Chapter 15
“Why are you looking so smug?” Vix asked, watching with faint amusement from across the carriage. “You’ve been smirking like that all evening.”
“Smirking? Me?” Ambrose returned, his grin widening. “I would never.”
She gave him a flat-mouthed stare which made him chuckle, shaking his head.
“I just got married to a beautiful woman,” he answered with a shrug, adjusting to lean toward her across the bench. “Why shouldn’t I be smug?”
“It’s something else,” she answered immediately, withdrawing her hand before he could snatch it into his from where it rested on her knee. “I know you well enough to know when you’re up to mischief.”
“It is only …” he said, blinking and sighing as though he’d just been told something inconvenient, in this past handful of seconds alone in the carriage.
“Yes?” she pressed, her eyes narrowing. “Out with it.”
He clicked his tongue, then ran it over his teeth while watching her. “Terrible thing. The linens you sent don’t fit the mattress in your new bedroom. I’m afraid you’ll be stuck with me tonight.”
For a moment she was silent. His words landed in her chest, simmering and steaming like boiling water, little sizzling droplets escaping down into the pit of her stomach as the implication of both what he’d done and the very fact that he’d done it settled within her.
“You think you’re very clever, I suppose,” she managed to say thinly.
“I am very clever, yes,” he answered. “Thank you for noticing.”
The carriage began to slow, turning the last corner before reaching the Aster townhouse. Home, Vix amended in her mind. It was the last corner before home.
“You shouldn’t fret,” he continued, choosing to take up a loose fingerful of the tulle skirt in the absence of her hand, winding the fabric through his fingers. “I won’t take more than you’re willing to give from you, even if you are in my bed tonight.”
Her skin erupted in gooseflesh, the traitorous little bumps skittering down her arms to her fingertips as she cut her eyes to him, holding herself still. “I never fret,” she told him, pleased that her voice was still unmarked by her nerves. “What are you gobbling about, anyway?”
He raised his brows as the carriage pulled to a halt. “Lying and feigning ignorance all in one breath? You outdo yourself, Vix.”
She opened her mouth to reply, the acid already burning on the tip of her tongue, but was interrupted by the carriage door swinging open and Ambrose bounding out of it like he could not sit on the padded bench for a single second longer.
He turned and offered her his hand, the other tucked behind his back in a perfect posture of gallantry, and though she rolled her eyes at him, she did accept it.
“You are absurd,” she said as she hopped down onto the drive, allowing him to clasp her waist to steady her against the infinite layers of her skirt billowing out from the gravity of the motion.
He reached out to smooth them down around her bottom half, his hand ghosting through the fabric against her hips and thighs, though the brushing motions were rapid and businesslike. He grinned against her narrow observation of every obnoxious little thing he was doing.
Mr. Zeller appeared at the door almost immediately, standing at attention as though to welcome them over the threshold.
“Do not try to carry me,” she warned him, holding a finger up. “The dress will explode like a dead dandelion.”
He chuckled, pulling back a little to observe the smoothed skirt, and quirked his head to the side in acknowledgement. “Yes, I think it actually might,” he agreed with a little sigh. “I shall have to do it some other time.”
“You certainly do not have to do it ever,” she snapped, spinning to her side and twirling past him in a flurry of skirts. “I can walk perfectly well.”
Behind her, as she walked into the house, she could hear Ambrose muttering to Mr. Zeller, “I know. She wouldn’t let me,” followed by an assortment of disapproving throaty noises from the butler.
She cursed her lips for twisting in reaction, and tried to pull her face back into order before Ambrose might see it. She noted, with satisfaction, that her trunks had arrived, even if her linens had been sabotaged.
She had half expected him to regretfully inform her that she had nothing at all to sleep in as well. She certainly wasn’t disappointed to see that her nightgowns were here.
Certainly not.
“We will take dinner in my chambers,” Ambrose was saying as he came up behind her. “The necessary particulars that must be unpacked for my wife should be handled at once, and the rest left for tomorrow.”
She blinked, trying not to let her knees buckle straight out from under her at the sound of his voice saying my wife.
Instead, she turned her head to the side with a brief nod of approval.
“Yes, and I will require some aid getting out of this dress and into something less constricting, if Mrs. Jenkins is still about.”
