Page 19

“This is a marriage of convenience, Anna. A wedding night was never part of our arrangement.”

Anna felt her face heat further, but she held her ground, arms crossing over her chest in a bid to contain her stubbornness. “Do you not want an heir, then?”

She had not stopped thinking about it ever since Phoebe had brought it up. The thought of having children for a man she barely knew and did not love unsettled her, but she knew how concerned such esteemed men were about their lineages. As such, she expected him to have such needs and had come to terms with the fact she might have to meet said need.

“I do not,” Hudson told her plainly. “Not at present. There is no need to complicate matters further than they already are.”

“Complicate matters?” Anna echoed, feeling confused and embarrassed. “I thought – it was to my understanding that wedding rites… consecrating one’s marriage was the natural order of things, following a wedding. I did not realize I was complicating certain matters.”

“That is not what I meant.”

“It is precisely what you meant, Your Grace, and you needn't try to sugarcoat it on my account. I am well aware of the terms of our arrangement. I helped draft them myself. Please forget that I came. It was a foolish notion.” She drew her robe tighter around herself, suddenly and acutely aware of how foolish she must look, standing in his study in her nightgown, arguing for something she could not even properly name.

She turned toward the door, feeling immensely mortified by her actions as she reached for the door, stopped by his voice.

“Anna.”

She paused, hand on the frame, not quite able to make herself look back at him.

“Wait,” he told her, more gently this time, and she heard the scrape of his chair as he rose. “I did not mean to make you feel foolish. That was not my intention.”

“Then what was your intention, Your Grace?” She turned, finally, to face him, chin lifted despite the flush still burning across her cheeks. “Because from where I am standing, it rather feels as though you are eager to be rid of me before this marriage has even properly begun.”

“That is not it at all.” He crossed the room slowly, stopping a respectful distance from her, though his eyes betrayed something rather less measured than the space between them suggested. “I only meant to honor the terms we agreed upon. I did not wish to presume.”

That should have settled it. It should have been the end of the conversation entirely, and Anna knew it, knew that the sensible course was to turn on her heel and return to her own room and forget this whole ridiculous errand had ever occurred. And yet she found herself lingering, twisting the sash of her robe between restless fingers, working up the courage to say something she had not entirely admitted to herself she wanted until this very moment.

“This whole ordeal is your doing,” she began at last, hesitant, though the thread of stubbornness running beneath refused to ease away. “You might, at the very least, grant me one wish in return for it.”

Hudson stepped even closer, until the diminished distance left her no choice but to tilt her head back to hold his gaze. “And what wish is that?”

She hesitated, momentarily looking away.

“Tell me,” he said, low, and a weight in his voice that made her pulse quicken despite herself.

“I want my wedding night,” Anna admitted, the words tumbling out in a rush before her courage could desert her entirely. “Even if you leave tomorrow. Even if this changes nothing between us beyond tonight. I only – I have looked forward to it, foolishly perhaps, and I do not wish to lose the chance of it entirely simply because our marriage began so strangely.”

For a long moment, Hudson said nothing at all. His eyes searched her face as though looking for some sign that she did not mean it, some flicker of hesitation he might use as an excuse to send her back to her own room and preserve the careful distance they had agreed upon. He found none, as she knew he would not.

“Very well,” he said quietly, and followed her back to her room.

The door had scarcely closed behind them, before his mouth found hers, and this one was nothing like the one they had shared in the hallway of her. There was no charge spurred by irritation or rage, and there hadn’t been an argument beforehand. But oh, there was so much heat. It started slow, as his hands framed her jaw and held her in place for his lips to ravage hers, spreading lower and lower as their bodies pressed together.

She had imagined this moment a few different ways in the days leading up to their wedding, spurred by the idea of her then-husband-to-be being a man of charm who had once entertained many lovers. She had let her mind wander off in thought of what it would be like to be in the position of those women and share a bed with him, which caused a myriad of thoughts to consume her.

Half of them nervous, half of them curious, none of them quite so overwhelming as the reality of it – the warmth of him pressed so close, the low, rough sound of her own name in his voice, unfamiliar and thrilling in equal measure.

Anna's fingers curled into the front of his shirt, drawing him closer, and she felt rather than heard the low sound that rose in his throat at the small, encouraging motion.

He untied the sash of her robe with unhurried fingers, easing the fabric from her shoulders, and paused only to look at her – truly look at her, in a manner that made her want to cover herself and lean into his gaze all at once – before he bent to press his mouth to the curve of her throat, and Anna's breath left her in a soft, unsteady rush.

“Tell me if you wish to stop,” he murmured against her skin, so unexpected gentleness that moment easing away whatever tension might have been left within her chest.

“I do not wish to stop,” she said, and meant it with her whole trembling body.

He walked her backward, slowly, until the backs of her knees met the edge of the bed, and there he paused, his hands still framing her face, his eyes searching hers deeply. Whatever composure he wore in every other room of his life seemed, at that moment, to have quietly slipped away, leaving something far less certain and almost tender in its place, though neither of them would have dared name it so.

“You are certain,” he said again, not quite a question.