Patricia Rice by This Magic Moment

feet. He was standing there half naked, and she didn’t dare look up.
    “Once we get past this first time, you’ll have nothing to fear.”
    He sat down beside her to pull off his boots, and Christina leaped up as if scalded, then fled across the room. “Just listen to yourself, Harry! ‘Get past the first time,’ indeed. Is that all this night means to you?”
    He froze with his boot over his knee, his splendidly naked torso shadowed in the light of the candles. He had his arm across his chest in the act of removing his boot, so she could only admire the bulge of his shoulder, but that was enough to give her visions for a week.
    “Christina, I have a lot of things on my mind right now. Love and romance come with time. They’ll come much faster if we share a bed.”
    “It’s not the bed sharing I object to,” she pointed out. “Did you think your name and title bought my body? Did you listen to the vows we said yesterday?”
    Dropping his foot back to the floor, Harry stood, and Christina could enjoy the full glory of his muscled chest. He was broad in the shoulders and narrow at the waist without an ounce of softness on him. A trickle of smooth dark hairs ran between the ridges of his upper chest into a narrow band that drew her gaze downward to his breeches.
    She gulped at the bulge pressing at his breeches placket and hastily raised her gaze to his face. She liked it better when Harry was laughing at her. She didn’t know the cold duke walking toward her now.
    “I meant those vows,” he said. “Didn’t you? You promised to be my wife. A wife shares her husband’s bed. Legally and morally, you have no right to deny me, Christina.”
    He reached for her, and Christina backed against the wall.
    An aura of peaceful blues walked through a connecting door to shimmer in the far corner past Harry’s shoulder. Eyes widening, Christina watched in awe as the aura formed a silhouette resembling a plump, rather stooped, old lady. Auras didn’t look like people, she tried to tell herself, but the impression was very distinct—as it had been the day Aunt Iona had warned her.
    “Christina?” Harry glanced from her frozen expression to the corner where she stared.
    “A ghost just entered, Harry,” she whispered. Without thinking, she pressed her hand to his chest to push him out of her way.
    The heat of his flesh shocked her. She jerked her hand back and dodged around him. She hadn’t seen a ghost so clearly since childhood. It was quite amazing. When would she ever have another chance?
    Harry gripped her arm to prevent her from examining the apparition any closer. “Don’t use that nonsense to put me off. Come to bed, and I’ll show you there’s nothing to fear.”
    She looked at him blankly, then back to the aura pacing in front of the bed as if to prevent them from using it. “Harry, don’t you see her? How can we go to bed with a ghost in the room?”
    With an expression of disgust, Harry flung aside her arm and swept his shirt from the floor. “Fine then. Play games. The ghost can keep you company. By Jove, I don’t need any more eccentrics playing havoc with my life right now.”
    With that, he slammed out of the room, leaving Christina alone with her shock and dismay.

Eight
    A bright ray of light split Harry’s head in two. Cursing, covering his eyes, he tried to remember where the devil he was and why.
    “I found you!” a cheerful voice called, shattering his splitting head.
    Oh, right. He’d just spent his second wedding night drinking himself into a stupor in one of the Abomination’s many moldy rooms because of the woman behind that cheery voice.
    “Go away,” he grumbled uncharitably. He’d swilled several brandies in an effort to sort out his outrage and dismay, and he wasn’t any closer to deciding what he ought to do than he’d been before.
    “I can’t. I’ll get lost again. Breakfast was ready an hour ago.”
    His head hurt too much to consider the plight of his stomach. He