Page 42 of The Rose at Twilight

Had the tub not been so close behind him, he might have saved himself, but when he stepped backward to regain his balance, his leg hit the side of the tub, and down he went.

Even so, his coordination and strength after years of training to be a soldier were such that he only sat down hard, catching the sides of the tub as he did, and sending a flood of the chilly water over the stone floor. His legs bent absurdly over the rim.

When he fell, he reached out reflexively for Alys.

Only the fact that she leapt backward, appalled by her temerity and stunned by its result, kept him from taking her down with him.

When she saw him about to heave himself out again, she spun toward the door, her robe billowing behind her, her primary impulse being to seek safety as far from him as she could run.

“Don’t touch that door!”

She had nearly reached it, but his tone, if not the words, stopped her in her tracks. She turned back slowly, drawing her robe protectively around her, to see that he had hauled himself out and was standing, dripping, by the tub.

“Come here.”

She swallowed hard. By rights, with wet silk clinging to his powerful legs and his codpiece hanging open, its contents exposed and considerably diminished in size, Nicholas ought to have looked ridiculous, but Alys felt no inclination to laugh.

His fury was tangible. She felt its waves from across the chamber.

She saw it in his eyes, in his countenance, in the very way he stood.

What little courage she had left evaporated at the sight. She remained where she was.

“I said, come here.”

“What will you do?”

His eyes narrowed. He said, “I have been told of an English tradition called the rule of thumb. Do you know of it?”

She nodded, biting her lower lip. A man was not supposed to beat his wife with a stick thicker than his thumb.

“In Wales,” Nicholas went on, “one law fixes the proper penalty for a wife’s insolence at three blows of a broomstick on any part of her except her head, or a more thorough thrashing with a switch the length of her husband’s arm and the thickness of his middle finger.

” He held out his right hand as though to examine it.

“Which shall it be, mi geneth, England or Wales?”

She had never before thought his hand could look so large. And although he had no stick, and she doubted that he would send for one, she was well aware that in England—and no doubt in Wales, as well—a man might legally, and at any time, use his hand alone to correct an erring wife.

“Well?” His hands were on his hips again, his feet slightly apart. Indeed, he stood precisely as he would have stood fully clothed, as though he had no awareness of his seminaked state or of the fact that he still dripped rivers of water on the floor.

Challenged, Alys drew a steadying breath, straightened her shoulders, and looked him in the eye. “You ought not to have provoked me, sir. You taunted me. I asked you not to do so.”

His jaw tightened visibly in response to her words, and a thrill of fear shot through her, but there was an arrested look in his eyes. He said thoughtfully, “You have courage, little wife, but I am not convinced that you have wisdom. Come here.”

His tone was gentler now than it had been before, less threatening. Bracing herself, she took several steps toward him, and when his demeanor did not alter, she went on until she stood before him, her gaze locked with his. The stone floor was wet beneath her feet, but she did not look down.

“Take off your robe,” he said.

Still watching him, she raised her hands and slid the silk back over her shoulders, then lowered her arms and let the robe slip down them and fall to the floor.

His breath caught audibly in his throat, and in that moment she thought he might begin to caress her again, and hoped that perhaps the danger was past.

“Continue with your task,” he murmured huskily.

Her gaze flitted briefly, involuntarily, downward, and to her amazement, she saw that he had grown again. The sight was an unnerving one, and she glanced back at his face uncertainly.

“Do you wish to defy me further?” he asked in a tone that made it clear the danger had not passed after all.

But when she shook her head, a twinkle crept into his eyes, and he said, “I did not think to spend my wedding night conversing in sodden hose, madam. Make haste, lest despite the fire on that hearth and the one that burns within me, I fall victim to an ague.”

Reaching out to touch the wet silk with one hand, then with both, she tugged, tentatively at first and then when the material did not submit, more forcefully; but the task was not an easy one, and Nicholas did not help her.

He stood as he had been standing, feet still apart, doing nothing to assist her, and before she finally succeeded, Alys felt as if she had indulged in a tug of war.

The wet silk clung as though it had been glued to him, making it necessary for her to peel first one side a bit and then the other until at last she had them all the way down.

She looked up at him then. “You must lift your feet, sir. I cannot do that for you.”

He complied and, free of his wet things, bent down without warning, scooped her up in his arms, and carried her to the bed.

“You must dry yourself,” she protested, enjoying nonetheless the sense of being carried like a child in his arms. His skin felt warm, not chilled at all.

“Be quiet,” he said gruffly, placing her on the bed, turning back to snuff the candles, then climbing in beside her. As he leaned over her, his lips close to hers, he murmured, “We have waited overlong, mi geneth. We’ve a duty to be done, a holy obligation to consummate our marriage.”

“I am afraid, sir,” she murmured back, speaking the first words that came to her mind but thinking at the same moment that though he was so large, so powerful a man, and now her husband, the words were not true.

She had defied him, made him angry, even physically assaulted him; yet, he had not retaliated as he might have done.

He had frightened her, to be sure, but he had controlled his anger, and now she was not so much frightened of him as apprehensive of what lay ahead.

She said none of these things to him in the silence that followed, and she realized suddenly from his expression, lit by the glow of the dying fire, that he had been taken aback by her confession of fear.

“I will not hurt you if I can avoid it,” he said softly. “I will go slowly.”

And he did, kissing, stroking, caressing, and teasing her, preparing her so thoroughly, in fact, that by the time he claimed her she was moaning, burning for him, her body alive and yearning for his.

And if the claiming itself was not so pleasant, the ache that followed became a small part of the memories that lingered.

Before she slept, she lay beside him, looking into the darkness overhead, distantly aware of a few last cracks from the dying embers on the hearth, and filled with wonder that a mere man could make a woman experience such marvelous feelings.

She wondered, too, if she had stirred similar feelings in him.