I let my weight fall onto the bed, and then rolled over. I could feel the fit of the dress growing tighter around my chest, and knew vaguely that my position was anything but modest. And I didn’t feel nearly half as bad about it as I ought to have. I made no move to smooth myself over and regain my respectability.
“I’m sorry,” I said again.
Baron’s eyes on me felt like hot pokers pressed against me. But he made no move toward me. I silently dared him to. But in spite of my silent desire, he did not. I let out a long breath and tried to quiet the voice inside me that begged for a second attempt at wooing him.
“You are forgiven,” he answered. His teeth grit together. Looking down at him he seemed all coiled up like a spring, every part of his body held tight. As if, any moment, he might come unwound and decide that he would give me, after all, what I so desperately wanted from him.
He turned away.
“Come with me. We’ll eat in the common room, wife.”
Even the word itself made me shiver. I couldn’t convince myself that he would change his mind, but I could hope. And whether I let myself hope or not, whether he changed his mind or not, I couldn’t stop my mind from imagining what it did. Where things might have gone if he hadn’t stopped.
I pushed myself up from the bed. He waited in the door, that coiled-spring look still covering him from head to toe. He pulled off his belt as I did, and set it down, along with the pistol in its holster, on a bedside table. The pistol itself, he pulled loose and set on the table.
Then he started toward the door without looking back to make sure that I was following. As if it were simply presumed that I would follow. And I did.
He moved stiffly. Everything I had ever seen from him suggested that he was a man at home with his body. A man who was capable of moving very easily and very quickly. The stiffness, even in spite of the long days of riding, was immediately obvious. I let myself imagine for a moment that it was for my sake that he was walking like that. And then I put it out of my mind.
“Wait for me,” I said. He held up a step and turned. My shoulder brushed against his and he visibly flinched away. His hands balled up into fists, and then he started down the stairs again. I held my breath and followed after.
At some point, I hoped, I would be able to either have my wishes granted, or better yet, I would stop wishing for it. But I wasn’t there yet. Not prepared for what life had in store for me. Like most people, I wouldn’t be prepared until the opportunity presented itself to me. I let out a long, low breath.
There was a restaurant in the front of the house. Across the room, a group of men played cards with their heads down, looking at their hands. I was vaguely aware that men gambled. I had no reason to ever know of it, though. Jodie hadn’t enough money to offer to gamble any of it away, and there was no other man in my life to make the demonstration.
For a moment, the gaze that Baron gave to the group had me convinced that he was considering going over to join them. And then he seemed to make some decision in his mind, and his posture relaxed, only slightly. He caught me watching him and his shoulders grew stiff once more.
He pulled out a seat for me. I took it. Then he seated himself and looked around. The meal was silent. My captor—my husband, as far as everyone here would know—barely looked at me. As he ate, and as he avoided my gaze, his posture relaxed again.
He pressed a piece of bread against the plate to sop up the last bits of steak juice, and then ate it. I had long-since finished my own food, but then my portion had been smaller than his.
“To bed now,” he said. “We’ve got an early morning ahead of us.”
“No time for even a bath?”
He let out a breath and for an instant he stiffened again. Then he forced himself to relax and looked over at me.
“In the morning. It would be nice to relax, even if it were just a little bit.”
“Thank you,” I said. I meant it. I couldn’t explain what I had to thank him for, but I couldn’t deny that I was thankful to him. I was afraid of him. Afraid of what he could do. But at the same time, he’d been the impetus that finally rescued me from a fate that had seemed inescapable. He’d taken me away from a life that would never go anywhere. I just had to hope that he didn’t take me to a life that wouldn’t go any further than the first.
“Don’t mention it. Come on.”
He started back up the stairs without waiting for me. I followed after. He was hard to get a read on, I thought. Nearly impossible. He seemed angry with me, and at the same time, he seemed to be perfectly satisfied to leave me to my own business at times, as well. I pushed the thoughts from my mind.
He fit the key into the lock; the bolt rasped, and the knob turned in his hand, and he pushed the door open. The room was the same as we had left it before. He picked the pistol up from the side table.
“You’ll want to get those clothes off. I won’t look.”
Then he settled into a chair and turned toward the wall. For a moment I watched him. Uncertain if I could trust a man like Baron Euler. Uncertain if I cared whether or not I could trust him. I wasn’t sure that I didn’t want him looking.
I stripped my clothes off quickly, then, and slid into bed. What did it matter if he looked or not, if he was going to slide into the bed right beside me.
“Are you finished?”
“I’m covered,” I said.
Euler turned and faced towards the room again. My dress was folded over the foot of the bed. I retained some small amount of my dignity, with my slip still on. He looked over at me, and a wild part of me thought about uncovering myself.
“I’ll take the floor,” he said. “You can have the bed to yourself.”
“Yessir,” I said. He stood and leaned over the lamp, and blew the lights out.
I tried not to think about anything at all. Tried not to think that I was afraid of what was going to happen next. Tried not to think about where we were going to go. Tried not to think about the fact that I might just have brought more trouble down on us both.
And more than anything, I tried not to think about whether or not I was glad he didn’t climb into that bed with me.