Chapter 24 #2
He was still smiling, still so stupidly full of fondness, watching her there. “This is new,” he reminded her, gesturing around the room. “New things can be unsettling.”
“Yes!” she said, startling herself with how emphatically the word came out and then immediately giggling at her own volume. “That is exactly right. Oh.”
She shook her head and took a bracing breath, pulling the loosened stays up over her head and holding them to her chest as she pulled the wedding dress up off the floor and looked around for somewhere to deposit them.
He moved then, sliding off the bed to take them from her, their fingers brushing warmly against each other as he moved the items to his wardrobe.
He draped them over the open door for tonight, until they could properly unpack and categorize what went where.
He ran his fingers over the fabric of the skirts, ensuring that there were no folds or kinks to ruin the fine lines in the layers of craftsmanship.
When he turned back around, he found her sitting at the foot of the bed, in nothing but that filmy chemise, grinning at him as she twisted her hair through her fingers. Watching him fuss over her gown had apparently soothed some of those nerves.
“You said that you had a surprise for me,” she reminded him.
“Ah, I did say that,” he replied, running a hand over his hair. “I suppose you still want it?”
She scoffed, lifting her chin. “Of course I do.”
He chuckled, stepping toward her. “All right, then. Come with me.”
She watched him approach, her eyes falling to his outstretched, open hand with overt glee. She took it, hopping from her perch at the foot of the bed and landing against his chest with a feigned display of clumsiness that made him groan, even as he caught and steadied her.
“Still playing at this?” he chided. “On our wedding night?”
“Playing at what?” she asked, blinking up at him innocently as she ran their connected hands down the curving, satin-covered side of her little body. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“Do you want to see your surprise?” he asked, his sternness just as feigned as her innocence, though he did not do a damn thing to remove his knuckles from the soft curves of her waist and hip.
She lowered her lashes and nodded. “I do.”
He pulled her into the hall and positioned her outside of the door to the washroom. “I would tell you to close your eyes,” he said softly, “but I know you’d peek.”
“I would,” she confirmed, making him laugh.
He still took his time turning the knob and pushing the door open, watching her face as he revealed the room behind it.
While undamaged by the collapse the previous year, this little room had benefitted from the opportunity of renovation.
It now sported new walls and floors, gleaming new fixtures, and its crowning glory sat at the rear of the room: a massive custom-built bath, claw-footed and marble, gleaming opposite the gently burning sconces that were lit on the wall on either side of it.
Delicate curls of steam rose from the center of the tub, scented with roses and lavender, painstakingly filled over the last several hours to be ready for Hannah when she finally arrived to behold it.
She gasped, dropping his hand to press both of hers over her mouth. “You actually had one made!” she marveled. “Oh, it’s glorious! It looks large enough to swim in! Have you had a bath in it yet?”
He shook his head. “It was only installed yesterday, and I bathed at the parish house before the wedding this afternoon. This wouldn’t exist if you had not suggested it, so it did not seem right to use it without you present.”
“Oh, and it …” She was wide-eyed, tiptoeing forward like she couldn’t quite trust her eyes. “It’s full! Thaddeus, it’s full!”
“Yes,” he agreed, leaning back against the wall to watch her, delight blossoming in his chest so fully that it almost made his ribs strain. “It is.”
“And hot!” she added with a little sigh of pleasure, trailing her fingers through the water. “Oh, it’s gloriously hot! My body aches so from the dancing and the standing and the wedding and all of it and this … oh! We are going to use it, aren’t we?”
She spun around as she asked the final question, her eyes sparkling like any other conclusion was ever possible, her wet hand clutched over her heart, soaking into that fine, blue satin.
“Yes, that was my plan,” he confirmed, nodding to the wall where two plush dressing gowns awaited them, tufted and thick for the winter chill, should it have the audacity to attempt to come in through the window above the tub. “If it pleases you.”
She stared at him for a moment, that wet hand trailing down the front of her chemise, leaving warm droplets in a line down the tantalizing plane of her body.
“You fool,” she said with a fluttering little sigh.
“I beg your pardon?” he asked, blinking.
“Fool,” she repeated as a slow, curling grin grew over her mouth. “If you’d just come and married me the day I sent that letter, we could have been having these baths all winter. Now lock that door and come here. It’s my turn to unbutton you.”