Читать книгу How to Wed a Baron - Кейси Майклс, Kasey Michaels - Страница 11

ALINA SAT CROSS-LEGGED in the middle of the hard tester bed, her sketchbook across her knees. She’d been so certain the baron would come knocking on her door to inquire as to why she had refused to join him downstairs for dinner. But when the clock had struck the hour of nine, she had at last given up on her fetching outfit of palest lilac silk in favor of a comfortable night rail she’d worn to the brink of shabbiness.

She only wished she hadn’t used the excuse that she wasn’t hungry in order to avoid him, for now her stomach had begun grumbling at her, pointing out that, if she was going to lie, she should first consider the consequences. Citing a headache from the excitement of seeing England for the first time? That would have been much better.

Except that the baron might have interpreted that as excitement upon seeing him for the first time.

That eventuality was not to be contemplated. The man was already entirely too pleased with himself just on general principles—that was obvious.

“And much too intelligent for my own good,” she muttered, her charcoal stick moving rapidly as she colored in the man’s hair, which was nearly as dark as her own. His skin was darker than hers; he was clearly a man who spent considerable time in the sun—she’d noticed as much when he’d taken her hand in his and bowed over her fingertips. He had hard hands, strong and even slightly callused, which had surprised her, for he certainly dressed (and behaved!) as a man who never so much as brushed his own hair without assistance.

She could still close her eyes and see her pale skin against his darker tones, her fragile bones no match for his strength if he were to squeeze her fingers between his. And she most certainly could still see those laughing, mocking green eyes.

He really did upset her sense of being up to any challenges her new circumstances could toss at her. She’d been so sure of her plans, back in the safety of her own bedchamber. And all it had taken was one look, one too-intimate touch of this man’s flesh against hers, to knock all of her confident pins out from beneath her. Oh, yes, he was going to be trouble….

Just to think—if she had worn gloves, as Danica had told her was proper, she would still not know that her betrothed had such an unsettling effect on her. Why, she might have gone down to dinner, prattled on in some inane way, all unaware that Baron Justin Wilde was anything more than a pretty fellow with an impertinent mouth.

Now what was she supposed to do? If there existed a way to control him, she had to find it. Quickly.

Strange how she had not thought about the marriage itself as anything more than a minor inconvenience, a necessary detail. At first, she’d been too angry to do more than think about being bartered away by the king, being forced to leave her home. But once her aunt had explained that a marriage of mutual convenience was all she could look forward to in any event, thanks to her birth and station—and had pointed across the king’s drawing room to where Count Josef Eberharter stood picking at his yellowed teeth with a penknife and declared the man to be Alina’s only alternative—the idea of traveling to England, to the birthplace of her mother, had begun to seem a reasonable alternative.

Her mother had told so many stories about her homeland, and always with such a wistful look in her eyes. Now she, her mother’s daughter, would see all the glorious sights herself. First London, of course, as everyone with any sense wished to visit this great metropolis. But then she would travel to Kent, and to her mother’s childhood home. Wouldn’t they all be surprised and delighted to welcome the daughter of their beloved and lost Anne Louise?

She cocked her head to one side and contemplated the now-completed sketch. Had she captured the correct degree of astonishment in his lordship’s entirely too-wise eyes as he looked cross-eyed at the fat fish tail sticking out of his wide-open mouth?

“Oh, my lady,” Tatiana said, leaning across the mattress to goggle at the sketch. “That’s even better than the last one. Danica, come see.”

“Humph,” the older woman snorted, staying where she was, busying herself with laying out Alina’s freshly pressed traveling outfit for the morning, a lovely thing of midnight-blue and military gold frogging, and a shako hat that was made to tilt forward above the lady’s right eye just so. “Horns and a tail? I see nothing so amusing in poking fun at one’s betrothed. You should only be thanking the Virgin for his handsome face and body. He could have been sixty, and fat and filthy into the bargain.”

