She should be happy with what he gave her—a haven, a home—and wish for nothing more.
Ten
Atlas led her down a long, dark hallway, past the wing she’d slept in the night before and deeper into the house, which seemed to grow bigger with each echoing step they took into the shadows. No candles flickered in sconces on the wall, and a chill raced gooseflesh up her neck.
She rubbed her free hand up and down her arm. “Is this where the family sleeps?”
“No. They sleep on the other side of the house. I began, last night, preparing a room in this wing for Alfie. But it will not be finished for a few days. I know you’ll wish to be close to him. My mother will listen for him tonight, will keep watch.” Silence. Then, “I apologize for keeping such isolated quarters. But I find it necessary.”
Necessary? For what reason? The chill on her neck turned into a full-body shiver. She barely knew this man. But she would learn more about him this night, more than she knew of most men. She would learn the shape and shade of his body, the way he moved when touched. She’d always possessed a healthy curiosity, and now it blazed, fully focused on her husband.
Herhusband.
He stopped and opened a door, and light hit her immediately, warm and welcoming as he tugged her inside and shut the door. A fire leapt and crackled in a fireplace directly in front of them, and to the right stood a large bed, crisply made and free from curtains. A few large chairs had been grouped near the fire, as well as a screen, and on the side of the room opposite the bed, a curtain bisected the room in two. It fell from ceiling to floor in a flood of some dark velvet, and beyond the room extended into darkness.
He moved toward the fire, but she wandered toward the curtain. What lay beyond? Pulling it back revealed a large window through which the moon shone, shining down on a pianoforte with a bench behind it. Those the only furnishings on this side.
Atlas’s warmth appeared beside her. “When I returned from the Continent, I put a pianoforte in the room next to mine. My own room was too small to fit it into. My father decided one day to tear down the wall between the two rooms, but that made the room too big to heat up, so I hung a curtain where the wall used to be. It helps. You’ll not be cold. I swear it.”
She ran her hands across the top of the instrument. This, then, was why he found it necessary to keep such isolated quarters. He liked to play without disturbing anyone. She laughed. What a goose she’d been to imagine he was anything other than what he was. If Atlas was a bit of literature, he’d be a love poem not a horrid novel.
He left her and knelt at the fire, poked it a bit, applied some magic that made it flare into hot life.
My. My, my, my.Sheflared into hot life, too. And all because he could stoke a fire into a rage. Would she ever be able to talk with a tongue like coarse wood?
He turned to her, flames casting his face with shadows. “Would you like me to leave? While you prepare for bed?”
“No. I think… Would like… That is to say, leaving is unnecessary. I can simply change behind the curtain. Or you could go behind the curtain or?—”
“Very well.” He marched across the room and disappeared behind frayed velvet.
He took the fire with him, somehow, and she rooted her feet to the floor to keep from following, seeking out his warmth.
The curtain wavered as if he’d hit it, bumped against it perhaps, and the sound of rustling followed it, linen scraping across the body, being removed.
Focus, Clara.She must. On her own disrobing, on her determination to stay out of this man’s bed. Her husband’s bed.
She removed her fichu and draped it over the back of a nearby chair. Then she bent her arm behind her back, reaching for the gown’s tapes, unable to catch them, despite a bevy of wriggles and stretches.
“Are you done?” Atlas asked, his voice stretching thin across the room.
“I’ve not even started yet.” She leaned against the bed post, hiding her eyes with a hand.
Footsteps. “Is something amiss?” Atlas’s voice washed over her, so close.
“I cannot reach.” She groaned, casting a glance over her shoulder.
He chuckled. “May I help?”
She gave him her back and clasped her arms across her belly as his fingers flirted with her gown, flirted with her skin above her gown where the fichu had previously fitted close to her body.
He made a strangled sort of sound, and the light brush of his blunt fingertips turned into the hot brand of his entire palm on the skin of her back above her gown. “Hell.” A hiss of a word, grumbly, too.
And it ruined her a little bit, toppled her resolve. Grasping for bricks to keep it upright, she said, “Should I turn around? You’ll be less tempted by my front. Most men are, I shouldn’t wonder. After a woman’s had a child. My back possesses fewer scars of motherhood.” She managed a weak laugh. She should dive under the bed and hope he entirely forgot her existence. What pitiful attempts at lightening the awkward heaviness that had settled around them.
His hands became shackles on her shoulders, and he spun her around, forced her chin upward until she met his gaze. Anger there. More fiery rage than she’d ever thought this man capable of.
“You don’t believe that,” he growled. She wiggled but could not escape. He only tightened his hold. “You believe it’s what others think, but you do not share their sentiment.” It wasn’t a question, but he demanded her answer nonetheless.
