Chapter 16
Chapter Sixteen
Isabella didn’t realize the two of them had fallen asleep next to one another until she was awoken by a soft yip and a panting tongue licking eagerly up her face.
The scent of dog flooded her nose, and she laughed, already reaching out to stroke Morris before she even opened her eyes.
Only, when she did, her eyes snagged on her husband, who had stayed at her side, slumped still against the wall, his face slack in sleep. Her heart stuttered. His head was tipped forward, chin resting on his chest, and his arms were folded.
Isabella wanted to capture the moment, but Morris ambled shakily over to his master, licking him in the same way he had with Isabella, granting them both a lovely, wet wake-up.
Oscar jerked awake, hands already lifting, but once he found only fur, he laughed.
“There you are,” he said proudly, his voice still thick with sleep. “You gave me a proper scare last night, boy. Let us have a look at your stitches. Lie down.”
Dutifully, Morris flopped to his side, baring the tender wound to him. Oscar nodded only once.
“No sign of infection,” he assessed. “The veterinarian will be around to check on him shortly, I imagine. In the meantime, boy, you rest up. No chasing rabbits, and definitely no going into the woods. You understand?”
Morris whined, but kept lying on his side, as if understanding to stay put.
Oscar slid his gaze to Isabella, clearing his throat. He was already getting off the bed, but she reached out, snatching his shirt sleeve.
“You… You do not have to go,” she said softly. “We could have breakfast together.”
Oscar did hesitate, and a part of her was hopeful that he at least considered it. But he sighed and shook his head. “I have things to take care of, but I will come and find you soon. In the meantime, you should rest as well. It was a long night. You must be tired.”
“I find myself energized knowing that Morris is all right,” she answered, smiling.
“As do I. I’ll come to find you.”
The veterinarian’s assurances had given Isabella hope, and with Oscar’s repeated promise to join her later, a fragile optimism began to take root. She retreated to the music room, filling the quiet with gentle practice to occupy her mind until he might come to seek her.
Morris, meanwhile, was prescribed rest. A salve was left for the dog should infection threaten, though the veterinarian seemed confident the hound would mend.
The servants, sensitive to her concern, took turns peeking in on the dog, reporting back that he slept soundly, his great frame rising and falling in peace.
Isabella drifted between her tasks and her thoughts, at one point wandering back to her chambers.
She had only just begun to loosen her gown when the door stirred and opened once more.
She glanced up to find Oscar being followed into her room by a maid, and he caught Isabella’s eye.
“Please see to it that Her Grace has a bath drawn,” he instructed the maid, who curtsied and disappeared into the separate bathroom connected to Isabella’s main chamber.
She only cocked her head to the side.
“What are you doing?” she asked with a playful smile.
“I told you I would come to find you. I knew you would not stay away from Morris for very long. I guessed correctly, it seems. Now, would you care to enter?” He nodded his head toward the bathroom, and she nodded, slipping off the bed, careful not to jostle Morris.
Once the bath was ready, Isabella nodded at her maid. “Thank you.”
Oscar leaned on the doorframe, watching her.
“I shall leave you to your soak, then,” he told her, but a smile danced on his lips, so different from the angry energy he had exhibited yesterday.
“Or you may stay and help me undress.”
His mouth twitched, his eyes running over her for a blistering second. “That is your maid’s job, Duchess.”
“Today, it can be yours,” she half-teased, but she could see him working through the request. It was evident that he did not know what to do with it.
She walked over to the doorway, grasped his wrists, and tugged him into the bathroom with her, closing the door behind them.
The steam wisped around her arms, the bath already smelling like flowers and almonds. It was ever so inviting, but more so was the promise of her husband’s hands on her bare skin.
“You may begin,” she prompted.
Isabella pretended not to notice when his hands trembled slightly as he lifted them to her dress’s lacing.
Slowly, and as methodically as he had tended to Morris the night before, he undressed her. But she did not want to be a task. She wanted to be something that barely kept him restrained, something to unwrap and discover.
His hands skimmed over her spine, the back of her neck, and the curve of her waist. Then, he finished unlacing her corset, and she felt his breath, unsteady and uneven, on her shoulder.
Oh, she thought. Perhaps this is exactly what I hoped for.
He desires me.
When she finally stood in her chemise only, she turned around to face him.
A flush covered his scarred cheeks, and she gazed up at him. He swallowed hard.
“Thank—thank you,” he said, his voice sounding tight. “For helping me with Morris. I wouldn’t have known he was injured if not for you.”
“It was nothing.” She waved away the thanks and instead nodded to the bath. “We both took care of him and had a long night. You deserve a bath, too.”
The breath he let out was shaky and long, and she swore she heard him say Heavens, underneath his breath, but he let her take his hand.
