Page 71 of An Inconvenient Vow

He raked a hand through his hair. “I thought it was madam you did not like.”

Oh yes, so it was. She turned her face aside. “Perhaps you should just go,” she muttered bitterly. She would not cry. No matter what it cost her.

Jeffree said something; she paid it no heed. Then he spoke her name again. Sabina shook her head to clear it. “What?”

“I said I need to wash. I can’t put my filthy hands all over you like this.”

Oh. She opened her eyes tentatively and found he had not moved from the side of the bed. She glanced toward the corner of the room and flapped her arm in that direction. “The bath,” she reminded him.

He swallowed, avoiding her eye. “You take it first. I need… a few minutes.”

She had just opened her mouth to ask why, when he turned his back on her and she saw him adjusting his braies. Oh. He needed the minute to calm himself.

Sabina rolled off the bed and tottered toward the bath. She was still faintly shocked that Jeffree de Crecy, the proudest man in Ganfordshire, was happy to climb into her used bathwater. Snatching up her long braids she wrapped them about her head, using a couple of pins still dangling from her hair to secure them again.

Then she set about tugging the laces loose on her bodice, dropping her gown to the floor and stepping out of it. By the time she had divested herself of her shift and lowered herself into the tub, Jeffree had flung himself down into a chair in front of the fire.

Cloths and soap leaves had been left at the side of the tub and Sabina soaped and scrubbed herself with a thorough single-mindedness that acted as a defense against the rapidly cooling water. At Jeffree, she did not dare direct a single glance.

If he watched, he would find no titillation in the sight of her practical ablutions. It was only when she climbed out and wrapped a large drying cloth about herself that she noticed she was covered all over in gooseflesh.

“Come and sit before the fire,” Jeffree’s voice rumbled from the seat he had taken. She turned her head and looked at him, but he was still gazing into the flames, not at her.

“The water is lukewarm at best,” she told him apologetically. He stood up with a muffled sigh and moved toward the bath. Sabina shut out the sounds of his disrobing by concentrating on patting her arms, neck, and face with the corners of the large cloth.

Glancing about the room, she saw their things had been placed just inside the door and padded over to fetch a clean shift. Jeffree was in the tub now and splashing about but she kept her eyes averted, right until the moment she was about to slip her shift over her head. Then she took a quick look, just to check he was not looking. Their eyes met. He was looking! Sabina almost dropped the flimsy garment in surprise.

Jeffree scowled. “Why are you putting clothes on?” he asked, standing suddenly up out of the water.

Sabina’s eyes almost popped out of her head. Only the utmost exertion of will allowed her to avert her eyes from his impressive physique. She had caught mere glimpses of it before and never in its entirety. Her heart beating so fast she thought he must surely hear it, she dropped the shift and instead bent her footsteps toward the bed. Drawing back the covers, she slid underneath them and dragged the drying cloth out from under her body.

Listening to Jeffree moving about over by the tub, presumably getting dry, Sabina steadied her breathing and reminded herself that she was the one with, as Meliora had put it, some experience of married life to draw upon. The drying sheet dropped to the floor, and she forced herself to relax back against the pillow bearer.

Why wasn’t he shy about his nudity? She snuck another glance at him as he stalked toward the bed and could only suppose that, possessing such a body, he rightly thought he had nothing to be embarrassed about. She took a deep gulp of air as Jeffree stretched out beside her on the bed looking unaccustomedly ill at ease.

Of course, she thought after a couple of heartbeats, he would expect her to take the lead in this, would he not?

“Will you take your braids down?” Jeffree asked, breaking the silence.

Sabina hesitated. “And by that you mean—?”

“Just unpin them from your head,” he clarified. “Not undo them.”

“I wonder what it is that you like about them so much,” she wondered aloud. Oddly enough, his request seemed to have dispelled a good deal of her anxiety. “Do you want to pull my braids Jeffree?” she guessed shrewdly.

His face turned red. “No,” he said at once, but his averted eyes and sharply indrawn breath betrayed him.

“Oh, yes you do,” she contradicted him.

“I just like to touch them.”

“You have not imagined it? Pulling them? Tugging on them?” she asked as she reached up to pluck out the pins. He did not answer, and Sabina had to bite back her smile. “I’ll wager there were not many women or young girls in Sir Charles’s home during your upbringing. What happened to Sir Charles’s wife?” She stretched to place the pins on a small bedside table.

“She died,” Jeffree answered, “but she was barely noticeable when she was around. She was a meek, colorless woman with little to say for herself.”

Sabina turned back to survey him. “Likely that is how Sir Charles prefers his women.”

A look of faint impatience crossed over Jeffree’s face. “I don’t want to talk about other women right now,” he said shortly. “Or my godfather.”