“I’d rather he was eighty, and with one foot teetering over the grave, too crippled with gout and dissipated by drink to worry about such things as his new wife,” Alina said truthfully, for she saw nothing wrong with wishful thinking. “What am I supposed to do with a man no older than Luka? What will he want from me?”

Tatiana giggled, putting her pudgy hands to her mouth. “Should we tell her, Danica?”

“That is the job of the husband, and not for us to say. It is proper for a lady of breeding not to know—”

“About breeding?” Tatiana quipped, and then covered her smile with her hand.

“You have never been amusing, Tatiana Klammer,” the dresser said, turning her back to the woman, who promptly stuck her tongue out at her.

Alina sighed. It had been thus ever since they’d begun their journey, the two women always jabbing at each other, the dresser believing her position to be higher than that of mere paid companion, the companion believing the dresser was altogether too full of herself. She had begun to wish Danica had not accompanied them to England, for the woman was stiff, humorless and full of rules.

Plus, she clearly didn’t like her new mistress, something Alina couldn’t understand, because everyone liked her. Well, perhaps not Aunt Mimi, definitely not Aunt Mimi. But everyone else.

She closed the sketchbook and put it to one side. “That is not what I meant, Danica,” she said testily. “I don’t know if he will want my company and conversation, or if he will ignore me for the most part, as I hope, and allow me to go my own way. I already know he will kiss me and give me babies. My mama explained that to me years ago. It’s the only way to get babies. I asked her, and she told me. I am…resigned to that.”

As her mother had been dead these past three years, it could be wondered just how specific the lady had been with her explanations.

The way Danica rolled her eyes as she turned about once more, Alina now wondered exactly that herself.

“What? What did I say that is so impossible that you made that terrible face?”

“Danica means nothing, my lady,” Tatiana said quickly, and the dresser returned to her duties, laying out a pair of fine stockings with a flourish before dropping a rather insulting curtsy and leaving the room, muttering darkly under her breath.

“I don’t like her,” Alina told her companion, not for the first time. “And I don’t think she really wished to come here. I shall have her sent home immediately.”

“The Entschlossen sailed on the evening tide, my lady, along with all those handsome guardsmen. I saw it leave from this very window. You were sleeping, and I didn’t think to wake you. I would have, had I known you were planning to send Miss Pickles and Sour Cider packing.”

Alina slid off the side of the bed, her bare feet encountering the cool wooden planks. “Yes, well, there’s no use for it then, is there? She was Aunt Mimi’s choice, and she’d only have replaced her with someone even worse. We’ll have to make the best of things. You don’t suppose I could take a quick trip outside and find a nice fat toad to put in her bed?”

“Oh, my lady, you are such a joy to me,” Tatiana said, dropping to her knees and helping to fit a pair of satin slippers on Alina’s slender feet. “But so very young, for all your fine ways and wonderful ideas. Now I think you should tell me more about what it was your dear mother told you about kisses and giving babies.”

Alina sighed. “Then Danica didn’t pull that monkey face of hers simply to vex me, did she? What else do I need to know, Tatiana? I shouldn’t wish to have to ask the baron the time of day, so I most certainly don’t want him to be telling me anything else. He should believe I am a woman of the world.”

The companion, old enough to be Alina’s mother, but not accustomed to speaking frankly on a subject she knew about but, in her spinster state these past forty years, had no personal knowledge of, struggled to her feet once more.

“Husbands do not care to think of their brides as women of the world, my lady,” she said, avoiding Alina’s eyes. “They get really put out about it, as I’ve heard the thing. Best you should do as Danica says, I suppose, since your mother didn’t see fit to explain the way of the world to you, and let his lordship tell you. Not that Miss Uppity knows any more than me, for there was never a man eager enough to brave that one’s embrace. Be like bedding a board.”

Tatiana, an earthy woman for all she had been serving in the manor house for most of her life, ran her hands down over her own considerable curves, then hefted her massive breasts one at a time, so that they fit more comfortably above her corset. “Not that these things don’t get in the way, from time to time. Still, better a handful of these than those sorry pimples of Danica’s.”

