by Lee, Jade
Nevertheless, he persevered, gritting his teeth as he struggled to respectfully disentangle himself from her. It was agony on many different levels, and he was soon sweating with the strain.
She remained silent throughout the entire wriggling and shifting experience, no doubt as aware as he was of her every curve and hollow. But before he could disengage from her completely, he felt the soft tremors invade her body, the slight gasps and jerks as she began to cry.
"Damn," he said softly, feeling extremely awkward as he finally rolled onto the soft grass nearby. "Where did I hurt you?"
His question produced a fresh surge of muffled sounds, and there passed some few moments before he realized she was laughing, not crying. By that time, her hilarity was quite audible as she guffawed like a soldier in his first drunk.
"Madame," he began.
"My, but I have done it correctly now!" she said between laughs. "I have actually cavorted upon the ground with a man!" She curled on her sides, holding them tight as the laughter poured out of her.
"Madame!" he said stiffly. "I rescued you from tumbling into the pit. I certainly did not cavort—"
"Yes," she interrupted. "Yes, you did! And I heartily thank you for the experience. It was the perfect ending for my ritual." She pushed halfway up from the ground, her weight resting on her elbow, as she continued to giggle. "Aunt Agatha will be so proud of me! Do say you will come for tea."
Anthony blinked as he stared at the long column of her neck. Clearly, she had lost her mind. He sat up slowly, keeping his injured leg straight before him. Then he patted her hand, trying to make the touch reassuring. "Give me a moment to rest, then I shall help you bury... whatever it is you lost."
She lifted her head as she focused on him. "Lost? Whatever do you mean? Did you lose something?" Then she looked about her, scanning the woods as if to find some item hidden beyond the trees.
"Of course, I have not lost anything!" he said, exasperation making his voice short. "You have!"
She turned and stared at him.
"The bones," he clarified. "In the pit."
"Bones?" she asked, clearly confused. Then, suddenly, her expression brightened. "Oh, those. What about them?"
He was perilously close to shouting. "Whose bones are you trying to bury?"
She merely blinked at him. "I have no idea whose bones those are. Some poor whale, I believe, sacrificed for the sole purpose of torturing me."
Her words made no sense, but he sifted through the nonsense to light upon one word. "Whale?"
"Yes. Those are whalebones. From my corsets."
"Your corsets?"
"Exactly!" She clapped her hands, as if he were some slow student only now catching on to his sums.
It was too much for him. He exploded, leaning forward despite new bolts of pain in his leg. "Do you mean to tell me you nearly killed me so that you could bury your corsets?"
"And my boots. And my escritoire," she responded calmly. "We must not forget the escritoire. It was extremely heavy."
Then, in the single most irritating moment of an entirely unbelievable conversation, the most terrible thing happened.
He recognized her.
Chapter 2
Anthony frowned at Sophia.
She had changed drastically. Her stunningly beautiful blond locks had been haphazardly cut away. Her long, regal body lay sprawled across the muddy ground. Her elegant clothing was now a smudged and torn smock. And her cool, sweet face looked at him as if he were the one who had lost his mind. But he recognized her, nonetheless.
"Good God, Lady Sophia, what has happened to you?"
She blinked, slowly sitting up straight as she focused on his face. The torches shed enough light for her to peer closely at him. He no doubt looked different than the ravaged face and wasted body she remembered. He was no longer in a hospital, his body thin and wracked with fever.
"Major? You are alive!" Her whisper confirmed his darkest thoughts. This tormented soul before him was indeed his angel of mercy, his Sophia, his intended bride. He saw her gaze travel the length of his body, skipping to his injured kg.
"It hurts," he said before she could ask, "but it is whole. I hope to regain full use in time. Indeed, I can ride again." He glanced back to where Demon waited patiently at the edge of the clearing.
"Thank God," she said. "Oh, thank God," she repeated, her voice shaking with the force of her emotion. Then she reached out a slender hand only to leave it hovering over his injury without touching him.
