All of this disrobing was being done without the assistance of a valet. But this detail was unimportant compared to the very real truth that Leo Bailey was undressing in the very next room. With the door open.

Heat suffused her face, her limbs. Good Lord, he was taking off his breeches. She tried to picture him, his arms and legs being revealed as each garment came away—and found that she couldn’t. Her mind simply shied away, protective. Anne had seen her brothers and their friends when they went for a bathe in the pond on their country estate. She had seen statuary and paintings, as well. She possessed a reasonable understanding of what the male body looked like without clothing. Like all girls, she was as fascinated as she was terrified by the idea.

How would such a body feel, so different from her own? Would it be soft? Hard? Certainly hairier. And the male body underwent ... changes ... in order to have sexual congress. A married woman would doubtless be witness to those changes.

But that had all been theory. This was real, and not twenty feet away.

The sounds of splashing water trickled out from the closet. He was bathing. A pulse of arousal throbbed through her, unexpected and sudden.

As she waited, Anne tried to distract herself, and studied the bedchamber. Painted red paper covered the walls, the design depicting thickly knotted and thorny vines surmounted with carnivorous-looking flowers. The fabric comprising the bed hangings and window curtains must have been specially made, for its pattern matched the wall coverings. Two wing-backed chairs stood before the fire, and there was a large mahogany clothespress and an escritoire. Everything in the chamber revealed itself to be the finest quality. Expensive, and new.

But as for hints of the man who slept in this room, who he was, what he thought, if he had any interests or pastimes. . . Anne found none.

Perhaps she might discover books in one of the nightstands. She often had several books by her bedside—though she would never sleep in her bed at her parents’ home again. She could not remember if she had packed those books in preparation for removing to Leo’s house. The thought panicked her. She hoped the books were here, somewhere. As though finding an unanticipated friend in a far-distant land.

But surely Leo had a book or two at his bedside. The need to locate one such volume overwhelmed her. If she could find one, then perhaps it might give her the smallest intimation as to who this man was, this stranger she had married.

She leaned over and started to open the drawer on the nightstand.

“What are you looking for?”

She jerked up, gasping. Leo stood beside the bed, wrapped in a banyan of green-and-black silk, his damp hair loose about his shoulders. Anne had but a moment to take in a few details—his long, bare feet, the hollow of his throat, a sprinkle of dark golden hair across his chest—before the anger in his gaze blocked out all other impressions of him.

“Nothing, nothing.” She didn’t like the panic in her voice, or the way she pushed back into the pillows propped against the headboard. “Books, in truth.”

He raised a brow. “Planning on reading?”

“I like to read before ... bed.” Her voice was thin, thready. Frightened.

Anger faded from his eyes. Replaced by something very like compassion. “This is all very strange for you.”

“I imagine it is strange for you, as well. Unless ... you have been married before?”

His laugh was unexpected, and genuine, and its warm contours helped soften the edges of her anxiety. “A new venture.”

She imagined that marriage might be one of the few things he hadn’t experienced.

The bed shifted as he sat down on the edge, his profile to her. He drew a breath, as if steadying himself. “Tell me, Anne. What do you know about what happens in the marriage bed?”

Don’t stutter. Don’t blush. He is a sophisticated man.

“I know the m ... mechanics of it.” Curse it, what did I say about stuttering?

He turned to her, a small smile curving his mouth. “Mechanics makes me think of grinding gears and pulleys. Though,” he added, mostly to himself, “some might enjoy that.”

She decided not to explore that last comment. “I know it can be very pleasurable for the man.”

“For the woman, too.” His smile warmed. “If done properly.”

Oh, dear. “So ... you’ve done it before.”

“Few men get to my age without doing it at least once.”

“When?”

“The first time, or the last time?”

She was uncertain she wanted to know the answer to either. Fragments from the scandal sheets jabbed into her thoughts, unsubtle suggestions about how the Hellraisers earned their reputations. Even Anne knew about those women. She had seen them at the theater, displaying themselves like gorgeous blooms in the hothouse of the private boxes, and the wealthy gentlemen that tended those blossoms, watering them with champagne and nourishing their soil with expensive trinkets. The women earned those trinkets, and Anne knew the means by which they did so.

Had Leo been one of those gentlemen? Did he know the company and bodies of courtesans? Would he continue to do so, even after their marriage?

Good God, attractive he might be, yet she really knew nothing about him.

She started at the touch of Leo’s hand on hers, and she met his gaze. He drew a breath, as if steadying himself, and then leaned toward her.

Anne could do nothing but brace herself for what she knew was to happen next.

He’s going to kiss me. They had touched lips only once, impersonally, at the conclusion of the marriage ceremony. But this was to be a real kiss. A kiss between husband and wife. She felt as though she had been waiting for this moment forever, and wanted it, hungered for it, even as she was numb with anxiety.

She closed her eyes, and the sound of her blood in her ears was a rushing gale.

At the first brush of his mouth against hers, she jolted. Their noses bumped, hard. He pulled back.

Opening her eyes, she covered her mouth with her hands. “I’m so sorry.”

He cradled his nose for a moment. “No damage done. Here.” She braced herself for another attempt at a kiss. Instead, he ran his warm, long fingers across her cheek, then down her neck. He gazed at her with perplexed interest. His breath came faster, and a flush darkened his skin.

At his touch, shivers of sensation ran over her skin and echoed deep within her. It felt wondrous. It felt awful. She wanted this, wanted him, yet she had no idea who he truly was, and it was all so strange, so terribly strange.

His gaze intent, he moved closer to her. He angled his body so that he faced her, and he filled her vision, every part of it, with the fire burning behind him.

This must be what rabbits feel when the hawk’s shadow blocks the sun.

He braced one hand beside her thigh. His nearness overwhelmed her. With his other hand, he slid her hair over her shoulder, revealing the shape of her breast beneath the delicate nightgown. Her nipple made a pale point under the silk.

Leo stared at her breast, rapt as a scholar, and she could hardly catch her breath. No man had ever looked at her in this state of undress. Focus and desire sharpened Leo’s face, and she felt pierced by it, by him, simply looking at her. At that moment nothing existed but the confines of the bed, and the truth that soon their bodies would be joined as intimately as possible.

Slowly, as if tracing a shadow, his hand moved from her shoulder. Down. The brush of his fingertips over her collarbone, the very top of her chest, and then lower. She bit back a gasp as his large, warm hand cupped her breast.

A rough sound came from deep within him, and an answering thrill shivered through her. His eyes were hot and sharp. When his thumb moved back and forth across her nipple, he watched the tightening bead with the intensity of a man searching for answers.