What a Lady Demands

by Ashlyn Macnamara

  “And yet no one is here to dismiss you as his father, and you’ve been engaging in the very sort of scandalous behavior I have. You invited me into your bed, in fact.”

  “I am not going to argue over who began things between us.”

  She swiped a wayward hank of hair out of her eyes. “You started this most recent round, at any rate. But you’re right, it doesn’t matter. I’m beginning to think my sister-in-law has a point when she claims it’s always the woman’s fault. Because you’re standing here ready to turn me out over everything that’s happened.”

  Her eyes glittered, and she looked ready to go a few more rounds battering him with the bedding. And damn it all, her weapon of choice may only be comprised of goose feathers and cotton, but she stood a good chance of bludgeoning him to death no matter what, given the force behind the blows.

  “If you will come out of that high dudgeon and allow me to finish. I have not said a word about sending you off. Under the circumstances, such an act is unconscionable.”

  She turned her head and studied him from the corner of her eye. “What does that mean?”

  “It means I see no choice but to make you an offer. For your own protection.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  The carpeting seemed to sway beneath Cecelia’s feet. “What did you say?” she asked faintly.

  “I see no way out of this situation other than to marry you.”

  “Me? You want to marry me?” Her heart slammed into her ribs, hampering her breathing. Odd how she felt that when she couldn’t even feel the tips of her fingers. “When I’m not even suitable to act as your governess, because I’m so scandalous and impure, but you’re willing to marry me?”

  He scrubbed a hand down his chin. “Is it necessary to phrase it in that manner?”

  “Can you think of something better? You’re the last person I’d expect to require a coat of sugar to sweeten the truth.”

  “I believe marriage is the most reasonable solution here.” He raised a knee and settled it on the mattress, while holding out a hand in what he must consider a placating manner. “You haven’t had a champion for years. Your father died when you were still in the schoolroom and your brother was gone. Who is going to protect you from Eversham if I do not?”

  “I don’t know.” She glanced about the room and gave an offhand half shrug. “You seemed happy enough earlier to leave the matter up to my brother.”

  “That would mean confessing to him the nature of your relationship with Eversham. Do you want to do that?”

  “No more than I wanted to do it for you. On the other hand, Alexander might decide to call him out, and that might just rid me of one very large problem.”

  “And if Eversham is a better shot? Would you want to put your sister-in-law through such an ordeal? Not to mention the rest of your family? But if we marry and Eversham continues to make threats against your person, I can call him out. And I like to think I am rather a good shot. I’ve the experience for it.”

  Experience, indeed. The evidence of that experience stared her in the face. A network of twisted scars marked his hip and thigh, marring his former perfection. Good Lord, the agony he must have endured. And he wished to revisit that particular form of danger? For her, no less?

  “What sort of example would you be setting for Jeremy?”

  With a wave of his hand, he pushed that question aside. “Ignoring the Eversham situation for a moment, there is the small matter of what has just transpired between the two of us. We’ve taken no precautions. Should you find yourself with child…”

  She blinked. If she had to, she knew what to do to restore her courses. Eversham had made certain of that, even if, with him, the possibility never came up. Pregnancy was far less of a risk when he preferred her to flog him until she’d raised bloody welts across his back.

  Heavens, and she’d been ready to strike Lind just now with the pillow. A sudden spate of nausea churned in her stomach. She hadn’t changed a bit. She wasn’t over Eversham and all he’d done to her, not in the slightest.

  “You will not have to concern yourself.” She stared at the floor. “I cannot imagine why anyone would wish to marry me, tainted as I am.”

  “Do you believe me pure?” he asked quietly. “If you knew anything about my first marriage, you’d run the other way. And in all fairness, I should, perhaps, give you some time to consider my proposal.”

  She reached for her shed garments. “If you require nothing more…”

  “Where are you going?” Good heavens, was that shock in his voice? She’d revealed all manner of sordid details today, and he chose to flinch at so mild a statement?

  “Back to my quarters.” She leveled her gaze on him. “To consider.”

  The corners of his lips turned down. He forced his fingers through his hair, not that the motion helped its disarray. “I thought…I mean, now that we…Damn it.”

  “What?” She could barely believe his tongue was tripping over an invitation…No, she wouldn’t allow herself to hope, even if he had just proposed.

  His mouth worked for a moment or two. “It’s just…” A sigh. “I’ve spent so many nights alone.”

  “So have many in this world,” she pointed out softly.

  “Yes, well…” His voice creaked like hinges rusty from disuse. “I thought you might stay with me.”

  —

  Cecelia tried to claim a spot on the mattress as far from Lind as possible, but even in sleep, the blasted man kept reaching for her. She knew he’d drifted off because his breathing came slow and even. Why she hadn’t risked running up the servants’ stairs to the top level of the house, disheveled and half-dressed, she wasn’t sure. Possibly it had something to do with the way in which he’d swallowed his considerable pride and asked her to stay. He’d worked hard enough to get the words out, certainly. It was most likely the closest she’d ever get to seeing him beg.

  Blast her soft heart. She ought to have learned better than to give in to a man when he addressed her in pleading tones.

