A Bride for the Prizefighter - Alice Coldbreath Page 0,85

myself for a bit. I’ll just sit here in the dark and take my ease while I keep watch for him.”

“Very well.”

They embraced again, and Mina made for bed.

She wasn’t sure how much later it was that she woke, a gust of wind rattling the pane along with a few drops of rain. She lay a moment, listening before she noticed she her head was resting on a warm, muscular shoulder. She was tucked against a big, solid body in the bed.

When she went to lift her head, Nye’s voice spoke out of the darkness. “Go back to sleep.”

Mina blinked. “You’re awake,” she said in confusion.

“Yes,” he agreed. “I’ve learned my lesson. I can’t close my eyes next to you or I’ll never get up.”

She considered this a moment. “What time is it?” she murmured.

He hesitated. “A little before two,” he said briefly.

Clearly, he had to get up before morning for some fell purpose, she thought, but let her own eyes drift shut anyway. It was no business of hers. Her eyes sprang again in the darkness. “Why did you come to bed, if not to sleep?” she heard herself persist.

He didn’t answer that, just clamped a big hand to the back of Mina’s head and dragged her face back to his neck. Had she been sleeping with her face pressed to him like this, she wondered? “Relax,” he said. “I’m not here for anything else.”

Mina frowned. “I wasn’t worried and I’m not afraid of you,” she grumbled, shifting against him. He was wearing his clothes, she realized, feeling the press of his buttons through her cotton nightgown. It was not as comfortable as when he wore his soft flannel.

“You promise?” he said in an odd tone. Mina tried to draw back to get a look at his face, but it was too dark in the room for that.

“I’m not afraid of you, William Nye,” she insisted with quiet conviction and felt him exhale. “So, don’t think you can browbeat me.”

He snorted. “If I ever did think that, you soon schooled me different.” She felt his hand at her lower back, brushing the back of his fingers lightly against the base of her spine. It was strangely comforting, and she let her eyes close again.

“Will it be the same people?” she asked suddenly.

“What?”

“The same people as last time,” she elaborated. “You know.”

“I really don’t.”

She could hear the frown in his voice. “The same people who bore witness,” she said. “That night in the church.” She thought she heard his breathing hitch before it levelled out again.

The shoulder under her cheek lurched in what she guessed was a shrug. “Some of them, maybe,” he agreed.

“Oh.” Even to her own ears, she sounded a little put-out.

“Does that bother you?” The words sounded like they were dragged from him.

Mina didn’t want to answer. Unbidden, the memories of that awful night flooded into her mind’s eye. She felt scalded and raw. “I don’t want to see any of them,” she admitted, her throat closing on the words. She felt his head turn sharply.

“Why? You have nothing to reproach yourself with.”

“I looked a fool,” she mumbled against his shoulder.

“No more than I,” he said, but that wasn’t true, Mina thought despairingly. Every one of his friends had seen the utter contempt he had for her. He had marched right out of the church and left her there and they had all followed him, laughing and carousing. She screwed her eyes shut and to her surprise felt his arms close tight around her, hauling her practically on top of him. “You don’t have to see any of them,” he said tersely. “You’re to stay out of their sight. Understood?” She nodded. It was what she wanted after all. For once their feelings on a subject agreed. “Good,” he said throatily. “Now go to sleep.”

And funnily enough, she did.

*

Mina woke late and reached for her father’s pocket watch on the side table, saw it was eight o’clock already. She felt the familiar constraint of Nye’s arm slung around her waist and looked back over her shoulder to find him fast asleep. Again, she wondered at his insistence that he ‘never slept’ and struggled to extricate herself. His arm tightened, hauling her back against him.

“Nye! We’ve overslept!” she protested. He slung a leg heavily across hers. “Nye! Really! You’re impossible.”

He made a grumbling sound against her neck. “It’s eight o’clock,” she told him loudly and felt his eyelashes flutter against her skin. “Did you hear what I said?”