Eve’s hand, slender and cold in his when he’d put the wedding ring on her finger.
Eve’s cheek, equally cool when he’d been unable to deny himself the smallest display of dominion outside the church—and she had not kissed him in return.
Eve, clinging in her oldest brother’s embrace for a desperately long moment, until St. Just’s countess had touched her husband’s arm and embraced Eve herself.
A whiff of mock orange coming to Deene’s nose and bringing with it a sense of calm until he saw the way Eve gripped her wine glass so tightly he thought the delicate stem might break.
He’d been prepared for bridal nerves. He’d even been prepared for his own nerves—this was the only wedding night he ever intended to have, after all—but he had not been prepared for his wife to be on the verge of strong hysterics.
A change of plans was called for, or neither one of them would be sane by bedtime.
“Evie.” He brushed her hair back from her temple. “Time to wake up, love. We must greet our staff.”
She straightened and peered out the window. “So many of them, and this is not even your family seat.”
Our family seat. He did not emphasize the point.
“Let me pin you up.”
She turned on the seat while he fashioned something approximating a bun at her nape. The moment was somehow marital, and to Deene, imbued with significance as a result. Deene had laced up, dressed, and undressed any number of ladies, but there was nothing flirtatious in the way Eve presented to him the pale, downy nape of her neck. He kissed her there and felt a shiver go through her.
“You are going to be the sort of husband who is indiscriminate with the placement of his lips on my person, aren’t you?”
She did not sound pleased.
“When we are private, probably. You always smell luscious, and I am only a man.”
His wife looked surprised, but before she could argue with him, he handed her down and began moving with her along the line of waiting servants standing on the drive. They beamed and bobbed at her. She smiled back with such warmth and graciousness that Deene revised his earlier estimation of her state of mind.
She hadn’t been anxious; she’d been terrified of what was to come—and likely still was. As soon as he scooped her up against his chest to carry her over the threshold, all the warmth left her expression, and the corners of her mouth went tight again.
Deene did not set her down when they gained the foyer but addressed the rotund factotum who’d hurried ahead to get the door for them.
“Belt, we’ll take a tray in our sitting room, and my lady will be needing a soaking bath as soon as may be. We’ll not be disturbed thereafter unless we ring. Understood?”
“Very good, my lord.”
“Deene, you may put me down now.”
He started up the steps. “Not a chance, Wife. You’ll dither and dally and want a tour of the place from top to bottom, or get to talking about menus with the housekeeper. You would leave me to my agitated nerves and no consolation for them but the decanter.”
They cleared the first landing. “Agitated nerves? You cannot possibly be serious, Deene.”
He was, somewhat to his surprise. “Humor me, in any case.”
She went quiet, now when he would have appreciated some chatter, some resistance, some measurable response to distract him from the perfect weight of her cradled in his arms. He reached what was to be their private suite and set Eve down on a blue brocade sofa by the windows.
“You’ll have to assist me out of this attire, Wife. I haven’t worn such finery since I took my seat in the damned Lords, and even then it was mostly robes…”
She was up off the sofa, wandering around the room. “I haven’t seen these chambers before.”
She hadn’t seen her husband completely naked before either, but Deene doubted she’d inspect him quite as assiduously as she was peering at the titles of the books on the shelves in the corner. He came up behind her and put his arms around her waist.
“Evie, have mercy upon me and help me get undressed.”
She turned, and he did not step back, so they remained in a loose embrace. “Haven’t you a valet, Deene?”
“I’m married now. Many married fellows make do with a handy and accommodating wife, the last I recall the arrangements.”
“My father…” She paused and started working the sapphire cravat pin loose from all the lace at his throat.
“Your father is old-fashioned in the extreme. I’m not. What was St. Just whispering in your ear about in the receiving line?”
By virtue of one question after another, one article of clothing after another, she eventually got him out of all but his knee breeches. He took pity on her enough to slip into the dressing room between their bedrooms and exchange the last of his wedding finery for a dressing gown and loose trousers, by which time a quantity of food had arrived in the sitting room.
“We are certainly getting the royal treatment,” Deene observed. “Belt himself wheeled that cart in, did he not?”
“Belt.” Eve shoved a book back onto the shelf. “I will recall his name because butler and Belt both begin with B.”
This was important to her. Getting out of her wedding dress was apparently not.
“Let me be your lady’s maid, Evie.” He wanted to take her in his arms and whisper this in her pretty ear, but she was looking quite… prickly.
“I thought my maid came down from Morelands to join this household?”
“And she’s no doubt in the kitchen, partaking of the general merriment occasioned by our nuptials. Hold still.” He moved around behind her and started divesting her of all the layers of clothing hiding her from his view. When she stood only in a sheer white chemise—with a hem lavishly embroidered in gold, blue, and green—Deene took a step back and shrugged out of his dressing gown.
“Take this. The fires aren’t lit yet, and until my naked body is draped over your delectable and satisfied person, it will keep you warm.”
She looked like she wanted to say something off-putting, so he kissed her on the mouth—a swift, no-you-don’t kiss that worked only because he kept his hands to himself rather than pull her tight against his body.
His lady wife took her revenge by shutting the dressing room door when the bath had been delivered. Deene let the wine breathe while he stared at the door and pictured his naked and curvaceous wife all rosy and delicious in her solitary bath. By the time she emerged an hour later, Deene had lowered the level in the champagne bottle by more than half, and the sun had set.
“Shall we light some candles?” Eve asked—perhaps a shade too cheerfully.
“Let’s not. Let’s light the fire and enjoy the shadows.”
She pulled his dressing gown closer around her, but Deene’s lust had been riding him hard, and he could tell she wore nothing beneath the velvet and silk of his clothing.
“My bath revived me,” Eve said, still standing in the dressing room doorway. “I’m quite famished.”
Deene said nothing. The food was before him on the low table in front of the sofa, and Eve was across the room. Unless he was to toss strawberries at her, she’d have to approach him.
“I’ve started the first bottle, Wife. Shall you imbibe?”
“Just a bit, if you please.”
While she perched on the first three inches of the sofa cushion, Deene held his wine glass up to her mouth. She sipped about as much as would inebriate a small Methodist bird.
For a few minutes, he tried—he honestly did—to feed her. She responded with an increasing number of agitated and unhappy looks, until Deene realized the situation was growing desperate.
And between when a man thinks he needs to say something and when the words start spilling from his idiot mouth, insight befell him: Eve’s nerves, her quiet hysteria, whatever she was grappling with, it had to do with her accident.