  At some point, though, she must have slept because she woke deep in the night to find Lind muttering on his side of the bed. Not surprising he’d face a nightmare or two, given his experiences in the army. Of course, the way he ordered everyone about, he deserved it.

  Now, on the other side of the mattress, Lind turned his head on the pillow. He raised an arm, like a man warding off a blow, and all the while he muttered under his breath.

  Tentatively, she reached over to rub his shoulder. “Lind. Lind, wake up.”

  It was no use. He didn’t listen to her in his sleep any better than when he was awake.

  “Lind, how on earth do you intend to share your bed with anyone when you take on so?”

  Still no result. Dash it.

  She inched her way across the mattress and fitted her palm about the curve of his shoulder muscle. The bare flesh beneath her hand was slick with sweat.

  “Lind.”

  “Jeremy! No!” With that shout, he bolted upright, shaking off her hand, and staring blankly into the dark for several moments, his breathing labored.

  She sat up and laid an arm across his back, resting her head on his shoulder. “It was just a dream. Do you know, that’s the first time I’ve ever heard you pronounce your son’s name?”

  “What?” The vestiges of sleep roughened his reply.

  “You said Jeremy’s name just now. It’s the first time I’ve ever heard you say it.”

  He shook his head, like a man who just walked through a very large cobweb. “I did? I don’t remember.”

  “You must have been dreaming about him. Do you dream of the accident?”

  He stiffened under her touch. “I do not wish to discuss that day.”

  And that was how this had all started. It was on the tip of her tongue to reply that perhaps he should, but she’d said something similar earlier to no avail. If she wanted to get the entire story out of him, she’d have to use a different strategy. “Before, you said something
about being broken. What did you mean by that?”

  “Isn’t that obvious?” he snapped, all signs of grogginess gone from his voice. “You’ve seen me now. All of me. You’ve seen the scars.”

  “I have.” She’d seen and touched and kissed. The top of his thigh was an ugly, tangled knot of scar tissue, but the disfigurement did not stop there. The twisted ridges continued on his backside—she’d felt them beneath her palm when she pulled him to her as he thrust and thrust. His left side, extending upward to his chest, was peppered with little white pockmarks, as if someone had sprayed his skin with large drops of water that had somehow turned to ice and left a permanent frozen stain. “I once saw your perfection, and now I’ve seen your imperfection. It does not change my view of you.”

  “Just as well.” A smile lay behind those words, even if she couldn’t see it in the dark. “Nothing will make those scars go away.”

  “I don’t consider them to have broken you.” She settled her head back against the pillows, and Lind followed. “Most men would have died of such injuries. You did not.”

  “I cannot walk as I once did. I cannot do many things.”

  “You can still do what counts. You should consider yourself fortunate.”

  He did not reply for a long time, and yet she knew from the increasing heaviness in the air about them that he had not drifted back to sleep. “Everyone wishes to tell me how fortunate I was to come back from Quatre Bras with my life, and not only that, my body more or less intact. I ought to have been able to return home and find everything as I had left it. You’d think that, wouldn’t you? Well?” he added when she didn’t reply right away. “Wouldn’t you?”

  “I suppose so, yes.”

  “Do you call it fortunate, then, that I survived only to come home and find my wife already with child?”

  “What?” Surely Lydia must have known there were means to restoring her courses if she’d committed an indiscretion.

  “Lydia was increasing. She must have been. The timing of Jeremy’s birth was all too suspect.”

  You’re wrong when you say the whole sorry affair doesn’t involve the boy. It does. Closely. Mrs. Carstairs’s words came back to her. She’d had no time to consider them, but they suddenly made frightening sense.

  Cecelia gasped but quickly pressed a hand over her mouth to stop herself from voicing the conclusion aloud. If she were to protect the housekeeper, she must not let on that she’d had any inkling of this.

  “You’re…you’re certain Jeremy cannot be yours?”

  “I returned to my London townhouse to find Battencliffe on the premises.”

  “Battencliffe?” The revelation rammed her in the gut and stole her breath. “Rowan Battencliffe?”

  “Yes, my supposed friend. Because of our friendship, I assumed it was innocent, but when the boy came along less than nine months after I’d resumed relations with my wife, Lydia confessed.”

  The final word of his statement echoed through the bedchamber like the tolling of a bell. Hardly sure what to reply, Cecelia held her breath and waited for him to go on.

  “Do you call that fortunate?” he asked, the words low and intense and fast, as though he was trying to spit them out before he could change his mind. “Do you call it fortunate that this child is considered my heir and will inherit my estates? Do you call it fortunate that the only piece I have left of my wife belongs to another man? Do you call it fortunate that this child has difficulties with the most basic of tasks, and that I am to blame?” The final word echoed in the room.

  “How can you be to blame for any of it?” Even given what she knew about Jeremy’s accident, she could not see how Lind might twist those events around to being his fault. Come to that, as long as he was laying blame, he held his wife strangely guiltless for a huge transgression. “Earlier you said no one was there.”

  “Yes, I did,” he replied, his tone deceptively soft once more. “The servants came, it’s true. But I should have been there. I should have been the one to pull him out of the pond. It should have been me in that cold water, not Lydia. But it wasn’t, because I was physically unable to be there.”

