"What?" Helena slid down further into the bedclothes. "Watching you undress?"
"No." He hesitated. Perhaps that would be a more sensible lesson for an exhausted man with a reluctant bride in his bed to manage. But hadn't he proven definitively today that he was not a sensible man? "No," he repeated more firmly, sending Helena deeper into the bedclothes. "I don't mean watching your husband undress, although that is a lesson for the future, my imaginative wife."
He pushed away from the bedpost against which he had been leaning. "The lesson for today is learning to undress your husband."
"You must be joking." Her voice did not convey conviction and he smiled, thinking she was beginning to know him already.
"Not at all."
"But I have had my lesson for today," she objected. "And we weren't even properly wed at the time." As if she might shame him into giving up on his notion. Never.
He crossed the room and parted the curtains a few inches. The early light fell upon her face and she buried herself in the covers with a faint squeal. Though she was no longer watching him, he bowed deeply toward the bed. "Behold, it is the dawn of a new day, Wife."
Chapter Seven
Was he mad? Helena peeked out from under the covers at her husband. The early dawn light threw odd shadows across the room. Across his face. But she could swear that his eyes were gleaming at her as if he were a jungle predator. A tiger. Or a lion.
"It is too early for such games," she said crossly as he rose from his bow and grinned boldly at her. She sat up in the bed, cradling her knees in her arms. He could not be serious.
But he was. He held out his arms. "Come. Undress your husband, Wife."
She did not move. "You are drunk."
"I assure you I am not." He stood waiting, staring at her in a most unsettling manner.
"I will call Griggson for you." Helena moved to pull the bell rope, and squealed as she was lifted bodily from the bed with no warning. His breath was scented with brandy. So much for his not being drunk.
"I can choose another lesson, then, if you like?" His mouth was inches from her ear as he whispered, "Would you like to know what it feels like when a man suckles your breasts? Or do you already know?"
Instinctively, she drew her arms across her chest. "I do not."
"Do not wish to know, or do not know?" Helena struggled to escape him, but he only laughed as he set her on her feet and placed his hands at her hips. "Well, Wife? Decide. I am tired and want my bed."
Helena reached for the shirt that was half unfastened and jerked at it angrily.
His hands came over hers. "Not like that, unless your husband has taken a mistress and you wish to punish him."
"What if he is a drunken fool?"
"You can hardly punish him for such a minor transgression, surely?"
He guided her to gently unfasten his shirt and then again he took her hands and brought them to his shoulders. "Now, a loving wife would allow her hands to skim her husband's shoulders as she pushed the shirt from him gently."
"Would she?" Even her fingertips, touching as lightly as she could manage, detected the powerful muscles in his shoulders. Muscles that coiled and flexed in his arms as her fingers skimmed quickly down their length. Helena felt as if her fingertips were being scalded. Were all men so warm? She could not recall from her brief encounters with William.
"Definitely." He caught her hands as she reached for the fastening of his trousers and brought them back up to his shoulders. "A gentle caress. That's it. And then, her hands would trail down his chest." His grip was not painful; his thumbs did not hurt her as he pressed her fingers open, one by one, and trailed her hands down his chest, almost as if they did not belong to her at all.
Helena was fascinated to feel the taut contours of his muscled breastbone and ribs. The fine hair that covered his chest. The warm steady pulse of his blood beneath his skin. His heart beating steady and rapid beneath his rib cage. She did not know when he let go of her hand and she began exploring on her own, unwilling to draw back from an study of the male anatomy she had wished to make for a very long time.
He drew in a startled breath when one index finger dipped into his navel and she could not help stopping there a moment. "Have I tickled you, my lord?"
Tickled was not what he would call the sensation, Rand thought. Torture was more like it. Still, it was a sweet enough torment, even if he knew he must cut it short tonight in light of her indisposition. "If I said yes, would you stop?"
"Of course not." There was a shadow of laughter in her voice as she answered. "Not even if you begged and pleaded on your knees, tears in your eyes." Her finger teased his navel more surely as she spoke.
