He gave a hoarse laugh, pushing himself onto one elbow before rolling heavily to his side. He drew her with him so that she lay tucked close against his chest. “Well – was it as dreadful as the stories would have it?”
“It was,” Hetty said thoughtfully, “enlightening.”
Theo chuckled, brushing a lock of hair from her brow. “Is that your polite way of confessing it was not entirely dreadful?”
“It was rather splendid, in truth. Though perhaps,” she added, feigning earnest reflection, “we ought to attempt it once more. To be certain.”
Another rough laugh burst from him, though he winced at the motion. “My darling girl, I fear my ribs are engaged in open rebellion. You must allow your champion a brief respite, lest he perish in your service.”
She hummed in mock sympathy and pushed away from him. “Then I shall fetch us a bite to eat,” she declared, swinging her legs from the bed and seizing his discarded shirt, which she promptly pulled over her head. The garment dwarfed her, slipping rakishly from one shoulder in a fashion that made Theo groan aloud.
Hetty turned, frowning, and placed a tentative hand between her thighs. “Good heavens. Why am I so… sticky?”
Theo made a strangled sound as he choked on air.
Her eyes flew to his, narrowing at once. “You promised you would not laugh.”
“I am not laughing,” he replied with desperate solemnity. “I am…suffering.”
“You are smirking, Theo.”
“I am grimacing,” he insisted gravely. “The wound, you know – most devilishly painful. It twinges.”
She regarded him with scepticism. “Then perhaps, sir, you will condescend to explain what, precisely, this… substance is?” She gestured vaguely, mortified.
He cleared his throat. “That, my dearest, would be… the consequences of… my – ah – satisfaction.”
She stared at him. “Your what?”
“My…conclusion,” he said, with all the gravity of a man delivering a eulogy.
Hetty’s mouth parted in dawning horror. “But surely you do not mean – That cannot possibly –Oh, isthathow – ?” She broke off, quite unable to finish the sentence.
Theo arched a brow. “My love, how did you imagine children were conceived upon the marriage bed?”
“Good Lord,” she managed, bolting from the room in a flurry of limbs and linen. “I require sustenance this instant.”
She could hear Theo laughing in earnest now, one arm flung across his eyes. He was quite at ease, stretched in all the disarray of their marriage bed, while she fled in mortification at the mere notion of harbouring her husband’s seed.
Maddening, incorrigible man.Even in her outrage, she knew he would delight in having so thoroughly discomposed her, for it was his peculiar gift to be at once the most provoking and impossible of creatures, and vexingly, the one whom she could not help but adore beyond all reason.
—♥—
Hetty returned bearing a tray full of what could only be described as a haphazard but spirited collection of provisions: a round of cheese, two somewhat bruised apples, a pot of quince preserves and an uncorked bottle of claret with two mismatched goblets clinking precariously beside it. She nudged the door open with her foot, feeling quite triumphant.
“You have a criminal lack of biscuits in this establishment,” she announced, setting the tray at the foot of the bed with great ceremony. “For a moment I quite despaired, convinced you lived in some dreadful state of bachelor monasticism. Indeed, I had begun tosuspect you kept no servants at all –though, upon reflection, I suppose they merely heard us and wisely withdrew to their quarters.”
Theo stirred, lifting himself against the pillows with the slow caution of a man nursing an injury. The sheet remained draped debaucherously about his waist in a manner that made her grin.
“I did not expect to be feeding such a ravenous woman under my roof.”
“Our roof,” she corrected, settling herself cross-legged beside him and reaching for the cheese. “And you ought to have known it by now. I am ever hungry for biscuits. It is practically the chief distinction of my character.”
They ate in companionable silence – the rarest sort, born not of want for words, but of an ease between two friends long acquainted.
Hetty bit into an apple and chewed thoughtfully. “It is very quiet here.”
Theo glanced up at her. “Do you dislike it?”