Alina giggled. “You’ve got considerably more than a handful, Tatiana,” she said, and then sobered. Swallowed. Looked down at her own muslin-covered breasts that were somewhere between Danica’s pimples and Tatiana’s impressive largesse. “Why should that matter?”

“No reason, my lady,” the maid said hurriedly, pulling a handkerchief from between her bosoms and dabbing at her suddenly damp upper lip. “No reason at all, and I meant nothing by it, truly I didn’t. I could go to the kitchens and beg something for you to eat. You nary had a thing but some watered wine and dry biscuits pass your lips since this morning. The crossing was a mite choppy, and I didn’t eat anything, either, but I surely made up for that lack earlier. English food isn’t so terrible, my lady. Just let me nip off downstairs and—”

“Tatiana,” Alina intoned severely, hiding her apprehension. “I asked you a question. Why should it matter if a woman…if she has pimples or handfuls?”

“It’s…um…the thing is, my lady—your mother said kisses give you babies?”

Alina was beginning to feel very silly. “I saw Jurgen in the hallway behind the silver room one day, and he was kissing Astrid.”

“Astrid, is it? The girl is a round-heeled fool, tipping over for any who ask her.”

Round-heeled? And what did that mean? Silly was rapidly escalating to uncomfortable. “That’s neither here nor there, Tatiana. We’re much of the same age, and I thought I should know what she was doing, as it was…she seemed quite distressed. Moan…moaning and everything, and saying in this absurd voice, ‘Oh, yes, Jurgen, my stallion.’ Um…so I asked my mother, and she told me that Astrid was a very reckless and uncouth girl, and that kisses lead to babies, and that was why I should have nothing to do with kisses until I was married and my husband kissed me, as she had done with my father, and as good and chaste people have always done.”

Tatiana pulled a face, the more round-cheeked version of the same expression Danica had displayed a few minutes earlier. “And now Astrid has two babies and no husband. A stallion, indeed! Jurgen? But, see, my lady, your dear mother was correct in what she told you.” The maid turned companion sighed. “And that’s all she told you? Truly?”

“You know how ill she was, Tatiana. I could see that the subject distressed her, so I thanked her and left her to her prayer book. And…and then she was gone, and I had never dared to trouble her with more questions. I suppose I could have applied to Aunt Mimi, but I didn’t want her to…to know that I didn’t know. I…I’m supposing there’s more than just kisses, and I’ve heard things a time or two at court.” She shook her head in denial. “But they can’t possibly be true. Nobody would do that.”

Tatiana looked about the room, spying out the small table with a decanter of wine that had been sent up by the baron, whose man said that it was safer by far to sip wine than to get within ten feet of the inn’s supply of water unless it was for one’s bath. She hesitated only a moment before pouring herself a full glass and drinking the contents in three nearly desperate gulps.

Wiping the back of her hand across her mouth, she then sighed, replaced the wineglass and sat her bulk down on a chair without asking permission.

“Ah, that’s better,” she said, rubbing her palms together and looking at Alina expectantly. “Now, my dear, sheltered little girl, you tell your Tatiana—nobody would do what?”

THE SMALL GILT CLOCK that had been a parting gift from the king chimed out the hour of ten o’clock from a small table beside Lady Alina’s bed. She sighed, supposing she would hear the lovely thing chime out every hour until dawn, her eyes still as wide and shocked as they were now, and staring up at the cracked ceiling.

Tatiana had left her after an hour. Alina would have given anything to have their discussion forever erased from her memory.

That’s what Jurgen and Astrid had been doing? Her parents had done this? The whole world did this?

Why? Why would anyone do this?

Yes, her mother had explained her monthly bleed when Alina had first experienced it. But she’d called it Eve’s curse, which hadn’t meant much, even when Alina had gone to the Bible in the study and searched it thoroughly. The snake, the apple, she knew all of that. But she hadn’t found anything about a monthly bleed, and had to content herself with her mother’s assertion that it made her a woman, and no longer a little girl.

That had seemed a fair enough trade. After all, men like Jurgen and Luka and Papa had to shave every day because they were men. She only had to bleed once a month.

