“I’ll be in my chambers preparing a light supper when you’re ready,” he answered the probing questions in her mind. She tried to act nonchalant but felt that her face revealed the disappointment in him not staying. She had felt ugly all her life, and finally come to terms with who she was, yet on her wedding day he hadn’t touched her since the carriage ride.
Desperate times called for desperate measures she told herself. She would bathe alone as he asked, but if her assumptions were correct, he was in fact lustful of her; he had said as much before. All she needed to do was give him a little push, and she would do exactly that.
A secretive hum passed her lips while she quickly undressed and sat down into the warm water and nearly choked with laughter. He had met his match; it was about time he realized that.
****
Nicholas paced in his room for close to an hour. If he kept it up, he would surely break the floor or forever mold it to his feet. He had felt bad the minute he left Sara alone in the bath. Had she wanted him to join her? It almost looked that way, but it also could have been his imagination playing tricks on him. He was, after all, a blubbering idiot, or at least that’s what he felt reduced to at this point. Why couldn’t he seduce her like any other girl?
The answer was simple: she wasn’t any other girl, and he had in fact never seduced an innocent woman in his entire life. Sure he had a well-deserved reputation, but it wasn’t because he walked around stealing the virtues of young debutantes. Most of his famous seductions were with older woman who were either married, bored with their spouses, or worse yet, cheated on.
He began to sweat when he thought about how he was to go about this night. He had put it off long enough and the last thing he wanted was for Sara to think he didn’t want her. He wanted her all right; it was all he could think about. Surely this need would go away after a few stolen moments in her arms. He prayed it would, or he would be useless to everyone including himself.
Really, what was taking her so long? He raised his hand to knock on the door then lost courage. It took him a ghastly twelve minutes to finally compose himself enough to knock on the door without passing out. He was a disgrace to his sex.
“Come in,” the voice echoed.
He relaxed and opened the door. Sara was nowhere to be found, he had imagined she would be standing in front of the door waiting, instead she was. Oh. Have mercy.
She was in the bathtub.
Still in the bathtub.
The inner struggle was obviously apparent to Sara. She merely smiled and asked him to please help dry her off. Was she insane? Had she lost her mind? That was like asking a tiger if he would like a cup of tea. Tigers didn’t like tea; they liked to eat people. He didn’t know whether to close his eyes, yell, jump in the tub with her, pull her into his room half naked, or quite frankly, cry. He decided against the first, because it's not as if he hadn’t seen a woman nude before, and she was his wife, after all. He also figured yelling would bring servants into their chambers, which was the last thing he wanted. And jumping in the tub with her was completely out of the question considering she was getting out, so that left him with only the last few options. Cry.
Or take her into his room and ravish her until she begged for sleep.
Both options sounded good at the time.
“Nicholas, are you well?” her sweet voice interrupted his inner battle.
He cleared his throat as best he could. “Of course, sure, yes, why wouldn’t it be?” He used an agonizing amount of affirmative answers in that sentence. Kicking himself would have felt better than the way her eyes teased him after his sorry answer.
He mentally yelled at himself and noticed a slender leg lift out of the tub and step onto the floor. It was like slow motion and his eyes traced from her delicate ankle all the way up her thigh. It felt wrong and right all at the same time. “Do you need my help?” he managed to ask even though his breathing had grown quite laborious over the past minute or so.
Sara looked at him through heavy lids and smirked. “Do you think you’re in the best capacity to help me right now?”
An honest woman deserves an honest answer. “No.” He swallowed.
“I figured. Why don’t you pour us some wine, and I’ll join you once I dress?”
He ignored the aching need all over his body and nodded his head. Words had trouble forming on his mouth so he managed to dip his head again before exiting into his own chambers.
Chapter Nineteen
He was a fool; an idiot, actually. Any red-blooded male would have taken one look at her and wept with pure joy. Instead he just felt like weeping. Who was he to take something so perfect and make it his?