Straining to hear the sound of booted feet approaching, she shifted restlessly beneath the bedclothes, aware that whatever demons her mind might be wrestling, her body still craved his touch. Sighing in resignation at her own uncontrollable desires, she waited.
Josh opened the door carefully, suspecting that she might be asleep. Sure enough, she was, lying in a tangle of flaxen curls that glittered like gold in the pale light. He closed the door silently behind him, never taking his eyes from her. She was, he realized, the most beautiful woman he had ever seen, and he wanted her in a way he had never wanted another woman, with a need that having her once had only inflamed.
Swiftly, he stripped off his clothes, heedless of where they fell and only vaguely aware of the room to which Candace had sent him, a room he had not entered in years. Only one thing mattered, holding her and claiming her.
She lay on her back, one delicate hand resting on her stomach, the other flung up beside her head amidst the gold of her hair. Josh silently cursed the well-wishers who had insisted on toasting his happiness time and again, keeping him from her for almost an hour.
He watched the gentle rise and fall of her breasts beneath the sheer fabric of her nightdress, so sheer he could see the shadows of her nipples nuzzling against the cloth. Desire ripped through him like the hot blade of a knife, making him gasp aloud. She stirred, but did not waken.
After a moment, when he thought he might be able to move again, he put out the light and slipped into the cushiony softness of the bed beside her. Her fragrance enveloped him in an invisible cloud, stirring his blood, urging him on. He reached for her, gentling his touch with the last shred of his willpower. "Lissy?"
Felicity responded to her name, emerging slowly from the dark oblivion into awareness equally dark. Robbed of her sight, her other senses grew more acute.
"Lissy?" a blessedly familiar voice beckoned as callused fingers stroked her cheek in well-remembered intimacy. Warmth surrounded her, his warmth, and with it the musky male scent that she recognized. But when he whispered her name again, she knew something was wrong.
"You've been drinking," she murmured drowsily, identifying the sickly sweet odor on his breath.
Josh chuckled at the faint note of censure in her voice. She was acting like a wife already. "Yes," he admitted. "I had to drink some toasts with our guests."
His words only half registered with her as she came completely awake and realized that she had fallen asleep waiting for him. She was embarrassed. "I didn't mean to fall asleep," she said in confusion. Only after she spoke did she think perhaps this was for the best since now he would not guess how eagerly she had awaited him.
He chuckled again, a rich, bubbling sound in the darkness. "It's no wonder that you did. You've been in here over an hour."
An hour! Felicity winced, hearing his previous promise echoing in her mind: "I'll be along as soon as I can." Obviously, he was not nearly as eager for her as she was for him. Her embarrassment became mortification, and all her previous uncertainties came flooding back until she thought she might choke on them. He preferred drinking with his friends to his wife's bed. When his arms slipped around her, she stiffened, turning her face away from his liquored breath. "What the…?" he muttered when his lips encountered her ear. "Where are you?" Humor flavored his question. His own desire blunted his perceptions, and he did not sense her withdrawal. The softness of her body, the scent of her skin inflamed that desire, blotting all other thoughts from his mind. He swept her up, drawing her into the heat.
Felicity tried to resist. If she meant so little to him, she would not surrender, but she was no match for his strength. When his mouth finally found hers, he held her so tightly that she could not even turn away. She felt a groan rumble from deep in his chest and the bulk of his weight shifted over her, smothering all her protests.
As if from a great distance, Felicity heard an ominous creaking sound. For one awful moment, she imagined that all her bones were breaking, crushed under this unwanted burden. And then they both fell with a loud thump.
With difficulty, Josh and Felicity untangled themselves from the bedclothes and each other to find they were now lying on the floor surrounded by the high sides of the enormous bed.
"What the hell?"
"What happened?"
Slightly dazed, Felicity could not quite get her bearings. She sat up carefully, feeling for the headboard and sides of the bed so she would not bump her head. She heard Mr. Logan swearing some more. "What happened?" she asked again.
"The bed ropes broke, I guess," he said, twisting around to a sitting position beside her. "Nobody's slept in this bed for years. The ropes must have rotted."
"But Candace said she put new ones on," Felicity remembered. Candace had carefully listed all the preparations she had made to the room as she was undressing Felicity. Felicity recalled this one in particular because Candace had mentioned the bed would now be able to hold up to a lot of tossing and turning, a remark that had made Felicity blush.
"Are you sure?" Josh asked, but he was feeling along the side of the bed where the ends of the ropes still dangled. "Somebody cut them!" he informed her in outrage.
"Cut them? Who would do a thing like that?" she asked in confusion.
"Somebody who's going to regret the day he was ever born when I find out who he is," Josh muttered furiously.
But Felicity was remembering another conversation she had had earlier in the day. "I don't think it's a 'him,'" she said thoughtfully.
"You know who did it?" he asked ominously, turning to her in the darkness.
Felicity hesitated a moment. "I… I think it might have been Blanche."
"Blanche?" he echoed incredulously. "Why would she have done it?"
"She was… disappointed when I told her you weren't going to let the men have a shivaree. She said maybe she'd think up some mischief herself…" Felicity let her voice trail off, and she winced at a new spate of profanity.
For a long moment neither of them spoke. Sitting there in the dark, on the floor, among the ruins of their marriage bed, Felicity began to feel a little ridiculous. She tried to remember that only moments ago she had been trying to fight off her husband's amorous attentions because she was angry with him, but somehow that seemed very long ago and far away. Now he, too, was sitting on the floor, fury having replaced passion as his most dominant emotion.
Although his large body was only a darker shadow in the blackness, Felicity could picture exactly how he would look, his broad shoulders stiff with frustration, his handsome face scowling grimly, his gray eyes glittering with rage. And his silver head the only thing visible above the side of the bed, had anyone happened to see them at that moment. His whole head and only the very top of hers. And they were sitting on the floor.
The absurdity of it all twitched at her lips. She slapped a hand across them, but the twitch continued. Before she could stop it, a bubble of laughter burst in her throat. She muffled it as best she could and it came out as a strangled sob.
"Felicity? What's wrong?" he asked in alarm. "Are you hurt?"
His concern, under the present circumstances, struck her as hilarious, and she had to use both hands to check the squeals trying to escape from her mouth.
The awful sounds raised gooseflesh along the back of Josh's neck. He reached for her with gentle hands. Good Lord, she was trembling. "What is it?" he insisted. "Where are you hurt?"
This undid her and she convulsed, collapsing against his chest. "I'm… not… hurt…" she gasped between shrieks.
She had to repeat it twice before he understood, and still he held her as tenderly as if she were spun glass. "Then what's wrong with you?" he demanded, though his voice and hands were infinitely gentle.