He couldn’t look away from her.
She was not a showy blossom, good for a few days—or at most a few weeks. She was more like the hazel tree beloved by Alice: In summer one found shelter and peace under the green shade; in winter the bare limbs were still shapely and durable. A woman for all seasons.
Their eyes met. She colored and looked away, the very model of decorum. When she’d been anything but in the dark, when she’d been all indecent touches, hot kisses, and rapturous whimpers.
Her ear, exposed by her upswept hair, was delicate and comely. Her profile was as exquisite as any he’d seen on an ivory cameo. And her eyelashes, had they always been so long, curved as dramatically as scimitars?
At the end of the evening, with Helena staying behind at the Lexington town house, Fitz and Millie traveled home alone.
They were silent inside the carriage. He didn’t know what to make of his reticence to speak to her. He certainly didn’t feel physically bashful—he’d disrobe this minute if his nudity in a moving carriage with all its windows open wouldn’t offend her. But it was shyness all the same, a shyness of the mind, perhaps. He was not yet accustomed to the reality of their marriage, not yet accustomed to going home with a woman he held in such high esteem—and making love to her, too.
Her maid took an eternity to get her ready for bed—the queen did not need this much time before her coronation. The moment she left, Fitz opened the connecting door.
Millie sat before her vanity, in her dressing gown, turning her hairbrush in her hand. At his entry, she glanced up at the mirror and watched as he approached her.
Could she see his hunger in his eyes? The entire day he’d thought of nothing but the untrammeled creature she became when all her clothes had been stripped away.
He lifted the end of her pleat and loosened the ribbon that kept the strands tied together. How small such things usually were: the restraints and fastenings that held together order and modesty. Without the ribbon, he easily unraveled the braid.
Unbound, her hair was still neat—it dropped in a straight-edged cascade down her back—but it was far from the simple light brown he’d always assumed it to be, instead full of nuances and variations, with threads of gold, bronze, and even coppery red.
“Will you turn off the light?” she murmured.
“Eventually.”
Now he wanted to see her, her hair, her skin, her intricate, interesting face.
He parted her hair at the nape, traced her vertebrae one by one, and watched her reflection in the mirror. Five years ago, perhaps even three, he’d have thought she reacted not at all. But now he’d become much more fluent in the language that was her expressions. He perceived the minute fluttering of her eyelids. He also caught the fact that she was biting the inside of her lip, because her lower lip pulled ever so slightly toward the seam of her mouth.
He undid the sash of her dressing robe. Her fingers tightened around the handle of her hairbrush. He lifted her out of the chair and flicked the dressing robe from her shoulders.
He’d never paid much mind to women’s nightgowns, except to know that they were made to make any woman appear twice her girth. Hers was no exception, pleated and puffed with all the trickery known to garment-making.
He gathered fistfuls of the nightgown’s skirt. Her lips parted, as if about to protest. But she said nothing, emitting only a breath of air.
“Arms up.”
She obeyed. He pulled the nightgown over her head and cast it aside. For a moment, it seemed as if she wanted to shrink, to hunch down. But all those years of walking with books on her head prevented her from doing anything, anything at all, to sabotage her posture. She stood very straight, her breasts high and pink-tipped, her hips full and round.
“Please, turn off the light.”
He looked at her for another minute, mainly her face, the caught breaths, the licked lips—the interplay of shyness and abandon.
And then he turned off the light, found her in the darkness, and kissed her.
Their third night together he did not turn off the light when he had her naked. Instead, he laid her on the bed, parted her legs slightly, and touched her in that hidden place and watched her face.
This should have mortified her, to be so intensely observed when she was so entirely exposed—and at his mercy. But it only made her pleasure more searing.
He did not extinguish the light until after she’d come to a shaking climax. Then he made love to her not only as if he had never experienced lovemaking before, but no one had.
CHAPTER 16