Lessons from a Scandalous Bride (Forgotten Princesses #2)(42)

Mrs. Cantrell looked unimpressed with this assurance. At this late hour, Cleo supposed that could be understood. “Good night to you then.”

Setting the lamp on top of the bureau, she left the room, closing the door behind her with a click.

Cleo studied the room anew, her gaze scanning the way the yellow gold lamplight flickered over the walls. A screen stood along one side of the room. She thought about stepping behind it and changing clothes before Logan returned, but then she recalled she’d left her valise with the horse.

She ducked her head beneath the sloping ceiling as she approached the window and peered out.

The moonlit night stared back, silent and still to her wandering gaze. Not even a breeze disturbed the leaves in the trees. She saw no sign of Logan. The stable was a hulking shadow.

The sound of the door opening behind her brought her whirling around. Logan ducked his head as he entered. Standing inside the small room with its low ceiling only reinforced just how very large he was.

He extended the valise for her to take.

When she didn’t move to take it, he gave the barest shrug and set it near the bed.

She was being foolish, she knew. Too afraid to approach him . . . as if he might accost her. In reality, the person she most feared was herself—and the totally unprecedented way she reacted to him. Around him, she no longer knew herself.

She stared from the valise to him. Suddenly the idea of changing into the same nightgown she’d worn earlier—when he had very nearly seduced her—struck her as a very bad plan.

He sat in a chair and began removing his boots. “Aren’t you going to change?” He motioned to her valise.

With a reluctant nod, she took her valise and moved behind the screen. She undressed, draping her clothes over the screen with slow, measured movements.

Inhaling a deep breath, she acknowledged that she still couldn’t bring herself to strip down to nothing and put that nightgown back on again. Wearing her petticoat and chemise, she stepped around the screen.

Her throat constricted. He was waiting.

He sat upon the bed, his legs stretched out before him with his ankles crossed. And his chest was bare. She gulped. She knew he was no small man, but the muscles there . . . it was just too much. She closed her eyes in a slow, anguished blink. He was the epitome of everything she denied herself. Youth, beauty, virility. If heaven had sent him here to test her, she was on a direct path to failure.

“What are you doing?”

He glanced at the bed. “Hoping to get some sleep.”

Sleep? She eyed him suspiciously. “There?” She motioned toward him upon the bed.

“It is a bed.”

“And you mean to occupy it? With me?”

“Was there another alternative? It’s the only room left. And the hard floor is hardly appealing. Did you wish me to sleep in the stable?”

Cleo stared at him in silence.

He studied her for a moment and then nodded precisely two times. “Apparently you do.” His mouth twisted wryly.

She gestured to him, the bed, herself. “This is hardly appropriate.”

“You’re still concerned with what’s seemly?” His look turned incredulous. “After everything that’s happened? We’ve been alone together for hours now. We were caught in a compromising situation by several witnesses.”

She shook her head, resisting the childish urge to cover her ears. “You don’t understand,” she muttered.

“Then explain it to me.”

She looked at him starkly, wishing she could. She wasn’t about to fall into bed with him simply because her reputation was in tatters and it didn’t matter anymore. That didn’t make it acceptable.

She crossed her arms over her chest and forced her gaze away from him—all that bronze flesh that looked smooth yet she knew was hard and firm beneath her fingers.

She heard his sigh before he asked, “Are you going to sleep in that?”

She nodded, unable to explain her reason for not putting that nightgown on again—that she was afraid it would carry her back to that moment when she was on the verge of giving herself uninhibitedly to him.

“Get into bed, Cleo.”

Her skin prickled at this command. “Don’t tell me what to do.”

“Do you intend to sleep on the floor then? Because I’m not. Don’t think I’ll play the gallant gentleman and take the floor so you can have the bed.”

“I would never mistake you for gallant,” she retorted even as she wondered why she continued to flay him with her barbed tongue. But she knew why.

His eyes narrowed. “I’m too tired for this.”

She was tired, too. And yet she couldn’t drop her guard with him. If that meant constantly haranguing him with prickly words, then so be it. Perhaps she’d earn his enmity and then he’d leave her be.

“What are you so afraid of?” he demanded.

The question made her chest ache. How did he know she was afraid?

“Nothing.”

You can resist him. Pulling back her shoulders, she strode to the other side of the bed, suppressing her alarm at the sight of how little space remained in the bed beside him.

She pulled back the coverlet on her side of the bed and slid beneath. She lay there for a moment, lacing her hands together atop her chest. She forced her gaze straight ahead, watching the shadows dance over the lighted walls.