Page 15 of Felicity Cabot Sells Her Soul (Scandalous Sisters #3)
She’d drawn up her knees again, the rumpled counterpane a testament to the disquiet that had plagued her well past the point of consciousness and into the realm of sleep.
As if she had had to fight for the sleep she had finally attained, though it did not appear at all restful.
The counterpane had slid almost entirely off the bed, one corner tenaciously clinging to the mattress like a desperate hand clawing at the edge of a cliff face, the clear loser in Felicity’s unconscious battle for supremacy.
And Felicity huddled in a ball near the head of the bed, her knees drawn up to her chest, obscured beneath the voluminous folds of her nightgown, conserving heat in a room that had gone just a bit chilly with the banking of the fire.
Ian wrenched at his cravat as he crossed the room to the coal scuttle, casting the fabric aside as he spread a fresh layer atop the dimming embers.
A tiny shred of paper floated over the toe of his right shoe as he rose, and he bent to retrieve it, squinting at the feathery, worn scrap—until he recognized the bubbly shape of a hydrangea sketched upon it.
So. She hadn’t liked the garden, then. It was something of a disappointment, given that he’d put quite a lot of time and money into it.
His fingers curled around the small scrap of paper, the last remnant of a treasured relic of their shared past. He’d known, he supposed, how deeply her grudge against him ran.
He’d expected her to lash out, to strike at him in whichever way she could.
He simply hadn’t expected this particular wound to hurt quite so much.
Probably it had only been catharsis for her, the cleansing by fire of this small reminder of a time she would rather forget.
Probably if she had had any idea it would wound him so, she would’ve waited for him to be present.
Ian crossed the room to tuck the scrap of paper within the drawer of his nightstand.
She’d eaten the cheesecake at least—but then, it had always been one of her favorites.
Her wedding ring sat there beside the plate, still untouched, as if she had not even noticed its presence.
Perhaps one day it, too, would receive a baptism by fire.
And he—he would just have to make his peace with that.
She’d earned the right to her enmity. A grudge unsatisfied for ten years left its marks upon a person.
He had made her into the angry, bitter, wounded woman she was.
He’d hurt her in a way that transcended the ordinary.
In a way that had left gouges upon her heart, changed her from the shy little dreamer she had been into the distrustful, guarded woman she had become.
Scraped away the softness he had adored, fashioned her into a tougher, sharper version of herself, one strong enough to survive the blow he’d dealt to her.
Strong enough to harden that wounded heart.
Strong enough to weather on without him.
And she had, admirably, until her position had become untenable.
Until she had had no other place to turn.
It would be a half an hour at least until the room was sufficiently warm again.
Ian reached for the corner of the counterpane that clung to the foot of the bed and yanked it back up, gingerly spreading it across the bed.
Felicity shivered as the fabric slid over her, huddling beneath it for a moment.
And then, as it began to warm with the heat of her body, at last she gave a low sigh and stretched out once more, flopping onto her back and draping one arm above her head.
In that moment, with the last echo of that sigh still on her lips, she looked just as she had ten years ago.
Those sharply-winged brows now soft, her full lips smooth and without the slightest hint of a pinch to them.
Instead of hollowed in anger, there was a tiny crescent of a dimple in her cheek.
He sank down at the edge of the bed, one hand lifting to rub at the spot over the ache in his chest. This was what he’d given up any right to ten years ago.
Coming to bed to find her waiting there for him.
The right to breach that sacred space in the center of the bed which served as a barrier between them.
The right to touch her, and to know that it wouldn’t earn him a swift rebuke.
Instead his hands fisted impotently in his lap.
If he climbed into bed now, he’d spend an hour or more staring at the ceiling thinking of nothing but her.
The soft, even cadence of her breath. The warmth emanating from her side of the bed.
The drape of her thick, dark plait across the pillows.
The mounds of her breasts beneath the counterpane.
Christ . Ian vaulted off the bed and made for the door in long, swift strides.
Another hour of work, then, before bed. And a glass of something particularly strong to numb his brain enough for sleep.