned, Mara laid awake in bed as she wondered whether the events of yesterday—culminating in the explosion of passion in the blue parlor—had truly occurred or were a figment of her imagination.
Shewaslonely.
Terribly so.
And in her loneliness, shehadconjured a few illicit... fantasies. But with no more than her own personal knowledge to draw from, which was admittedly limited, they’d been little more than kisses and a few caresses. Nothing—nothing—like what had occurred yesterday, when Ambrose had played her body like a cello, coaxing note after note of wondrous pleasure from places on her skin that she hadn’t even known were capable of such... suchrapture. The things he’d done with his fingers—
On a squeak, Mara drew the covers over her head and buried underneath them like an animal taking refuge in its burrow. Unfortunately, there was no hiding from the loud, unannounced arrival of her sister when Kitty threw open the door, bounced across the room, and leapt onto the bed without a care for the early hour or the privacy it implied.
“Mara! You lump, wake up,” she said, shaking the covers.
“What is it?” Mara popped her head out wearing a frown. Normally she was able to tolerate Kitty’s selfish antics without annoyance, but this morning she’d wanted time to herself. Time to think, and to ponder, and to consider what difference—if any—the events of yesterday had on today and the days going forward.
