A Bride for the Prizefighter - Alice Coldbreath Page 0,76
raised her voice. “Nye, wake up!” She looked around vexedly as a shower of stones struck against the window this time. “For goodness’ sake!” Sliding out from under the blankets, she remembered belatedly she was nude. Clicking her tongue, Mina crept over to the chest of drawers where she had a spare nightgown and retrieved it. A loud ping from the window had her drawing in a sharp breath and hurrying over to draw back the curtains and fling the casement open.
“Stop that at once!” she hissed down to the dark courtyard below. “Just stop it!”
A single torch burned in the courtyard below and she could make out a few shadowy figures huddled round it. They looked to have scarves pulled over the lower parts of their faces.
“We need your man down here now,” a rough-sounding voice harangued her. “Send him down, woman.”
“I am trying to wake him,” Mina answered coldly. “Once I have roused him, I will be sure to send him down. Kindly refrain from throwing stones at my window.”
A grunt which she took to be of assent answered her and Mina slammed the window shut. Uncouth louts, she thought, pursing her lips. Bandying words with her at this time of night! Groping for the matches on the side, she soon struck a flame lighting the candle in her holder. Picking up her father’s watch, she found it to be half-past two in the morning. With a startled exclamation, she turned back to the bed and found Nye had not moved an inch.
Really, once he was asleep, he slept like the dead. She crossed to the bed once more and commenced shaking him like a dog with a rat. “Nye! Will Nye! Wake up this instant!” She was forced to bawl in his ear when nothing else made an impression.
His eyes flickered open at last. “Mina,” he murmured thickly. “Get back into bed.”
“I most certainly will not! There’s a bunch of ruffians in the courtyard below, demanding your immediate presence!”
His eyes which had been drifting shut again, re-opened. “The yard?” He struggled up onto one elbow. “What?”
Mina darted to the chair to gather up his discarded clothes. “They need you below.”
“Time is it?” Nye slurred, rubbing at his eyes. He drew his knees up and moved sluggishly to a seated position.
“An ungodly hour! It’s half-past two in the morning,” Mina hissed at him. “Your confederates seem to have no consideration for anyone but themselves!”
“Half-past two?” he repeated, seeming dumbstruck for a moment, then he swore under his breath and flung back the covers. She darted forward with his clothes and dumped them on the bed next to him. “Get back under the covers,” he told her as he stood up to dress. Mina hesitated, wanting to say something about the nefarious business he was clearly caught up in. As though guessing what was on her mind, he turned and scowled at her. “I won’t tell you twice,” he warned.
Mina bristled, but decided discretion was the better part of valor. She clambered back into the bed and turned her back to him as he pulled on his clothes, muttering under his breath ill-naturedly the whole while. When he stomped from the room taking the candle with him, she rolled onto her back and stared up at the ceiling. Well, that was that then. Her suspicions had not been the result of an overactive imagination. Her husband was in league with a smuggler’s gang.
She wrestled with the problem for the next hour and a half, waiting for him to return. Finally, she dropped off to sleep and when she woke again at seven, she was still alone in the bed. For some reason, that fact filled her with annoyance. So, he thought only to share a bed with her when he wanted that did, he? She seethed as she pulled on her clothes.
Embarrassingly, almost every item of clothing now made her think of Nye. Her corset made her remember he thought it too confining, her stockings too plain, her garters basic and unadorned. Dragging her hair back to pin at her nape, she stared at herself in the mirror. She was no dancing girl she thought bitterly. But she was a wife now. The tenderness between her legs reminded her that there could no longer be any question of annulment. Yesterday’s romp in the sheets had put paid to that. She was in truth and fact married to an out-and-out scoundrel and a lawbreaker.