Free The Snow White Bride by Claire Delacroix Page B

his weight to his elbow as he stretched out beside Eleanor, endeavoring to look unsurprised by her presence. He doubted, however, that her keen gaze had missed his astonishment.
    He sighed in mock dismay. “I see that you do not smile as yet.”
    “Would you abandon your quest then?”
    Alexander watched Eleanor, unable to understand her hard tone. What had he forgotten? Something of import, he would wager. It was unlike him to forget anything, but there were great gaps in his recollection of the night before.
    “I am nothing if not persistent in pursuit of my goals,” he said, then reached across the expanse of the bed to touch her. “We must still try to coax your smile. After all, the most lofty goal is not won by a man who abandons the quest too soon.”
    His hand very nearly landed upon her waist; then his fingers closed upon empty air. Eleanor had slipped from the far side of the bed, eluding his caress in the last moment. She even took the linens with her and wrapped them about herself with a fierce gesture, ensuring that he did not win the barest glimpse of her nudity.
    What had he done to insult her? For she was insulted, of that he could have no doubt. Her li ps were set in a thin line and her eyes snapped with a fire that would have been more beguiling, had it been bo rn of ardor instead of anger.
    “Perhaps you would prefer to meet the bold wench who offered you a morsel from her trencher.”
    Alexander fought to recall this detail. “Anna, the ostler’s daughter?” He scratched his head, and even that hurt. “I should think she would have found another suitor by this time.”
    “But she is ambitious all the same, to try to tempt the laird himself. We might well find her outside the door, awaiting your favor.”
    Alexander grinned. “Hardly that! Anthony would not endure it.”
    “Anthony?”
    “My castellan. All must slumber in their place, by his reckoning. He does not rest until all is as it should be.”
    “Which explains, of course, my presence here. Does he oft indulge your whimsy in taking women to your bed?”
    “I do not take women to my be d…”
    Eleanor coughed, politely correcting him.
    “Perhaps you seduced me,” he teased. “Perhaps you evaded Anthony’s keen eye to join me abed. You said you were a courtesan, after all.”
    “Perhaps not.” And she gestured then with a single finger to the mattress.
    Alexander frowned and looked downward in confusion, the vivid red stain upon the linens silencing any clever comment he might have made. He gaped. He blinked. He shook his head, but there was the mark of a broken maidenhead upon his linens all the same.
    No wonder she was vexed. Indeed, he was vexed himself that he did not recall this particular mating.
    When he glanced up, wordless for once in his life, Eleanor regarded him coolly. She was wrapped fully in that linen sheet, one end cast over her shoulder, her arms folded across her chest
    “You are not a courtesan,” he said.
    “You were right in that.”
    Alexander shook his head, still fighting to make sense of the blood. “You said you were twice widowed.”
    “And without a child from either match,” she said quietly, then arched a brow, as if daring him to calculate how that circumstance might have come to be.
    Alexander fell back across the mattress, perplexed beyond belief. Eleanor, the most enticing woman he had met in years, had been wed twice and two different men had failed to consummate their match with her. They might have been elderly men or sickly men, but Alexander could not imagine forgoing a consummation with Eleanor if he were dead.
    Perhaps the lady had been the one to decline.
    Then why would she have surrendered her all to him, on the first night of their acquaintance, and that when he was drunk? He glanced her way, finding her as impassive as previously.
    Oh, he had erred beyond belief.
    “Why? Why me?”
    Eleanor shrugged. “I was curious.”
    “I was drunk!”
    “Yet, amorous all the