Page 24 of In Want of a Wife
She glanced around the hall, empty of guests. For that she was thankful. This was not her best nightgown, and it was already far too late to consider that she was standing in view of the public in her nightclothes, knocking on a single man's room.
She knocked again and was about to do so once more before the door yanked open, and Mr. Davies stood there with only a sheet clenched around his waist.
Oh, good lord.
“What's the matter?” he asked.
The problem was that she couldn’t look away, though that would have been for the best.
She swallowed hard, her words getting lost on their way. “We…”
He raised his eyebrows.
“…are trying to sleep.”
“So am I.”
He wasn't sleeping. The rude, disrespectful blackguard.
A moan, the same that she had heard from her room, and she swore originated from Mr. Davies’s room, echoed from farther down the hall then. The world seemed to collapse into itself as it rang in her ears, mocking her mistake.
Hergravemistake.
The sounds were not originating from his room.
Her heart raced in her chest as she felt the burn of her embarrassment hot on her cheeks.
He leaned against the doorframe and smiled that impossible, annoying, charming smile. Why must the man possess a crooked smile? He appeared… tousled. Wickedly and indecently so. His black, curly hair stood this way and that. But it was his arms that made her mouth dry. Fine muscles, smooth and defined, and her fingers ached to touch them. To feel the power that hid behind such magnificent flesh.
She remembered falling into them only hours earlier. And how she hadn’t been able to look away from him, as if waiting for an answer while the world tilted upside down.
Lily forced her eyes away to try to quell her discomfort.
“I'm flattered.”
Even his voice was… rough.
Lily nodded, smacking her lips. “Good night,” she said, turning to leave.
“That was all?”
“I thought...”
“Oh, I know what you thought. And while I must offer my appreciation in your estimation of my character to secure such company while I am accompanying three ladies across England, I will only say that I am not responsible.”
If the floor fell away and swallowed her up, Lily would forever be grateful. It was already a terribly awkward situation, and he was not helping.
The intolerable oaf.
And he had just made her feel like the biggest idiot in the world.
He walked past her, still only clutching a sheet around his waist, and knocked on the door at the end of the hall. He was met with silence, which was appreciated. “Please,” he said. “If you could keep it down, there areladies”—and at that, he spun around and grinned at Lily—“who are wishing to sleep.”
When silence followed, he stalked back to his room. “Will that be all, Miss Abrams?”
The ability to speak was a distant memory as she nodded. He had just thoroughly embarrassed her and then acted the part of a knight in shining armor. In only a sheet.
He continued to pin her stationary until, finally, she turned for her room.
