Of course she hadn’t. Until a few minutes ago, when he’d informed her of his wife’s untimely demise, she’d believed him married. Not only wed, but safely ensconced half a world away. She’d no reason to believe he’d return to England now, or ever, for that matter.
Despite a well-worn, drab day dress, despite her light brown hair swept back in the simplest of knots, the years had been kind to her. As a young hopeful in her first season, she had a tendency to stay in the corner and keep to herself. Now she possessed an inner glow, perhaps a reflection of some newfound strength that radiated from her being. It enhanced features that other men might deem plain, but he never had.
You put that there.
The thought came from nowhere, like an unexpected punch to the gut and just as brutal. He stumbled in its wake. If she’d become stronger over the years, it was, in part, due to what he’d put her through when he broke their engagement. And if anyone knew how that kind of pain might strengthen a person, it was Alexander Sanford.
Henrietta turned to him sharply, her jaw working as if she were chewing on a few choice words—words he’d deserve if she gave them voice. “The way I remember, you still possessed enough sense to remain in bed when circumstances called for it,” she said at last.
He braced himself against the stone wall. “I had business that couldn’t wait.”
“Yes, well, you have a servant of sorts you could have sent in your place.”
“Satya?” Yes, she’d had opportunity to meet him. “Not even he could take care of this.”
“Business with Tilly? That no one but you could see to when you haven’t been in England for years?” Oh, yes, she had every right to be skeptical. In her place, he would be, too.
“An entire ship went down. I might hope to possess a modicum of luck that would allow me to recover at least some of my losses.”
She crossed her arms over her bodice, its gray fabric so faded it might have been dirty white. Strangely symbolic, that hue, when she was no longer a young miss clad in a pristine evening gown in search of a husband in the drawing rooms and ballrooms of London. “And your servant couldn’t have seen to that for you?”
He studied the crumbling stone that made up the wall. “Some things have personal value that another cannot understand.”
Her glare heated the back of his neck like the Indian sun—no doubt she assumed he meant some keepsake of his late wife. And she wouldn’t be far off with her guess, either. For that very reason, he could not meet her eyes. He could not face her judgment, for he was guilty as charged.
“They still might have waited.”
“Not if Tilly sold them out from under me.”
In reply, she shuffled her feet, dislodged a few pebbles, and sent them careening down the slope. “Do you think we might be on our way?”
He chanced a glance at her, but she was looking past him, toward the manor. A paid companion and not at her post. “Does my aunt know where you are?”
“Do you think I’m daft enough to tell her what I was about? ‘Your pardon, my lady, but I need to go down to the village and see if there are any positions I might take. This one no longer suits.’ Yes, that would go over quite well, wouldn’t it?”
The Henrietta he knew from the ballrooms of London would never have replied with such a diamond-honed edge of sarcasm. “Why did you take it in the first place?”
“That is none of your affair. My life stopped being any of your concern the moment you married another. I was perfectly content with my lot until last night.”
Every word struck him like a slap across the cheek. “Then you’d better return to your post before she discovers you’re gone and starts asking questions, hadn’t you? Because you and I both know how relentless my aunt can be if she wants to worm something out of you.”
A gleam came into Henrietta’s eye that told him she knew exactly what he meant. At another time, she might even laugh and exchange some well-placed mots on the subject. After several months in Lady Epperley’s employ, Henrietta surely had stories to tell. But she didn’t so much as smile. “Don’t be ridiculous. You’ll never make it back under your own power, and if I leave you here, I’ll never hear the end of it.”
“I am not as bad off as all that,” he insisted.
“No, you only swooned a while ago, and you’ve come close a few times since.”
“I did not. A man does not swoon.” To prove it, he stood. Too fast. His field of vision contracted to encompass no more than her face. Everything else went black. The earth swayed beneath his feet.
“Oh, for heaven’s sake.” Her voice echoed from far off.
This was not good. He groped for the wall, but could not find it. Support. He needed support. The ground pitched like the deck of his ship during yesterday’s storm. He was about to go under yet again.
A pair of hands gripped him by the shoulders, steadied him. Then an arm slipped about his waist, and he found himself hauled up against a warm, very female body. The curve of one hip abutted his thigh. A soft breast pressed against his side, and her scent surrounded him. Whatever she’d been using to bathe, it smelled like a garden of exotic flowers, better than the fields full of jasmine in India. A perfume he could go on breathing forever.
“Would you like to tell me again how you’re not swooning?” The sharpness of her words hit him like a face full of icy seawater.
“I’m not. I’m quite alert now, thank you.” Parts of him were fast coming more alert than others.
“Then let’s get you back up the hill and into bed.”
That statement jolted straight to his groin. Good God, had she really said that? His demure little Henrietta talking about taking him to bed? Only she wasn’t his Henrietta, not anymore. And she didn’t seem to be unassuming any longer. Or naïve. Any softness she’d possessed as a young lady just coming out had eroded away to her inner toughness—a toughness he didn’t know existed when he first asked her to marry him.
You put that there, too.
