“Perfectly reasonable questions.”
Sophie toyed with the edge of the sheet. “Most men wouldn’t think so.”
Piotr caught her hand. “And I am not most men. Where is this coming from?”
“Childhood insecurities,” Sophie mumbled. “I’m sorry. This is embarrassing and not at all a romantic topic on our wedding night.”
Piotr sat up, the hotel bed protesting the movement. He slid an arm under her shoulders and hauled her up against him. “Any man who would wish to extinguish the fire that burns so bright in you is no man at all. Whatever dreams you wish to chase, I will chase them with you.”
“I am the luckiest girl in the world right now,” she whispered, looking up at him.
“Careful,” he replied, his eyes dancing. “You might be accused of being a shameless romantic.”
“I’ll have you know that the women in my family are not romantics, shameless or otherwise,” she sniffed. “We leave that to our menfolk.”
“I can’t wait to meet them.”
“You will.”
“They will not be angry? That I married their daughter without even meeting them?”
Sophie bit her lip. For as long as she could remember, marriage had ever been an enemy to her ambitions and dreams and an adversary to her independence and freedom. Her antipathy toward the institution had increased each time some meddling matriarch told Sophie that it was well past time that she abandon her frivolous studies and do what was natural—marry well and settle down.
A thousand times she had sworn to her family that she would never fall in love. Never marry. A thousand times she had sat down at her writing desk to tell her family that she’d been a liar. And each time, the words hadn’t come. She would remedy that as soon as she got back to Warsaw tomorrow.
“They will love you,” she told him. That was the truth.
“I wish my parents were still alive and could have known you,” he said, his finger tracing patterns along the top of her arm. “Though they would have been appalled that I did not marry you in front of a hundred people, in a church filled with flowers, with a brass ensemble to serenade us out. Or that I did not take you to Paris or Vienna for our honeymoon and sleep on silk sheets.”
“That all sounds complicated.” Sophie squeezed his hand with hers, twining her fingers through his. “This world is complicated enough.”
“I didn’t even manage a proper photographer.”
“I didn’t particularly want to marry a proper photographer.”
“Very funny.”
“I love you,” she said simply, those words seemingly inadequate for the storm of emotion that was constricting her chest.
He glanced over at her, holding her eyes with his own, the smile slipping from his lips, his expression intense. “I love you too,” he replied.
“I wish your leave wasn’t so short. I wish you didn’t have to go back to your regiment tomorrow. I don’t want to lose you again so quickly—”
“This was the best leave of my life.” He cut her off. “And you can’t lose me. You’re stuck with me for good. Your last name is now the same as mine. You are wearing my grandmother’s ring. I’m well and truly yours.”
Sophie closed her eyes and listened to the steady beat of his heart beneath her ear.
“The answer to your question is yes,” he said presently. “You are unnatural.” His lips found the hollow behind her ear. “Unnaturally brilliant, unnaturally beautiful.” His hand slid under the sheet over her hip. “And most of all,” he whispered, “unnaturally bewitching.”
Sophie opened her eyes. “Show me,” she said.
And he did.
Sophie wasn’t sure what had woken her.
She lay in the bed, listening intently, but nothing disturbed the stillness aside from Piotr’s steady breathing. Her husband had indeed had more than a few ideas on how best to spend what little time they had left before he was required to report back, but then so had she. Both had finally fallen into an exhausted, sated sleep sometime in the small hours before dawn.
She crept from the bed with care and opened her small suitcase as quietly as possible, feeling for her clothes.
“Leaving me already?” Piotr’s sleepy voice mumbled out of the dark.
“Just to watch the sunrise,” she said, pulling a simple frock over her head. “Go back to sleep.”
“Not a chance. This is the first dawn of the first day of our life together. I’m coming with you.” The bed creaked, and a light flickered on.
Sophie buttoned the collar of her dress and slipped on her shoes. Piotr joined her a moment later, and they exited the old stone building and stepped out in front. Turning away from the empty street that led back in the direction of the town center, they circled the hotel and found themselves in a deserted, grassy expanse. Based on the long, dilapidated building that sagged forgotten on the south side of the space, Sophie guessed that, in a century past, the expanse might once have been a carriage yard.
Dawn was pushing at the horizon, a soft gold glow layered below the bruised purples of a retreating night. The air was cool, sharp edges of an encroaching autumn lurking on the breeze. Sophie caught Piotr’s hand and tugged him along a well-trodden path that crossed the yard to end near a pasture gate, dew making the toes of her shoes wet where they brushed the grass.
They reached the gate, and she leaned over the rail. The wood was rough beneath her arms but she paid little attention, delighted to find that the fenced enclosure was home to a dappled mare and her foal, both appearing like apparitions in the watery light. With fingers of mist swirling through the tall grass and an ever-lightening sky behind them, the horses looked like they might be posing for a postcard, the sort of photograph of the Polish countryside that was sold in the streets of Warsaw. The beauty of the scene made her sigh. She wanted to fix this moment in her memory forever.
“Isn’t it lovely?” she breathed happily.
“He is a handsome little fellow,” Piotr replied. “I like his shoulders and legs already.”
Sophie made a face at her husband. “The landscape, dear,” she said dryly.
He kissed her. “That too.”
In the pasture, the copper-colored colt pranced and bucked before nearly toppling sideways.
Sophie laughed. “I think he’s trying to impress you. Angling for a cavalry job, maybe.”
“Perhaps.” He ducked through the rails and held out his hand. “Come,” he said, grinning. “Let’s go make friends.”
Sophie followed him and took his hand. She’d never ridden as a child—her parents hadn’t kept horses at the family’s Norfolk estate—but Piotr had taken her often. It was not long before his deep love for the noble creatures became hers as well.
The mare whickered a greeting and turned toward them, approaching as the colt continued to prance beyond. The mare stopped beside Piotr and blew gently against his arm. He reached up and scratched between its ears, murmuring something that Sophie couldn’t hear. The horse lowered its head.
“You’ve cast a spell on her.” Sophie joined him, watching the way his hands moved over the horse. She’d always loved Piotr’s hands, strong, rough, callused, and yet infinitely gentle. Even the most nervous of mounts seemed to settle under his touch.