That said, his sleep pants were by far my favorite item of his attire.

Because he looked good in them.

Also because they left his chest bare.

His stomach was trim, flat and boxed.

His ribs were ridged.

His chest defined.

His shoulders dented by the deep cut of his collarbone.

And he was hairless there.

All of this was attractive.

Very attractive.

But it was the veins.

The veins that traced up his forearms and over the bulges of his upper arms.

Though mostly it was the veins that tracked from underneath his sleep pants at his pelvis up the plane of his flat stomach toward his navel.

Not to mention the deep indentations that circled his hips, something I could see as sometimes those pants rode low, and I watched avidly when they did as he walked about my room and then our tent, blowing out lamps of an evening.

He was lean and sinewy up top in a way that, even then, with all that was happening, made my mouth water.

So much, with him staring at my torso like that, my eyes could not deny themselves the opportunity to return the favor.

At first look, I bit my lower lip.

“Farah.”

I forced my gaze back to his.

This was not entirely difficult.

He had the most beautiful green eyes in the world.

“The light is on,” he noted. “Are you all right?”

No.

I was not all right.

My mother was dead.

I was to be made princess of a foreign land, doing this being wed to a man I was falling in love with. A man who was in love with another woman.

And he was plagued by ghosts that haunted his dreams and I had no idea what to do about it.

“I, yes…well, no. You…that is, I was sleeping and…”

It occurred to me as I blathered that this was True.

The only way to make him all right was to make him feel useful.

“We near Notting Thicket,” I blurted.

“Not really,” he muttered. “At this pace, we’ll be there next year.”

I felt my lips quirk for he was right. We were proceeding very slowly.

“We’re nevertheless no longer in Firenze,” I told him.

Understanding, or the understanding I wished him to believe, dawned in his eyes and they grew gentle.

“This is true,” he said, falling back with his hands on me so I fell with him.

He then slid his arms around and cuddled me close.

This was not an unusual circumstance. In fact, I fell asleep in his arms every night.

But he’d never kissed me.

He hadn’t even tried.

He hadn’t even appeared like he was going to try.

“It’ll be all right,” he assured. “And as we’re both awake, I’ll share what I decided earlier. We shall delay our wedding further. At least a month. I’ll speak with mother about it in the morning.”