Page 24 of Awakened On Her Royal Wedding Night
Vinicio gave a considering nod while Ippolita carried the peignoir into the bathroom and hung it on the back of the door. She stoppered the enormous tub and opened the taps.
The tub was set between marble columns and built into a platform with two steps leading up to it. The fixtures were gold, as were the ones on the nearby sinks. A steam shower took up the entirety of the opposite wall.
Ippolita withdrew a blue bottle from behind the mirror and opened it, offering it to Claudine to smell it.
When Claudine nodded her approval, Ippolita poured a generous amount of liquid into the water, releasing the aroma of lavender, geranium and bergamot as well as starting a froth of bubbles.
Claudine felt rather useless, especially when Ippolita lowered the lights and said,“Vino, signorina?”
“Per favore,”Claudine mumbled as she followed Ippolita back to the main room. “Can you please tell her she doesn’t need to wait on me like this?” she said to Vinicio.
“Are you displeased with her?” Vinicio glanced between them. “We’ll begin a hiring process tomorrow for your personal staff—”
“No! I mean, she’s lovely.” Claudine realized then that Ippolita was auditioning for a job she very much wanted. “I only meant I’m not used to this. I’m feeling very spoiled.”
“I’m confident that is how the Prince would want you to feel,” Vinicio said with a nod.
He exchanged another few words with Ippolita, who relaxed and smiled shyly, then finished pouring the wine and carried it on a tray into the bathroom.
Claudine was soon cosseted in warm water and a fragrant mass of bubbles that caressed her skin. The lights were dim and the gentle notes from pastoral classical pieces trickled in from hidden speakers. She pinched herself, wondering if this was even real.
It became very real when Felipe let himself in!
She sputtered slightly on the sip of wine she was in the middle of taking and sank deeper into the crackling bubbles. “We need to talk about your habit of barging in on me when I’m in the bath or shower.”
“I’m starting as I mean to go on,” he said dryly, noting, “It smells good in here.” He came to sit on the edge of the tub. His gaze seemed to penetrate past the thick snow of foam. “You’re comfortable?”
Naked in front of him like this? Not really.
“Vinicio said the pageant is saying unflattering things about me.”
“He told me you seemed upset to learn that. They’re trying to cover their own negligence by throwing fault on you. It’s driven by my brother. They will all look that much more foolish when it’s revealed you were with me all along.” He stole her glass and sipped from it. “The King has approved our marriage.”
She didn’t know what impacted her more, his words or the way his gaze seemed to slam into hers, knocking her deeper into the water.
“I told him our marriage does not buy your silence about what Francois did to you. You’ll speak up if and when the time is right for you. I mean that. How much you say, to whom and when, is completely in your control.”
“And he accepted that?” She numbly lifted her hand from the water to accept the glass he handed back.
“Not gracefully, but certain things can’t be hidden.” His penetrating gaze traveled the clouds of bubbles before he touched the edge of the scrape on her arm where she had removed the soaked bandage. “My father has always enjoyed the dogfight between his sons, but this was not an attack on me. You weren’t mine yet.”
He traced his fingertip from her elbow to her shoulder, where he picked up a damp tendril of hair that had fallen from her clip. He lifted it to curl the tail of it around her topknot.
“Now that you are, I told him that if he expects me to silence you to protect my brother, then he has not been paying attention to the kind of men he has created.” His voice was lethal, his absorbed expression mesmerizing.
Her body reacted with shivers of hot and cold. Her muscles were frozen while her bones were melting.
“I still have much to do. Eat something. Sleep.” He bent and touched his mouth to hers. “Tomorrow will be a busy day.”
Claudine woke with a gasp, aware someone was in the room with her.
“It’s me,” Felipe said as he slipped into the other side of the bed. “Go back to sleep.”
She turned onto her side to face him, only able to see the vague outline of his shape against the darkness. He sighed once and lay still, completely relaxed, as though he had willed himself to sleep and it was done.
This is my life now. This is what I’ll do. I’ll sleep with this man from now on.
She could hardly fathom it. And sex? For procreation, obviously, but he had stated it would be all pleasure for her.