Oh, if only she had known! She would never have agreed to the marriage had she known. Removing herself from her aunt Mimi’s jurisdiction, her constant disapproval, had weighed heavily in her decision, as had Count Josef Eberharter’s teeth. Pleasing the king had, of course, been paramount…even if displeasing the king by refusing probably hadn’t been a serious option in any case.

The prospect of fine gowns, of moving in English society, of having a home of her own, these had all finally brought her around to the notion that, if she was not the luckiest girl in the world, she at least wasn’t cleaning out fireplace grates or living in some damp cave, worrying when next she’d have something to eat.

But this? She hadn’t known about this. The so disgusting, so crudely violating, so intensely intimate this.

She’d made Tatiana swear on her prayer book that she was telling the truth. She’d demanded the companion then swear on that same prayer book that people actually liked it. Tatiana wasn’t sure enough to put her immortal soul in jeopardy by swearing to the latter. But she was fairly certain men liked it. Men liked the oddest things.

The soft knock on the door to her bedchamber all but had Alina jumping out of her skin.

“Lady Alina? It is I, Justin Wilde. I see a spill of light under the door and feel impelled to disturb you. I believe we should have ourselves a small conversation.”

Her wide eyes popped open even wider. It was him…God and all His saints help her…her stallion.

“Forgive me, my lord,” she called out, wishing her voice didn’t seem to be a full octave too high, and piteously thin. Wishing she had dared to blow out her candle and face the dark, and the disturbing images Tatiana’s words had planted in her brain. “I am abed.”

“Ah, but not asleep,” came the assured voice. “One could hardly expect you to be, if your bed is half so uncomfortable as mine. Please. We really do need to talk.”

The disturbing images disappeared as her temper came to her rescue. Was the man always going to prove such a pest?

“Oh, all right, if you’re otherwise going to stand out there making a fuss,” she groused mean-spiritedly, throwing back the covers and slipping to her feet. “One moment.”

She located her dressing gown, not caring that it was old—why had she purchased so many pretty things, and completely neglected to refurbish her nightwear? She should probably add that question to the list of Things Nobody Had Told Her, praying it would not be a long list. She could only be grateful that the thing buttoned from her throat to her toes, rather like muslin armor.

But her parents had not shared a bedchamber. It had never occurred to Alina that her husband would share hers, that he would ever see her in her nightwear. There was no avoiding the thing—she was stupidest person in creation!

Not bothering to locate her slippers, she padded to the door, slipped back the latch and stepped back a half-dozen very large paces. “It’s open, my lord.”

He stepped inside and closed the door behind him.

Alina crossed her arms protectively over her breasts. Just in case he became “maddened by lust,” as Tatiana had said men were prone to do at the drop of a hat.

“My, aren’t you a picture,” the baron said, bowing to her before advancing toward her, daring to lift the single thick braid that hung down over her crossed arms. “I had a mare once whose tail was so long and fine that my groom enjoyed braiding it this way. It looks better on you,” he added as he dropped the braid, so that she quickly gave her head a flip, sending the thing flying behind her back.

“I’m not a mare, my lord,” Alina told him, knowing that, in many ways, she was. A broodmare…with an ermine-tipped velvet cloak.

He tilted his head to one side and looked at her more closely. “No, of course you’re not. Is there something amiss, my lady? Have I made you nervous? I promise you, that was not my intent in coming here.”

“Then what is your intent, my lord?”

Something was happening to her. He was looking at her in the strangest and most intense way, and something was happening to her. She was becoming curiously aware of her body, parts of it that had never before bothered to bring themselves to her attention. And hadn’t they taken a fine time to wake up and say hello!

Alina hastened to the chair Tatiana had been sitting in an hour earlier. The wineglass she’d refilled three times during the course of their discussion was still on the table beside it, still with half its contents. She picked it up and drained it, suppressing a shiver as her first taste of unwatered wine served to make her feel warm from her tongue straight down to the bottom of her belly.

Tatiana had said that wine helped when one was nervous, and if taken in enough quantity could even make the unthinkable, thinkable.

