“No, I am fine,” Hawk said, but he rose anyway, a measure of his nightmare-muddled senses, Alex thought, as he allowed her to lead him, much as he had led her earlier, into the bedroom. By her guess, the time must be going on two in the morning.
With the only light in the bedchamber coming from a candle left to drown in its own wax, and a scuttle’s worth of glowing embers, she sat Bryce on the edge of the bed and went for his shirt studs.
Stud by stud, Alex divested her husband of his damp shirt and replaced it with the dry one, though, neither of them sought to replace the studs.
Somehow they communicated without words that he would retain his trousers, though Alex ascertained, with a sweep of her hand along one tensely muscled thigh, that they were not as damp as his shirt had been. Then he allowed her to tuck him into the bed, and after she went around to climb in on the opposite side, he even accepted her warmth beside him.
“Cold are you?” he asked, after a silence, more in derision than question. “I warned you.”
“Umhmm.” Alex sought his hand, clenched tight at his side and cupped the hard fist, despite his resistance, taking a good deal of satisfaction in stroking his knuckles with her thumb.
He sighed, then, either in relaxation or resignation, Alex could not be certain which, as she kissed his temple.
“Be still and let a man sleep,” he said.
Before long, Alex heard the soft rumble of his deepened breathing and she reveled in the beauty of the moment.
Somewhere near dawn, during that sweet drifting time between sleep and wakefulness, Alex thought she felt a hand in her hair, someone’s breath upon her brow, a butterfly-soft kiss, but before she could ascertain whether it was a dream or not, her husband left the bed.
Pleased to believe she had not been dreaming, Alex slipped back into the waiting arms of Morpheus.
Hawk woke her hours later, close to noon, gruff and impersonal once more. They departed Stephen’s Hotel before breaking their fast, with his promise that they would stop soon.
Alex surmised that his sullen, somber mood must have to do with his nightmare.
SIX
AFTER TRAVELING for nearly an hour, in the throes of a need to drive himself beyond endurance, Hawk ordered a stop at the Old Welsh Harp Inn, along the Broadway in West Hendon. Alex needed to stretch her legs and refresh herself, and Myerson needed as badly to water the horses.
Hawk realized that this was not a war game he was playing, that slogging on would not catch the enemy unaware. Neither would it drive them beyond the enemy’s reach, for in weak moments, Hawk very much feared that his worst enemy lived inside him.
He secured a bedchamber where he and Alex might both freshen up, but as soon as they entered, the great four-poster in its center loomed large, bright and boldly inviting, in counterpoint to the future, which loomed dark, narrow, and depressingly bleak.
Alex did not love him, Hawk reminded himself, and she deserved better, at any rate. He excused himself and stepped outside on the pretext that she could refresh herself at her leisure and in peace and privacy.
When she came down, he seated her in the private dining parlor he had secured, and took his turn upstairs. By the time he returned, the future seemed so grim, that any appetite he might once have imagined no longer existed.
While they waited to be served, Alex caught him up on his sister Rose’s daughters, now his wards, all the while keeping her aversion to his scars from her expression, even in the well-lit parlor, where his every imperfection must appear obtrusive and hideous.
Beatrix had been four and her sister, Claudia, fifteen, when their widowed mother died of consumption. Among the few remaining members of Hawk’s family—besides his sister-in-law Sabrina and her children—Claude and Bea had been his wards for a year, Alexandra’s for nearly twice as long.
Alex regaled him with homely tales that revealed just how much she had come to love his nieces, proving he had been right in his decision to go to war. They had been better off with her than they would ever have been with him. If only they could all remain together now that he was back.
But he owed Alex such a debt of gratitude, the least he could do was set her free.
“Bea has so vivid an imagination,” Alex said, “that we never know what she will fabricate next. Last month, she told us she was a fairy. And what must we do before every meal but carefully fold her invisible wings for all of ten minutes, so she could sit properly back against her chair to take sustenance. Claudia informed her in exasperation one evening, that everyone knew fairy wings were supposed to fold flat without help, but Bea replied sadly that hers were defective.”
As the meal progressed, Hawk actually felt the knots ease from his shoulders and the heaviness of dejection lift from his spirits.
“At one point,” Alex continued, “the imp insisted for weeks that she had been turned into a mermaid, though her tail fin was suspiciously invisible. She reminded us, of course, that mermaids have no need of baths.”
“Devil take it, you did not allow her to go without bathing for all of that time, did you?”
“Oh yes, but not without the requisite swims to keep her scales shiny and magical.”
Guilt halted his laugh somewhere deep in his throat, where it sat like a lump of stone. So many of his comrades had died, and Hawk knew, more than most, how they felt at the last, making mirth impossible to sanction. “You have been a good parent to the girls,” he said. “Thank you.”
Sometime while they talked, the Inn specialty, turkey and ham pie with Cumberland sauce, Oyster Creams, and assorted savories, had been placed before them hot and well spiced. The service had been quick, the serving-ware and servers clean, and the ale smooth and dark. And despite himself, Hawk relaxed and ate the entire meal, even the Orange Fool—a dessert recipe likely filched from Boodle’s.
