“No.” She pushed back. “No.”
“What?” His gaze was unfocused.
She dug in her nails. “I want to wait; I’ve changed my mind.”
His expression blanked. “Now?”
“Yes.”
He held himself above her, their bodies twin mirrors of frozen tension. Neither one of them blinked.
“Right,” he said. He sat back on his heels, and the curves of his shoulders were peppered with sharp little white crescents—her nails had bit deep. He turned and faced the wall and locked his fingers behind his neck. A thin sheen of sweat gleamed on his back.
Hell. This was hell; a mortification more broiling hot than she’d ever felt. She had to watch her husband’s shoulders rise and fall with uneven breaths, and when she made to speak, he shook his head before a word passed her lips. There was a flash of a very white, muscular bottom when he rose and pulled up his trousers. As he tied the belt of his robe, he glanced down at her, the hollows beneath his cheekbones deeply shadowed. She hid behind her hair, hoping to become invisible.
“I’ll see you in the morning, then,” he said, and dipped his head. “Good night.”
He left through the door leading to the corridor and closed it behind him softly.
Her breath shuddered out of her. She did not inhale for a long moment. She almost wished he hadn’t left; the silence filling the room was deafening and made the riot inside her head roar all the louder. She pressed her cold hands to her hot cheeks. There really was nothing to do in such a situation other than have a drink and a lie-down, was there? She took a glass from the tray and gulped the now flat champagne as if it were water. What a disaster of a wedding night. But she could have ogled every artful depiction of the male form and none of it could have prepared her for the chest hair and scars and certainly not his thing. Man’s anatomy had certainly evolved since the glory days of Olympia. After a brief hesitation, she slid a hand between her legs. It felt slippery, as if her monthly courses had arrived. But no. She carefully poked inside, which she never did. No, not an obvious fit. Why then had she a creeping suspicion now that she might perhaps have reacted rather too dramatically? She put down the empty champagne glass and grabbed the full one.
When her head lay heavy and buzzing on the pillow, she admitted she hadn’t just refused him for fear of being hurt. Her life had changed too quickly in ways she had never envisioned, and this now was her stubborn streak asserting itself, that indelible part of her that despite everything a woman was taught from the cradle, made her want to bend the world to fit her feelings rather than bend and bend herself until she fit whatever situation had been inflicted upon her. But now she had revealed that part to her husband. In a most delicate situation no less. It would be … interesting to face him come morning.
No. Her rejection should have worked like a bucket of ice water over his head, but here he was, prowling along dark corridors overheated and with a raging cockstand. No. She was imprinted on his senses, on his tongue and his palms, salty sweet, arousing, velvet soft. Her no was a physical thing, too, jabbing away into his muscles, sharp like needles, and it eventually drove him toward his gymnastics room. He braced his forearms against the door, waiting and breathing while the sweat on his neck cooled. An inanimate sand sack wouldn’t do right now. He needed a reaction, the bracing energy of an opponent. He gritted his teeth. Every single person of consequence in England knew he had married Harriet Greenfield today, and if he showed anywhere in London at this hour for a sparring, rumors about a piss-poor wedding night would spread like wildfire among the toffs.
He leaned his forehead against the smooth oak wood. It was his fault. Matters had gone to shit because he had done something he never did—he had dithered. But when he had first seen her on the bed, his mind had blanked. She had looked so fine, with her hair streaming over the pillows like ribbons of red silk. His wife. A visceral feeling had reared its head: mine. Followed right by: not for you. Like when he had first seen Rutland’s estate looming from the mist, both desirable and antagonizing at once. And if he had learned one thing in life, it was whatever he wanted, whatever he needed, he had to take it. Unless he took, he went hungry. But his usual way didn’t apply here. Instead, he had made a clueless attempt at tenderness. His hands clenched in frustration, and he went to the washroom for a cold shower.
He returned to his study a while later, frozen beneath his robe and in no better temper. He grabbed the book on flower language Matthews had brought him the day before: Flower Lore, written by a Miss Carruthers from Inverness. He flicked through the pages, skipping over chapters on monks and herbs and Ruskin waxing lyrically about filigree petals until he found the alphabetical overview at the very end. Apparently, red chrysanthemums communicated love. They both knew love wasn’t a part of this, but she might appreciate the sentiment. Camellias stood for loveliness. Laurustinus, cheerfulness in adversity. Definitely would get a dozen of those. He was disgusted by his own sarcasm—he should be upstairs, tupping his wife to make the marriage contract count, not picking out flowers. He scribbled his selection down on a piece of paper and went to Matthews’s rooms on the other side of the house, because it was only ten o’clock. The muffled, mournful melody of Matthews’s traverse flute sounded behind his door when he knocked.