Page 48 of Lord Garson's Bride
“I get by. Anyway there’s no room.”
“If you lie on your side and squeeze up against the wall, there is.”
He didn’t look convinced. “You’re playing with fire, Jane.”
“I trust to your honor.”
“An inebriated man has no honor.”
She didn’t believe that either. “Hugh, I’m sleeping next to you. We can do it on this inconvenient contraption, or we can do it in the other room where we’ll both be comfortable.”
“Speak for yourself.” He groaned and set his feet flat on the floor. “You are a pain, Jane.”
Jane stepped back. His voice was so full of rueful affection, that she didn’t even mind him calling her a pain. She extended her hand. “I’m glad you saw sense.”
“You won’t be so smug, if I have a dream about snuggling up to my dear little bride, and you wake up to find me heaving about on top of you.”
She gave another of those delicious shivers. Right now, that didn’t sound nearly as threatening as he imagined. But this wasn’t the moment. She wanted him fully conscious when he claimed her.
Soon…
“You’re so tired that the second your head hits the pillow, you’ll start snoring.”
He still looking discontented, but he took her hand and stood. “I wouldn’t bet on it, sweetheart.”
The endearment was all irony, so it shouldn’t make her melt. But she couldn’t help smiling, as she collected the candle and led him into the bedroom.
Immediately the fire in the grate made her feel warmer. She let Hugh go, blew out the candle, and made for the bed. After a hesitation, he followed. Without meeting her eyes, he lay down about a foot away.
For a long moment, they remained unspeaking and flat on their backs. Then with another of those heavy sighs, Hugh reached out to wrap an arm around her and haul her across into the shelter of his body. Jane released the breath she’d been holding and curled against his side. Closing her eyes, she drifted to sleep, warm and strangely happy.
Chapter Seventeen
As Garson swam up from the murky depths of troubled sleep, the first thing he knew was that some buffoon was using the inside of his skull as kettle drums. The second thing—so close upon the first that it was almost the front runner—was that a soft, round breast filled his left hand.
This didn’t make immediate sense, but the percussionist’s enthusiasm beggared connected thought. Without opening his eyes, he gave a soft grunt of satisfaction and squeezed.
The woman in his arms responded with a sleepy sigh and pushed back so her rump pressed into his stirring cock. Despite his headache, he recognized that this was an unusually promising beginning to the day. But long and bitter experience counseled against opening his eyes.
For more than three years, Garson had dreamed that a lovely woman lay beside him, only to wake to odious reality. During most of that time, the woman had ruler-straight black hair and eyes the color of the Cornish sea. Over the last few days, though, his fantasies had undergone a change in casting.
Devil take him, when had that happened? Suddenly, even through his pounding head, it seemed important to get this straight.
He didn’t mistake his current companion for his lost love. Nor did he imagine that he was dreaming. His wife’s physicalpresence, warm and drowsing, was too vivid to be anything but real.
His eyes cracked open to darkness, although instinct told him dawn wasn’t far off. Inhaling Jane’s rich scent, he buried his face in her hair. The temptation to take this closeness to the next level rose, along with his unruly dick.
After all, the deal was that if she invited him to her bed, he could claim his husbandly rights. While patches of last night were deuced fuzzy in his recollection, he vaguely remembered her insisting that he joined her.
But his mouth tasted like the floor of a stable, and he badly needed a wash, and he wasn’t sure whether his wife was merely acting the Good Samaritan. Much as he wanted Jane, the risk of shattering the fragile trust they’d built over the last days was unacceptable.
While his conscience mightn’t have woken when he did, it was vocal now. What a bloody fool he’d been last night. He hadn’t been so bosky since his wild days at Oxford. He’d hoped he’d learned more sense since then.
Clearly not.
Half seas over as he still was, he was in no fit state to do Jane justice. After that incendiary and damned frustrating drive yesterday, he’d felt sick with self-pity. One drink in the shabby pub he’d stumbled into near the river had turned into another. And another. Before he knew it, the pub was closing, the world was reeling, and he was staggering home through dark streets to seek his lumpy bed.
Except when he’d got back, Jane had rescued him from his prison cell. More, she’d treated him with a tolerant affection he hadn’t deserved.
