How to Wed a Baron

Tatiana had left her after an hour. Alina would have given anything to have their discussion forever erased from her memory.

That’s what Jurgen and Astrid had been doing? Her parents had done this? The whole world did this?

Why? Why would anyone do this?

Yes, her mother had explained her monthly bleed when Alina had first experienced it. But she’d called it Eve’s curse, which hadn’t meant much, even when Alina had gone to the Bible in the study and searched it thoroughly. The snake, the apple, she knew all of that. But she hadn’t found anything about a monthly bleed, and had to content herself with her mother’s assertion that it made her a woman, and no longer a little girl.

That had seemed a fair enough trade. After all, men like Jurgen and Luka and Papa had to shave every day because they were men. She only had to bleed once a month.

Oh, if only she had known! She would never have agreed to the marriage had she known. Removing herself from her aunt Mimi’s jurisdiction, her constant disapproval, had weighed heavily in her decision, as had Count Josef Eberharter’s teeth. Pleasing the king had, of course, been paramount…even if displeasing the king by refusing probably hadn’t been a serious option in any case.

The prospect of fine gowns, of moving in English society, of having a home of her own, these had all finally brought her around to the notion that, if she was not the luckiest girl in the world, she at least wasn’t cleaning out fireplace grates or living in some damp cave, worrying when next she’d have something to eat.

But this? She hadn’t known about this. The so disgusting, so crudely violating, so intensely intimate this.

She’d made Tatiana swear on her prayer book that she was telling the truth. She’d demanded the companion then swear on that same prayer book that people actually liked it. Tatiana wasn’t sure enough to put her immortal soul in jeopardy by swearing to the latter. But she was fairly certain men liked it. Men liked the oddest things.

The soft knock on the door to her bedchamber all but had Alina jumping out of her skin.

“Lady Alina? It is I, Justin Wilde. I see a spill of light under the door and feel impelled to disturb you. I believe we should have ourselves a small conversation.”

Her wide eyes popped open even wider. It was him…God and all His saints help her…her stallion.

“Forgive me, my lord,” she called out, wishing her voice didn’t seem to be a full octave too high, and piteously thin. Wishing she had dared to blow out her candle and face the dark, and the disturbing images Tatiana’s words had planted in her brain. “I am abed.”

“Ah, but not asleep,” came the assured voice. “One could hardly expect you to be, if your bed is half so uncomfortable as mine. Please. We really do need to talk.”

The disturbing images disappeared as her temper came to her rescue. Was the man always going to prove such a pest?

“Oh, all right, if you’re otherwise going to stand out there making a fuss,” she groused mean-spiritedly, throwing back the covers and slipping to her feet. “One moment.”

She located her dressing gown, not caring that it was old—why had she purchased so many pretty things, and completely neglected to refurbish her nightwear? She should probably add that question to the list of Things Nobody Had Told Her, praying it would not be a long list. She could only be grateful that the thing buttoned from her throat to her toes, rather like muslin armor.

But her parents had not shared a bedchamber. It had never occurred to Alina that her husband would share hers, that he would ever see her in her nightwear. There was no avoiding the thing—she was stupidest person in creation!

Not bothering to locate her slippers, she padded to the door, slipped back the latch and stepped back a half-dozen very large paces. “It’s open, my lord.”

He stepped inside and closed the door behind him.

Alina crossed her arms protectively over her breasts. Just in case he became “maddened by lust,” as Tatiana had said men were prone to do at the drop of a hat.

“My, aren’t you a picture,” the baron said, bowing to her before advancing toward her, daring to lift the single thick braid that hung down over her crossed arms. “I had a mare once whose tail was so long and fine that my groom enjoyed braiding it this way. It looks better on you,” he added as he dropped the braid, so that she quickly gave her head a flip, sending the thing flying behind her back.

“I’m not a mare, my lord,” Alina told him, knowing that, in many ways, she was. A broodmare…with an ermine-tipped velvet cloak.

He tilted his head to one side and looked at her more closely. “No, of course you’re not. Is there something amiss, my lady? Have I made you nervous? I promise you, that was not my intent in coming here.”

“Then what is your intent, my lord?”

Something was happening to her. He was looking at her in the strangest and most intense way, and something was happening to her. She was becoming curiously aware of her body, parts of it that had never before bothered to bring themselves to her attention. And hadn’t they taken a fine time to wake up and say hello!

