The Scoundrel

Without his permission, his gaze went to her bosom. From beneath the quilt, he could just glimpse the top of her—

“Good morning!” she said cheerfully.

Daniel whisked his gaze upward, still feeling on the wrong side of the situation. Sarah beamed back at him, limned by the dawn—which explained the angelic notion he’d experienced upon seeing her. She fairly crackled with alertness, while he felt barely capable of scratching his beard stubble.

“Oooh, you’re a slow riser. I wouldn’t have guessed that. Especially given how early you must wake up to get to your smithy. And how active Eli is. Why, he must keep you hopping! You’re probably busy from sunup to sundown, aren’t you?”

He blinked. Lord, she was a talker. Was she always so…awake in the mornings? He’d seen roosters with less vigor, and they were responsible for waking folks.

“I’ve been awake for ages,” she said, wiggling a little beneath the quilt. She sighed happily. “Waiting for you. After last night, I thought we’d—”

“I don’t want to talk about last night.”

At his hasty tone, her eyes widened. “Why not? It was ever so promising, until you—”

“Stop.” Hell. What had he done? He had to fix it somehow. But in the meantime… “I need time to think.”

At her abashed look, guilt swamped him.

“I mean, wake up. No more talking.”

Wrinkling her nose in puzzlement, Sarah complied. Grudgingly. Her silence lasted approximately as long as it took Daniel to realize he was naked beneath the linens. Naked! With Sarah! Not that sleeping in the altogether was unusual for him, but…hell. He and Sarah spent their time talking and fishing and dunking each other in Morrow Creek. Not lying comfortably abed after a night spent…doing things he couldn’t even recall.

“So,” she piped up, “if you don’t want to talk, what do you want to do?”

Immediately, several wicked suggestions leaped to mind. Ferociously, Daniel tamped them down. If Sarah had been an ordinary woman, things might have been different. He enjoyed a roll in the sheets as much as the next man—possibly more. But as it was, the two of them had a marriage to tend to. They couldn’t muddle the issue by lolling abed and behaving like two people who were besotted with one another.

“I want to get up,” he decided.

She looked stricken. For naught, as it turned out. Because no sooner had Daniel grabbed a handful of quilt to toss aside than he remembered. He was still naked. God forbid, Sarah might be naked, too! If he threw off the coverlet…

Tarnation. They might both need smelling salts.

He stayed put, frozen in the wake of Sarah’s confused gaze. The bed shrank to a cozier size, making him intimately aware of their nearness. And the potential for swooning. Not that Sarah had ever been particularly delicate. Typically, she was sturdy and sensible and extremely handy with a bamboo fishing rod. But she had turned all weepy on him yesterday. There was just no telling what getting hitched might have done to her.

Forlornly, he missed the old Sarah. The one who made sense.

“We could have a walk along the mountain trail after breakfast,” she suggested breezily. She snuggled deeper in the quilt, her unbound hair silky and tousled. “That would be nice. Of course we’ll have to go to church with my family this morning, too. I told my mama we’d collect Eli after services are over. But until then…”

He’d have sworn she fluttered her eyelashes at him. Suggestively. With all the feminine allure of a dance-hall girl. Befuddled by the very notion of Sarah doing something so unabashedly flirtatious, Daniel stared at her.

He’d never seen her with her hair loose like that, he realized. It looked nice. Soft. Touching it would be…

A mistake. Damn it. He had to concentrate. Unless his years of bachelorhood had made him incapable of ignoring a woman—any woman—in his bed.

She’s Sarah, he reminded himself sternly. Sarah.

“How did you get here?” he asked.

“Why…it happened last night. Don’t you remember?”

Was it his imagination, or did she suddenly seem to be hiding something? Frowning, Daniel tried to recall what had happened after he’d come home from Murphy’s saloon.

He had a vague recollection of finding Sarah in her nightgown. Of turning away, his face burning, while she scrambled barefoot to her own room. Of realizing, belatedly, that he should have been clearer on exactly whose chamber was whose. Although, come to think of it, he’d thought he’d done a good enough job of that.

He recalled further that he’d felt Sarah crawl in bed beside him sometime later. That he’d decided it would be better to deal with her in the morning when he hadn’t had quite so much whiskey. That he’d dreamed he’d felt her snuggle up to him sometime in the night.

That he’d dreamed he’d liked it.

“You told me we’d finish things this morning,” Sarah said.

She looked expectant. Alert. And, he couldn’t seem to forget, possibly naked.

