She was shaking, suddenly colder than she’d ever been in her life, her arms wrapped around herself.
“Caroline, good God, what did you see?” He pulled her tightly against him, rubbing his large hands up and down her back, warming her, trying to calm her. After a few minutes, he said again, “It’s all right now. I’m here. Tell me what you saw.”
She burrowed her face in the crook of his neck.
“I’ve never seen you like this before. You become a wife and turn into a hysterical ninny?”
“You sod, you—”
He grinned down at her. “Good. You’re back to normal. Kind of like having Alice kick old Bennett in his ribs, right? Now, talk to me.”
She took a deep breath. “You’re right, I shouldn’t have become an idiot. It was a monster, North, but I’m not really sure what kind of monster, just that it was one. I was looking outside wondering where the devil you were, why the devil you hadn’t come to me immediately since every time you’ve been near me in the past weeks you wanted only to kiss me and caress me, and then there was this monster.” His arms tightened around her.
“No lust right now. Go on. What monster?”
She gulped, burrowed closer, and whispered into his shoulder, “It was a monster face, no body to go along with it, just a hideous face and it just suddenly appeared right in front of me. But it wasn’t really a face, that’s why I called it a monster. There was enough human about it, but it was terribly deformed and the mouth was grinning at me and it just kind of bobbed there in front of me.”
He held her tighter if that was possible. “That would frighten the wits out of a virgin, which you are.”
“You don’t believe me?”
“Naturally I believe you’re a virgin.”
She poked him in the arm and he smiled down at her. “Better now? There’s nothing there that I can see, Caroline. But it’s so damned dark tonight. Maybe you ate some suspicious mushrooms that resulted in a dash of brain fever?”
She shook her head. “No mushrooms.”
“Ah, then it was Mrs. Freely and her commentary on everything and everyone present today.”
She tried to smile, but couldn’t quite manage it. “Perhaps it was just a tree limb or something like that. I remember hearing the rustling of the trees when the wind pushed their branches against the house. It was just so unexpected and maybe I saw more than I normally would, and it scared the dickens out of me.”
“No matter, I will still scour the area outside those windows on the morrow.”
“North?”
“Hmmm?” He was kissing her neck, nuzzling her head back so he could have more of her.
“Where were you? What were you doing? I thought you were mad for me. I thought you wanted to toss up my skirts all throughout the afternoon, all during supper, all during the time you were sipping on brandy in the drawing room, even while Mrs. Freely was telling everyone that a groom shouldn’t over-imbibe on his wedding night, that it led to disastrous results.”
“I was reading in my bedchamber, studying, actually.”
“Reading?” She leaned back in the circle of his arms to look up at him. “Studying what? How dare you? It’s our wedding night!”
“An instruction book with pictures.”
She just blinked at him.
“A book that tells a man what he’s to do with a woman. A step-by-step instruction book. I was fairly certain all this lovemaking business had something to do with my manly parts and your womanly parts, but I wanted specificity. I wanted expert advice and explanations. I didn’t want to be a clod on my wedding night.”
She went up on her tiptoes and kissed him full on the mouth. She kept kissing him until he was kissing her back, parting her lips, running his tongue along her bottom lip, his hands going lower to cup her buttocks and lift her against him, molding her to him.
When she was nearly breathless, she leaned back just a bit. “You know, North, I’m not at all sure you’re doing this properly. Perhaps you’d best go back and study that book more closely.”
He stared down at her, his eyes glazed with lust, shook his head to clear it just a bit, then said, “My God, I need to study how to keep your mouth shut.”
“Oh no, that’s really quite easy. All you have to do is touch me and kiss me.”
“I can do that,” he said. He scooped her up in his arms, and nearly ran to her bed, paused a moment and stared at that narrow stingy mattress with its suspicious lumpy surface, then turned and did run into his own bedchamber. She wondered as he dropped her onto her back on the mattress of his bed that would easily hold six men side by side what exactly was going to happen. She felt herself flush, felt her heart speed up, felt her palms dampen. She cocked an eye toward him, watching him strip off his dressing gown. He was naked beneath it. His face was flushed and his eyes looked glazed.