To Seduce a Sinner (Legend of the Four Soldiers #2)(15)

“What isn’t?”

“Your jesting.” She looked at him, her tilted eyes mysterious. “It isn’t tedious. I like it, actually. I only hope you will be able to bear my own reticence.”

“If you look at me like that, I shall bear it most admirably,” he whispered.

She held his eyes as she sipped from her wineglass, and he">

The thought was strange at this highly civilized breakfast. Strange, and at the same time pleasantly arousing. What a very odd thing marriage was between people of his rank. Like breeding horses in many ways. One picked out the dam and the sire based on their bloodlines, put them in proximity to each other, and hoped nature took its course and produced more horses—or aristocrats, depending on the parties.

He smiled as he watched his new wife, wondering what she would say if he told her his thoughts about horses and aristocratic marriages. Alas, though, the topic was too risqué for virginal ears.

But others were not. “Is the wine to your liking, my lady?”

“It’s acidic, tart, with just a tiny bit of sweetness from the grapes.” She smiled slowly. “So, yes, it’s to my liking.”

“How delightful,” Jasper murmured, his eyelids drooping lazily. “It is, of course, my duty as your husband to see that your every desire, no matter how small, is fulfilled.”

“Indeed?”

“Oh, yes.”

“Then what is my duty as your wife?”

To bear my heirs. The reply was too blunt to voice. This was a time for pretty flirtation and banter, not the cold realities of a marriage such as theirs. “My lady, you have no more onerous a duty than to be lovely and grace my home and heart.”

“But I believe I may soon become bored by such light duties. I’d require additional tasks to fulfill than merely looking lovely.” She sipped her wine and set the glass down; as she did so, her tongue darted out to slowly lick a droplet from her bottom lip. “Perhaps you can invent a more exacting duty?”

He inhaled, for his entire attention had become focused on her wet bottom lip. “My lady, my mind is awhirl with possibilities. It dances hither and yon, brushing many but alighting on none, though several tantalize. Have you no examples to give me of what a wife’s duties should be?”

“Oh, examples abound.” A smile was playing about her lips. “Should I not obey and honor you?”

“Ah, but those are light duties, and you specified an exacting one.”

“Obeying you may not always be a light task,” she murmured.

“With me it shall be. I will merely bid you to do such things as smile at me and make my day brighter. Will you obey me in this?”

“Yes.”

“Then already I feel a surfeit of wifely honor. But I seem to remember another vow.”

“To love you,” she said. Her eyes dropped in maidenly modesty. He could no longer see her expression.

“Yes, only that,” he said lightly. “To love me is, I fear, a much greater taexach greask than any other wifely duty—I am a very unlovable fellow at times—and I’ll not blame you should you choose to forsake it. You may merely admire me instead, if it is more to your liking.”

“But I am a woman of honor, and I have made a vow,” she said.

He looked at her and tried to see which was the banter and which was her real feeling—if she had one. “Then you will love me?”

She shrugged. “Of course.”

He raised his glass to her. “Count me, then, the most fortunate man alive.”

But she merely smiled now, as if wearying of their wordplay.

He sipped his wine. Was she looking forward to this night or dreading it? Surely the latter rather than the former. Even at her age—older than many brides—she likely knew very little of the physical act between a man and a woman. Perhaps that fact accounted for some of the paleness in her face earlier. He must remind himself to go slowly tonight and not to do anything that might frighten or disgust her. Despite her lively repartee, she was by her own admission a reserved woman. Perhaps he ought to consider putting off the consummation for another day or so, in order that she grow more used to him. A depressing thought.

He shook his head and shoved all depressing thoughts aside, then took another slice of roast duck. After all, it was his wedding day.

“OH, IT WAS a beautiful wedding, my lady,” Suchlike said dreamily that night as she helped Melisande from her gown. “His lordship looked so handsome in his red embroidered coat, didn’t he? So tall and with those lovely wide shoulders. I don’t think he needs to use padding at all, do you?”

“Mmm,” Melisande murmured. Lord Vale’s shoulders were one of her favorite things about him, but her new husband’s physique didn’t seem quite the thing to discuss with her maid. She stepped out of her underskirts.

Suchlike draped the underskirts over a chair and began unlacing Melisande’s stays. “And when Lord Vale threw those coins to the crowd! What a kind gentleman he is. Did you know, ma’am, that he gave a guinea to every servant in this house, even the little bootblack boy?”

“Really?” Melisande bit back a fond smile at this evidence of Lord Vale’s sentimental nature. She wasn’t surprised at all. She rubbed a sore spot under her arm where the stays had chafed a bit. Then, clad in her chemise, she sat at a dainty burlwood vanity and began taking down her stockings.