She had warmed to the game, he realized. Now that she was in control. The weariness of a misspent night fell away from him. "What if I were to throw myself on your mercy?"
A distinct flavor of well-savored revenge in her answer. "Who says I have any mercy?"
"I say you do," he avowed. "You can be sure I would not be standing before you if I were a poor judge of women. Especially women who dispense mercy freely."
Her finger stopped its teasing motion for a moment, and he feared his careless words had broken the spell between them. He had forgotten that a mistress might not mind the reminder that she had won him from others. A wife — his wife — apparently did.
He found himself oddly uncertain how to recapture the ease between them, and might have ended things there, for the night. But then she redoubled her efforts and her voice showed only a shadow of hesitation as she replied, "Those women were not your wife. They were not tasked with curing your reprobate ways. A wife should be merciful sparingly. Or so I have heard."
"Maybe you will make a good wife yet." Did he want a good wife? He had not thought so until she spoke the words. For a moment, to see her smile, he wanted to swear he would not drink, would not gamble, would not — but that was impossible, and the sooner she learned that lesson, the better for both of them. "I can promise you that mercy or no, I will not be tamed by any woman, not even a wife. I like my life as it is."
That comment broke the spell. Her finger jabbed him once and then she turned her back on him.
Perhaps he should have let her have her sulk. Mischief made him say imperiously, "You are not finished."
Her answer was flat and final. "I am."
He refused to accept defeat. He wanted his playful Helena back. "I do not sleep in my trousers. Or my boots."
Annoyed, she impatiently unfastened his trousers and would have shoved them down to the floor, if he had not again stopped her by taking her hands in his.
He said as patiently as if he were instructing a child, "First, the boots."
Helena gave him her best glare to show that she did not appreciate being treated as his doxy. "I have never taken a man's boots off before." Perhaps, she hoped, he would relent and finish the task himself.
He sat in a chair and held out his left leg as if her pique were of no consequence to him. "Your lover was not terribly demanding. I'm amazed he knew enough to manage the thing successfully between you. Perhaps you are still a virgin and don't even know it."
She felt herself flush hotly at the insult and wished he could not see how his words affected her. "I assure you, I am not."
He shrugged. "Then give me his name so I might offer him some pointers on how to treat a woman properly."
Helena did not reply, although his words reminded her sharply that she was not able to take the high ground with him as much as she wished. She had come to him with a blotched reputation. Nevertheless, she did not wish to be treated as if she were his servant. Take off his boots! She had taken off her sister's boots many times, but she would not give him the satisfaction of saying so. Whatever he wanted from her, he would have to ask for.
She stood mutely, making her expression as deliberately blank as she could manage with the fury that flowed through her veins.
After a moment, he sighed. "Turn around." She did so, expecting him to then ask for her to grasp his foot. Instead, she felt a nudging between her knees and gasped as she realized that he was insinuating his leg between hers, lifting the lawn of her nightdress high up her legs with the toe of his boot.
She opened her mouth to protest that Ros had never done such a thing when she realized she would give herself away. So she stood quietly, as if she could not feel the supple leather sliding back and forth against the inside of her bare thighs.
His voice was a soft purr. "Pull."
She moved back to clamp his leg at the knee with her own knees. Perhaps her hold was tighter than he expected, but he made no protest as she pulled at the heel of his boot. The snug fit gave some resistance. She suppressed her gasp when he placed his other foot firmly on her bottom and pushed against her as she tugged at the stubborn boot once more. She could have wept when it came free in her hands and his stocking-clad foot slithered back through her knees.
Before she could catch her breath, his other boot was sliding between her knees. "The other one, please."
This one proved even more stubborn that its twin. And Helena found her breath becoming more rapid and shallow as he placed his foot on her bottom again. Clad in only a stocking, his foot seemed to exude a warm strength as he pushed against her. When the boot came free she moved her legs apart and stepped away so that he could not tease her thighs with his foot once more. Even between a husband and wife that could not be proper. Could it?