By the time they were ready to leave, the rain, which had barely begun when they arrived, was coming down in torrents.
“A good thing we are no more than an hour or so from Devil’s Dyke,” Hawk said, standing beneath the Welsh Harp’s small front overhang, watching their carriage shudder beneath the furor of the windy downpour.
“With the muddy roads,” Alexandra said. “That hour may very well turn into two or three.”
“Right. Shall we make a run for it, then?” They dashed toward the carriage, running between the raindrops, as the young Alex used to say.
After they set off again, they fell into a rather uneasy silence, Hawk dividing his time between trying not to stare at the agreeable sight of his wife, and gazing out the window. He no longer took any of the sights for granted, however, given the fact that he never expected to see her, or the town where they grew up, again.
“Nothing changes here,” Alex said, cutting the tension, as they drove through the center of St. Albans. “The old curfew tower stands yet.”
“As it has for centuries.” He almost felt welcome just seeing it.
Alex chuckled. “Remember the day I talked you into following that poor, keening sheepdog up to the top?”
“I remember every one of those ninety-three steps,” Hawk said, with a grimace. “I remember that somehow I got locked in at the top with her while she delivered six squealing pups.”
“Well, I went for help.”
“The pups were amazing,” Hawk admitted. “Though I still shudder over the scrapes you got me into.”
“I?” Alex said, using the same innocent tone that saved her satin skin that very day, though back then, he had not pondered her skin’s texture with such morbid and single-minded preoccupation as he had been wont to do today, Hawk mused.
“And there,” she said, with the excitement of a first-time visitor, “is a piece of the old Roman wall. My father said every other generation wanted to clean up those ruins.”
“Destroy them more like.”
“But somebody always managed to save the old city enclosure for succeeding generations.”
“I clearly recall the day a
certain brat climbed that particular section, when she ought not, me at the bottom shouting for her to come down.”
“I told you there was a mewling kitten up there, and it was stuck, and I saved it, but you were such a scold, you made me fall.”
Hawk scoffed. “Did I also force you to tell your father that nothing hurt, until your wrist swelled like a hot air balloon, so a doctor must be fetched?”
Alex grinned.
Hawk shook his head. “As always happened, you charmed a chuckle from your father, while mine thrashed me with a birch cane for encouraging you.”
Drawn by the combination of sympathy and mischief in her eyes, Hawk was shocked anew by the desirable woman his bride had become, and discomfited anew by the tension churning in the pit of his belly because of it. Which made it doubly surprising to him, that any of the old ease in her presence existed, particularly with a war and two weddings now standing between them—never mind an annulment, if she but knew it.
This burgeoning physical awareness, however, was something new and as enticing as it was frightening. “How old were we,” he asked, “the first time you lured me into trouble?”
“I was three and stuck at the bottom of the dyke. You were eight and tried to rescue me.”
“Slipping down a forty-foot slope of mud was easy, as I recall, getting back up, impossible.” When he spotted her, his clothes had been, as always, pristine. Her knees had been scraped bloody, her dress torn, and mud caked her short, curly hair.
When they were rescued, after the most fun ever, they were in the same sorry state. That had been the first time his father warned him away from Alexandra Huntington.
“It only took being stranded together that day for us to become fast friends,” she said. “If I remember correctly, we were inseparable after that.”
“Because, no matter how hard I tried, I could not shake my tenacious shadow, a bit of a sprite, but more of a spitfire. So small, I thought you might break, though I soon discovered that you were sturdy as a tree trunk, and thrice as stubborn as its roots.”
“And I made you laugh, you said. You loved having me around. Do not pretend otherwise. Stubborn, did you say? Me?”
Hawk shook his head, looking back. “In my arrogant maleness, I did not, for the most part, mind keeping in tow, a female who venerated the ground upon which I walked, until I learned that you had been warning other girls away.”
Alex covered her mouth with a hand, but the bright light in her eyes revealed not one whit of remorse. “You knew and did not try to thrash me?”
“By the time my indignation took hold, I was off to Oxford and it no longer mattered. What drove me most to distraction was your goading me into some lark or other that broke a corresponding rule, for which I, not you, would be punished. I suffered mightily for that penchant in you. Why were you always after breaking rules, Alexandra?”
“I only broke a rule when I had good reason to do so. Besides, you made up half the blasted rules, yourself, as if rules and the following of them were the be-all and end-all of existence.”
“They are more than that. Rules, whether written or unwritten, like honor and ethics, are the very backbone of a civilized society.”
Alex closed her eyes and laid her head back, as if overtaken, at once, by weariness. “Pity you did not follow any rules where your family was concerned.”
Hawk winced, for her blade struck bone. Having come from a long line of privileged rogues, he had always attempted to act more civilized than his less-than-exemplary ancestors. He had prided himself on following a code of ethical conduct that would keep him from wreaking the kind of havoc his father and grandfather, and scores of other male ancestors, had perpetrated before him.
He had treated his tenants with generosity and respect, bedded only those women who wanted bedding—lucky for him, a great many had back then. He had gambled only with rich, greedy, bird-witted men who seemed to want to lose, Chesterfield prime among them.