But nothing happened. Clearly it would take considerably more wine for that! Alina sat down with a thump, crossed her arms once more over her breasts that were neither more than a handful nor pimples.

She looked up at Lord Wilde; so tall, so very handsome, she supposed. But the unthinkable remained unthinkable. Mostly. Those parts of her body that had heretofore slumbered happily seemed to be coming even more awake, aware in some strange, unsettling way. She clamped her knees together tightly, even as she forced herself to lower her arms, clasp her fingers in her lap.

Do not think about his strong, callused hands, she warned herself. Do not think of where he will touch you, how he will touch you with his hands…and with his…with that other thing.

She couldn’t help herself. Her eyes strayed to the slight bulge at the juncture of his thighs.

She shivered and quickly looked away.

“Comfortable?” he asked, both his smile and his tone telling her he knew she was not.

“I am not accustomed to having gentlemen see me in my…when I am not dressed.”

“I should most certainly hope not,” he said affably. “But you are all that is modest. Almost aggressively so, one might say. Alina—may I please have the pleasure of addressing you so informally? I find it a delightful affectation.”

What did he mean, aggressively so? Was he making fun of her? Oh, he was such a man of the world, wasn’t he? The insufferable snot. “Alina is my mother’s name for me. There is nothing pretentious about it. My cloak is pretentious.”

His smile was different this time than it had been earlier. She could see this one in his eyes as well as on his lips. “Yes, it certainly is. You’re going to bankrupt me, aren’t you, minx? At least I’ve been forewarned. Please feel free to augment your wardrobe in any way you wish. I suggest you begin with your nightwear.”

She drew the dressing gown more closely about her. He had already made his point. She did need new nightwear. Preferably fashioned out of chain mail.

“Ah, now I’ve insulted you.” He pulled a straight-back chair away from the wall and turned it about, straddling it as he sat down. “I apologize, and can only put it down to something I learned earlier this evening.”

At least he wasn’t so big, now that he’d sat down. “The something you believe we must speak of tonight? Does it have anything to do with that nonsense you were spouting this afternoon? Because you very nearly frightened me. I thought I’d been betrothed to a lunatic.”

“Yes, I suppose you did. I’d like to apologize for that, Alina. I was under the mistaken impression that your king had informed you of—well, how do I put this?”

Her bare feet were beginning to feel chilled against the cold floor. “I would suggest, my lord, that you put it quickly. I would like to return to my bed.”

He stood up, replacing the chair against the wall, and held out his hand to her. “Much to my shock and even, yes, my consternation, I believe the devil is in it for me no matter where you deposit yourself, so why don’t you do that? Tuck the covers up under your chin, and perhaps I’ll be able to twist my mind around what I have to say.”

Now, what did he mean by that curious statement? Really, if it weren’t for the yellowed teeth, Count Eberharter was beginning to seem like the lesser of two evils. At least he was supposedly sane.

Alina scurried across the room and climbed onto the high bed, not unaware that she was, even if just for a moment, all but aiming her backside at her betrothed. Thinking about uncontrollable lust and dropping hats, she slid herself beneath the covers with alacrity. Then she quickly pulled the covers up and under her chin. “Back where I began,” she said, looking at him. “But you’re still here.”

Not only was he still there, but he had managed to pour himself a glass of wine, using the same glass she and Tatiana had used, as it was the only one on the tray. The thought passed through her mind that she and the companion had employed the wine for courage. Had he felt a similar need?

“I had a long and rather interesting chat with your secretary, Alina. He tells me that you believe this marriage of ours has been concocted solely to display friendship between your king and my Prince Regent, and to be an outward show of a new era of trade cooperation between our two countries now that Europe is once more at peace. Is that true?”

“No,” she said quietly, because she was, at heart, an honest person, and because her toes were curling beneath the covers at the way he kept looking at her and she would probably trip over her tongue if she dared a lie. “Not solely, my lord.”

“Justin,” he said, cocking his head very slightly. “Go on.”

