arms over her chest, but, swift as always, he captured her wrists, holding them loosely at her side.
“No, no,” he said, his eyes roaming wickedly over her. “I’ve decided I like your bed jacket a lot better when it is undone.”
When his eyes met hers again, they were playful and intense all at once. She licked her suddenly dry lips and tried to speak again.
“Um. As I was saying…”
“Were you saying something? I didn’t notice.”
“I think Isaac is feeling lost and alone.”
He released her wrists and dropped his eyes again. “Actually, no, your bed jacket still offends me.”
“He was in the Navy for more than half his life and he is only twenty-four.”
“I think it would look better on the floor.”
Oh heaven help her. “And now that he has been discharged, he does not know what to do with himself.”
“Definitely needs to be on the floor.”
He used only his fingertips to chase the bed jacket down her arms and over her hands, a touch so slow and delicate and tantalizing that she bit her lip to avoid crying out.
He knew what he was doing to her, curse him. But what she had gleaned from Isaac mattered too.
“I know what you’re doing, Joshua.”
“Rescuing you from this ugly garment. I am very heroic.”
“You’re avoiding talking about your brother.”
The bed jacket slithered down her body, pooled at her toes. His fingertips rested on her hands like butterfly feet.
“I am alone with my wife in my bedchamber,” he said. “Of course I don’t want to talk about my brother. You know, your nightshift is ugly too.”
“He said you tried to keep them all together.”
Her words hit a mark that she did not know was there. His expression turned cold and hard, like steel; his shoulders tensed and he dropped his hands. Already she missed him, missed his teasing and his sensuality, but she had to say this. She had to understand. She had to make him understand.
“That when Papa came to help you, you wanted you and your brothers to stay together but they wanted to leave. You tried to stop them from going, you said your family had to stay together, but it was what they wanted, the Navy and India, but that’s no reason to turn your back on him now.”
A tick of a clock, a beat of her heart, a pop from the fire—then he moved so quickly she did not know his intention until she was already tossed over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes, her chin bumping his back, his arm an iron band around her knees.
In only a few strides, he was back in her room. He hauled her off him and she flew through the air and landed on her mattress with a bounce. Her nightshift was tangled up around her thighs and she automatically tried to smooth it down.
“Stop it,” he ordered harshly.
She froze. But he was not looking at her legs.
“Stop trying to fix my family,” he said. “You’re trying to fix your sisters and my brothers and me and—whatever it is you’re trying to do, stop it. It is very tedious and extremely unwanted.”
She lifted her chin mutinously. “He’s going to stay here. I’ve invited him.”
“Of course. Why shouldn’t everyone move into my house?”
“It’s my house too.”
He glowered at her. “And stop being so right all the time. Now, I’m going back through that door and you will not bother me again.”
She scrambled up onto her knees. “But what about the other thing?”
“What other thing?”
“My bed jacket. And my wifely duty.”
He buried his fingers in his hair and made a sound like a growl. “You’re trying to seduce me again. You and your wifely duty and your empty womb and your ugly bed jacket. I don’t have time for this. I have some very important work to do.”
“It’s two o’clock in the morning.”
“Then I have some very important sleeping to do.”
No, he would not leave! She would not let him.
Cassandra grabbed the hem of her nightshift and pulled it up over her head. And then it—Oh no! It caught on her hair and she yanked at it, yanked harder, feverishly aware that her whole body was exposed to him—she should never have done this, it was so brazen, and now she felt a fool—and she yanked again, and the shift came free, half her hair tumbling down her back after it.
But his eyes burned as they roamed wildly over her nakedness, and she basked in the heat, unable to move.