Just as well. If the world was as cruel to her as it had been to him, she was going to need that fortitude. But then she’d already faced the cold cruelty of the world, a sin she could lay directly at his doorstep.
She stiffened, no doubt in shock at their closeness, and set off, practically dragging him alongside her. Another difference from the young lady he’d once known. He’d never expected enough strength in her to support the weight of a grown man. But here she was, hauling him along, and he had no choice but to stumble after her.
“What have you been doing with yourself these past years?” he panted.
“The usual ladylike pursuits. Needlework, gossip, shopping, dancing, avoiding practicing the piano. Why do you ask?”
“You seem to have built up a surprising amount of muscle in the process.”
“Merely my daily constitutional, which, by the way, was what I was doing when I stumbled upon you, swooning in the road. Should your aunt ask. Or does your honor preclude you telling a small fib?” She spit the last question with a great deal of scorn.
His honor, indeed. He deserved that, too, the way he’d left things. “I suppose my honor can take this one small affront.”
She hesitated in her relentless stride, and the movement reverberated through his entire body. “Thank you.”
A humbler man might beg her to stop for a while and let him rest against her softness. Hell, he might even beg, if he thought it would get him anywhere. Too much time had passed since he’d known the safe haven of a female body. His hands ached for the contour of her firm curves. “It’s the least I could do, considering.”
“Don’t mention it. Please.” Again that finely honed edge to each word, sharp as a knife. And like a knife, each one cut deep, straight to the quick of his pride.
Henrietta left Alexander in the care of a footman and escaped to her room. Her heart still fluttered in her throat, and she hardly knew what to do with her hands. Alexander ought to have remained in bed, safe—safely tucked away where she would
n’t run into him. Where she wouldn’t be obliged to offer her support while he made his painful way back up that hill, her arm about his waist, her entire side plastered to his.
Her breast still tingled with the warmth of his body. His scent still seemed to surround her.
Thank heavens Lady Epperley didn’t wish to question her activities. Not only had she left the manor, she’d taken a constitutional with Alexander—as if they’d planned an outing together—and that was enough to start the wheels turning in the old lady’s head.
Naturally, her employer knew of her past with Alexander; thankfully, she hadn’t wormed any details out of Henrietta—so far. With the pair of them under her roof, however, that might serve to trip the old girl’s memory.
Henrietta strode several paces to the window of her chamber beneath the eaves on the third floor, adjacent to the nursery. The room had no doubt housed any number of nannies or governesses to the manor’s children. In the absence of those, it was fit enough for a paid companion.
A salty breeze off the Channel disturbed the worn curtains and bore the cry of a few gulls. The gray water glinted with deceptive calm in the sunlight as it hissed over the pebbled beach below. Only yesterday, storm winds had whipped that water to boiling fury, enough to dash ships upon rocks. Enough to heave lives into chaos along with the shards of broken spars on the shore.
She turned away. At any moment, the bell that summoned her into her employer’s presence might ring. Her glance fell on her night table. The box. She’d brought it back here earlier before changing her mind about her current employment.
Ironic that such an exotic and finely crafted object had survived wind and waves that pounded the heavy timbers into splinters. She ran her fingers over the inlay, marveling at how the artisan had incorporated the wood grain along with the varied hues of ivory and precious stone into the design.
Costly, oh, yes, the object was costly, perhaps even priceless in England, where it was likely the only one of its kind. With both hands, she hefted the box. From deep within came a metallic rattle. And if this was merely the casing, what treasures must it house? The very thing Alexander might have been asking after in Tilly’s shop.
A wave of guilt settled in her stomach. She really ought to show it to him—and she would, once he was properly up and about. With any luck, once he had what he was looking for, he’d be on his way. She might return it to him now, but she’d still have to wait for him to recover before he left. Perhaps she’d been hasty in deciding to seek a new position, after all. He would regain his strength eventually, and then he’d be gone from her life.
Again.
“We must notify the Company immediately.” Alexander ignored the pounding in his head and chest. The pain had redoubled since his ill-advised walk to the village, despite the fact that he’d returned to bed.
Resting. How he despised inactivity, even when his body required it.
“Yes, sahib.” Satya stood, immobile, at the foot of the carved four-poster, straight as any soldier on parade. “Shall I send for paper and ink?”
Alexander nodded. As long as he was stuck here, he might as well get the formalities out of the way and inform his superiors of the loss of a ship. And at some point, he’d have to work out what to do about lodging. He hadn’t intended to pay his aunt such an immediate visit upon his return to England, and certainly not in this manner. He must make arrangements, and not just for him.
“I’ll write a letter immediately,” he said. “And you shall post it from the village. At the same time you can inquire—”
Before he could say more, however, the door flew open and slammed against the wall.
“What is this nonsense?” His aunt burst into the room, leaning on a cane, but moving quite briskly for all that. “Out of bed and venturing down to the village? Unheard of.”
He attempted a smile but feared he’d only managed to make half his mouth cooperate. “Good afternoon, Aunt.”
