First Comes Marriage (hq-1) by Mary Balogh

Author:Mary Balogh [Balogh, Mary]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: love_history

13

VANESSA'S room overlooked the lake. The moon still shone across it in a wide silver band. The view was really quite breathtaking. And the house itself - the little she had seen of it anyway - was lovely.

But her mind was not really on either the moonlight or the house, which she would explore tomorrow.

She was in /her /room.

As opposed to /his/.

Or /theirs/.

She and Hedley had shared a room from the day of their marriage. She had assumed that all married couples did. With Hedley -

But she would not think of him tonight. She must not. She belonged to someone else now.

He had actually called her pretty on the way here. /Very /pretty, to be precise. He had almost joked with her, telling her that her clothes were pretty too - meaning that /she /was prettier, that it was /she /he had noticed first.

What a thorough bouncer! She sighed even as she smiled.

But he /was /capable of humor, even if only of a very dry kind. He was not inhuman.

Well, of course he was not.

She set her forehead against the cool glass of the window and closed her eyes.

The bed behind her had been turned down for the night. She was very aware of its presence. Perhaps she should be lying in it. But she kept remembering how he had accused her a month ago of offering herself like a sacrificial lamb. She would look like one - she would /feel /like one - if she lay there waiting for him.

She felt like a virgin awaiting the deflowering, she thought in some disgust. She was /not /a virgin. She was an experienced woman.

Well, /almost /experienced anyway.

And if her brain did not soon cease its incessant chattering she would surely go mad.

There was a tap on her door and it opened before she could either cross the room or draw breath to call out.

He was wearing a wine-colored dressing gown that covered him from the neck to the ankles. He looked menacing. And gorgeous too, of course.

His face was blank of any nameable expression. His eyelids were half drooped over his eyes, as they had been the first time she saw him. He was looking steadily at her and she could not help thinking of the very different reaction she must be provoking in him.

She did not often wish for the impossible, but just /sometimes /she wished she were beautiful. As she did now, for example.

She was wearing the ice blue silk and lace nightgown that had been chosen specifically for tonight - by her new mother-in-law, not by her.

She thought its low neckline too revealing. And she very much feared that if she stood just so to any particular candle, a beholder would be able to see right through it.

She might not have minded so much if there had been something worth seeing.

She hated being self-conscious about her figure - or her lack thereof. "I suppose," she said, "we will grow accustomed to this." His eyebrows rose. "I suppose we will," he agreed as he stepped into the room and came toward her.

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