Page 15 of To Marry and to Meddle
She looked up at him, her mouth gone dry. There was something intoxicating about standing this close to him, breathing in his scent, feeling the weight of his undivided attention. She wondered idly what it must be like to share a stage with him, whether an actress playing opposite him felt this same fizzing in her veins, but she buried the thought just as quickly as it had arisen, all at once not having any wish to think of him with any woman but her.
And—in part to banish those thoughts, and in part to dosomethingwith that fizzing feeling that consumed her, and in part because it seemed the only thingtodo in that instant—she reached up, cupped his face in her hands, and kissed him.
The benefit to being married to a notorious rake, Emily reflected, with what small portion of her brain was capable of intelligent thought at the moment, was that he certainly responded quickly to such overtures. It was the matter of a moment, somehow, for control of the kiss to entirely change hands, for it to no longer be Emily kissing Julian, but him kissing her. His arm slid around her waist, his free hand gliding up to the nape of her neck, his fingers cradling her head, tangling in the braided knot that still rested there, the remnants of her wedding coiffure.
He broke the kiss with a half laugh, half curse, disentangling his hand from her hair and turning her away from him so that he could attack it in earnest. “How the devil do you take this down?” he asked,hands working quickly; Emily could hear theplinkof hairpins hitting the floor.
“I would think you had some experience in the matter,” she said primly, and felt the warmth of his laugh against her neck a moment later. She was inordinately pleased with herself—Diana was the one known for her wit among their set; no one ever used the wordamusingto describe Emily. But shelikedbeing amusing—she’d simply been scolded one too many times by her mother for making what was deemed an unseemly joke, and so had learned at a young age to keep such observations to herself.
But no longer, she thought with an almost giddy sense of glee. Because what her mother found appropriate, or inappropriate, was no longer Emily’s concern.
WhatwasEmily’s concern was the feeling of Julian’s fingers in her hair, the loosening of the heavy knot of hair at her nape, the slight tug as he began to unwind it. She was acutely conscious of the sound of her own breathing in the room, a bit quicker than usual and just the slightest bit unsteady, and she turned to face him once more, suddenly unable to bear the tension, the feeling of his hands on her without her being able to see him, a moment longer.
No sooner had she turned than his mouth was on hers again, his hands at her waist, one of them beginning a steady journey downward. At some point she dimly realized they were moving, Julian backing her steadily toward the bed, and a moment later the backs of her knees made contact with the mattress and she sank down upon it, Julian following, twisting at the last minute so that he landed next to her rather than burdening her with his weight.
He reached over to cup her cheek in his hand, already moving in for his next kiss—
And that was when, with only the briefest, angriestmeowin warning, the bloodshed commenced.
Julian had been warned more than once about wedding nights being painful, bloody affairs, but he had been determined that his should be otherwise. And, at the very least, he had not expected to be the bloodied party.
“This is romantic,” he said darkly, three-quarters of an hour later, as Emily checked the tightness of the bandages covering his arms. The dangerous creature who had inflicted such injuries was sitting happily on the floor about ten feet away, attacking a plate of food with great gusto. Emily had previously attempted to soothe it with a dish of milk, which it had lapped up with enthusiasm before promptly vomiting all over the floor, necessitating yet another visit from the inn’s beleaguered maids, who were no doubt beginning to wish that Julian and Emily’s carriage had broken an axle in any village in England other than theirs. They had already been summoned when, once Julian had managed to extract his flesh from the creature’s claws, he and Emily had retreated far enough from the bed to realize that the hissing, spitting, fluffy demon was, in fact, a rather hungry kitten.
The maids and the innkeeper all professed their ignorance of the creature’s origins, claiming that they did not recognize it as the offspring of any of the resident barn cats. At this, predictably, Emily’s eyes had widened, and she had seized Julian’s recently mangled arm in a grip that, had he had even slightly less dignity, would have prompted a howl of pain. Sighing in resignation—and feeling all at once Extremely Married—he had watched as a blanket was lovingly crafted into a bedfor the monster, and numerous dishes were prepared to tempt his lordship’s fancy. (A furtive peek in an indelicate location had confirmed that he was, indeed, a he.)
Julian, resigning himself to the reality that there would be no further amorous activities this evening—which might be for the best; he would hate for one of his gaping wounds to bleed all over his sweet, blushing bride—had taken a bath in water that, by that point, could only be charitably described as lukewarm, hissing as every single one of the scratches on his arms came into contact with the liquid.
Emily, who had once been filled with such maidenly horror at the idea of them bathing in the same room, was too occupied with cooing at the murderous ball of fur to even note Julian’s state of dishabille; he had the distinct impression that he could have paraded before her in his smalls—or quite possiblyoutof them—and she would not have taken a moment’s notice.
Once he had washed off the dust from their unexpected horseback ride, and ensured that none of his scratches were actively bleeding, he’d pulled on a shirt and breeches and she’d bestirred herself enough to see to the bandaging of his wounds.
“Marmalade,” she said, checking his final bandage and then perching on the edge of his armchair.
“I beg your pardon?”
“For a name,” she clarified, looking down at him. “For the kitten.”
“Ah. I was thinking Beelzebub.”
“Julian!” She swatted at his arm, though she did so gently enough that it was really more of a pat than anything else.
“Lucifer?” he suggested.
She crossed her arms over her chest and frowned at him; across the room, the hell-beast sneezed directly into his dinner, which apparentlystartled him so much that he jumped approximately a foot in the air, managing to upset a good portion of the remaining food onto the floor in the process.
“How is it possible to be surprised by one’s own sneeze?” Julian wondered aloud as Emily rushed over to mop up the mess, cooing platitudes at Beelzebub-Lucifer all the while. “Are you certain he didn’t sustain some sort of mental damage during our tussle on the sheets?”
Which was decidedlynotthe sort of tussle on the sheets he had envisioned for this evening.
“Shh!” she said, then whispered to the demon, “You’re perfectly intelligent, aren’t you, Marmalade?”
“You can’t call him Marmalade,” Julian objected. “Even if you won’t agree to my perfectly brilliant names, you’ve got to come up with something else. He’s not orange!”
“Fine,” Emily conceded, staring down at the kitten. He had seemingly completed his dinner at last, and was now arching his back in an exaggerated stretch. Emily reached out a finger to gently scratch him behind the ears, and a sound began to emerge from the creature that after a moment Julian identified as a purr.
“Look! He likes me already!” Emily said, giving Julian a watery-eyed smile.
“Ilike you,” Julian grumbled. “And yet I’ve never seen you get quite so excited about it.”
