Governesses Under The Mistletoe: The Runaway Governess / The Governess's Secret Baby. Liz Tyner
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to the bed.
Their bodies twined close, skin heating skin, and for once, warmth on an August night soothed.
He paused, pushing himself up so that she looked into his eyes. The darkened room didn’t allow her to see the exactness of his features, but she could visualise him easily. His lips were parted and he studied her face, then moved to the side enough that he could reach to her cheek. She didn’t feel the touch, but his hand heated much like sunbeams travelling over the skin.
His fingertips dropped to her skin, moving to her jawline and down her neck to her shoulder. He trailed down her arm and took her hand, putting it against his cheek, moving to place a kiss against her palm. The bristles of his face mixed with the softness of his lips. She traced his jaw, taking in the transition to a world she’d not known existed. Tendrils of his hair brushed against her knuckles.
‘Isabel,’ he whispered, so softly she knew it was not a question, but a caress with words.
He moved forward to kiss her, but something inside her had changed so that the tilt forward seemed to take a thousand moments, but she savoured each one.
His lips, warm and moist, took her thoughts away so that she could only feel.
His hands brushed over her breasts, bringing the feel of a caress to her entire body. He outlined her hips, her stomach, and pulled her against him, his hardness between them.
Again the warmth of the night became a balm as the slickness of his heated body bonding to hers swathed them in a cocoon of togetherness.
When he entered her, the murmurings whispered into her ear made her feel more protected and loved than she’d ever imagined at any moment of her life.
In some knowledge she didn’t know how she’d gained, William did all he could to protect and cherish her with his body.
* * *
William stood at the side of the bed, looking down. His head kept lowering as he fell asleep on his feet and then he’d raise it and jolt himself awake. She lay so still and looked more fragile than any glass figurine with her resting lips, the lashes resting over closed eyes and the skin pale in the moonlight.
He leaned over her and brushed a kiss at her hair, hoping she would wake. She didn’t move. Then he brushed a knuckle against her cheek, and her eyelids flickered and she rolled over.
Stepping away he turned, controlling his breathing. She was well. She would remain well.
He should have met Isabel in her chamber. Even after she’d knocked on his door, he could have easily walked her back to her room and then left as she fell asleep.
He was not cad enough that he could ask her to leave his bed, and he didn’t think she had plans to go. If she had, she would have left earlier.
He could not become attached. He could not experience anything deeper than he might feel for any other person. To care enough that you didn’t want to hurt someone was how it should be. But he could not care enough that the person could damage him. If he had learned one thing in his life, that was it.
He didn’t don his trousers or shirt, but slowly began gathering his clothing. Devil take it. His face itched. He touched it again. This would be the second day without shaving and he simply could not stand another moment of it.
But he couldn’t ring for his valet and ask the man to simply ignore the woman in his bed—the wife in his bed.
This was what the vicar had meant about marriage, but William had been too absorbed to see. A wife did differ from a mistress. He’d not expected that since no love was involved.
The simple act of declaration of marriage in front of a few witnesses and it wasn’t just nonsensical words. But he had suspected that all along.
His thoughts had tried to warn him when he’d not been able to think the night before. He’d babbled on to the vicar as if he’d swallowed a crate of ale, but he’d not had any spirits until the one before the wedding, hoping it would steady him. The portent of knowledge, and the sleeplessness, had taken him out at the knees and gutted what was left of his thoughts.
This oddness, at seeing Isabel asleep in his bed, helpless in her slumber, was a reminder of all the conflagration he’d experienced during the past days. Surely, soon this would dissipate. Distance would help.
With his clothing bundled in one hand and his boots in the other, he made it out the door and pulled it closed behind him. In the hallway, he dressed, resting his back against the wall as he tugged on his boots.
Marriage had reduced him to—secreting himself out of a married woman’s bed in the night as if she might have a husband appear at any moment.
He would have to find another place to stay, at least temporarily until he had accepted the routine of someone living in his house. But he could not turn to his friends. He would be the laughingstock. So, Will, wife toss you out on the wedding night? What didn’t you know how to do?
He would go to his sister’s house. He wouldn’t have to explain there. It wasn’t as if he hadn’t stayed there many times before when he’d been playing cards with her husband, or talking with her, and the night had flitted away. The servants always let him in as if he owned the property.
* * *
Someone knocked at the door and Isabel’s eyes opened wide and she pulled the covers to her neck, feeling the strange slide of bed fabric against bare skin. She was in the middle of a monstrously large bed, she was naked and she was alone.
‘Yes?’ she asked, that being the only word she could think of. William. He didn’t wish to startle her.
‘Pardon.’ A male voice, rising high at the end, as if his foot had been trampled. Not William. ‘Later, sir.’
Oh, that was most likely William’s valet to wake him.
She looked around the room. He was not about, nor were his boots, nor any sign of the clothing, except hers.
Well.
She jumped out of bed, dressed as best as she could and darted to her room. How did one approach the servants and ask where one’s husband had wandered off to? She could not pen this in a note to the butler.
Back in her chamber, she sat on the mussed covers where she had tossed about the night before waiting to see if Mr Husband remembered he had got married. She reflected on what a small bed the room contained. Oh, it fitted her shape perfectly, but didn’t quite measure up to his chamber.
Little embers grew inside her, fanned by every deep breath she inhaled.
She stood, arms crossed, and examined the bed. The room was not nearly as nice as she’d thought it the night before. Oh, it was beautiful and pleasant, all the things a woman could wish for if she had not awoken alone in a much larger tester bed.
No lovely posts raising high in the room to declare the owner worthy of the best.
She tamped her hand over the covers. Lumps under. She was certain.
This was what he had meant about marriage. The tenderness of the night before was like the empty—smaller bed. It had...a rather nice cover, but underneath it was just workable. Nothing alive in it.
Oh, what a fool she was for neglecting to believe the truth told to her.
She whirled around, saw her face in the mirror and picked up her brush and pointed at the reflection. ‘He told you. He didn’t wish to be married. Vows and nonsense. Vows and nonsense.’ She combed her hair and reminded herself that it was not his fault. None of it. He had rescued her.
They had met in a brothel, lest she forget. He was not a saint. He was probably back at Wren’s hoping to...win something.
She put her brush on the table.
It wasn’t as if she cared for him overmuch. Her feelings for him only stemmed from the fact that he had saved her life. He could have turned and left her to Wren. None of the other men there had