Leah planted a tasting kiss over his heart.
“Lovey?”
“Nicholas?”
“What are you doing?”
Such a careful question. She dropped her arms from around him. “I honestly don’t know, though of this much I’m certain: I am not enamored of what passed between us earlier, when you pleasured me and I allowed it. We are to be married, though.”
He remained unreadable, watching her as she visually took in the tub, the bed, the flowers in a vase on the windowsill—red roses, of course, with maidenhair and baby’s breath.
“We are married,” Nick said, as if picking up the conversational shuttlecock and batting it to her.
Leah had thought about this, after he’d left her aching in her bed, when she’d dressed in her wedding finery, and on the coach ride out from London. Her husband was a stubborn, independent, shrewd rogue of a man, but he was also kind and the closest thing Leah had to a friend. She hadn’t been at ease with what had passed between them, but neither was she ready to toss all intimacies with him aside.
Which left only one course: “Nicholas, will you teach me what pleases you?”
***
Nick could not form an answer, for his mind was whirling, robbing him of coherence.
Why, why in the name of sweet, squalling baby Jesus, did his wife have to be the first woman to ask him how she might please him?
Women who were intimate with Nick were safe with him; they could take and take and take to their hearts’ content, and that was how he wanted it. He’d learned, to his eternal heartache, that when he took, misery followed.
So he gave generously and skillfully, and got his pleasure that way.
He wanted to give to Leah—had planned on years of that very martyrdom—and here, she wanted to give as well.
For the first time, he experienced the subtle rejection of the pleasured by the pleasurer who would not yield to her own desires. She sought to make love to him, not with him, and the distinction made his heart shrink even as his cock began to stir.
And between bewilderment and arousal, Nick felt fear licking through his veins.
He wasn’t going to be able to keep his distance from her, to offer her pleasure and companionship and the kind of fondness he offered most any woman who sought it. She was going to wind herself around his body, and around his heart, and he’d be reduced to begging, breaking a promise he’d made to himself on Leonie’s behalf, and regretting and regretting and regretting.
God help him, if he wasn’t careful he’d be falling in love with his own wife.
“Nicholas?” Leah peered up at him, concern in her pretty brown eyes. “Are you all right?”
“I will be fine, though tonight would serve us both best if we used it to get some rest,” he said, his voice sharper than he intended.
Leah peered at him briefly then stepped away. “If you say so. The day has been long.”
Before the hurt in her gaze had him howling on his knees for forgiveness, Nick turned and ducked into the adjoining dressing room.
“Here.” He held out a robe, a deep blue velvet, the smallest he had, but it still pooled on the floor at Leah’s feet, leaving inches of hem trailing on the ground. Leah shrugged into the robe, regarding him with puzzlement.
“Thank you.” She belted the robe as best she could. “Shall we to bed?”
He would rather have crawled over hot coals. “A capital notion.” And worse than hot coals was the uncertainty he’d put in his wife’s eyes. “The footmen will deal with the tub tomorrow.”
“A cricket pitch of a bed,” Leah remarked, eyeing the vast, dark, canopied wonder where Nick slept. “Do you prefer one side or the other?”
“I sleep in the middle. But we’re both probably so tired we won’t know we’re sharing. And tomorrow night, your things will no doubt have arrived in your chambers.”
“So we are not to share a bed regularly?” Her tone was perfectly casual; Nick wasn’t deceived for a moment.
“Our bedrooms adjoin,” Nick said, moving around the room to blow out candles. “I will be happy to accommodate you when you desire it, Leah.”
“I see.” Leah’s voice radiated with suppressed hurt, but Nick steeled himself against it and turned in the dim light to face her.
He was going to burn in hell for this day’s work. Slowly, while every neglected wife in the realm jabbed at his parts with a hot, rusty pitchfork. “Shall I pleasure you now, Wife?” he asked softly.
“I