Alina hastened to the chair Tatiana had been sitting in an hour earlier. The wineglass she’d refilled three times during the course of their discussion was still on the table beside it, still with half its contents. She picked it up and drained it, suppressing a shiver as her first taste of unwatered wine served to make her feel warm from her tongue straight down to the bottom of her belly.

Tatiana had said that wine helped when one was nervous, and if taken in enough quantity could even make the unthinkable, thinkable.

But nothing happened. Clearly it would take considerably more wine for that! Alina sat down with a thump, crossed her arms once more over her breasts that were neither more than a handful nor pimples.

She looked up at Lord Wilde; so tall, so very handsome, she supposed. But the unthinkable remained unthinkable. Mostly. Those parts of her body that had heretofore slumbered happily seemed to be coming even more awake, aware in some strange, unsettling way. She clamped her knees together tightly, even as she forced herself to lower her arms, clasp her fingers in her lap.

Do not think about his strong, callused hands, she warned herself. Do not think of where he will touch you, how he will touch you with his hands…and with his…with that other thing.

She couldn’t help herself. Her eyes strayed to the slight bulge at the juncture of his thighs.

She shivered and quickly looked away.

“Comfortable?” he asked, both his smile and his tone telling her he knew she was not.

“I am not accustomed to having gentlemen see me in my…when I am not dressed.”

“I should most certainly hope not,” he said affably. “But you are all that is modest. Almost aggressively so, one might say. Alina—may I please have the pleasure of addressing you so informally? I find it a delightful affectation.”

What did he mean, aggressively so? Was he making fun of her? Oh, he was such a man of the world, wasn’t he? The insufferable snot. “Alina is my mother’s name for me. There is nothing pretentious about it. My cloak is pretentious.”

His smile was different this time than it had been earlier. She could see this one in his eyes as well as on his lips. “Yes, it certainly is. You’re going to bankrupt me, aren’t you, minx? At least I’ve been forewarned. Please feel free to augment your wardrobe in any way you wish. I suggest you begin with your nightwear.”

She drew the dressing gown more closely about her. He had already made his point. She did need new nightwear. Preferably fashioned out of chain mail.

“Ah, now I’ve insulted you.” He pulled a straight-back chair away from the wall and turned it about, straddling it as he sat down. “I apologize, and can only put it down to something I learned earlier this evening.”

At least he wasn’t so big, now that he’d sat down. “The something you believe we must speak of tonight? Does it have anything to do with that nonsense you were spouting this afternoon? Because you very nearly frightened me. I thought I’d been betrothed to a lunatic.”

“Yes, I suppose you did. I’d like to apologize for that, Alina. I was under the mistaken impression that your king had informed you of—well, how do I put this?”

Her bare feet were beginning to feel chilled against the cold floor. “I would suggest, my lord, that you put it quickly. I would like to return to my bed.”

He stood up, replacing the chair against the wall, and held out his hand to her. “Much to my shock and even, yes, my consternation, I believe the devil is in it for me no matter where you deposit yourself, so why don’t you do that? Tuck the covers up under your chin, and perhaps I’ll be able to twist my mind around what I have to say.”

Now, what did he mean by that curious statement? Really, if it weren’t for the yellowed teeth, Count Eberharter was beginning to seem like the lesser of two evils. At least he was supposedly sane.

Alina scurried across the room and climbed onto the high bed, not unaware that she was, even if just for a moment, all but aiming her backside at her betrothed. Thinking about uncontrollable lust and dropping hats, she slid herself beneath the covers with alacrity. Then she quickly pulled the covers up and under her chin. “Back where I began,” she said, looking at him. “But you’re still here.”

Not only was he still there, but he had managed to pour himself a glass of wine, using the same glass she and Tatiana had used, as it was the only one on the tray. The thought passed through her mind that she and the companion had employed the wine for courage. Had he felt a similar need?

“I had a long and rather interesting chat with your secretary, Alina. He tells me that you believe this marriage of ours has been concocted solely to display friendship between your king and my Prince Regent, and to be an outward show of a new era of trade cooperation between our two countries now that Europe is once more at peace. Is that true?”

“No,” she said quietly, because she was, at heart, an honest person, and because her toes were curling beneath the covers at the way he kept looking at her and she would probably trip over her tongue if she dared a lie. “Not solely, my lord.”

“Justin,” he said, cocking his head very slightly. “Go on.”