A Riveting Affair (Entangled Ever After) by Candace Havens & Patricia Eimer & Lily Lang

Author:Candace Havens & Patricia Eimer & Lily Lang
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: steampunk, Ever After, entangled, romance, Candace Havens, Patricica Eimer, Lily Lang
Publisher: Entangled Publishing, LLC
Published: 2013-03-19T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter Five

Could he be regretting our hasty marriage? Had our wedding night been disappointing? Had I been disappointing?

I pulled the blankets up over my naked breasts and hunched my shoulders together, feeling vulnerable and exposed. Would he want to annul the marriage when we reached Paris? Not that I could blame him. He didn’t really want me, he just wanted free of his father’s chokehold over his life.

Now that the legalities had been taken care of, I didn’t expect that he’d want to bother bedding me again. I felt my cheeks flame. Not that I would have minded. Even if I barely knew him, my new husband was smart, charming, and dangerously handsome. He’d also been a considerate lover and almost sweet.

It was unlikely that he’d want to have much more to do with me regardless. What we had was an alliance for mutual survival disguised as matrimony, not a loving marriage like my parents had enjoyed.

No, I reminded myself. We would be friends, partners of the mind. Scientific colleagues who happened to share a home and a last name. Then, if at some point he decided he wanted an heir, perhaps we could negotiate a more physical relationship if he wanted. Otherwise I’d have to be content as his wife and, like so many other women in the aristocracy, turn a blind eye if he chose to indulge in his physical pleasures elsewhere.

My heart clenched at the thought of Julian taking a lover, and my eyes burned with tears. I sniffled and then rubbed the back of my hand over my eyes, scrubbing at the wetness on my cheeks. I heard the creak of the cabin door opening and dashed my hands over my eyes again a final time before turning my face away, pretending to stare out the porthole and into the dark night sky.

“Aida?” Julian’s voice was soft. “Is something troubling you?”

“No.” I heard my voice waver and inwardly cursed myself for being a weak-willed ninny. “Nothing’s wrong.”

“Aida.” His voice sounded wary now, and I could hear him moving about our tiny cabin, kicking off his boots, dropping his coat over the room’s only tiny chair. I heard the soft rustle of fabric and peeked over my shoulder so see him slipping out of his trousers before I jerked my face back around toward the porthole.

“Aida.” I felt the bed dip and a brief rush of cold air as he slid under the blankets with me. He wrapped an arm around my shoulders and gently turned me so that my head was resting against his linen-covered chest, trying to hide how vulnerable I felt at the idea that we’d be having this conversation while he was clothed and I was not.

“What’s troubling you?” Julian asked.

“I woke up and you were gone,” I said, immediately feeling foolish.

“Oh.” Julian shifted, and I thought he might be embarrassed. He leaned down to kiss the crown of my head. “It was nothing.”

“Where did you go?”

“Oh, um.” He coughed. “The airmen’s head.”

“The what?” I pulled back and looked at him.

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