They chatted for a few more minutes before Prue made her way inside and used the stairs to prepare for her husband.
Several hours later,Prue accepted that all her preparation was for naught. She had been bathed in rose-scented water, her long dark brown hair with its gold highlights brushed with over a hundred strokes. Her nightgown was also not the usual cotton, but a light blue silky shift that revealed more than it covered. When she had stared at her body in the oval mirror, her dark green eyes had glittered with nerves and anticipation.
Pushing off from the bed where she had been sitting since she heard her husband moving about in his adjoining room, she padded across to the connecting door. Temperance’s words had implied Prue might be the one to initiate consummation. Taking a deep breath, she opened the door, stepped over the threshold, and quickly closed it behind her. Her husband swiftly turned from where he stood by the window with a glass in his hand.
Her throat dried, and her belly went frightfully hot. He was naked. Well, at least his shoulders and chest were. She was too frightened to lower her gaze to see if he was naked everywhere.
“What are you doing here?”
Confusion rushed through her. “To consummate our vows,” she murmured huskily.
His eyes flared, but he only watched her with that hawk-like stare. What was he thinking? Prue walked over to him, grateful that her legs did not wobble and show her uncertainty. She stood only inches from him, and she inhaled his evocative, masculine scent and felt the heat wafting from his body. She noted that his eyes had darkened, obliterating the golden-brown striations normally at its center. His long fingers curled around a glass of what looked like brandy, and his throat worked on a tight swallow.
She found his reaction curious, and inexplicably her body responded. Prue felt warm all over, and her heart shook beneath her breastbone. Digging deep for courage, she pressed her hands flat against his chest. He inhaled harshly, then only silence lingered in the bedchamber. The merry cackle of the fireplace mocked the perilous tension that coated the air.
“I planned to wait,” he said, almost harshly, a tinge of red covering his sharp and very elegant cheekbones.
You are very handsome, aren’t you, husband?
“Wait?”
“Yes, until…until you are ready.”
“I am ready now,” she refuted, tentatively sliding her hand up over the hardened wall of muscles.
“Do you even know what bedding entails?”
“Yes.”
A soft groan whispered from his lips, and he lowered the drink onto the ledge of the window with aclink.
He took a single step toward her, and now their bodies were flush together. She had to tilt her head to see his expression. He was taller…larger, and suddenly she felt surrounded by him. Yet, it was not an unpleasant sensation. Perplexing fluttering went off low in her belly, and her breasts felt suddenly heavy and a bit tender.
He threaded his fingers in the length of her hair and nudged her, so she met his gaze.
“You are just a girl—” he began gruffly as if he struggled with something.
“I am a woman!” Prue inhaled raggedly, for it was most important that he saw her as a woman…his wife! Not as a girl who he believed was still wet behind the ears. “Yourwoman,” she said with instinctive provocation.
The fingers in her hair tightened even further, and he spun with her to press her against the wall. Something hard dug into her stomach, and she knew this is what he would use to join them during consummation. A slow, torturous ache rolled through her, and she inhaled sharply.
Prue darted her tongue to wet her dry lips. “I…” her throat closed. What was there to say. “I am ready.”
He groaned, bunched her hair into his hand and shifted her head. Oh, God, he was going to kiss her…and then take her to the bed where that impossibly hard thing pressing in her belly will make her feel pain and bleed. And his eyes, they gleamed with something that seemed almost savage. There was nothing tender in his stare. It was pure…pure…? She didn’t know what it was, but it was intoxicating. A roaring began in her head, and her entire body shook with nerves, alarm, and anticipation. To Prue’s horror, darkness started to edge her vision.
“Oh, no,” she whispered before succumbing to the darkness into a dead faint.
Chapter One
Three years later
If Lady Prudence Campbell, Countess of Wycliffe, was destined to be no more than a jewel in her husband’s house, then she would damn well outshine them all. She’d spent two years in the country, overseeing the renovations and redecoration of his house, and making friends with his sisters—both older than she—until, one by one, despite claiming they were firmly on the shelf, they had gone to London and found suitable matches, having grand adventures of their own. Meanwhile, she had been married to her earl for three years and hadn’t even had a proper kiss to show for it or any sort of fun. The chaste peck on the lips he had given her the day of their marriage certainly didn’t count. After all her hopes and dreams of drawing his attention, the reality had fallen disappointingly flat.
But rather than languish away in the countryside, Prue had come to Town determined to make a point. Clearly, she couldn’t compare with the charms of whichever woman he had fallen in love with. She couldn’t compare to a more worldly, experienced woman. Although her figure had filled out more since her marriage, she never did manage to lose the sharpness of her chin. If not for her friends at 48 Berkeley Square, she might have given it all up for lost.
But the ladies at 48 Berkeley Square were not the sort to quit, and neither was Prue. Perhaps she had been young and naïve when she had married, but the intervening years had taught her something of how to be a wife, how to manage a grand household. The only thing left was to ensconce herself so firmly into her husband’s life that he couldn’t dislodge her if he tried. Hence the reason she had decided to host her very first London ball.
This evening, she had chosen a dress of vivid color and daring cut in the hopes of drawing the eye—the eye of one man in particular, Oscar George Campbell, the Earl of Wycliffe. That man, unfortunately, had only remained next to her while doing his duty in the receiving line. The moment the room filled with people, he suddenly found inescapable things to do on the other side of the ballroom.