The Marrying Season by Candace Camp Page B

Genevieve had seen his mistress, a small, curvaceous brunette, completely unlike herself.
    Myles would come to regret marrying her. Perhaps he already did. The tears she had been struggling to suppress throughout this whole miserable day suddenly came flooding forth, too many, too strong, to deny. And, of course, that was the moment Myles chose to come back into the room.
    Genevieve hastily turned away, struggling to gulp back her sobs. She listened to the sounds of Myles moving about the minuscule room, pulling off his boots and removing his jacket. Genevieve buried her face in the pillow. Perversely, the harder she tried to conceal her sobs, the more they pushed out of her.
    “Genevieve?” Myles stopped in the midst of taking off his waistcoat and turned toward the bed. “Are you—” He lifted the candle. “Genny! Are you crying?”
    He set down the candle and crossed the room. Genevieve moaned and rolled away from him. “No! Don’t look at me.”
    “Dear girl.” The sympathy in his voice was almost too much for her to bear. “I can hardly spend our married life not looking at you.” Myles sat on the edge of the bed and took her by the shoulders, turning her toward him. “Don’t cry. ’Tis not so bad as it seems.”
    She tried to pull away, but he would not let her, wrapping his arms around her. His warmth and strength surrounded her, and she could not hold back any longer. Genevieve flung her arms around him, burying her face in his chest. “Oh, Myles! I am so ashamed!”
    Genevieve broke into sobs, clinging to him, and Myleslay down on the bed beside her, cradling her against him. “Ah, Genny, I know I am not the sort of man you envisioned marrying. But I’m not a bad sort, really. We’ll rub along together well enough. You’ll see.”
    His words reminded Genevieve of her grandmother’s vision of their marriage. Somehow this image, which she had once viewed with equanimity with Lord Dursbury, now, with Myles, seemed bleak and barren. Her tears came even harder. Myles kissed the top of her head, his hand stroking soothingly up and down her back. He held her while she cried out all her misery. Then, finally, she fell asleep, cradled in his arms.

Seven
    M yles opened his eyes. His cheek rested against Genevieve’s head, her fine, blond hair tickling his nose. His arm underneath her body had gone numb. But that inconvenience was the least of what filled his consciousness. What he was acutely aware of was her lithe, long body inside the circle of his arms, snuggled up tight against him, her round, firm bottom fitting perfectly into the cup of his pelvis. Their legs were tangled together, one of his knees between hers. One of his hands might be asleep, but the other one was quite awake as it rested upon the sweet curve of her hip.
    Genevieve sighed in her sleep and wriggled back into him, and his body leaped in response. She was a warm, soft, desirable armful. And she was his.
    He slid his free hand over her hip and down onto her leg. Her innocent and unrevealing nightgown had worked its way up during the night, so that her legs were bare from the knee down. He thought of exploring farther, of inching up the gown to show more of her long legs, and once again his body pulsed in response, hard and eager.
    But that would be foolish in the extreme. It took no particular genius to know that Genevieve was an innocent when it came to the marital act. She was, after all, the daughter of a proud, aristocratic family, sheltered and chaperoned, kept not only inviolate but as unknowing as possible until the day she married. As brother to five sisters, he was aware just how well young girls were shielded from reality. Genevieve, he suspected, was more skittish than most. It would be cruel, not to mention unwise, to give free rein to the desire coursing through him. Myles was not a man to rush his fences. He must woo her.
    He stroked his fingers lazily over the point of her shoulder and down her arm, then on to the dip