He smiled as he reached out and pressed her hand down to land softly upon his leg. How many nights had he dreamed of just this? Of her touch, warm and soothing on his pain. "It is quite whole," he said. "Though I am supposed to rest it, not scramble out of pits."
She did not seem to catch his mild admonishment. Indeed, she was still staring at him, her eyes wide with stunned amazement. "They told me you died. They were most specific."
"They were wrong. I am well."
She shook her head. "They were very clear."
"They were wrong," he repeated. Then he smiled. "I recovered. Thanks to your promise."
It took a few more moments of her staring at him, looking at his face, then his leg, then his entire body, but eventually she seemed to accept that he was real. That he was alive. She burst into tears.
Tender feelings flooded his soul. Reaching out, he gently pulled her into his arms, gathering her close as he stroked her trembling shoulders. "Shhh, my lady," he whispered. "The nightmare is over. I am whole."
She wrapped her arms around him, tightening their embrace, as if still reassuring herself of his strength. He held her quietly, caressing her arm in long strokes, allowing himself to relish every second of their reunion.
"I could not have done it alone," he murmured against her hair. "Your promise kept me alive. You gave me hope when nothing else mattered." Her sobs were subsiding now, her body stilling as she began to compose herself. "Oh, Sophia," he whispered as he dropped a gentle kiss on her brow. "I have waited for you forever."
She raised her head, tilting her face toward him. He helped her move, shifting her to a better position, one that allowed their mouths to touch. To kiss. But before he could claim her lips, she spoke.
"Promise? What promise?"
He felt his breath freeze in his body. There it was: the hard reality that Sophia did not remember their engagement. It cut at him more than the sword that had crippled his leg. More than the fever that had ravaged his body. And more than the knowledge that his entire future was now in question.
But how could he be surprised? Looking at the dirty creature in his arms, he knew she was unbalanced. Her mind was unhinged, perhaps by the very event that had separated her from him in the first place.
Naturally, he could understand. Upon hearing the false news that her fiance had perished, Sophia's delicate constitution became overbalanced. She was distraught. So much so that she quit the fashionable whirl for a lifetime of mourning in Staffordshire. Now the shock of his recovery was too much for her delicate sensibilities.
All he needed to do was gently remind her of what had occurred. Of her promise to wed him. Then, her mind would naturally return to the calm demeanor which was its natural state.
Smiling, he stroked her cheek. "You promised to marry me."
She pulled free, out of his arms. "I most certainly did not!"
His empty hands clenched, and his patience began to fray. "In the hospital. When I was ill. You promised to marry me."
"But you were dying." Again she stared at him, her gaze roving over his body. He waited, allowing her the time to look her fill and assure herself that he was whole.
"As you can see, I am recovered."
"Well, I cannot help that," she shot back. Then, suddenly, she pushed up on her feet, straightening enough to tower over him. "In any event, what are you doing here? And how dare you interrupt my ritual!"
He paused at the abrupt change in her tone, but he reined in his temper. Shock ofte
n sent delicate constitutions into strange mood shifts. He gestured to the yawning hole at their fleet. "What is this ritual?"
She turned to look into the pit, and he caught a flash of reflected torchlight in her eyes. "I was sacrificing... well, you among other things."
"Me?"
"Yes! For arranging and planning my life like every other person has tried to do since I came of age! My word, even when you were delirious, you were ordering me to marry you. I had to agree just to silence you." Suddenly, she planted her hands on her hips. "Indeed, I should throw you back in the pit along with the rest of the constrictions and burdens. How dare you ruin my moment of symbolic relief from all of London?"
"Relief from London? What nonsense is this?" He straightened, ignoring the bolt of agony in his knee, pulling himself tall enough to stare her in the eye. "Besides, you said I created the perfect ending for your ritual."
