How to Lose a Bride in One Night (10 page)

Then the thought came that maybe he had no wish to see her naked. Maybe that was why he had been avoiding her. Perhaps she repulsed him—just as she had repulsed Richard. The possibility slid through her sourly, settling sickly into the pit of her stomach.

She desperately didn’t want to think that. And yet if that was the truth, the new Annalise wouldn’t run from it. Emboldened with that thought burning through her, she peeled back the towel from her body and let it hit the floor with a loud smack.

Air swept over her, chilling her flesh. Her nipples rose and hardened. She gazed at his profile, willing for him to look at her with something that was revulsion or even apathy. A deep hunger grew to a simmer in her blood as she willed him to look. For emotion to crack his implacable features. For him to react to her nakedness. To
her
. For him to feel the same attraction she felt for him.

Several more moments passed, stretching interminably until he glanced down at her, undoubtedly expecting her to be covered up by now, the pashmina blanket up to her chin. Anything except to be lying exposed on the bed like some kind of offering.

Her gaze locked with his. Her arms held her up from the waist, palms positioned flat down on the bed just behind her. She had no idea if it was a flattering pose. She didn’t risk a look at herself—only him. He filled her vision, her world in that moment.

“Cover yourself.”

The words could have stung if there wasn’t a tremor in his voice. A slight wavering that belied the rejection.

She smiled slowly, hoping her action—or inaction—would be words enough.

He extended the blanket another half inch closer. She flicked it a glance, dismissing it, and looked back at him.

She didn’t read revulsion in his gaze. There wasn’t that flash of disgust she caught sight of on Bloodsworth’s face that last night. Of course, there wasn’t anything in Owen’s deep blue eyes. Just the usual fathomless dark. And yet his features looked strained, his jaw locked tight. A muscle feathered beneath the flesh of his cheek—a telltale sign that he wasn’t unaffected. Instinct told her this was a good thing.

“Anna?” His voice was all exasperation. The blanket bobbed in his hand. “What are you doing?”

This time she spoke, her annoyance surfacing. “I would think that was obvious.” She moistened her lips, letting her tongue trail her bottom lip just as she had seen other women do. The girls she apprenticed with had done that on more than one occasion when they wanted to entice a man. Certain male customers with plump pockets frequented the shop. They stopped in to purchase some frippery for their wives or sisters. Many a time she had found Agathe or Sally in the back, in the storeroom or in a closet, skirts hiked indecently while a man fondled their thighs.

She stared at him, trying to communicate with her heavy-lidded eyes:
Trying to seduce you
. Only it occurred to her that she wasn’t doing it very well if he was prodding her to cover up.

He stepped forward, draping the blanket over her, the backs of his fingers brushing her bare shoulders. Heat sparked on her skin at the contact, and from the way he quickly pulled back, she knew he must have felt it, too.

“I don’t think this is a very good idea.”

She leaned forward and seized his hand, her fingers circling around his wrist and holding fast, desperate to keep some form of physical contact between them. “And why not?”

His gaze drifted to her hand, lingering there for a moment before looking back to her face. “For one thing, you cannot even stand.”

“I’ll be on my feet next week. Besides . . . I don’t need to stand.”

He shook his head, his dark gold hair tossing in a way that forced the longing inside her to grow to an actual physical ache. “I’m not in the habit of taking advantage of injured young women in my care.”

“Then a week from now you’ll have no qualms?” She cocked her head, enjoying herself a tad too much. “Your honor could be appeased then?”

“I did not say that. Have you also forgotten you have not fully recovered your memory? How do you know you’re even unattached? What if you are married?”

The question hit its mark. She schooled her features to reveal nothing of the sting his words caused.

“I’m not,” she quickly replied, the lie tripping easily off her tongue. She hardly felt like a wife. Especially not the wife of a man who threw her away. A shudder rippled over her at the idea of being married to him. That she belonged to him. It might be a matter of legal record, but she was not his wife. She was not married to that monster.

“Or perhaps your heart is attached—”

“It’s not,” she countered, that not a lie at all.

“How do you know?”

“Because I would feel it here.” She placed a hand over her heart. “I would know.”

He snorted. An indulgent smile played on his lips. “You’re a romantic.”

“We are consenting adults. What’s wrong if we—” She considered her words. “—amused ourselves?”

He released a breath, his expression sobering once again. “You don’t know what you want.”

“I do.”

“You don’t know what you’re saying. You’re confused.”

She sighed. “Don’t patronize me. I did not get pulled from that river yesterday. My faculties are fully intact and functioning. I may have lost my memory but not my intelligence.”

“Then I trust that a good night’s rest will restore your good sense.”

