Free An Unforgettable Rogue by Annette Blair Page A

useless.
    Rainwater must have eased the arrow from the rupture where it struck and stuck, Alex mused as she bit her lip and regarded her husband.
    He raised a brow. “Are we under siege?”
    “I was … practicing,” she said, by way of feeble explanation. “And I heard … something. And I jumped … in fright. And, accidentally, my shot went wide … accidentally.”
    “Very wide. Accidentally.”
    Alex swallowed a knot of hysterical laughter, but she could not quite stop it from rushing forward, so she clamped a hand over her mouth.
    Hawksworth regarded the source and sorceress of all his dreams, her turquoise eyes wide with trepidation, yet brimming with merriment all the same.
    He shook his head. Behold the thorn in his side, his hoyden … his wife.

CHAPTER EIGHT

    “Sleeping with me will not be as dreadful as you seem to think,” Alex promised as they made their plodding way, arm in arm, down the stairs toward the family bedchambers. “My bed is big. You will not even know I am there.”
    Hawk scoffed, feeling all the restrictions of a cage. “Well you will bloody well know I am there. If it were not so late, and you did not look so tired, I would fight you on this. You will be sorry when I push and kick and trample you in my sleep. You may end up more severely wounded than I.”
    Alex bit her lip, appearing not the least worried or repentant. “Oh, Myerson,” she said when they saw his man in the upper hall. “Welcome to Huntington Lodge. Do you think you can bring up a tub and some hot water to my—our, dressing room? His grace will want a bath before I cut his hair.”
    “His grace will not want his hair cut,” Hawksworth said. “And you would not be doing the cutting, if he did.”
    “The bath, please, Myerson,” Alex said. “And thank you.”
    Hawk followed Alex into a well-appointed bedchamber. The curtains and counterpane, like the upholstery on the two wingback chairs by the hearth, were covered in the deep turquoise velvet of Alex’s eyes. Pillows of gold brought the color, the very room, to life.
    Upon her dresser sat a Roman pottery vase, one of the childhood treasures they had unearthed near the Dyke, though this one had always been Alex’s favorite. Colored pale tan to deep blue-gray, and looking as if someone had combed a staff of shallow half-circles in the clay before firing, the vase lent an air of reality to Hawk’s illusory sense of homecoming.
    While the bedchamber was not rich by any standard, it was in better condition than he would have expected. “You expected to share this room with your husband, did you not?”
    “On occasion,” Alex said. “Which is exactly what I am doing.”
    Hawk nodded, hardly daring to believe it. He could be comfortable in this room, with very few adjustments, if only Alex would not expect him to play the husband— Correction, if he had the right, and the confidence in his ability, he would gladly play the husband.
    With the manner of an artist evaluating a work of art, Alex regarded him critically. “Your beard is as wild as your mane. I will trim both.”
    “You will not.”
    “Hawksworth, do you want me to awaken in the night and scream because I have a beast in my bed?”
    “You will have a beast in your bed, make no mistake.”
    “The one now growling beside me?”
    A rather foreign and uncomfortable bubble of mirth caught in Hawk’s throat, making it ache, making him angry. “Indeed.”
    “There are beasts, and there are beasts,” Alex said, pointedly, shivering as if in anticipation. Damn.
    “Just a little bit?” she cajoled, in the charming way that only Alex could. “I will only cut your hair a little bit. And after traveling all day, I am certain we would benefit from a hot bath.”
    “We? One at a time, of course.”
    “In a slipper bath? I should say so. As if there is any other—” Her grin shot an arrow of doubt straight to Hawk’s conscience. He was not the rogue of old and he should tell her so.
    “There is