The Sherbrooke Bride - Catherine Coulter [84]
CHAPTER
15
THE SCREAM BROUGHT Alexandra bolting up in bed. It was loud, piercing, and it was coming from the countess’s bedchamber, the bedchamber she wasn’t in. She jumped out of Douglas’s bed, realized she was quite naked, and grabbed the counterpane, wrapped it around her as she dashed to the adjoining door and flung it open.
There was a maid, Dora by name, fifteen and foolish and thin, and she was shrieking, her hands covering her face, and she was staring at the bed through her fingers.
Douglas was sitting up in bed, staring in some confusion down at his naked chest, now covered with hot chocolate. The white sheet came only to his belly.
Alexandra skidded to a halt, staring.
Douglas raised his head and yelled at the maid, “For God’s sake, you silly wench, shut up!”
Dora clamped her jaws together. She began to wring her hands. Alexandra quickly came into the room, and Dora, seeing the mistress she’d expected instead of His Lordship who was amazingly naked, said, “Oh, my lady! Oh dear! ’Tis His Lordship and I thought it was you and I gently shook your—his—shoulder and he came up and he doesn’t have any clothes on and it scared me so that I spilled the chocolate all over him and I burned him. Oh my lady!”
Alexandra looked at Douglas. There was chocolate matting the thick hair on his chest and staining the white covers. His hair was tousled, his jaws dark with whiskers, and he looked so beautiful to her that she couldn’t understand why Dora had been shrieking. If she had discovered him thus, she would have leapt into the bed with him and kissed him until she was breathless.
She said to the maid, “It’s all right, Dora. You may leave now. Fetch some warm water and washcloths and towels. Hurry now, His Lordship can’t be all that comfortable with the chocolate on his chest.”
Alexandra turned to her husband. “Are you all right? Did the chocolate burn you?”
He looked vastly irritated. “Dammit, no, but she startled the devil out of me, the hysterical little—”
“You probably scared her more, being in my bed.”
She managed to hold herself quiet until Dora let herself out of the bedchamber. Then she laughed and laughed, so hard that tears pooled in her eyes. She hugged her stomach, bending over, still laughing.
“Damnation! Be quiet!”
“Yes, my lord,” she said and laughed some more. Finally, Alexandra wiped her eyes on the edge of the counterpane, and looked at her husband.
Douglas, pulled from a deep sleep, doused with hot chocolate, and then shrieked at, shoved away the covers and rose from the bed. He was quite naked and Alexandra became quite still at the sight of him.
He didn’t look at all like he had the night before.
“Good Lord, woman, stop staring at me!” It was then that Douglas looked down at himself. He drew in his breath. There was blood on his member.
He looked at the shrouded woman with long tousled dark red hair who was standing there like a half-wit staring at him, the woman he’d taken the previous night, that former virgin woman who was also his wife, and said, his voice deep and gruff, “Did I hurt you?”
She stared at him, unconsciously clutching the counterpane more closely. “Yes.”
“Do you still hurt?”
She was terribly embarrassed, standing here with him perfectly naked, asking her questions that made the roots of her hair turn even redder. “A little bit. No, not really. Some, it’s strange.”
He walked past her into his own bedchamber, grabbed up his dressing gown and shrugged into it. He looked back at her, and said, “Come here.”
Alexandra, her head cocked to the side in question, walked slowly to him. Without warning, he lifted her and laid her onto her back on the bed. He began unrolling the counterpane.
“Stop! Oh dear, what are you doing? Douglas!” She was swatting at him, but it did no good. Soon she was lying naked and he was looking down at her. “Part your legs.”
She twisted away from him, but he grabbed her ankles and flipped her back. “Dammit, hold still, woman!”
“No, this is horrid! Stop it, Douglas! I might not be a virgin now, but this is still