“She is, Lady Aster,” Zeller said, only to be immediately shushed by his master.
“I will assist you,” Ambrose informed her, sounding haughty as can be. “I’ve a talent for laces.”
“Is that so?” she said, giving a bored little sigh as she came all the way round to face him. “You claim to have talents for so many things, Ambrose.”
“Yes, I am a bit of a prodigy,” he confirmed, that smirk landing back on his mouth. “It is my curse. I am good at everything.”
She gave him a patronizing little glance. “Of course you are, dear.”
“Doubt if you must,” he replied smoothly. “I can always demonstrate my many talents.”
She had no response to that, which was in and of itself not something that Vix enjoyed. Rather than stand there, dry-mouthed and weak-kneed, she brushed around him toward the stairs, as though she were bored of standing about after such a taxing day and eager to take her leisure.
“I do not think I want dinner,” she said absently, because she knew that she would not be able to swallow a single bite. “We had so very much after the wedding.”
“Oh?” he asked, falling in line after her. “Appetites turned elsewhere?”
She made a little noise that she hoped registered as annoyance as she reached the top of the stairs and turned toward the bedroom, taking the doorknob in hand this time on her own rather than waiting to be flung bodily into the chamber.
She heard his footsteps falling after hers.
It seemed Mrs. Jenkins had already anticipated their needs for the evening, before they had even reached the townhouse. There, on the bed, was a satin nightgown, a comb, a ribbon, and a little pot of cream for Vix’s evening toilette.
Everything had already been accounted for. There was nothing that needed doing. It was almost enough to make her feel distressed.
The door clicked shut behind her.
He approached almost silently, with only the gradual presence of his body heat against her back to alert her to his nearness. He moved her hair from her shoulders with a gentle sweep of his hand, the tips of his fingers whispering against the back of her neck.
She closed her eyes. She did not know what to do or say and only hoped that he would take the burden from her now. He must, she thought. It was how these things always went in the novels.
The knot at the top of her bodice was worked gently loose, each lace pulled at with delicate but firm tugs until suddenly she could breathe a little easier again. He did not say a word, simply following down the passage of her spine, loosening carefully as he went.
Was he really not going to speak?
“Ambrose,” she said, gritting her teeth against how ragged she sounded, squeezing her eyes shut. “What did you mean before? When you said you wouldn’t take more than I was willing to give?”
He paused, only for the briefest moment, his fingers stuttering in their task. “It seems evident to me,” he replied, careful. Controlled. “I will not take your virginity from you until you ask me to.”
Her eyes flew open, her hands coming up to hold the neckline of the gown to her chest as it started to sag. She turned half to the side, unwilling to risk the dress in a full spin of outrage. “What?” she demanded. “What nonsense is that?”
He shook his head, pulling at the laces in loose, languid strokes now as he steadied the parting of the bodice. “It is exactly what you wished for,” he reminded her. “Patience.”
“Patience,” she echoed, her voice gone whisper thin with indignant fire. “It is not about patience. You want me to beg.”
He stepped back, giving her the space to turn toward him fully, the dress hanging off her skin. “I never said beg,” he corrected, taking in the sight of her without mask or apology. “I said ask.”
“You want me to kneel at your feet and plead with you to deflower me,” she pressed, taking a step closer, dropping her hand so that the dress spilled down around her hips, revealing the glinting ivory corseting underneath. “Don’t you lie to me, Ambrose Aster.”
“I am not the liar here,” he said, eyes still on her body, voice still soft. “I think you know that.”
She flashed him a humorless smile. Her teeth felt sharp against her lips.
She reached down and pushed the rest of the dress off her hips, letting it pool on the floor, and stepped out of it, kicking her shoes away in the process.
She turned abruptly, gesturing to her back, where the laces of the corset were still strung tightly together.
“There is more,” she hissed, “if you please.”
She thought he made a little sound then, something in his throat. He returned to attend her, his fingers sliding into the space between the boning and the strings, steady and deft, despite how her body was currently thrumming with outrage.
“If you are so unmoved by me,” she whispered, feeling the corset come loose, “I will not petition for touch. I can be perfectly happy in a cold bed. I will not beg you.”