Midnight Honor

her wifely obligations. There were times she could have wept from the sheer pleasure of feeling his hands, his mouth on her body. And there were times, when the lights were low and he was deep inside her, she imagined she could sense a longing for intimacy that went beyond the physical act of their union. Times when the urgency of his whisperings and the hungry rovings of his hands and mouth were as contradictory as they were confounding. He was a skilled, generous lover, and his body betrayed his pleasure in ways no amount of mental discipline could control. In turn, he awakened needs within her that made her more than willing, and often shamelessly eager, to go to his bed at night.
    The very notion that he had sat in the dark and suspected her of having a lover was ironic enough to almost make her smile. There were countless times over these past six months when she had sat in that same chair and wondered the same thing about him.
    Angus had never given her any reason to believe he had been unfaithful, but men were inherently sly creatures when it came to such indiscretions. Married men, especially handsome, worldly men accustomed to the courts of Europe, were expected to keep mistresses; it was as commonplace as keeping two sets of plate in a household, one for special occasions, one for everyday use. Few of his peers would haveunderstood any reluctance on his part to sample the less inhibited beauties who seemed to arrive by the shipload each time the English garrison was reinforced. Wild Rhuad Annie was the kind of woman a man took behind the stable to toss her skirts above her head for a sweaty romp. She was not the kind men married or to whom they remained faithful.
    Yet Angus had not touched her, sweatily or otherwise, in over a month, and she suffered a genuine melancholy for the lack. The tingling in her body now had less to do with her quick scrub and proximity to the fire than with the heat in his eyes as they watched her every move. His shirt being carelessly unfastened did not help her powers of concentration either, nor did the movement of his fingers as he absently stroked the stem of the wineglass.
    Her own fingers fought the urge to press down into the junction of her thighs, to stop if she could the ache that seemed to be growing there by the second. But having discovered there was more to marriage than arranging dinner parties and keeping track of seventy household servants, Anne could not simply command her body to go cold. Nor could she act as if the patterns thrown by the firelight were more intriguing than the remembered feel of his breath on her neck or the sensation of his fingers skimming across her breasts.
    No, she did not want to argue with him. She wanted to throw off her robe and sprawl naked on the hearthrug like a harlot if that was what it took to bring him out of that wretched corner.
    Anne looked down at where the brush rested in her lap. According to the rules of polite society, it was considered
très gauche
to actually be in love with one's own husband. Was it also wrong to want to feel his arms around her, or to enjoy the physical pleasure of his flesh moving inside her?
    “Here, let me help.”
    Startled, Anne turned and found Angus standing beside her, his hand outstretched. She had not heard him get up or walk across the room. And because, for the moment it took him to lean over and gently prise the hairbrush out of her hand, she had no idea what he was offering to do, she remained warily still, only following him with her eyes.
    “You look as if your arms are ready to fall off.”
    “I can manage,” she whispered.
    “I'm sure you can.”
    Without further ado he took up the brush and moved behind her. It was the first time he had ever done such a thing, and in her indelicately aroused state she was not all that certain she could bear him doing it now.
    He began by dealing quickly with the fiery disorder, using a man's brusque, no-nonsense efficiency. But when the brush began to run smoothly from her scalp to the ends of the curls, his movements slowed as well, and the strokes became noticeably more deliberate. Before too long the tangles and the dampness had been banished and on each silky pass of the brush, the gleaming strands began to crackle with static. The surface of Anne's skin tingled with the same needle-prick sensations. She sat breathlessly still, her heart pounding like a blacksmith's hammer, wondering if he could possibly be aware of the unbelievably