"That was before I knew you were you!" she snapped. "Now I shall have to do an entirely new ritual with new corsets. And whalebone is terribly expensive, you know."
He stared at her, and suddenly his temper broke. "This is insane!" he bellowed.
"It is not!" she yelled back. "It is symbolic, and I believe you should have to buy the corsets."
He reared back. "What?"
"You are the one who ruined this experience. It is either a whole new ritual or you shall have to throw yourself back into the hole. Your choice." She folded her arms across her chest as if daring him to deny her.
"I will not throw myself into your pit—"
"Your effigy, then."
"Absolutely not! And I will not buy you corsets. Not yet, at least. What I will do is marry you, then buy you new corsets; then I shall take you to London before we leave for India!" The words were out before he could stop them, but once said, he did not regret them. Perhaps this was no way to tell a lady they would marry, but then again, a lady did not bury innocent furniture in the middle of the night!
Unfortunately, as the silence stretched between them, he realized that perhaps this was not the most ideal circumstance to reunite with Sophia. Especially as he was beginning to glimpse her stubborn streak. It was possible that she would be stubborn enough to cry off their engagement just to spite him.
In fact, the more she stared at him, her mouth sagging open in shock, the more he believed he might have erred. At last she drew back, smoothing her muddy dress as if it were the most costly of court gowns.
The motions reassured him. For the first time since this whole bizarre episode began, he recognized the Sophia he knew—despite her attire. She was cool, composed, and almost regal as she looked down at him and smiled.
"I do not wish for any new corsets."
And with that, she strode away, head held high, stomping most effectively on her small, bare feet.
He watched her go, doing nothing to stop her. He was in too ill a temper to continue their conversation. And she was obviously not in an appropriate frame of mind.
He instead busied himself with filling in her pit. It didn't take long. He moved quickly, doing the minimum necessary to ensure any wandering strangers were safe from her handiwork. Then he mounted Demon and rode toward the Rathburn home.
It was not far to her house, and he saw her immediately, but he did not detain her. He merely wished to make sure she returned home safely. And as he watched the moonlight wash her silhouette with silver, he could not restrain a smile.
She was magnificent. Her body was tall and slim, her carriage graceful. She was a true aristocrat, her blood nearly as blue as that of the Regent himself. Even when tiptoeing back to her manor door on bare feet, he could see the pride in her movements, the generations of breeding.
Tonight's episode he excused as merely a temporary female aberration. After all, she had just completed her fifth London Season. She had thought her fiance dead and was now facing a lifetime spent on the shelf as too old to be marriageable. A woman on the verge of spinsterhood would certainly undergo enormous emotional distress. Her actions tonight were merely a symptom of her fears.
She was perhaps only now realizing that her worries were at an end. He still intended to marry her, despite tonight's show of temper. Then he planned to spend the rest of his life caring for her.
The thought gave him so much pleasure that he whistled all the way back to his room at the inn.
* * *
The following morning, Sophia stared at her drawer of unmentionables and frowned. They were all gone. All her stiff corsets, itchy underclothes, and even her walking boots. All buried.
Which was exactly as she had intended. Until the major had shown up, of course, and ruined the entire thing. Now she wanted to repeat last night's ritual, except that she had nothing worthy of burying. She actually liked everything that remained.
She closed the wardrobe with a sigh and sat back down on her bed. It did not matter, she told herself. Her arms ached from last night's digging, and she did not wish to repeat the process.
So what was she to do today?
She turned her head to stare at the steady hands of the gilt clock on her dresser. It was not even teatime yet. My goodness, the days went ponderously slow in Staffordshire. In London, she would have already attended one or perhaps two functions, frittering away her time with idle chatter and insipid gossip. Thank goodness that part of her life was over.
Of course, now that she was in Staffordshire, she was merely frittering away her time doing absolutely nothing except feeling bored. She tapped her fingers together. What exactly did a free, unfettered spinster do with her time?