Her cheeks burned. “So if I wasn’t injured . . . if you knew my name to be
Miss
Anna Smith, then you would have no qualms?” Whether he desired her shouldn’t matter so much. But it did. It would mean that he wanted her. That she didn’t repulse him. And after Bloodsworth that mattered more than ever. To be wanted, desired.

He opened his mouth, but words seemed to elude him.

With a grunt, she released his hand and started to pull herself back on the bed away from him, disgusted with him. With
herself
. What about her failed to entice a man? “If you could, please send Mrs. Kirkpatrick along. She can help—”

With a growl, he grasped her shoulder, stopping her from further retreat. His knee came down on the bed beside her. The mattress dipped, and she slid a bit closer whether she willed to or not.

He stabbed a finger at himself, directly in the center of his chest. “Don’t look at me as though I’m something beneath your shoe because I insist on doing the right thing and not using you as you’re begging me to.” His gaze raked her, scathing and thorough as though she were still naked and not covered with the blanket he thrust upon her.

“I’m not asking to be used!”

“Oh, come now. You’re not asking for anything honorable from me.” He thrust his face closer, his body radiating anger.

She pushed at his chest with the base of one palm, her other hand clinging to the blanket at her throat. “I never heard of a man taking such offense over a little flirting. Go. Away.” She bit off each word, her face flushing hotly with shame.

“Oh. You are accustomed to flirting in this manner, then? Has that memory returned to you?”

His eyes glimmered with accusation, and she knew then, without a doubt, that he doubted her story. He doubted her, and yet he allowed her to remain with him. Was he toying with her?

“You’re hateful,” she fairly growled. “I cannot even fathom why I entertained the notion of you . . . of me . . . oh!”

“Nor I.”

She inhaled a deep breath through her nose

Indeed. What had she been thinking? She certainly shouldn’t crave his touch. Or kiss. Or anything else. That had been a colossal miscalculation on her part. He clearly preferred not to sully himself.

Suddenly, irrationally, she wanted to scratch at his face looming so closely over her, all stark, handsome lines and tempting shadows. She shoved at his chest yet again. “Remove yourself.”

His jaw hardened and he closed his hand over hers. She could feel the thud of his heart against her palm.

“You are hardly in a position to issue commands.”

And the truth of that statement only angered her further. To be vulnerable, weak . . . it was everything she had vowed to never be again. And yet here she was again. She curled her fingers into a tight fist and dug her nails into her tender flesh.

Their gazes held, locked. The air surrounding them crackled with tension. She couldn’t help thinking that he resembled some kind of dark angel risen to tempt her to sin. Considering she had done her damnedest to tempt him, and to no avail, she could have laughed at the comparison.

“Get off me,” she repeated, lifting her head off the bed, bringing their faces closer. She didn’t know how she dared to challenge him. Naked, leg broken, she was hardly in a position to make demands.

“Oh, now my nearness offends you?” His deep voice mocked. This close, his eyes gleamed with a light in the centers, almost like the moon off inky waters. “What a capricious nature you have.”

“You’re impossible,” she whispered.

“No more than you. Moments ago you threw yourself at me. What’s next? A marriage proposal?”

She laughed. True, genuine laughter. “Is that what you think? Marriage? To you?” She gulped a breath, stifling her laughter. “That would be akin to not being married at all. You’re never around and when you are you hardly speak. You certainly won’t touch—”

The rest of her words were cut off by his mouth. They slammed over hers roughly. She cried out, but the sound was lost, consumed in those ravaging lips. Their teeth clanged briefly in a fierce collision. It was nothing like the sweet, gentle kisses she had fantasized about with great anticipation those many weeks before her wedding.

Nor was it anything like the quick, chaste kiss Bloodsworth gave her after the completion of their vows. It was savage and relentless, punishing. She whimpered and pushed at his chest, and that must have affected him because suddenly his lips gentled on hers.

He nibbled on her bottom lip sweetly, almost apologetically. When he stroked the bruised flesh with one swipe of his tongue, everything inside her shook alert, awake and alive and hungry.

His mouth lifted off hers slowly. Feeling him slipping away and loathing the loss of his warmth, she wrapped her arms around his neck and pulled him back down over her, mashing his lips to hers.

This time she kissed him, nibbled and sucked at his bottom lip in the same manner he just did with her. When she set her tongue to him, licking, he groaned against her. His hands fisted in the blanket covering her, tugging it lower in the process. Cool air wafted over her bare shoulder.

He was careful with his weight, straddling her, his knees on either side of her hips. Meanwhile she let her hands roam, reveling in the freedom to touch him. Her fingers drifted from his shoulders to his neck, his jaw, his face, and then back around to tangle in his hair.