“Justin,” she repeated, trying out his name, wishing her heart would kindly stop racing as if she’d just run up the long, curving flight of stairs at home. “Those were the king’s reasons, and your king’s, as well, I suppose. But I could have refused, you know.”

“How fortunate for you.”

She heard something in his voice, something that pulled all of her attention to him. “You had no choice?”

“Well, we all have choices, I suppose. Mine, however, were not acceptable to me.”

“Neither were mine,” Alina said, pushing up the pillows behind her so that she could sit back against them. She felt ridiculous, just lying there, while he stood over her like some…some…stallion. “Aunt Mimi made it very clear that if I refused this grand honor the king was gifting me with, I would be married off to someone of her choosing. She seemed entirely too delighted to have that power, so here I am.”

“I’ve been many things in my life, Alina, but I believe this may be the first time I am being seen as the lesser of two evils. I’m flattered.”

“You probably shouldn’t be, you know. I really never considered you. I’ve always wanted to travel to England. I want to meet the rest of my family, now that my parents are gone. It isn’t pleasant, you understand, to think that your single remaining relative is Aunt Mimi.”

Justin chuckled softly. “We must be thankful, then, that she didn’t decide to escort you here herself.”

Alina nodded, actually beginning to relax. Which was ridiculous. She was in bed, and he was standing there, and these newly awakened parts of her body were becoming more and more interested in having him continue to stand there. “She’s convinced Englishmen are all barbarians, so she refused to accompany me. She may even now be rubbing her hands together in glee, believing some great bear has already eaten me, or something.”

“There are no bears in England, Alina. At least not of the four-legged variety. I was told your mother was English, but I hadn’t given that fact very much thought. What’s your family name?”

“You’ll allow me to go see them?”

Justin shrugged. “I see no reason not to, do you?”

“No, I don’t. But Luka told me that English husbands are very strict, and that I will not be allowed to walk out alone, most especially in London, and that, as a wife, I will no longer have a mind of my own, but only my husband’s will and permission.”

He sat down on the edge of the bed, which for some unknown reason suddenly seemed quite a natural thing for him to do. “God’s teeth! No wonder you don’t like me. He told you all of that? Did he tell you that we lock wives in the cellars if they dare to disobey, and keep them there on a diet of stale bread and ditch water for a month?”

Alina’s eyes widened at this, but then she noticed the tiniest bit of crinkling around the outside of Justin’s eyes. “You said that you and he had a long talk this evening. Did he tell you that I’m a very good shot and that I have a very bad temper?”

“He said you are prone to do whatever people tell you not to do. He didn’t mention any proficiency with firearms.”

“Oh. Then perhaps I shouldn’t have mentioned it, either. And not just with firearms. I am also extremely proficient at archery, and I know how to throw a knife so that it actually sticks in whatever it hits. That isn’t easy, you know, getting the handle not to hit first.”

“Now I’m intrigued,” Justin said, and she believed him, because he was looking at her with some interest. “Many Englishwomen are proficient at archery. Some enjoy shooting, although not many. But I don’t believe I’ve ever met a female who knows how to throw a knife without the handle hitting the target first. Why would you want to learn such a thing?”

Alina lowered her eyes for a moment, and then looked at him again. “Your English ladies were safe here, on your island, while Bonaparte seemed to go where he willed all across Europe. My father said that when the fox threatens the chicken house, even the hens must know how to defend themselves.”

“Luka told me your father died at Waterloo. I’m sorry.”

“So am I,” Alina said, sighing. “But he didn’t mean to die. If he did, he wouldn’t have left me with Aunt Mimi. He would have been certain to leave instructions that I be sent to England, I’m sure of it. But Luka isn’t so sure, as Papa never said anything to him.”

“Ah, yes, your mother’s family.”

“My family,” she clarified. She hadn’t really thought seriously about her mother’s family, not until her father was gone, but she’d daydreamed about how they would be. How they’d love her. “They live in Kent. I looked at a map, and it isn’t all that far away from London. It’s all down here the way Portsmouth is, at the fat end of the island, and not up near Scotland.”

