Chapter 14 #2
“I offer my sincerest regrets that you are upset,” he said icily.
“But I must insist that we attend a Christmas charity tomorrow. It benefits a good cause, and it presents the image of the kind of duke and duchess we are going to be. I shall free you from any other duties between now and then, such that you may prepare yourself as this is not an instance in which you can afford to fail.”
“Aaron, listen—”
He did not listen. He stood, his back as stiff as the soldier he had been for so long.
“Now that it has come to attention that you are acquainted with my cousin Ariadne, I gather that I do not need to remind you the stakes of such a first appearance. No doubt, due to that association, you understand that marrying into a ducal family—into the broader Lightholder family in particular—you are not just entering a marriage. You are entering a public role. You will need to brace yourself accordingly.”
“Aaron, can you please just—”
He could not. He offered her a decisive nod.
“Good evening, Phoebe.”
He turned on his heel and walked—no, it was a march, a proper march—out of the room.
Phoebe sat for a while, feeling calmer—far, far calmer—than she had before he’d come into the room.
That was something to puzzle over at a later date, she decided, when she had more energy and wasn’t feeling as though her body was humming with the aftereffects of her emotional confession.
She suspected that it would take reserves that she currently lacked to work through the idea that her husband had actually brought her comfort.
Strange, strange, strange.
Perhaps there was more to Aaron Warson than met the eye—and perhaps there was even more than what he revealed when they kissed.
And Phoebe decided that she was going to figure it out on her schedule, not his.
Aaron was having a wonderful dream.
This was unusual because typically his good nights of sleep were those in which he didn’t dream at all, given that his dreams were almost always vaguely horrific scenes of screaming and gore and the feeling of slippery boat decks beneath his feet.
It was never specific—there were no faces, no names, and Aaron, who could navigate from practically anywhere in the world just based on the stars, never knew where he was in them.
But somehow that vagueness made the horror even worse, even more sickening.
He often woke from those nightmares in a cold sweat, gasping, clutching at his own chest.
This one was similarly vague but in a way that was lovely.
There was a soft warmth enveloping him, and instead of the bitter tang of blood, there was a dusty, floral scent like soap and rosewater.
And instead of pain or the wracking grip of terror, his body felt a growing sensual pleasure that radiated from the heat pressing up on his middle.
Sleepily, Aaron reached around and felt his bed linens. Ugh, no, he was waking. He willed himself to return to sleep and that sweet, arousing smell, but something pricked at his senses, dragging him back to the land of the living.
With extreme reluctance, he opened his eyes.
And he saw his wife, standing at the side of his bed, her arms crossed and a smirk on her lips as she peered down at him.
Hm. He had been circumspect and reserved in reality; he was patient and had waited—was still waiting—for Phoebe to come to him.
But it seemed that his mind had provided for him.
“Well that took you quite long enough,” she said tartly. “I thought you were a soldier! You’re quite lucky I’m not an enemy, let me tell you that. I could have killed you a dozen times over.”
Aaron… wasn’t entirely certain that he wasn’t still dreaming. But surely, he had to be. She couldn’t really be here.
“Phoebe?” he said, squinting up at her. He raised a hand to her waist. She felt real. This was a great dream.
But, he thought, it could be better. He reached over and hauled her on top of him.
Yes. That was better. This dream had a great deal of potential.
Except…
He didn’t think he could have imagined the way the heavy fabric of her dressing gown coasted over the curve of her body where her hip met her thigh. And he didn’t feel that his dream Phoebe would let out such an alarmed little squeak.
Good Lord. This wasn’t a dream.
Which meant that his wife really was in his bedchamber—in his bed.
Straddling him.
Because he had—Jesus bloody Christ—grabbed her and dragged her onto him.
Except… she wasn’t fighting to get off him. She was just still looking down at him with that same pert expression.
And goddamn him if that didn’t appeal to him far more than it ought.
Aaron had a fair bit of experience avoiding getting hard at an inopportune moment. Quarters on a ship were tight, even for officers, and it made for a mighty awkward command if the men you were ordering about saw one… swelling at the wrong moment.
Aaron put every ounce of that experience to bear as he realized that the warmth in his lap that had woken him was his wife’s…
Best to not finish that thought if he wanted to have any hope of achieving his goal.
He should very likely have been alarmed by Phoebe’s presence. Wife or not, she’d snuck into his bed with him, entirely unaware.
But he hadn’t woken up feeling so relaxed in… possibly in the whole of his life. He didn’t want to waste the opportunity. It could be another three and thirty years before a waking this fine came along.
Also, she was watching him in a way that said very clearly that she was waiting for his reaction, and he was just enough of a bastard to enjoy watching her squirm as she waited and waited for something that would never come.
“Phoebe,” he asked very politely, getting a perverse surge of pleasure when she gave him an annoyed pout, “what are you doing here?”
Slowly, she looked down at his half-dressed state—most of his modesty was maintained by the pooling of the sheets, which was one of life’s greatest mercies insofar as his desire not to embarrass himself went—then back up to his face very pointedly.
Why do you think I’m here? that look asked.
He blinked innocently at her.
Her eyes got very narrow.
“I just want you to know,” she said, “that I will honor the agreement I made to you before we married.”
“I’m delighted to hear it,” he replied. He was feeling uncharacteristically playful, too, as if this middle-of-the-night visit existed in a magical space outside the real world. “I probably could have heard it in the daylight hours, but now is good, too.”
Her exhalation was just this side of a growl.
“But,” she went on sharply, “I would like it to be equally clear that I will not be threatened. I will not be bullied. I had quite enough of that from my father, thank you very much.”
Aaron felt suddenly far less playful.
He hadn’t particularly liked Lord Turner, but he had accepted that the man was a means to an end. If Turner spoke about his younger daughter like she was a cut of meat to be sold off, well, he wasn’t all that different from most men of his class, now was he?
And if he spoke about his elder daughter in a way that made his distaste for her clear—that simply hadn’t been Aaron’s problem. He couldn’t make gentlemen treat their children well. If he’d had that power, no doubt he would have applied it to his own father first.
But now Phoebe was real to him in a way she hadn’t been before. Real, with her own bruises beneath that witty exterior. Real and here and his.
And he found that he very much disliked the idea of her living with a man who disdained her.
“I can say that I won’t bully you, wife,” he agreed. “But having a strong commander to give orders—that creates order. That’s how we make this thing—our lives together—that’s how we make it work.”
Without order, there was chaos. And with chaos, there was death.
It seemed, however, that this was the wrong thing to say.
Phoebe looked at him wryly—not quite disappointed, not quite angry, but certainly not pleased—and threw her leg over and off him with the same disregard that she might show dismounting a horse.
Good thing that she was so unbothered since Aaron was worried that his brain didn’t work due to all the blood attempting to rush to his groin.
“Where are you going?” he asked, hoping he didn’t sound too petulant about it.
She shook her head at him. It felt like a scolding.
“You can have a soldier, or you can have a wife,” she told him. “I know which one I would rather be, but you seem determined to cast me as the one that does not sit on your lap.” She shrugged. “I probably would have chosen differently.”
And then, she sauntered through the door connecting their bedchambers, not even closing it behind her, which meant that he couldn’t even risk taking himself in hand, lest she overhear and get another weapon on this little battle of the wills between them.
He couldn’t resist, however, groaning quietly then palming his face when he heard the echo of a laugh come through the open door.
He did not think it likely that he would get back to sleep anytime soon.