Married By Morning (The Hathaways #4)(53)

“Time for your bath,” Leo said, coming to pull her chair back.

Wondering if he intended to stay in the room, Catherine ventured, “Perhaps you might allow me some privacy.”

“I wouldn’t dream of it,” he said. “You may need assistance.”

“I can bathe myself. And I would prefer not to be watched.”

“My interest is purely aesthetic. I’ll imagine you as Rembrandt’s Hendrickje Bathina, wading in the waters of innocence.”

“Purely?” she asked doubtfully.

“Oh, I have a very pure soul. It’s only my private parts that have gotten me into trouble.”

Catherine couldn’t help laughing. “You may stay in the room, as long as you turn your back.”

“Agreed.” He went to stand by the window.

Catherine glanced at the tub with keen anticipation. She didn’t think she had ever looked forward to a bath so much. After securing her hair to the top of her head, she shed the robe, the shirt, and her spectacles, placed them on the bed, and glanced cautiously at Leo, who seemed to have taken a great interest in the view of the carriage yard. He had opened the window a few inches, letting rain-scented air into the room.

“Don’t look,” she said anxiously.

“I won’t. Although you really should discard your inhibitions,” he said. “They could get in the way of yielding to temptation.”

She sank gingerly into the battered tub. “I would say that I’ve yielded quite thoroughly today.” She sighed in relief as the water soothed all her intimate stings and aches.

“And I was delighted to be of assistance.”

“You didn’t assist,” she said. “You are the temptation.” She heard him chuckle.

Leo kept his distance as Catherine bathed, looking out at the rain. After she had washed and rinsed herself, she was so tired that she doubted her own ability to climb out of the bath. Rising on shaking legs, she fumbled to retrieve the folded toweling from the stool next to the tub.

As Catherine stepped out of the water, Leo came to her quickly and held up the toweling, wrapping it around her. Swathing her in a temporary cocoon, he held her for a moment. “Let me sleep with you tonight,” he said against her hair, a question in his voice.

Catherine looked up at him quizzically. “What would you do if I refused? Arrange for another room?”

He shook his head. “I would worry about your safety if I were in a different room. I’ll sleep on the floor.”

“No, we’ll share the bed.” She pressed her cheek to his chest, relaxing fully in his hold. How comfortable this was, she thought in wonder. How calm and safe she felt with him. “Why wasn’t it like this before?” she asked dreamily. “If you’d been the way you are now, I would never have argued with you about anything.”

“I tried being nice to you, once or twice. It didn’t go well.”

“Did you? I never noticed.” Her skin, already pink from the bath, turned a deeper shade. “I was suspicious. Mistrustful. And you … were everything I feared.”

Leo’s arms tightened at the admission. He looked down at her with a pensive gaze, as if he were untangling something in his mind, approaching a new realization. The blue eyes were warmer than she had ever seen them. “Let’s make a bargain, Marks. From now on, instead of assuming the worst of each other, we’ll try to assume the best. Agreed?”

Catherine nodded, transfixed by his gentleness. Somehow those few simple sentences seemed to have wrought a greater change between them than everything that had gone before.

Leo released her carefully. She went to bed while he washed awkwardly in a tub that couldn’t begin to accommodate a man his size. She lay and watched him drowsily, the warmth of her body gathering between the sheets of the clean, dry bed. And in spite of all the problems that awaited her, she sank into a deep sleep.

In her dreams, she went back to the day she had turned fifteen. She had been parentless for five years, living with her grandmother and Aunt Althea. Her mother had died during that time. She had never known exactly when this event occurred, having been informed well after the fact. She had asked Althea if she might visit her ailing mother, and Althea had replied that she had already died.

Even knowing that her mother had suffered a fatal wasting disease, knowing there was no hope, the news had come as a shock. Catherine had started to weep, but Althea had grown impatient and snapped, “There’s no use crying. It happened long before now, and she’s been in the ground since high summer.” Which had left Catherine with a bewildering sense of lateness, of off-timing, like a theatergoer who had applauded at the wrong moment. She couldn’t grieve properly because she had missed the appropriate opportunity for grieving.

They had lived in a small house in Marylebone, a shabby but respectable dwelling lodged between a dental surgeon’s office with a replica of a set of teeth hanging from its sign, and a subscription library supported by private funds. The library was owned and run by her grandmother, who had gone there every day to work.

It had been the most tantalizing place in the world, this heavily frequented building with its vast and hidden collection of books. Catherine had stared at the place from her window, imagining how lovely it would be to browse among rooms of old volumes. Undoubtedly the air had smelled like vellum and leather and book dust, a literary perfume that filled the quiet rooms. She had told Althea that she wanted to work there one day, a declaration that had earned an odd smile from her aunt, and a promise that she undoubtedly would.