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“Why not?”

He looked at her, incredulous. “You suggest that I try to talk you out of a response to the idea of living in close proximity to me that was . . . that was so visceral that I saw you recoil? You looked pleased when you first walked into this chamber, and then you realized I would share it with you, and you looked horrified.”

Oh, dear.

He had caught the moment that she realized that the chamber had been designed for Yasmin.

“You misunderstood.”

It was his turn to wait. She couldn’t tell him the truth. It was too humiliating, and besides, there was nothing either of them could do about it.

“I’m not sure that I’m as needful of privacy as I thought.”

His mouth tightened.

“What would it be like, if we shared a room?” she burst out. “Would you be here when I took a nap? When I took a bath?” Despite herself, her voice did sound somewhat appalled.

“Only if you wished.” His voice had changed from courteous to wry and teasing. “We napped together yesterday.”

“That was because . . .”

“That is part of married life. Will be a regular part of our married life no matter where you are sleeping.”

The horrifying thing was that now Stella couldn’t think of anything other than that. His body was branded in her memory, even the rough hair that shadowed his chest muscles, thickening into an arrow over his stomach. He hadn’t shaved in the morning so short rough hairs, invisible except in the sunshine, had prickled her inner thighs.

When he buried his face between her legs . . .

It was hard to keep her mind on why she didn’t like this room.

“We might consider sleeping together in the other room,” she suggested. Her hands curled around the arms of the delicate, pretty chair, Yasmin’s chair. She was lucky it didn’t creak and fall to pieces when she sat in it.

She had to hold herself back, or she would launch herself at him like a lustful dairymaid. Two people in one of these chairs? It would smash to the ground, just like the rotten draperies downstairs.

Silvester looked utterly nonplussed. “You don’t like this chamber?”

“I would like to look at the other room,” she said, getting to her feet. She walked over to the door without looking back. “Is it to the right?”

The corridor was wide and lined with mullioned windows. Deep shadows stretched between windows since the sun couldn’t make it through the dirty glass. Stella reached out and swiped one dingy brass lamp as she passed. Her finger came back brown with dust.

Silvester took her hand without comment and rubbed the dust off with a handkerchief. “I have to warn you that the other bedchamber was last decorated for a royal visit.”

He pushed open another set of double doors. A huge bed jutted from one wall, surrounded by crimson velvet draperies and, oddly enough, a picket fence. In the center of the room was a second bed, marooned in empty space. Around the walls gilt chairs were arranged in double rows.

“The royal visit was some time in the past,” Silvester said apologetically.

“Did the visiting monarch need to be penned like a disobedient chicken?” Stella asked, stunned. She gasped. “Was it King George? I’ve heard his mind is disturbed, but do they fence him in?”

She took a step back. The very idea of sleeping in a room where a king had been imprisoned was distasteful.

“No, no,” Silvester said. “The fence marks the private area, which was, as you can see, not very private. It isn’t meant to fence in the monarch; it prohibits those of lesser status from approaching the monarch.”

“Oh. Did the king’s attendants sleep there?” Stella nodded at the central bed.

“Presumably so. The royal personage in question was Queen Elizabeth. Family lore has it that she traveled with hundreds of courtiers, who bedded down everywhere from the buttery to the parapets. One of them was nearly beheaded when the family claymore fell off a wall. He was apparently sleeping on a chest in the armory.”

“A claymore?”

One side of his mouth hitched into a teasing smile. “Didn’t you read through the letter C in the encyclopedia?”