“Anna,” he breathed into her mouth the moment before his tongue touched hers. A chill chased over her at the sensation. Goose bumps broke out over her skin as his tongue began a dance with her own, licking, tasting, stroking. Her belly tightened, grew heavy and aching.

The hand clutching a tight fistful of the blanket covering her loosened and smoothed out over her breast, cupping the mound through the fabric that she wished wasn’t there. She arched into that hand, crying out as those splayed fingers pressed and caressed her back.

“Miss Anna, do you need any help yet?”

Owen launched himself off her and the bed, leaving her gasping, her hands bare, empty and bereft. He took several steps until he was a good distance from her.

Annalise lifted her head to glare at the housekeeper.

Mrs. Kirkpatrick grasped the edge of the door, looking back and forth between the two of them in horror. “Forgive me, my lord, I did not realize you were here.” Her gaze lingered on Annalise. Self-conscious beneath the woman’s shocked gaze, she pulled the blanket back to her chin.

“I was just leaving.” Without another glance at her, Owen strode from the room, passing Mrs. Kirkpatrick on his way out.

“Well, then. Let’s get you dressed,” the housekeeper said as she advanced. But Annalise paid little heed as Mrs. Kirkpatrick buzzed about the room, collecting her bedclothes.

She brushed her lips, still tender and warm from his mouth. He’d proven he wasn’t immune to her. He wanted her. And in a week she would be on her feet again. Then he couldn’t hide behind his excuses of honor. She wouldn’t be bedridden. One more week and he couldn’t hide from her anymore.

It would be the longest week of her life.

O
wen fled to his chamber as if the hounds of hell were after him. He realized he could have used his adjoining door, but he’d been too rattled at the time to recall that fact.

Now he paced the length of his bedchamber, staring at the adjoining door, listening to the sounds of female voices on the other side. He had no doubt Mrs. Kirkpatrick would be in there for a while helping Anna dress that tempting little body, covering her curves, the breasts with their dusky dark nipples that begged to be tasted.

Groaning, he dragged both hands through his hair. He was mad. She was an invalid suffering from memory loss. He couldn’t take advantage of her. Her willingness, the invitation in her eyes—none of it mattered. Not without knowing who she was.
Not being who he was
. He wasn’t that much of a scoundrel.

He might be soulless, depraved, but he liked to think there was still some code of honor within him. Some lines he would not—
did not
—cross.

With a growl of frustration, he stormed from his chamber and out of the house, determined to find something to occupy himself. Something to consume his thoughts and help him forget a maddening female who begged for his touch.

Chapter Eleven

A
re you ready?” Mrs. Kirkpatrick asked.

Annalise looked down at her legs, already in position, dangling over the side of the bed. The eager yearning she had felt over the last weeks to finally be rid of the bed, to finally rise and walk, had swerved into something else. An anxious fear that she loathed even though she understood it. It was the same wretched fear she felt all those years ago when she rose from bed after her accident. Each morning she woke and limped—staggered in the beginning—across the small chamber she shared with her mother toward the basin of water.

Even months after her accident she would linger a few moments in bed every morning as dawn seeped through the curtains of her window, praying that today would be the day when she rose and walked like she had before the accident. Sound of body. No limp. No longer a broken girl.

What if I can’t walk at all
?

What if the moment her foot touched the ground, she crumpled? A wash of bitter fear coated her mouth.

“Miss Anna?”

She snapped her gaze back to Mrs. Kirkpatrick. The housekeeper watched her expectantly, a hint of impatience lurking in her eyes. A good portion of the woman’s day was now devoted to her. She doubtlessly wanted to see her up and about, too.

Nodding, she pressed her hands against the side of the mattress and gently eased off the bed. Mrs. Kirkpatrick gripped her arm for support.

“There you go now,” she encouraged as Annalise stood, a faint hint of her brogue creeping out.

For several moments she didn’t move, testing her weight on her feet. She offered up a wobbly smile. “Good so far.” She hadn’t toppled to the ground. The only question that remained was if her leg could bear her weight as she walked.

Mrs. Kirkpatrick nodded. “Ready for a step?”

Sinking her teeth into her bottom lip, she nodded, not convinced she was ready at all, but unable to hide from reality. Now was the moment she learned her fate.

The housekeeper tugged on her arm, nudging her to move forward.

Annalise shook her head and shrugged her arm free. “I’m fine.” If she was to do this, she needed to see if she could do it on her own.

She didn’t breathe as she lifted her right foot and set it down. Now came the true test. She lifted her left leg quickly in a step. And didn’t fall.

A small breathy laugh escaped her. She’d done it without collapsing. She smiled widely and then caught herself. She needed to attempt more than a single step to know for certain that she could still walk. Then she could celebrate.