The morning's correspondence had brought some relief to the tedium. She fingered the missive from her sometimes friend, Reginald, Lord Kyle, and re-read his message. It began with the usual on-dits from London, nothing that she cared to know or follow, though she did manage to read every word at least twice. It was only at the end that his correspondence shifted to the odd.
Staffordshire must be overrun with madmen. I fear I sent one to your doorstep in the form of a major recently released from hospital. The other is a man I call Uncle Latimer. You would know him as Lord Blakesly the elder (the younger one being both presumptuous with the title and an idiot to boot). Have you heard anything of him?
It ended with the usual farewells, mixed with dry comments about his difficult tailor. Sophia knew nothing of Lord Blakesly the elder, though she absolutely agreed with Kyle's assessment of the younger. As for the realization that Reginald was responsible for directing the major to her here, she had every intention of chiding him for it when next they spoke. She would have written him a letter stating her opinion, but her escritoire was currently buried in the side yard.
What struck her as particularly odd was that Reginald considered the major insane. True, Lord Kyle clubbed all military men as madmen. Swordplay and bullets tended to disrupt one's attire, and that, to Reginald's thinking, was proof of a weak mind. But perhaps he had a point. The major had just recovered from a severe illness. Perhaps it had weakened his normal reason.
But he had not seemed mad last night, she thought with a sigh. Indeed, he had looked magnificent riding in on his huge stallion. At first, she had thought him a conjured spirit, tall and dark, like King Arthur riding to battle. The torchlight had turned his brown locks to a reddish gold like a magical helmet. And when he had bellowed at her, all she could think of was keeping the spell alive so that he would remain by her side.
There was no spell, of course. Only the major, still as handsome and commanding as ever, even after his illness. Even now, she could hardly believe it was him. Alive and seemingly unhurt. I am well; that's what he had said.
He was well, but she remembered all too clearly the hours spent by his bedside. The pain that had wracked his body. The agony of watching his strength slip away. And then that horrible moment when they told her he'd died. She could not stop her tears even now, despite the sure knowledge that he was alive.
But the Major was not some mythical creature, she remi
nded herself. He was a man. A man who had been desperately hurt. Who even now could catch another fever. What if last night's events had reopened his wound? What if he had returned only to die again? Only to abandon her once more? She did not want to need someone, to want someone, who might slip away so easily. She did not want to hurt like that again. Her body clenched at the horrors she envisioned. And yet, at the same time, she kept remembering how glorious he had seemed last night. How strong.
Yet how forceful and opinionated! He was as bad as the worst of the condescending fops who graced the London ballrooms. No, he did not live for his tailor or the latest on-dit, as Reginald did, but he, like the others, expected to be obeyed unquestionably. He practically ordered everything and everyone about him. Why, his interruption of her ritual was typical of him, and all because he thought she was doing something silly.
Oh Lord, she groaned into her pillow. Her mind was spinning in circles. She kept remembering him looking so virile. Not sick at all. Thinking back to her removal from London, she knew she should have spoken directly with the doctor. But the nurse had been adamant that the major had died, and Sophia had been heartbroken. After all, she had seen the signs. The major had been going to die. Had died. Or rather, she thought he had. And the pain had been too much to bear.
Still lost in her confusing thoughts, Sophia was startled by a discreet knock at the door. "Beggin' yer pardon, miss," said Mary—her maid at her aunt's estate—as the girl pushed into the room. "But yer aunt wondered if you planned to attend tea."
Sophia blinked, her gaze skipping straight to the clock. "Oh my, yes. I had clean forgot." She hopped up from the bed, using the motion to force thoughts of the major from her mind. "Tell Aunt Agatha I shall be there directly."
She did not waste time on her appearance. It was just she and her favorite aunt. What she did do was grab the book of scandalous poetry that she had purchased secretly in London. The two of them absolutely delighted in reading it over crumpets.
