Kiss Me, Annabel

Page 35

“I’ll be going through that door into our dressing room,” Ewan said firmly. “And you’d best change into something cotton, my girl, and up to your ears as well. Or we won’t last a night together. I’ll have to jump out the window and run to the stables, and that will cause more gossip than our marriage did in the first place.”
He closed the door behind him and Annabel just grinned at the ceiling. After a second, he poked his head around the door and growled, “I’m warning you.”
So she slid out of bed and stood up and saw the shock of it in his eyes, the way they darkened and turned tigerhungry. Annabel knew she had a lovely body, from a man’s point of view. She had always thought of it as her personal dowry, to be offered in a trade for a man of sustenance. But now she felt the swell of her breasts in a different way, measured by the sudden rasp of Ewan’s breathing, by the way he stood so rigidly by the door. The silk of her nightgown caught between her legs for a moment and he closed his eyes. As if he were in pain. Annabel could have laughed with the pleasure of it.
He felt for the latch behind him and left without another word. Luckily, there was a starched and ironed cotton nightgown near the top of her trunk. She took off the silk and folded it into a shimmering square. Then she pulled on the cotton. It billowed around her legs like the sails of a ship as she ran back to the bed.
When Ewan came back into the room she was peeping at him from under the covers, cotton buttoned up to her chin. He was wet, his hair back against his head. But he was still dressed. She raised an eyebrow.
“I bathed at the sluice in the back,” he explained. “And there’s something I didn’t think of.”
“Yes?”
“I don’t sleep in a nightshirt. I never liked them.”
“But what do you—” Her eyes widened.
“In the buff,” he said. “Obviously I can’t do that at the moment.”
“Obviously not!” she snapped.
“Although you have already seen my chest,” he pointed out.
“I have no wish to see it again.”
He sighed. “In that case, I’ll wear a shirt and my smalls.” And without further ado, he pulled off his boots and tossed them to the side. And then he put his hand to his pantaloons, but she realized her cheeks were turning fiery red, so she turned on her shoulder and stared at the wall.
After a moment she felt a large body settle into the bed next to her.
“I canna fathom how I got myself into such a stupid situation,” Ewan murmured, and she had to turn over to look at him.
He was lying on his back, staring up at the beams, arms crossed behind his back. He’d rolled the sleeves of his linen shirt up, and it was open at the neck. Annabel could feel her heart beating in her chest, for all the world as if it were trying to escape.
“I should have marched you over to a bishop, special license in hand, and had done with it,” he said. “Don’t you agree?”
“No. I like being courted,” Annabel said. She felt unaccountably shy. It was as if her whole life had led up to this moment of finding herself in bed with a man. And yet it was happening under such strange circumstances!
“I don’t even dare look at you,” he said after a moment.
Annabel felt like laughing aloud. “Well, close your eyes, then,” she said. She turned her shoulder to him again.
“Two more weeks of this,” he groaned. She felt him moving around and risked a peek. “I’m putting a pillow between us,” he told her. “I’m not risking you rolling over in your sleep and ending up in my arms. There are limits to my endurance.” He found a bolster pillow of at least a half body’s length to put between them.
Annabel settled down again and tried to think about sleep, but suddenly he was there, looming over her. She looked up at him. “I’ve two kisses left,” he reminded her. “I’m keeping one for tomorrow.”
“But you said never in the bedchamber,” she said, feeling a flutter of excitement mixed with apprehension.
“Then this is a goodnight kiss only,” he said. He bent his head and kissed her, a sweet, small kiss. “It doesn’t count in my ten. But I want to tell you that I thank God your sister Imogen draped herself around me on the dance floor.”
She smiled at him, and then he turned over. And after a while, listening to his calm breathing, she went to sleep.
Fifteen
“You hold yourself very dear,” Imogen said to the Earl of Mayne. He was following her up the grand flight of stairs that led to Almack’s ballroom.
“I am very dear,” Mayne replied. “It’s a pity you don’t account yourself at the same value.”“There’s no need to be sarcastic simply because I tried to kiss you,” Imogen tossed over her shoulder. “You must have shared a hundred kisses in carriages before.” On the way to Almack’s she had suggested that since most of London thought they were involved in a torrid affaire, it was his duty to at least kiss her on occasion. Mayne, apparently, felt otherwise.
Imogen was rather surprised to find herself pleased that he continued to elude her advances. He was a challenge, and having a challenge took her mind off Draven.
“I am used to the choice of location and activity being my prerogative,” he said now.
“Then I am rendering you a great service by bringing you into the modern age. Widowed ladies in particular no longer have to act like pious nuns.”
“All these newfangled notions might be too much for me,” Mayne said pensively.
“Oh, I doubt it. Lax morality suits you far better than this prudishness, you know. You have a reputation to keep up. People will start thinking you’re marriage material, if you don’t watch out. Matchmaking mamas will add your name to their private lists, rather than shuddering if their daughter catches your eye.”
“I surprise myself,” Mayne admitted, joining her at the top of the stairs.
“As a matter of fact, you should be showering me with grateful kisses. Here am I, a beautiful young widow allowing you to partner me about. Why, if the ton weren’t convinced that you were engaged in an extramarital affair, they might think the worse of you.”
“That I am considering marriage?”
“That you have the pox,” Imogen retorted.
“Your ladylike nature constantly astonishes me,” he said acidly.
Imogen grinned. She felt more cheerful than she had for months. Something about bantering with Mayne made her feel less hopeless. And less grief-stricken. She paused and put a hand on his arm. “Prudishness is an affectation that doesn’t become you. Since the ton is convinced that we are conducting an affaire, why is it that you have never even kissed me? Don’t you find me desirable?”
“You are all that is desirable, as you very well know.” He looked over her head and nodded in greeting to an acquaintance. “But should we really discuss the lack of intimacy in our friendship at this particular moment?”
Imogen looked around. Almack’s was full of people, all of whom were undoubtedly fascinated by their arrival. She grinned at him. “Everything important should be discussed within the full view of the ton. It stops people from trying to exercise their imagination on their own.”