Margaret Moore - [Warrior 13] by A Warrior's Lady Page B

not.”
    Anne didn’t think it was possible to blush more than she already had, but she discovered she was wrong. “I…I cannot be naked,” she protested.
    “You do not have to reveal all,” Lisette said with a cunning smile. “A shoulder will do. Indeed, I have heard that the curve of a shoulder can be more exciting than a breast.”
    Anne stared at her maidservant. “Where did you hear such a thing?”
    “A lady’s maid hears many such things.” Lisette frowned. “Do I shock you, my lady?”
    “Not really. I just never gave such matters much thought.”
    At the sound of footsteps, Lisette gasped and giggled at the same time, her hazel eyes bright with an excitement that was nothing to Anne’s. “The groom—he comes!”
    Could one forget how to breathe? How to think? How to walk? It seemed as if her body was totally benumbed, except for a sort of gnawing hunger deep inside.
    “To the bed, quick!” Lisette ordered as she frantically began to tidy the dressing table. “And your shoulder, my lady.” When Anne didn’t move, she gestured wildly, as if trying to shoo a gaggle of geese. “To the bed, my lady! And your shoulder!”
    Jolted out of her momentary numbness, Anne scurried to the bed and scrambled under the coverlet. She scooted backward until she was sitting with her back against the headboard. Once there, she swiftly tugged the knot in the drawstring at her neck until it came undone, then shoved the garment off her right shoulder.
    “Your hair, my lady!”
    She put her hand to her head. “What about it?” she cried, an edge of panic in her voice.
    “It should be like a curtain, spread upon the pillows.”
    Without pausing to ask why, anxious and excited in equal measure, Anne fluffed out her hair. Then, her throat dry, her whole body tense as that of a startled doe when it first hears the beaters in the bush, she swallowed hard and smoothed the coverlet over her lap. She couldn’t be more tense and anxious if Reece really was going to make love with her that night.
    The door burst open and a horde of men crowded into the room, the king among them. Very conscious of her exposed shoulder only half hidden by her hair, she realized Piers and her half brothers were not with Henry. Thank God. They were the last people she wanted to see tonight.
    As the king came to a skittering, laughing halt, he stared as if taken aback, but what else did he expect? He had made her a bride.
    Anne suddenly wanted to pull the coverlet up over her breasts, or slouch down beneath them. Instead she sat as still as a stone, unable to do anything except stare herself as Reece came to stand at the foot of the bed.
    How handsome he looked in his dark garments, despite his bruised cheek and reddened eye. His intense, enigmatic gaze raked her and her stomach clenched and her body hummed with a primitive response to his burning scrutiny. Despite his plan and the reasons for it, she wanted to sink into the feather bed with hisbody settled between her hips, her legs and arms holding him tightly to her.
    She wet her dry lips and forced the image away as she tried to control the response of her body.
    That proved to be impossible.
    “We bring the bridegroom, my lady,” Henry finally—and unnecessarily—declared.
    Still staring at her, Reece bowed with great formality.
    Clearly the sight of her, bare shoulder and all, was not affecting him. Or maybe there was something wrong with her, that she felt so much while he felt so little.
    Looking like the young man he was, the king chortled drunkenly, snapping her mind to attention.
    “God’s wounds, man, what are you doing?” he demanded, slapping Reece so hard on the back, Anne winced. “You’re standing there like a damn eunuch and I know full well you’re not. If she’s not a sight to warm a man’s blood, I don’t know what is!”
    Anne pressed her lips together and tried not to take umbrage, even if the king spoke as if she were an inanimate object, like the stool or the