  Her heart swelled in her chest until her ribs became a vise, yet at the same time he gave her hope. He hurt, yes, but he also didn’t resent Jeremy for his very existence. He’d just implied he’d have saved the child, but maybe he’d have only acted to prevent Lydia from falling into the water.

  “And brooding over your past will in no way bring Lydia back or change anything. The best you can do is move forward.” That statement was possibly the last thing he wanted to hear, given his agitation, but blast him, he needed to hear it, for Jeremy’s sake if nothing else. “You should do it for your son.”

  He looked up, his eyes transforming the reflected moonlight to an inferno. “My son? My son? Have you heard a single thing I’ve said? He is not my son.”

  “In all the ways that matter, he is.” She laid a hand on his shoulder, the flesh beneath her palm hot and trembling. “Whatever happened in the past, he’s been given into your care. He will inherit your estate. He’d be your son if you made him so.”

  “And how do you expect me to manage that?”

  “Everything I’ve been telling you from the beginning. Take an interest in his life. Teach him what you can. Show him what you do. I’ve seen the way he looks at you. That child idolizes you. Do you know the easiest way to make him happy?”

  “No.” That single word emerged hoarse and broken.

  “Acknowledge that. And let go the rest. Nothing you do will bring Lydia back, and it will not change Jeremy. If you want him to overcome his difficulties, you have to teach him that. You have to show him through your own example that it can be done.”

  “How do you know anything about this?” His head turned on the pillow in disbelief.

  “Easy. In a way, I’m just as broken as you are. Only my scars aren’t so visible. You might even say you and I are well matched.”

  —

  Cecelia disentangled herself from Lind’s arms and padded back to her chamber in the early dawn hours. Her body ached in the most intimate places, a reminder at every step of how her relationship with Lind had changed over the past day. By the time Jeremy was stirring, she’d downed a cup of tea and felt nearly human, enough so that she might envisage occupying a five-year-old for the rest of the day.

  At least, she was in a state to plan their activities. Jeremy would certainly want a good look at his pony, even if riding was out of the question just yet.

  But an interruption in the form of Smithers obstructed even a vague notion of stopping by the kitchens for carrots before visiting the stables. “There is a gentleman in the foyer asking for Miss Crump. His lordship has directed me to refer him to you.”

  She followed the butler down the stairs to find a paunchy man inspecting a portrait of some Lindenhurst ancestor in the lower corridor. Wisps of gray hair stuck out at angles from beneath a lopsided bicorn hat, to mingle with his bushy side-whiskers. At Cecelia’s appearance, he tucked his hat beneath his arm, presented a leg, and bowed low over it. “Professor Treacher, at your service.”

  In the face of such a display of outdated manners, Cecelia inclined her head, while suppressing a bubble of laughter at the name. “I’m afraid you have me at a disadvantage. I’m certain you came here expecting Miss Crump, but she is no longer a member of Lord Lindenhurst’s staff.”

  “Oh dear.” Professor Treacher twiddled his fingers before him. “And I’ve come such a long way. I was requested here to present one of my demonstrations.”

  “Demonstrations?”

  “Yes. I show representations of famous battles.”

  “Oh.” Good heavens, was there anything the paragon of all governesses hadn’t thought of? “Then come right in and tell me what you require. I believe you’ll have a most avid audience, just as soon as he’s finished his breakfast.”

  An hour later, Smithers summoned Cecelia and Jeremy down to one of the unused sitting rooms. J
eremy approached a table where heavy paper cutouts representing soldiers stood, battle-ready, on a map. Leaning in, he squinted at the deployment.

  “Welcome, my good sir, welcome.” Professor Treacher smiled and bowed. “I wonder if you know what you’re looking at.”

  “A field full of soldiers.” Faced with a stranger, Jeremy had reverted to his terse replies.

  “Professor Treacher has come to show us how the Waterloo campaign played out,” Cecelia said.

  “Yes, and I’ve set up the two armies in their initial positions. The English are in red, encamped along the road to Brussels, which they were defending from the French. Do you know who their commander was?”

  Jeremy eyed him. “Everyone knows that. It was the Duke of Wel-Welling-Wellington.”

  “Very good, very good.” The professor beamed. “Perhaps you can tell me who the enemy forces were, then.”

  “The French. And it wasn’t just the English fighting them. There were Dutch forces in the field against Nap-Napoleon.”

  Professor Treacher eyed the boy. “I see we have a regular little military scholar here.”

  “My father fought in this battle.” Holding on to the side of the table, Jeremy circled the display. “Where were the Grenadier Guards placed?”

  “Oh, along about here, I imagine.” The professor gestured vaguely.

  The line of Jeremy’s brow settled into a scowl. “You mean you don’t know?”

  “When we consider such a large-scale battle from this perspective, we cannot reproduce conditions with complete accuracy.” Professor Treacher swept an arm in a broad gesture. “I’d need my map to cover this entire room to break things down to that point. The best we can do is look at the general positions of the armies relative to one another and study how they advanced and retreated over the course of the final days.”