First Comes Scandal (Rokesbys #4)(68)

Bunions. Ah, the romance of medicine.

By the time he entered his room, he was bone tired. He moved quietly; he suspected Georgie would not be awake when he opened the door, and indeed, she was lying on her side, one hand near her face, her chest rising and falling softly with each breath.

“It seems that we’re to be denied our wedding night once again,” he murmured. He barely made a sound; it was really no more than a movement of his mouth. But he wanted to say it, to feel the words on his lips. He wanted to stroke her hair, too, to brush aside the wisps that tickled her face. But he did not want to wake her. He needed her, but she needed sleep more, and he suspected that he did, as well.

Nicholas did not know if he could make their first time perfect, but he was determined to try, and he knew this did not mean mauling her while they were both so tired they could barely function.

He looked down at Georgie, asleep in a moonbeam across her pillow. In all of their families’ matchmaking, a more contrived visual could not have been concocted. The moonlight through the window was romantic, and his sleeping wife’s long plait falling off the side of the bed was oddly inviting. Nicholas was gripped by a whimsical urge to lift her braid and put it on the pillow next to her.

He could not imagine what it was like to have so much hair one had to contain it before bed. Nicholas had never grown his hair long; it simply wasn’t his style, and frankly, it seemed more of nuisance than it was worth. His brother Andrew had once worn his past his shoulders, but he’d spent nearly a decade at sea as a privateer, and apparently queued hair was an expected aspect of the role.

Nicholas liked Georgie’s hair. He’d never seen it down, or at least not since they were children. But even pulled back, the color was an undeniable beacon of warmth. It was red, but not red, not in the way one usually thought of redheads. Which was to say, it wasn’t orange.

They’d napped a bit in the carriage, and during one stretch while she was dozing and he was not, he’d peeked down at the strands, marveling that each was somehow a different color—red and brown and blond and even a few he’d swear were white, and they all combined to make something he could only describe as the morning dawn on a winter’s day.

He changed into his nightshirt and crawled into bed, taking care not to disturb her. But as he drifted off, it occurred to him that there was nothing more welcome on a winter’s day than that first glimpse of sun, that promise of warmth. And even though he’d tried so hard to give her the space she needed to sleep, his body felt the pull of hers, and he moved. He curved behind her, and his hand found hers, and he slept.

GEORGIE CAME AWAKE slowly, one sense at a time. The cool morning air on her face, the pink of the sunlight filtering through her eyelids. She felt impossibly cozy and cocooned under the quilt, and even as her brain slowly rose through her sleepy fog, she wanted to burrow in, to press herself into the warmth, into the strength.

Into Nicholas.

Her eyes flew open.

He was in bed with her. Which shouldn’t have been shocking, except that she had no memory of how he’d got there. What had happened the night before? Nothing intimate, surely. They’d helped the boy, the other Georgie, and then Nicholas had insisted that she go up to the room and get ready for bed. He’d thought she’d want some privacy to get ready. She’d thought him so considerate. And then …

She must have fallen asleep.

She closed her eyes again, abject in her embarrassment. What sort of bride fell asleep on her wedding night? Or the night after the wedding night, as her case was. But it didn’t matter. She was still a terrible wife.

She stayed like that for several seconds, trying to hold herself utterly still. What was she supposed to do now? Wake him? Surely not. Should she try to slip out of the bed? His arm was thrown over her waist. Could she move it without disturbing him?

Could she move herself without disturbing him?

She gave it a little test, edging forward just a smidge.

Gremmremph.

As noises went, it was sleepy. And adorable. And she wished she could actually see him, but they were both on their sides, and she was facing away, and if her miniscule motion elicited his sleepy mumble, she’d surely wake him if she tried to turn.

But maybe if she moved just a little more. And then a little more after that, inch by inch until she could slip out from under his arm. Then she could turn. She could see what he looked like when he slept. Was he a quiet sleeper, or did his dreams play out on his face?

Were his lips closed, or did he hold them ever-so-slightly open? And what of his eyes? Had she ever truly looked at him when they were closed? No one held a blink for long enough for someone else to remember the expression. Did he still look like a Rokesby if she could not see the electric blue of his irises?

She pushed herself forward again, wiggling across the sheets, using all of her concentration just to move an inch. And then she waited, because it wouldn’t do to move too quickly. She needed to be sure he’d settled back into sleep before she moved again.

And maybe she also needed one last moment before leaving the bed, because nothing had ever felt quite so perfect as his hand on her hip.

She sighed. She loved his hands. Big and strong and capable, with flat square nails. Was she mad to find a man’s hands so attractive?

Then she felt him move, a yawning, stretching motion, the kind one made when one wasn’t quite yet awake. “Georgie,” he said, his voice sleep-slurred and husky.