She didn’t start to pull him toward the bath. No, she wanted to slowly undress him, to marvel at every layer he hid behind, to undo every locked door he shut himself away through.
Her fingers roved over his own hand, feeling every ridge of the scars, mapping pale line from pale line. Some were deeper, pulling at the creases and calluses of his skin, while others were simple lines, long faded and healed.
“I now know why you keep the northern turret locked,” she said quietly, “and I am sorry I trespassed in there and found the portraits of what you looked like before the war. You were not ready for me to see such a thing, but I have been ready to know who you are, who you were, and who you will be, for a long time. You do not have to hide yourself away anymore, Oscar.”
When he said nothing, nor pushed her away, she let her hands slide up his forearms to the buttons of his waistcoat. Her own breath caught as she boldly began to unfasten them.
Her eyes met his, finding conflict there. Desire and unhidden want welled in his green eyes, but she could see the fear he possessed of her intentions.
She wanted him bare to her fully, and she moved slowly to truly give him the chance to refuse.
“I am not afraid of you,” she reminded him. “I have never been, and nothing you do can push me away. Nothing you possess or hide can make me think less of you.”
He still didn’t look entirely convinced, but his face softened at her gentle insistence. Her hands slipped his waistcoat off, letting it fall to the floor. He caught her wrists, halting her from moving to his shirt.
“Stop. You haven’t seen… everything,” he managed to say, but it sounded as though he struggled.
Isabella shook her head. “Scars do not make a man hideous. Yours do not. I am not afraid of you, Oscar. Truly. Trust me, as I trust you.”
After another few labored breaths, he dropped her hands, granting her silent permission to continue.
So, Isabella did, and although she moved tentatively, she hungered for him. She hungered for the expanse of him she was going to uncover. It was not about her curiosity over his scars, but purely the intimacy of his skin, his body, finally, without his dark armor he hid beneath.
Button by button, she undid his shirt, exposing more flesh and finding more scars that told stories of everything he had lived through. When she slid it off, her eyes dropped back to the bandages on his forearms. Again moving slowly, she let her hands fall to the fastenings, a silent question.
He said nothing, only looked back coolly at her, so she unfurled them, finding more scars littering up his arms.
And then he was bare from the waist up, and Isabella could not stop drinking him in.
Her head spun with both the steam in the room and the opportunity of seeing him like this. His body was wide and built so strongly, and his chest rose and fell with his heavy breathing.
Scars of all kinds peppered his torso, like on his hands.
Burn marks, slices that spoke of deep gashes, small nicks from smaller blades—but his body told a story, and Isabella wanted to admire every chapter of it.
He was a warrior, powerful and rugged. Her husband, who had gone through so much, stood before her.
He had almost wept because he could not save every soul.
Her husband thought himself a fighter rather than a savior, yet he was the most honorable man she had ever known.
“Do they hurt when I touch them?” she whispered, sliding her hands over the scars on his arm, up to one of the bigger wounds on his shoulder.
Oscar shook his head. “No.”
Isabella continued to slide her hands up and down his arms, feeling the soft skin beneath the rippling scars, and she dared to lean into his chest, pressing a kiss right in the center.
She swore she felt his heart speed up.
“Isabella.” His voice was strained, and she let herself press closer, smiling against his skin, realizing why he sounded strained now.
It was not the anticipation of her seeing his body, but more to do with how his body was reacting to her touch.
“Yes?” she teased.
“The water will go cold,” he muttered.
She pressed another kiss to his chest, this one open-mouthed, slightly more toward the hard muscle on the right.
Oscar let out a hard breath. “Isabella.”
“I do not care,” she replied.
“I do.”
And then she was tugged from his chest, he grasped the edge of her chemise in his hands, and he had pulled it over her head before she realized he had moved.
“Isabella,” he breathed her name again. “I will not… I cannot keep myself on a leash any longer.”
“I have never asked you to hold yourself back,” she whispered.
And then, he kissed her.
His mouth pressed to hers, hot and needy, perhaps as much as hers, and the kiss immediately turned desperate. Isabella wished to clamber up him, to wrap her legs around his waist, to give in to the wanton desire that coursed through her.
But before she could move closer again, he stepped back, not tearing his gaze from hers as he unfastened his breeches.
Now that they were both naked, Isabella gazed at him, swearing that the bathroom spun around her. Her thoughts turned muffled; the only thing ringing true was her exposed husband before her.
More scars littered his thick thighs, and her mouth turned dry at the length that was hardened between those legs. Something deep inside Isabella stirred, and she swallowed back her fear.
Oscar only looked back at her, amused and yet almost as though he was nervous, as he stepped into the tub.
He nodded his head toward the water. “Join me.”