“You needn’t worry. Your dowry is yours to do with as you wish. I don’t require it and I won’t touch it.” He said this like her money was diseased, before he swept open an arched door. “Your room.”
Pru had to brush past him to step inside, and she hesitated to appreciate the scent of cedarwood and soap wafting from his warm, virile body. She prolonged a blink as she remembered that scent. Remembered burrowing her face into his neck and gasping in great lungs full of it.
Even now, it provoked her exhausted body into a state of unnatural awareness.
When she opened her eyes, she marveled.
This wasn’t a simple chamber, but a veritable suite. She’d a wardrobe at home smaller than the gilded fireplace, and everything else was to scale.
Like the rest of the house, the room was devoid of extraneous furnishings. However, the bed was half again as big as anything she’d slept in and angled toward windows that stretched from the ceiling to the floor.
Unlike the antique, leaded panes of downstairs, these had been installed recently, and the whole of the vast city spread out beyond in a tableau of dazzling light and spires.
“Your trunks are at the foot of the bed,” he informed her. “Until a lady’s maid has been procured for you, Lucy, the maid of all work, will tend to your needs. Unfortunately, she is with her ailing uncle until tomorrow afternoon. So you might need to call upon—”
“It’s all right. I’ll manage.” She turned around, clasping her hands in front of her, doing her best not to look at the bed.
He seemed to be avoiding it as well.
Lord, how different this interaction was from the last night they’d spent together. Would they ever find that sort of warmth again? Would he ever look at her with that all-consuming heat threatening to turn her into a pile of ash and need?
She watched him stride around the outskirts of her room, inspecting the view as if he’d never seen it before. Avoiding her as if she carried the plague rather than his child.
Perhaps he needed his mask.
“If you pull on these cords, the heavy drapes will fall and block out the sunlight if you are prone to sleeping late.” He demonstrated by tugging on a tasseled cord releasing one of the cobalt velvet panels. “This one next to it secures the drape back in place without needing to tie.”
“How clever,” she murmured.
“I thought so.” His hands clasped behind his back in a regimental pose and they stood like that, staring at each other for longer than was comfortable.
It struck her in that moment how little she knew this man. How little she understood him.
He stood like a soldier, but wore white-tie finery. Just today he’d been a blackmailer and a bridegroom. He was a Chief Inspector. A vigilante. A knight. Her lover. A husband.
Her husband. One who had certain rights. One to which she had certain marital duties.
Despite herself. Despite everything, a little flutter of excitement spread through her belly.
“Well.” Morley cleared his throat and skirted nearly the entire room to avoid her in a controlled dash for the door. “Good evening to you.”
“Good evening?” She parroted his words back to him as a question. Wasn’t this their wedding night? “Where are you going? That is…are you…coming back?”
He stopped in the doorframe, his wide shoulders heaving with a long breath before he slowly made an about-face to regard her with a strange and vigilant wariness. “Only a base creature would expect you submit to the marriage bed after such a traumatizing few days.” His expression turned hesitant. “You don’t know me very well, but I assure you, I am not a man who is prone to—the kind of behavior I demonstrated upon the night we met.”
The realization that he was being considerate warmed Pru a little. “It seems that night was out of character for us both.”
His eyes skittered away. “Yes. A hard-won lesson of our mutual folly.”
Something about that statement tempted her to argue but she could find no words. “I appreciate your consideration, and you’re correct. I don’t know you at all…” Pru fiddled with her wedding ring as she took a tentative step forward, latching on to an idea. “Perhaps you could stay for a while. We could talk. We could…become acquainted. I don’t relish the idea of being alo—”
He retreated a step to hers, shaking his head decisively. “I’ve work to do.”