Lady Thief - By Rizzo Rosko Page 0,27
The setting sun shone in through the small windows and highlighted his easy posture and expectant smile. The firelight, so close to the tub, made everything seem so much warmer and clearer, including her naked body.
Marianne desperately wished she could throw her robe around herself, but ‘twas across the room on a chair. And suddenly having the tub placed so close to the fireplace did not seem a particularly good idea as she began to feel overheated.
“Why, I am pleased with you, my dear.” He casually dipped his fingers into her bath water, creating tiny ripples when he swirled them close to her exposed breast.
Her face heated, not because of their closeness, but because she was no longer certain if she wanted to deny him what was rightfully his. She had certainly stopped thinking of an annulment.
That reminded her. “I have been meaning to thank you. For not forcing my hand the night I came here. I am thankful for your patience with me. It recently occurred to me that I had yet to make my gratitude known.”
She looked at him. His brows were drawn together. “You believed I would have forced you?”
“You said it yourself that night. ‘Twould have been your right.”
He made a noncommittal sound and looked away.
While he was distracted, Marianne admired his face. No longer did she see the single hairs of silver in his sand colored hair or the small wrinkles under his eyes as a sign of his age, but as distinguished features she began to enjoy, features that would never be found in a man closer to her age, like Blaise.
He would likely look ridiculous when he aged and silver weeded through that orange mop of his.
“Today is Tuesday, do you know what that means?”
Marianne shook her head.
“Tuesday is the day I usually spend with Blaise, supervising his training. I have been out of practice with handling swords and blades as of late, so I tend to let Bryce work with him as long as I am there.”
She nodded. That certainly explained where he went every Tuesday, but did not explain his absence during the nights. The rest of his words came to her, and she puzzled over them.
As lord he should never be out of practice with his weapons. What could bring that about?
William continued, unaware of the question in her head. “Usually I do a little swordplay with the two of them, but today I sent Blaise off for his training alone,”
Marianne lifted a brow and completely forgot about their positions. William was a creature of habit; it was how she managed to track him so easily since he rode the same route every Sunday after church. “Alone?”
He smirked and nodded, like a boy confessing to a sin he did not particularly care about, his fingers still in her bath water. “Aye. As odd as it would seem I went against my normal routine to keep an eye on you.”
She glared and turned away, though the gesture was half-hearted. “I thought I felt someone’s eyes on my back. Olma had me nearly convinced I was going mad.”
His wet finger flitted over her raised nose. “Always in the air.”
Marianne hurriedly lowered her nose, mortified that she had been caught again. This time she could not stop herself from covering her breasts with her arms. She was shocked to find that her nipples had hardened themselves and a spark of sizzling fire lit up under the skin when she touched them.
She shifted her legs and noted that there was a spot that felt swollen somehow, pulsing, in the place where they met in the middle and inside. How was he able to do this to her?
She was desperate to put her mind on other things. “I shall assume that next week you will not be following me around then?”
He nodded and resumed swirling his fingers in her water. “Aye, next week I will train with him.”
“With him? You mean to help him improve.”
William shook his head. His face colored and he forced himself to look her in the eyes. “Nay, you misunderstand. My skills are not what you imagined them to be. I am sorry to tell you that you entered into a marriage with a man with little skill with a sword, or any blade, or any weapon.”
She blinked. To be slightly clumsy with a weapon was one thing, but to have very little skill was another.
From the moment they met, while she had not pictured him furiously wielding swords around, he