He stood, grinning as wickedly as any boy caught stealing sweet buns from the kitchen. She would have turned and fled for the bed, but he held out his arms and said, "Now the trousers."
She saw no point in protesting. She just wanted to be done with this. Hastily she reached out to the already unfastened trousers and pushed clumsily at them.
She should have known he would not let her off so easily. He enjoyed her torment too much. "No. Again, like the shoulders, only this time you caress the hips."
She was shocked to realize he wore nothing underneath the trousers. But it gave her an idea of how to end matters between them quickly. "And do I caress farther down, to your thighs?" she challenged, realizing that he was fully aroused.
She was not too naive to know that was an uncomfortable state for a man who was not going to be able to make love to his wife.
"No." He laughed breathily. "Over the buttocks, like this." His hands guided hers over the hard, tight curve, and the movement pushed his pelvis against her belly.
Still holding her to him, her hands to his nether regions, he stepped out of his trousers. For a moment she was almost free, and then he held her against him, tightly, and bent his head to capture her mouth. His hands swooped up her arms to capture her shoulders when she made to pull away. Helpless, she stopped struggling and allowed herself to adjust to the feel of a naked man pressed against her. Kissing her. After a few moments, she began to realize there was a dangerous pleasure to be had in this kind of embrace.
She almost wished that he would lift her and carry her to the bed, as a hero in a romantic novel might do. But then she realized that was impossible. Surely he had not forgotten? He had been so casual in the use of the term menses. She did not want to have to say it aloud. She turned her head away, murmuring objections that were halfhearted. His kisses, his touch, felt too good.
"I find myself wishing you were going to have a child," he murmured heatedly in her ear. Despite his words, he did not pull away from her. For a moment she thought he would not stop. She closed her eyes and told herself sternly not to scream. She was his wife, after all. How silly to be afraid of the inevitable.
But after a moment the harshness of his breath evened out and he released her with a soft kiss on the top of her head. "That wasn't so awful, was it, my love?"
"Not at all," she lied.
He laughed softly. "I suspect you are relieved that your indisposition saved you from more of my attention."
"Not at all," she lied again. "I want a child as badly as you do. It is the one thing about this bargain that we both agree upon."
"Come to bed," he said, smothering a yawn. "I am feeling guilty for disturbing your sleep."
"In a moment." The thought of climbing into bed beside her new husband sent a sensation through her she had only felt once before — when William had first touched her as a lover. There was both pleasure and a twisting of unease in the feeling. The unease was compounded by Helena's suspicion that the earl was incapable of feeling guilt. Without looking at him, she bent and gathered his discarded clothing into her arms. "Griggson will have our heads if we do not hang this properly."
She drew out the chore, smoothing unseen wrinkles from the fabric as she listened to him climb into the bed and make himself comfortable.
At last she turned. "There, not even Griggson could complain—" She broke off. Her husband was unmistakably asleep, his lips parted, his shoulder rising in an even rhythm.
Asleep. After ... With a sigh she donned her dressing gown and settled on her chaise with a book. She was not getting into bed with him. She intended to heed the warning about letting sleeping lions rest. Or was it dogs? No matter. Her husband, despite his many flaws, was no dog. He was a lion. She only hoped he did not see her as a lamb.
The trip to Parsleigh could have been accomplished in three long days of riding, as his grandfather planned to do. Rand decided that they would stay a day longer so that they might see Ros off, now that her trip to America had been both discovered and sanctioned by her family.
He welcomed the delay, in truth. He had no intention of traveling at a breakneck pace. Hard travel would only get them to Parsleigh earlier, and he had little desire to see much more of his home than he had already been forced to endure.
While he did not normally enjoy staying at inns during his travels, preferring instead to sojourn with friends on the way, he found himself looking forward to doing so with Helena. The journey might be the only time the two of them would be truly alone. He even schemed to send Griggson ahead of them, so that he would have to share his wife with no one on the journey.