hand. “I would like, someday, to know you by instinct.”
Leah drifted off, content in Nick’s embrace, and did not wake up until he was hefting her into his arms and trying to extricate her from the coach without disturbing her.
“Nicholas, I can walk.”
“Nonsense,” Nick said, shifting as he freed her from the coach. “I will carry you over this threshold, for it’s one we own. Belle Maison, thank God, is still in my father’s hands.”
Leah did not protest, though she wanted to. With his talk of blind fathers, dying fathers, and thresholds that “we” owned, he was looping one thread of longing after another around Leah’s heart.
“My lord, my lady.” An old fellow standing by the mounting block bowed and picked up his lantern. “Congratulations, and welcome to Clover Down. The lad will light your way.”
Nick nodded his thanks as the coachmen steered their conveyance around to the carriage house and a young footman held up a second lantern to illuminate the front steps of the manor house. The butler opened the door, offered them congratulations and welcome, and was quickly waved off to bed. Leah gained her feet only when Nick had deposited her in the master bedroom, which to her surprise boasted an enormous tub of steaming, rose-scented water.
“A lookout was no doubt posted,” Nick said, “and the water kept heating in the laundry until we were spotted. Your staff wants you to feel welcome.”
“I most assuredly feel welcome. Perhaps you’d like to go first?”
“We can share. Because this is our wedding night, I will be your lady’s maid.”
Leah turned and offered him her back, thinking how odd it was, to be so casually intimate with Nick once again, and how nonchalant he seemed with the whole business.
“I feel as if I’m watching some woman who looks like me embark on her married life with a man who resembles Nicholas Haddonfield,” Leah said, her back to her spouse.
Nick’s fingers made short work of the myriad buttons on Leah’s wedding dress. “Maybe married life, if it’s to be successful, is no different from the rest of one’s life, or it shouldn’t be.”
“This feels different,” Leah decided, “but not strange.” She turned, the back of her dress gaping, and lifted her hands to Nick’s chin.
“Hold still,” she said, unfastening his sapphire pin and untying the elaborate knot in his cravat. Without pausing, she undid the buttons of his waistcoat, and then relieved him of his sleeve buttons, which also sported inset sapphires.
“You do clean up well, Nicholas.”
“You aren’t going to stop now, are you? I am hardly ready for my bath.”
He was teasing, so Leah humored him. Many married men had no valet, and this was something she could do for him as his wife. She undid the buttons at the knees of his satin breeches and the garters to his stockings, slipped off his shoes, then took another step back. Nick reached forward, turned her by the shoulders, then eased her gown down to her hips and unlaced her stays. Leah balanced on Nick’s shoulder to step out of her gown and found herself facing him in chemise and petticoat.
He smiled down at her. “Now we’re getting somewhere.” He knelt to deal with her stockings, garters, and slippers, then unfastened the tapes to her petticoats, gathering the entire frothy pile and dumping it on the couch that faced the hearth.
Leah watched him pad barefoot across the room, and it was as if with each piece of clothing they shed, Nick became more himself and less that polite, well-dressed aristocrat she’d married hours ago.
“You are looking at me, Wife. I like that.”
“You are rather hard to miss.”
Nick walked right up to her and gathered her close. “I will blow out all the candles, sleep in my clothes, pledge to leave you in peace, but on our wedding night it will be expected that we share a bed. I’ll sleep elsewhere if that’s what you prefer.”
He offered her a reprieve. Nick, in his boundless kindness and perceptivity, was offering her a reprieve.
“Let’s begin as we intend to go on,” Leah said, though she could only manage it with her cheek resting against Nick’s chest. The fine linen of his shirt lay beneath her nose, and below that his beating heart. She pushed his shirt aside, put her ear over that heart, and listened to its steady rhythm while Nick’s hands caressed her back.
“It shall be as you wish.” He rested his cheek against her temple, and silence spread around them until