“This morning. Right.” Wondering what sort of finishing she expected of him, Daniel cleared his throat. He always had had a habit of putting off problems till they were nigh unsolvable, he admitted to himself. Look at his troubles with Eli. But this time, he knew he’d have to deal with Sarah straightaway. “This morning.”

“Mmm-hmm.”

He didn’t know what to say. Or what to do. He and Sarah had an arrangement…didn’t they? A businesslike agreement. Perhaps she was simply feeling extraordinarily friendly. Her family was a famously freethinking one, after all. She probably thought nothing of hugging her sham husband. In the dark. While they were both—he felt compelled to remind himself—completely unclothed.

Silence fell. Clearly, peacefulness was more than Sarah could stand. “I’ll start, since we didn’t have much time to talk last night. As you can see, I found your gift.”

“Gift?”

“The nightgown.” Shyly, she bit her lip. “I’m sorry I didn’t thank you properly for it when you came home. It’s beautiful.”

The heartfelt gratitude in her eyes was his undoing. Daniel didn’t have the will to argue. But the truth was, he hadn’t given her any… “Nightgown?”

Sarah nodded. In demonstration, she allowed him a peek beneath the quilt. He spied lace over creamy skin, feminine curves swathed in white and one long leg bent at the knee before he forced himself to close his eyes. The image of her still swam before him. It looked as if schoolmarming did a great deal for a woman’s…feminine assets.

Dry-mouthed, he opened his eyes again. He pointed. “It’s, uhhh, hitched up. Right there.”

“Here?”

She patted ineffectually at the wrong leg, doing nothing to end his view of her bare, curvy thigh. With any other woman, Daniel would have taken her movements for coquettishness, but this was Sarah. Sensible Sarah. She couldn’t possibly be trying to snare him with a forbidden glimpse of her thigh.

She’d already caught him in wedlock, hadn’t she? What more could a woman possibly want?

“Ahhh.” She stretched, arms overhead. She offered him a brazen smile. “I slept splendidly. I guess we wore ourselves out, didn’t we?”

He didn’t know what to say to that. Agreeing with her wouldn’t quite put forward the no-nonsense marriage he’d hoped for. But despite that fact, Daniel couldn’t help preening a little. He was good at satisfying a woman—most likely due to his enjoyment of the task.

Enough of that. He needed to get to the bottom of things. “When I came home last night,” he said, “after you left here—”

“Oh, that,” Sarah interrupted hastily. “Yes, I figured you needed some time to prepare yourself. To freshen up for our wedding night.”

Freshen up? He arched his brow. For…?

“So I went to the other room to brush my hair, to give you some privacy. But by the time I got back…” Trailing off suggestively, she chuckled. “Well, that’s neither here nor there, is it? A proper wife keeps her husband’s secrets, and she keeps him warm at night, too.”

Hmmm. Maybe he hadn’t dreamed the feeling of her arms around him. What, exactly, had happened when she “got back”? For the life of him, Daniel could only remember stripping off his clothes, hastily washing, then collapsing on his bed, done in by the unusual events of the day.

“You clearly know more about being a good husband than you’ve let on, Daniel. I don’t know where you learned it, but I’m glad.” Looking contented, Sarah dragged the quilt over herself again. “A gift on our wedding night? So generous of you. I’ve never owned anything as beautiful as this nightgown.”

He gave a noncommittal grunt. He was an honest man, and Sarah deserved the truth. He needed to tell her he hadn’t given her that gown. But when she looked at him that way, all appreciative and sweet, he just couldn’t do it.

“It’s very lovely,” she said. “Isn’t it?”

It was. Especially on her. But it ought to have been in her own bed, along with the rest of her.

“It doesn’t look very warm,” he grumbled.

She smiled, her whole face shining with a mysterious sort of feminine wisdom. Likely she believed him to be teasing her, as usual. Daniel stewed.

He still couldn’t figure out why Sarah wasn’t across the hall where she was supposed to be. The question occupied most of his thoughts, leaving room for little else. Had he, in a whiskey-fueled bout of stupidity, invited her to sleep with him instead?

“Ahhh. I’ve just realized why you’re so grouchy this morning.” Sarah peered at him, apparently confirming her suspicions. “But you needn’t look so troubled. I understand about last night.” She offered him a gentle pat on his shoulder. “Mama warned me that some men have…difficulties when they’ve been imbibing.”

“Difficulties?” He all but choked on the word. She could only mean…no. That kind of talk absolutely couldn’t continue. “I never have difficulties.”

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