“Well, there’s no need to pull such a face.” She advanced farther into the room. Her damnable cat trotted past her, jumped onto the pale green coverlet, and began licking one gray flank. “Whatever am I going to tell your mother when she gets here?”
“My mother? Coming here? She doesn’t even know I’ve returned.”
“I daresay, she’ll find out the moment she gets my letter. And you can wager your last tuppence she’ll be in her carriage within an hour of reading it.”
Alexander closed his eyes and prayed for patience. Knowing his aunt, she’d made the situation sound far more dire than strictly necessary. Granted, he had been shipwrecked, and yes, he might have come close to drowning, but that was no reason to alarm his mother. He could have told her the tale in his own way and in his own time and saved himself a load of fussing.
“No doubt she’ll have your sisters in tow, as well,” his aunt went on. “Good heavens, but I wasn’t prepared to receive all these guests. And where shall I house everyone?”
“If you’re concerned about room, I can be off as soon as I’m well enough. And what’s this about my sisters?” Last he’d heard, Cecelia had been engaged to some lord or other, despite her lack of a generous settlement, and Jane had wed two years ago.
His aunt stopped in the middle of a muttered tirade that involved moving everyone out of their current bedchambers and into new quarters. “That’s right, you’ll not have heard.”
He blinked. There was something quite menacing in that statement, even if his aunt was prone to dramatics. “What won’t I have heard?”
“Jane is increasing, but Cecelia … The scandal, my boy. Your sister was obliged to cry off her engagement, when …” His aunt waved a be-ringed hand, and the cat flinched. “Oh, it’s simply unspeakable.”
Alexander had never been one for gossip. His aunt, on the other hand, was all too happy to invent half the juicy on-dits she passed along—or so he surmised, since he made it a habit never to listen to her. For her not to wish to repeat something was, well, unheard of. If he didn’t know better, he might suspect her current reluctance was one of the signs of the apocalypse.
“What is unspeakable?”
His aunt looked away for a moment. “You shall have to ask Cecelia for the details when she arrives. My heart cannot stand to repeat the tale, and Albemarle cannot abide gossip.”
“Albemarle cannot abide—”
“You may as well know, though,” she went on as if he had not spoken, “that she’s completely ruined her prospects. Your mother has retired to the country with Cecelia to live quietly.”
Bugger it all, what now? Although he could work out well enough the nature of the scandal his sister had found herself in, if she’d not only been obliged to break her engagement, but their mother was waiting for the news to die down in the country.
He opened his mouth to demand a clearer explanation, but she held up a hand. “I will not repeat it. If your sister is not overly ashamed, she shall have to be the one who tells you. Do not ask me again.”
Idly, he wondered if Henrietta paid much attention to gossip. She had, in the past, as much as any young miss, but he didn’t know her anymore, much less his own sister. If only he could prevail upon Henrietta to overlook this morning’s contentions, she might tell him what had happened to Cecelia.
“Although now that we’ve broached the topic of scandal …” His aunt let that sentence trail off ominously.
Oh, good Lord. No doubt she was about to take advantage of his bedridden state and fill him in on the unsavory doings of the entire ton throughout the time he’d been in India. “I’d really prefer not to know.”
“How can you not want to know when it involves you?”
“How could it possibly involve me when no one knows I’ve returned to England? What can you imagine I’ve done?” That second question was probably more to the point, but his aunt could not have heard of his specific circumstances in India. Not that she didn’t possess a vivid imagination.
She blinked at him as if he were the
simplest boy in an entire school devoted to idiots. “You broke your engagement to Miss Upperton.”
“I’m afraid I had little choice in the matter.”
“Little choice? You broke your word.” She leaned in and lowered her voice, doubtless so Albemarle’s sensibilities to gossip would remain unruffled. “Miss Upperton had no recourse at the time, but if she takes it into her head to sue you for breach of promise … Can you imagine the talk? Can you?”
“Miss Upperton would never do anything like that.” He could state that much with confidence. The young lady he’d been engaged to possessed impeccable morals.
“How do you know? Perhaps she’s in need of the funds. She wouldn’t have to remain in my employ if she came by a windfall.” She clutched at her bodice. “She was all too happy to secure this position, you know.”
“What is that supposed to mean?” Curse these damned injuries that kept him a captive audience to this conversation.
“No one else would have her.” She pronounced this last in a whisper, as if Henrietta herself lurked in the room and might overhear. “I was obliged, don’t you see? Someone in the family had to make up for your shortcomings. And now, here she is on hand, the moment you return. She could drag the family’s name through the mire if she chose to. But you can prevent it from happening.”
She paused expectantly, but he refused to take the bait. He could wait. He’d nothing better to do while his cracked ribs mended.
“Oh, good heavens, do I have to spell it out?” his aunt exclaimed at last. “Make up for your past mistakes. Offer for the girl. Then she has no case.”
“As if she’d accept me after everything else that’s happened.”
“My dear boy.” She cackled. “I’m certain you can convince her. All you need to do is expend a little effort. Court the girl. You’ll bring her around. Honor demands you make restitution.”
What a Lady Craves Page 4