“There you go. On with you.”

Sucking in a lungful of air, Annalise pressed forward. One step and then another. She staggered a bit, a little unsteady, cautious, fearful of falling. Mrs. Kirkpatrick hovered close.

Gradually, her steps evened out as she walked. Her leg felt weak, but that was natural after being abed for so many weeks. She frowned as she approached the door to the room.

“Is something amiss?” Mrs. Kirkpatrick asked, eyeing her up and down curiously as she hovered close. “Are you in pain?”

At the door, Annalise stopped and turned, hesitating for a moment before continuing. “No.” She walked a little more, feeling her brow furrow in bewilderment at her even, if somewhat tentative, gait. “I’m not in pain.”

“Well. That’s good news.” The housekeeper studied her face before glancing back down to her legs. “Then what is it?”

“I’m not limping.”

“Should you be limping?”

I used to
, she almost said, but caught herself. She didn’t want to refer too much to her past as long as she was feigning memory loss.

“I merely thought . . . I feared there could be a limp.” She increased her pace, hope unfurling inside her. She didn’t want to think it could be true, but the evidence was glaringly clear with her every step.

“Well, apparently those Gypsy folk knew what they were doing when it came to setting that leg. Appears you can walk on it just fine now.”

She could walk. Without a limp.

Her heart thundered madly in her chest. She approached the bed, marveling at her smooth albeit slow steps. The hope in her grew, blossoming into full-scale joy.

The first time she broke her leg, Mrs. Danvers had forced her from bed a week after her fall, insisting she would not harbor any lazy layabouts beneath her roof. By then Annalise was helping her mother in the nursery and with other tasks about the house. She was not allowed to be idle—even in order to heal properly.

Apparently this time around, being off her feet had allowed her leg to heal properly. If Mirela was in front of her now, she would have hugged her to within an inch of her life. And she knew she owed her good fortune to Owen, too. If he hadn’t found her and taken her in and given her the opportunity to recuperate, she would still be crippled. If not dead.

“You shouldn’t push yourself too hard,” Mrs. Kirkpatrick said, “but you should walk daily. Lord McDowell said you need to increase your stamina each day.”

“You spoke with Lord McDowell?” She looked sharply at the housekeeper.

The woman nodded. “Aye. Yesterday. He’s the one that told me to get you on your feet today, that it was time for you to start walking.”

So he had not totally forgotten her. After last week’s embarrassing episode in her bedchamber, she had no sight of him. She hadn’t even heard any sounds coming from the room next door. She had started to wonder if he still intended to keep his promise to her.

She glanced toward the door that separated their rooms. “Is he here now?”

Mrs. Kirkpatrick’s lips thinned with disapproval, and Annalise wondered if she thought her interest unseemly. “No.”

Absurd, but disappointment lanced through her. She had hoped he was near, that he would surface to witness her progress. She was no longer the invalid. She could look him in the eyes now instead of from a chair or bed.

She crossed the room again, walking cautiously. Her limp might be gone but she still wasn’t quite in skipping condition.

“Don’t overtax yourself,” Mrs. Kirkpatrick reminded her, standing back now, hovering less.

Her lips curved. “A moment ago you were shoving me off the bed.”

“If you overtax yourself, then you won’t be able to get up from bed at all tomorrow. You’ll be too exhausted.”

“Will his lordship return tonight?”

Mrs. Kirkpatrick’s lips went thin again, and this time Annalise did not think it was just because she disapproved of her improper relationship with the earl. It was something else, something more. “I don’t expect him tonight.”

She stood in place for a moment, noticing that the housekeeper didn’t meet her gaze, instead bent her head and concentrated on smoothing the coverlet of her bed with her hands.

And then Annalise understood. Owen hadn’t been staying here. He was spending the nights somewhere else. Her mind shied away from just where he could be. Another residence? Another woman?

A hot surge of jealousy spread through her chest.

Squaring her shoulders, she looked down at her feet and continued her stroll around the bedchamber, shoving aside feelings of hurt. It was none of her business where he spent his time. Or with whom.

“You don’t have to remain, Mrs. Kirkpatrick. I intend to walk a few more paces around the room at least.”

“I don’t know—”

“It’s as his lordship said. I need to increase my stamina.”

With a shrug, the housekeeper moved for the door. “Ring the bell if you need anything.”

Annalise focused on her steps again. She needed to be strong. Stronger than ever before. When she next saw Owen, he would not confuse her for the invalid he fished from the river. Nor would he mistake her as the woman who had so foolishly offered herself to him. She would not commit that mortifying error again.

He’d see her as a strong, healthy woman, ready for whatever instruction he could give her.

She’d make certain he saw her for who she really was. Or at least who she was determined to become.