Confessions of a Royal Bridegroom(85)

He easily captured her wrist. “Right now, all I’m thinking about is why you keep running away from me. You dashed out of the dining room before you’d barely had anything to eat. I don’t bite, Justine.” He plucked the brush from her hand. “Not unless you want me to.”

When he stepped behind her and started to draw the brush through her hair, her heart jolted hard against her ribs. She started to stand, but he gently pushed her back onto the low seat.

“Don’t be a ninny,” he said. “I already gave my word that I wouldn’t do anything you didn’t want me to do. But I am your lawful husband. It’s perfectly respectable for me to help you get ready for bed.”

She let out a little snort as she stared at him in the mirror. “There’s nothing respectable about you at all, and you know it.”

A low, husky laugh, one that sent shivers down the backs of her legs, was his only answer. Deciding she was too tired to fight him—and taking him at his word that he wouldn’t force himself on her—she sighed and slowly relaxed, letting the soothing brushstrokes bleed the tension from the muscles of her face and neck.

“I love your hair,” he said after a minute or two. “It’s like velvet fire under my hands.”

“You’re welcome to it,” she said in a sleepy voice, her eyelids threatening to flutter shut.

“Ah, yes. I imagine you don’t like the attention it draws to you. Thus, all the ghastly caps.”

She sighed. “They’re not that bad. But it’s true that I’m not very fond of the color. My cousins teased me endlessly about it when I was a child, and I must say that some of the so-called gentlemen of the ton weren’t much better. They were always making jokes about whether I had an evil temper to match my hair.”

“Idiots,” he murmured, continuing his steady, smoothing strokes.

“Well, I thought so,” she said in a drowsy voice. “I was the most timid wallflower one could imagine. The last thing I wanted to do was draw anyone’s attention.”

Griffin put the brush down and deftly parted her hair into three, thick strands. “And why was that?” He started to crisscross the strands into a neat braid.

She stared at him in the mirror, taking in the calm concentration of his expression as he worked. “Where did you learn to play lady’s maid?”

He flashed a smile. “There’s very little I don’t know about a woman’s toilette, Justine.”

She scoffed. “I can imagine.”

“None of that, wife. Now answer my question. Why did you avoid calling attention to yourself, unlike most other girls? God knows you’re pretty enough. I would have thought all the young beaus of the ton—stupid and shallow as they are—would have perceived that much about you, at least.”

Her traitorous emotions preened at his offhand compliment, but since he was standing in her bedroom, partially undressed, she thought it best to ignore it.

“My father drew more than enough attention as it was. For a spy, he was a remarkably flamboyant man although, oddly enough, that worked in his favor. Uncle Dominic always said that Papa was so extravagant in his behavior that no one would believe for a minute that he worked for the Service. But neither my brother nor I much cared for the attention. People used to gossip about him and all his outrageous antics.”

“But your father was gone from London a great deal, was he not?” Griffin asked.

He bent over her shoulder to select a ribbon from a small dish on the table. Justine could feel the heat of his body all along her back, and when his silken-clad arm brushed against her shoulder, nerves made her stomach jump.