“Ah,” he said, “but you did not hire me as a husband, did you, Jessie?”
And why did the sound of that particular variation on her name almost take her knees out?
“Besides,” he added, “we are not sure yet, are we, that my skills surpass those of Ruth.”
“Are you good at ironing?” she asked him.
He gave her a look that implied a clear no. “Come,” he said.
He seated her before the dressing table, and she watched in the mirror as he removed all the pins from her hair. He placed them in a neat pile on the dressing table, she was relieved to see, rather than sending them to join her gloves and bonnet on the floor.
He was in no hurry. But something struck her. He was already making love to her. His fingers untangled each curl as it was freed of its pins, and his knuckles caressed her scalp each time. He kept his eyes on what he was doing rather than on her image in the glass. He had a brooding look on his face. No, wrong word. But she did not know what the right word was. He looked wholly intent, wholly engrossed. He was in no hurry at all.
And then all the pins were gone and her hair was in a riot of untidiness about her shoulders and she swallowed again. Strange men ought not to see one with one’s hair down. But he was not a stranger. He was her husband.
For the first time he looked into the mirror.
“It is horribly untidy,” she said.
“Gorgeously disheveled,” he said.
“Is that not a contradiction in terms?” she asked.
“No.” Just the one word.
He picked up his own brush from the dressing table and began to draw it through her hair with long, slow strokes from the roots to the tips. Smoothness replaced the riot and her hair shone in the sunlight, which was beaming directly on them. He was still fully dressed in his wedding finery. Lace half covered his hands. There was a strangely enticing contrast between the femininity of the frills and the masculinity of the hands. He might have been a businessman, but she doubted he had spent all or even most of his working days behind a desk.
He put the brush down and drew his fingers through her hair at the temples to draw it back behind her shoulders. He held her eyes with his own before he dipped his head and kissed the side of her neck. Her toes curled up in her slippers. His hands closed about her upper arms, and he drew her to her feet, still facing away from him. Then he swept her hair forward over one shoulder and unbuttoned her dress down the back, from her neck to her hips. He moved it off her shoulders and down her arms. It whispered down her body and pooled about her feet and he left it there. Ruth would have a fit.
Her stays went next. He untied the laces and let the stays fall on top of her dress. Only her shift and her stockings—and shoes—remained. As well as her pearl necklace.
Oh my. It was a short shift. It did not even reach her knees. Neither did her stockings from the other direction. Her knees were bare. He turned her and looked her over without even trying to respect her modesty. He seemed very fully clothed in contrast to her. Apart from the lower halves of his hands there was not the merest hint of bare flesh from his chin on down.
She was going to die. Of mortification? Or . . . of something else?
His eyes were heavy lidded. Even when they looked back up into hers. And then—oh goodness me—he went down on one knee before her and began to draw off one garter and roll down one silk stocking to the ankle. He lifted her foot—she braced herself with one hand on his appealingly solid shoulder—and removed first her shoe and then her stocking with the garter. They landed on top of her dress and stays. The other garter and stocking and shoe joined them in the next minute or so. He really was in no hurry. He stood up.
And while she watched, he shrugged out of his coat. It was a tight fit. It was more like a second layer of skin, she thought, than a garment. His silk waistcoat followed it to the floor. Was his valet the sort of man