Braden froze.
“You haven’t told her, have you?”
“You’re undoubtedly tired from your journey,” Braden said, rising. “And I have estate business that’s been waiting since the Convocation began. You may go.”
Quentin paused at the door. “If you’re not careful, brother, you’ll find enough business, related to the Cause and otherwise, to keep you from ever knowing your wife. And I don’t think she’ll consent to remain in your shadow.”
Braden went riding soon afterward, Telford and his estate manager beside him, to inventory repairs and alterations needed on Greyburn lands before the coming of winter. He visited tenants and listened to Telford’s description of the state of cottages and fences, roads and pastures. As always, the laborers and shepherds and farmers were mute in his presence, awed and intimidated. They spoke freely only when he delegated his human companions to deal with the people who lived under his patronage.
It would have been another story had he taken Cassidy. She’d naturally make the tenants feel at ease; she wouldn’t know how to play the aristocratic countess. She’d see herself as little different from these ordinary folk. How could they fail to love her?
But she would go too far. She always did. She’d let the formalities lapse beyond recovery, and make the humans forget their place. Like the Greyburn servants, they had everything they could want or need. He wouldn’t let them have Cassidy as well.
Only when he was certain that she recognized her limits, accepted her station as his wife—then he might permit her to go with him on his rounds. When he was sure of her. When the last of his doubts were laid to rest.
That night, as always, he took her to their bed. It was the one time in the day they were absolutely alone, the only hours when they didn’t depend on inadequate words to communicate. And he never stopped wanting her.
But tonight he must tell her the truth he’d withheld. The part of the truth she must know.
He expected this morning’s argument over Rowena to create a strain between them. Cassidy’s usual flood of cheerful, inconsequential chatter and questions about his day was replaced by a pensive silence as she sat in bed waiting for him to undress.
Sulking, perhaps, or more likely preparing to renew her arguments. She’d proven that she had a woman’s passion, but even that hadn’t altered her nature. Quentin had warned him that he might never know Cassidy. Quentin was wrong.
He knew her as she was—an innocent who still saw the world through rose-colored glasses. He’d sworn to himself a thousand times that she had to learn the harshness of reality, but now—standing beside the bed and listening to her steady breathing—he admitted that he, too, had been wrong.
Because he would fight to keep her just as she was tonight, awaiting him in his bed, vibrant and alive. Yes, he’d teach her what she must know as his wife. She’d accept the necessities of life among the loups-garous. But he would also continue to protect her from anything that could taint the guileless and unsophisticated simplicity that made her what she was. That made it possible for him to trust her.
Let her have her small, harmless rebellions. They couldn’t hurt him.
She would not become another Milena.
He lay down beside her and kissed her lips. Her arms looped about his neck.
“Braden—”
He knew how to counter her unspoken debate. He slid his tongue inside her mouth and teased her until she forgot all about disagreements and opened herself to him. As always, her passion was utterly uninhibited, filled with little cries and sighs and moans that made him hot and hard in seconds and gave him no relief.
His bed—their bed—was far larger than the pallet in Matthew’s cottage. There was room enough for every sort of sensual game, if Cassidy had been of Milena’s bent. But she needed no such exotic diversions.
She already knew how to drive him to near madness with her simplest touch. Her very boldness was the most potent of aphrodisiacs. But tonight, she used her slender strength to roll him onto his back, and she braced herself over him, hair sweeping across his face.