Chapter Twenty-Two
Juliana rolled on to her side and opened her eyes with a start, alarmed to find herself lying face-to-face with her new husband. Not just face-to-face either. Their chests were actually touching, her breasts pressed up against the thin linen of the undertunic he was mercifully still wearing. Somehow they must have rolled together in sleep, the mattress dipping in the middle to form a U-shape around them, the blankets wrapped tight around their bodies like a cocoon.
She held her breath, wondering how to extricate herself from her current position, before deciding against it. She’d never shared a bed with anyone before, but she had the distinct impression that if she tried to roll away then the movement would disturb him. For a horrifying moment she’d thought she’d seen his eyelids flicker, but then they’d stilled again, his breathing just as deep and regular as ever. She wanted to keep it that way. Bad enough that she’d actually invited him into her bed. How much worse would it look if he woke up and found them like this? Not to mention that she was his wife and in bed with him. What might he expect from her? Nothing, in all likelihood, given that he’d just come back from Matilda and thought she looked like a stablehand, but they’d never discussed that particular aspect of marriage. No, she definitely didn?
??t want to wake him. With any luck, he’d roll away by himself soon enough, none the wiser about how close they’d been, and in the meantime the warmth from his body was surprisingly comforting. His chest felt sturdy and strong, just like the rest of him. She hadn’t expected to sleep at all, but she must have and for a while, too. The last thing she remembered was him lying down beside her, but now, for the first time in as long as she could remember, she felt rested.
Slowly, she let herself breathe again. She hadn’t used her chamber at all since the night her father had slipped away in his sleep, roaming aimlessly around the castle instead, sinking ever further and deeper into a morass of grief and despair. Despite Lothar’s assurances, she hadn’t expected to see him again either. After everything she’d said and accused him of, she’d doubted that he’d want to come back, yet she’d found herself wishing he would. Her father’s death had put their quarrel into perspective. As much as she’d still resented their marriage, ironically she’d wanted her husband. Wasn’t that why she’d gone up to the battlements every day? She’d told herself that she’d been looking for solitude, but deep down she knew that she’d been looking for him, too, as if he were the only one she could talk to about her loss, the only one who might understand...
And he had understood. The things he’d said about her father had made her feel better in one evening than she had in a whole week of her own tortured self-recriminations. Once he’d said them, it had all seemed so obvious, as if he were actually lifting the burden of guilt away from her shoulders. He’d seemed to care about how she felt, too, as if their marriage were more than just a promise he’d made to her father, or a means of getting a castle. She’d been scared to be left alone again afterwards, afraid that if he went then the feeling of relief might go with him, asking him to lie down beside her because she’d had the bizarre notion that she wouldn’t be able to sleep without him. She certainly hadn’t thought of the other implications, though now she was acutely aware of the fact that they were married and lying in bed together.
On the other hand, being in such close proximity gave her a chance to look at him properly for once. They’d barely had a pause to draw breath since they’d met, lurching from one crisis to another—Sir Guian, her father, Matilda. Now there was only the two of them, she could finally look at him. Not that she could see a great deal. Her eyes had adjusted to the darkness, but his face was still cast deep in shadow. Only the jagged white line over the left side of his face stood out in the blackness, like the streak of lightning she’d first imagined it to be. What had he said, that his father had kicked him? She shuddered at the thought, seized with a powerful urge to reach out and touch it, to stroke the sides of his face, to press her lips against the damaged skin... She half-lifted a hand, yelping in surprise as his eyelids sprang open.
‘Juliana.’ His voice sounded perfectly neutral, as if he found nothing unusual in their intimate position.
She pulled her hand back at once. ‘You scared me! I thought you were asleep.’
‘Your eyes woke me up.’
‘My eyes?’
‘I could feel them burrowing into my skull.’ The corners of his mouth twitched upwards. ‘I never realised I was so fascinating.’
‘Just because my eyes were open doesn’t mean I was looking at you!’ Suddenly she was glad of the darkness concealing the scarlet tincture of her cheeks. They were probably redder than her hair. ‘I was just thinking, that’s all.’
‘Might a husband ask what about?’
Husband? Her heartbeat started to flutter erratically, reminding her of the fact that their bodies were still pressed close together under the covers. Now that he was awake she really ought to pull away, but the blankets were wrapped so tightly around her they seemed to be holding her in place. His body was having a strange effect on hers, too, as if it were taking on an independent life of its own, her breasts straining through her gown as if she were cold, which she definitely wasn’t. Quite the opposite—her skin felt red-hot, yet something about him made her want to press even closer.
‘Your scar.’ She said the first thing that popped into her head.
‘What about it?’
‘Does it hurt?’
‘Sometimes.’
‘Can I touch it?’
He hesitated for a moment. ‘If you wish.’
She lifted her hand and trailed her fingers delicately along the barbed line of his scar. It felt surprisingly smooth, as if it were an ingrained part of him.
‘It’s not very pleasant to look at.’ He sounded almost apologetic.
‘I don’t care about that.’ She cradled her hand against the damaged side of his face. ‘It’s part of who you are.’
She met his gaze and her stomach flipped over. Even in the darkness, his eyes were burning with an intensity that made her temperature soar and her insides quiver with excitement. She felt as if she’d just been scorched. His whole body seemed to have tensed, too, the lower part in particular behaving in a way she’d never expected...
‘Are you hungry?’ His voice sounded strange.
‘Hungry?’ She had to repeat the word to make sense of it. Was she hungry? What did that have to do with anything? ‘Yes, I suppose so.’
‘Wait here.’
He rolled away suddenly and she gasped, feeling cold and bereft as he sat for a few moments on the edge of the bed before standing up.
‘It’s the middle of the night!’