“Yes, I am familiar with Kent. My own estate is located in Hampshire, also in the…fat part of the island. What’s your mother’s family name?”

“Farber,” Alina told him proudly. “My mother was Lady Anne Louise Farber, daughter of the Earl of—”

“Birling. Yes, I know the family title.”

She watched as Justin stood once more, his handsome features suddenly cold, hard. She sat up straighter, sensing that the ease they’d seemed to have found with each other these past minutes was just that, a thing of the past. “What’s wrong?”

His expression softened, but only with some effort, she was sure. “Wrong? Why, nothing, my dear, nothing at all is wrong. I just thought of something else I must discuss with the Prince Regent when next I see him. I must tell him how very clever, no, how fiendishly clever he is.”

“I don’t understand.”

“You will, unfortunately. But not right now. It’s time you slept. Good night.”

“But…but you said we had to talk, that there was something you needed to tell me.”

His hand on the door latch, Justin turned, looked at her in the near darkness. She couldn’t see his eyes now, and she had the strangest feeling that this was because he didn’t want her to see them.

“Yes, it had to do with our destination. I’m afraid we won’t be traveling to London tomorrow. Instead, you’ll be heading off to West Sussex, and the estate of my friend Rafe, the Duke of Ashurst. And his wife, Charlotte,” he added almost immediately, as if he felt he should. “You’ll travel quickly, I’m afraid, with only a single night spent on the road and two full days in the coach.”

“And then we’ll go to London?”

“I will,” he said, and opened the door. “I most assuredly will be traveling to London. I’m convinced there is someone there who can barely contain his glee as he awaits my arrival.”

She threw back the covers and got out of bed. “But I won’t be going with you to see this happy person? Is that what you’re saying? You’re going to take me to this Ashurst, and this Duke, and leave me there?”

“You’ll remain with my friends until I return for you, yes.”

“But—why?”

He didn’t answer her. Instead, he closed the door and walked to where she was standing barefoot on the chilly wooden floor, and put a hand to her cheek, which made her feel very strange indeed. Not frightened. Not at all frightened. She fought to keep herself from tipping her head, so that she could press her skin more closely against his, feel the strength of his hand, the slight roughness of his skin.

“You’ve been badly used. I’m sorry, pet,” he whispered softly. “I’m so very, very sorry. But I’ll fix it, as best I can. I promise.”

“You make precious little sense, Justin,” she told him, caught between anger and fear…and a hint of something she felt fairly certain, after her instructional talk, Tatiana would have termed interest. Mostly, she knew she didn’t want him to leave. “How can you fix something I don’t even know is broken? How would I even know when you’d fixed it?”

He smiled, but it was one of those smiles that didn’t quite reach his eyes. “Aren’t your feet cold?”

“Never mind my feet,” she shot back, deciding anger was perhaps the best option at the moment.

“Ah, but I find them adorable. Small and slim. Have you ever heard the expression I kiss your hands and feet?”

Alina curled her toes and clenched her fingers, and those parts of her that had been so happily slumbering shot out warnings that she might soon be in significant trouble if she didn’t apply some maidenly common sense and put a halt to this strange conversation, and that those previously slumbering parts weren’t all that averse to a little adventure.

“Once again you’re not answering my questions,” she pointed out, striving to regather her scattered wits. “We were speaking about my family, and suddenly you ran for the door.”

“I beg your pardon. I do not run for doors.”

“Very well, then, why did you come back?” she asked, believing the answer to that might be more important.

“Perhaps for this?” he offered, moving his hand so that now he was tipping up her chin. “One more look, and perhaps even a small taste.”

“Oh. I…that is…you shouldn’t have to answer every quest—”

Her eyelids fluttered closed as he brought his lips to hers, and then retreated before she could react at all.

“Innocence,” he said softly. “You taste like innocence. And I should be shot.”

And then he was gone, and Alina crawled back into bed, holding a hand to her mouth, knowing she wouldn’t sleep a single wink for the remainder of what was going to be a very long night.