The Baronet's Bride (Midnight Quill #1.5)(3)

Don’t think about it. He concentrated on the humming while he shucked his breeches and peeled off his stockings—simple tasks that were so damned awkward to do one-handed.

Higgs shook out a folded nightshirt. “Here you are, sir.”

Gareth reached for the nightshirt—and caught sight of himself in the mirror, naked except for his linen drawers . . . and the bandage protecting the stump of his left arm. He flinched at the sight, flinched at the familiar kick of emotions, the grief and the disbelief—That’s really me?—and looked hastily away.

Higgs helped him put the nightshirt on. It was stupid how difficult it was to wrestle one’s way into a nightshirt when one only had one arm.

Gareth stood silently while Higgs pinned up the left sleeve. The batman had become deft at doing that in the months since Waterloo.

“Will there be anything else, sir?”

“No. Thank you, Higgs.”

“Good night, sir.”

“’Night, Higgs.”

The door closed behind the batman, and suddenly Gareth’s wedding night was a whole lot closer than it had been a minute ago.

He should be eager for what was coming next. He and Cecily alone together, kissing and touching, making love. But he wasn’t eager. In fact, if he had any choice in the matter he wouldn’t consummate his marriage tonight. Or tomorrow night, or next week, or perhaps not ever.

When had he become so afraid of sex?

That was easy to answer: six months ago, when the battlefield surgeon had amputated his arm. And it wasn’t so much the sex that he was afraid of, it was disappointing Cecily with his awkward one-handedness, or worse, disgusting her with his body.

He couldn’t let her see him naked. That went without saying. No nudity, ever.

Thank God she’d been married before. Thank God she wasn’t a virgin. She knew what to expect between them tonight. That would make it easier.

Easier perhaps, but it was inevitable that she’d compare him to her first husband. A man who’d been youthful and vigorous and who’d had two arms.

Gareth squeezed his eyes shut. He really didn’t want to open the door between their two bedchambers.

Don’t you want children, Gary? Can’t have children without sex.

Gareth opened his eyes and stared at himself in the mirror. He tried to recapture the joy he’d felt when Cecily had accepted his offer of marriage, the joy he’d felt when the vicar had pronounced them man and wife. He loved Cecily. He wanted to spend the rest of his life with her. He wanted everything that being married to her entailed.

Except the sex.

All day he’d veered away from thinking about it. He’d thought about everything but sex—but now, here it was, confronting him.

Oh, God, I can’t do this.

But he had to. He’d made a commitment to Cecily. He’d promised, before God, to be her husband.

Gareth met his own gaze in the mirror and made his second vow for the day: that he would do nothing to make Cecily regret marrying him. He’d be the husband she deserved—strong, not weak—and if he wasn’t whole, he would pretend to be whole. He’d conceal his limitations from her, never let her see just how helpless he really was, that he had difficulty doing up his buttons, that he struggled to shave himself, that even putting on his nightshirt was hard now. And he would never, ever do anything to inspire her pity.

The army had taught him to plan ahead, and he had. He and Cecily would have separate bedchambers, so she’d never see just how much Higgs had to help him. His cook had already learned to serve only meals that he could eat one-handed. His groom knew to lead his horse to the mounting block without asking and to hold the reins while he climbed into the saddle. In most aspects of his life, he’d learned to pass as competent.

Except in bed. The last hurdle. The worst hurdle.

Right now Cecily loved him—she’d told him so today, and the words had brought stinging tears to his eyes. His missing arm seemed not to bother her. More than that, she seemed to accept it, as if it was just another detail about him: that he had brown hair and hazel eyes and only one arm. Cecily didn’t avert her gaze from his empty sleeve as his former fiancée had done; she smiled at him as if he were a normal man. When he was with her he sometimes even forgot that he had only one arm, and in the times when he was aware of it, it didn’t seem to matter quite so much. But right now it was impossible to forget it, and it mattered. A lot.

Gareth looked at himself in the mirror. For the first twenty-nine years of his life he’d had two arms. Now, he only had one.

His fiancée, Miss Swinthorp, had made him feel as if he was an emasculated parody of a man. Worse than that, she’d made him feel ashamed of himself. Ashamed of his body. Ashamed that he’d thought, for even one second, that she would still want to marry him now that he had only one arm.

His engagement to Miss Swinthorp had been severed upon his return to England, but the emotion she’d evoked still lingered: shame. And that made him angry. Angry at her, angry at himself. He’d fought at Waterloo, he’d lost his arm, and this was who he was now. A different man with a different body. No longer Captain Locke of the Royal Horse Guards, but Sir Gareth Locke of Mulberry Hall, Somerset. He might wish he hadn’t lost his arm—might desperately wish it—but he refused to feel ashamed of it.

Cecily didn’t make him feel ashamed, and that was what he needed to hold on to. The kisses they’d exchanged had been sweetly eager, passionate even, and as long as she never saw him naked, as long as he wasn’t clumsy and awkward and fumbling in bed, everything would be all right between them.