Lessons from a Scandalous Bride (Forgotten Princesses #2)(43)

“The lamp,” she murmured.

“I’ll take care of it.” He rose and strode across the room. She stared after him, her mouth drying as she appreciated his broad back with its lightly flexing skin.

In moments, they were submerged in darkness. She heard his footsteps and then a slight rustling beside the bed. She waited for the bed to dip with his weight, but nothing—simply more of that rustling noise.

She moistened her lips before speaking into the dark. “What are you doing?”

“Undressing for bed.”

A vision of him discarding his breeches flashed in her mind. “What? You cannot—”

“Unlike you, I prefer to be comfortable at night. I don’t typically sleep in my trousers.”

“Perhaps you could be atypical for just tonight?” she suggested, her heart beating a panicky rhythm. “For me?”

His side of the bed sank with his weight and she resisted rolling in that direction.

He chuckled low, and the sound was like velvet stroking her goose-puckered flesh. “You’re like a nun clutching the bedsheets in fear of a marauding Viking.”

She winced at the description, which struck her as strangely appropriate.

He continued. “How did you ever expect to handle your wedding night?”

“I didn’t,” she muttered so low her voice was barely audible.

And yet he heard.

The bed creaked and she guessed he had propped himself up on his elbow. She felt him above her, imagined him looking down.

“What did you say?”

She made a low, noncommittal sound.

“Did you say, ‘I didn’t’?” He made a sound—part laugh, part groan. She winced. His fingers snapped on the air as though he’d made a grand discovery. “You chose Thrumgoodie because he wouldn’t be able to perform. That’s it, isn’t it? You don’t want intimacy.”

“Yes!” She bolted upright in the bed. “That’s it precisely. Is that so unbelievable? Unlike the other females of your undoubtedly vast experience, I don’t want to submit my body to a man! I may have to marry, but I don’t intend to torture myself through child labor again and again and again with no promise for a healthy child, with no promise that I myself shall even survive.” With no love to make any of it worthwhile.

Silence fell and stretched between them like a wire pulled taut. She held her breath until her chest ached. The air she was holding escaped, sawing raggedly from her lips.

“Well,” he said, his voice devoid of emotion. “That does paint a rather grim picture.”

“It’s reality,” she retorted, blinking eyes that suddenly burned with tears, hating that she should feel so overwrought when he seemed so calm.

“For some women, I suppose, yes. That is a reality they must bear.”

“For some women,” she agreed fiercely. Like Mama. “But not this one. Not me.”

Suddenly she felt the brush of his fingers against her face. She flinched and pulled back from the tantalizing sensation.

“It doesn’t have to be that way.”

“Oh, no? A man can make such a promise?”

“Well, no—”

“Then I’ll take no such risk.”

“Life is risk. Would you rather not live life?”

The question had been there, on the fringe of her mind ever since Jack’s man arrived on her doorstep. Ever since she met Logan and felt the dangerous feelings he stirred inside her. She’d effectively avoided it until now. “I’ll live. But it will be a life of my own choosing.” A life that shall improve the lives of her siblings.

“So no to passion . . . no to love?”

She stiffened. Love? If it were to be believed, if it were real . . .

He went silent after uttering the word and she wondered if he regretted it. Whether he was as shocked as she was at expressing such a sentiment.

“No children?” he asked, his voice suddenly casual, detached. “Sounds infinitely dull, and you’ve never struck me as dull.”

“It sounds wise,” she returned. “Safe.”

“Safety.” He snorted, his voice suddenly hard and unaccountably angry. “My brother and father died on their way home from the Crimea. After surviving three years of war, their carriage lost a wheel and sent them tumbling down a mountain a two-day ride from home. There’s no accounting for when it’s your time . . . or what God has planned for you, and you’re a fool if you think you can plan your life to avoid risk.”

His words deflated her, sapping her of her indignation. She thought of Bess right then—felt the echo of his grief so very keenly. Her fingers itched to reach out and touch him at this confession, but that was just an invitation for disaster. She curled her fingers and sank back down on the bed, struggling to regain her poise.

His voice continued, “I know that you’ve suffered. That you’ve known terrible loss. Maybe more than even I can understand. But I know that you can’t stop life from happening.”

You can’t stop life from happening.

With a gulping breath, she marveled that she had ever judged him shallow. There was more to him than she first thought. He continued to reveal himself to her in ways that made him hard to resist.

He sighed and settled back down beside her, close but still not touching any part of her. “For someone so brave—”