Against his father’s exhortations that he owed more to his name than to marry the penniless Alexandra Huntington, he had married his maddening hoyden of a neighbor, the plague and nuisance of his growing up years. Because she had no other chance for marriage, or so he thought, and would have a better future as a rich and titled widow. And because she was prudent, trustworthy, resourceful and penniless, and would appreciate the favor he did her.
He had married her, because she would take better care of his family than he, while he was off fighting Boney, a glory for which his father had offered everything a son could ever hope to have.
Glory bedamned. His father bedamned. Waterloo had been worse than hell. He had gotten what he deserved, going off to war, but Alexandra had not deserved what she got, yet her life had been altered as well.
Hawk would never forget the look on her face when he bid her farewell at the church immediately following their wedding ceremony. God’s teeth, he had used her ill.
As if that had not been bad enough, he was so eager to fare off to glory that he married her and shipped off to France before the reading of his father’s will. He had known that all Hawksworth brides were well provided for at the time of their husband’s deaths. He had known it and counted upon it.
He still did not know what had gone wrong in the case of his bride, for his father’s old solicitor had also passed away, leaving everything in the hands of his nephew, who had been traveling since Hawk returned.
He had not known that he left his family to be cast off by his heir, without a farthing to their names or a roof over their heads. Or that they had been forced to take up residence in Alexandra’s ramshackle manor, between St. Albans and Wheathampstead. But, devil take it, she was right; he had not followed his own code of conduct where his family was concerned. God knew how they had managed, though he would learn soon enough.
Alex opened her eyes of a sudden, in something of a panic, as if to ascertain whether he was actually there.
“Did you fall asleep and think you dreamed me?” Hawk asked. “Or would that have been more of a nightmare?”
“I dreamed, but I did not sleep,” Alex said enigmatically. “And as to whether you might be a dream or a nightmare, if you do not already know that answer, then you do not deserve to know it.”
And what did that mean? With that faraway look in her eyes, Hawk had feared she was dreaming of Chesterfield, the bloody knave, but now he was not so certain.
“Tell me,” Hawk said, to turn her thoughts. “How stands ‘the house that Jack built?’”
“It stands.”
“Always a promising beginning.”
Alex nodded. “It is improved in some respects,” she said, “and worse in others.”
“I regret that I did not make provisions for you all,” Hawk said. “You were right. I ought to be drawn and quartered.”
Alex tilted her head, considering his offer, as if perhaps he ought, and Hawk felt that old need to suffer for his failures. What better did he deserve? “You must have wanted to trounce me when you found out–.”
“When you believe someone has died, your thoughts do not usually run toward vengeance,” she said. “But you should have realized, Bryce, that you could die in the war and that your heir might inherit. What were you thinking?”
He could offer no excuse, damn his eyes. He thought only of pleasing his dead father, but if he told her so, she would despise him the more, which he would deserve.
“What did faring off to glory get you, anyway,” she asked, “but dead, which might more easily be true, than not?”
“You are not telling me something I have not told myself a score of times. Now I have to undo the whole blasted mess, and my countenance does not help. Few people, if any, recognize me, though my voice, in some cases saves the day.”
“Your voice frightened me witless, coming from a derelict off the street, or so I thought you.”
Hawk paled and sat straighter. “My sincere apologies, Madam, but my physiognomy is not something that can be altered. Go
d knows, I would, if I could.”
Alex sighed. “I have no aversion to your appearance, Bryce, which is not entirely unpleasing, you may not know. You were simply unknown to me at the time.”
“A derelict, Alex?”
“Look at your hair,” she said. “Did you ever, in your stylishly groomed life, wear it wild and flowing away from your face, for all the world as if it were a lion’s mane? Though it is too devilish dark to be any such thing, of course. And those clothes. They are not even yours.”
Hawk fingered the frockcoat he might have tossed on the flames a war and a lifetime before. “Do you not appreciate my stylish attire? Is the weave of the fabric not fine enough for you?”
“As if clothes ever mattered a jot to me.”
“These clothes were a gift from the peasant family who nursed me back to health, I will have you know.” Hawk shook his head, but he could not help looking back. “I remember they were as pleased to present them as I was to receive them. I have nothing else to wear, as things stand, and by the time Sabrina told me of your upcoming nuptials, I had less than an hour to stop you. I could think of no better way than to go myself, my destitute appearance notwithstanding.”
His words furrowed Alex’s brow. “Had you been in London long? And Sabrina knew you were there?”
SEVEN
HAWK COULD NOT precisely say why he had been back so long without contacting Alex, because he could no more explain it to himself than to her, but knowing the length of time would only hurt her, he decided on a temporary half-truth. “I have been back long enough to discover that you were no longer living in my London house and that you did, in fact, sell it, for which I planned to teach you some vengeful lesson.”
“I most certainly did not sell your house. What kind of lesson?”
“I learned the truth before your lesson was ever devised.” He shrugged. “I soon discovered that my heir tossed you out and later disposed of the townhouse, that you were living at Huntington Lodge and taking excellent care of the family. Again, thank you.”
Scandalous Brides Page 5
