As he walked, he contemplated his marital prospects. Lady Jane Babcock certainly had a duchess’ sense of entitlement, self-consequence and superiority. Perhaps that was why he had no desire to marry her. She also took exception to Smeeth and Thatcher, who were nonnegotiable as far as he was concerned.
The waning moon cast light enough for him to find his way over the bridge and through Bathwick.
Silently, he skirted the cottage and stayed in the shadows. He sidled through the rasping, overgrown roses to the ivy-covered wall, muttering threats to prune the blasted bushes to mulch. With practiced confidence, he climbed the ancient ivy to her dark window, which he found open a few inches. Again, he lifted the sash and slipped inside. Miss Haversham stirred in her sleep when the window closed with a thin squeak.
His heart stilled.
Her head surfaced, mussed hair escaped her thick braid. Her luminous eyes blinked several times. She rose up a few more inches and smiled.
That smile! Miss Haversham made him her champion with that tremulous smile. (How could that be? Hers was an ordinary smile, nothing remarkable, though her teeth were fine, white and even. Her lips were, admittedly, rosy and plump as pillows. Still. It was only a smile.)
That was the precise moment he knew it was hopeless.
He couldn’t hope to get her out of his system. Not tonight or ever. It was much too late for that. At the sight of her, his heart boomed in his chest like a mad timpanist played it. Blood pounded in his head and elsewhere. Prudence Haversham made him greedy in a way he never felt about a woman before. He wanted her every waking smile, every kittenish blink. He wanted to be with her not for one or two chaste nights of painful frustration, but for all nights to come clasped skin to skin in sweaty ecstasy.
Staying away had shredded his self-discipline. Waltzing with her last night made even fretful sleep impossible. Here, now, even in his sleep-deprived state, things suddenly snapped into focus. As much as he knew he shouldn’t have come, he was absolutely certain this was where he wanted – no, needed — to be.
Because he loved her.
Standing in the moonlight, he rumbled, “Your window was an open invitation, Miss Haversham.”
“It was not.”
“You deny it was open?” He murmured.
There was a long-suffering sigh before she replied, “I prefer to sleep with fresh air, Your Grace, so I left it open a crack. You couldn’t have known it was open unless you climbed within inches of it!”
“So you admit you left it open,” he drawled.
“Don’t be exasperating. You’re in my room uninvited.”
“Uninvited? But the window…” He said in feigned confusion and came to the foot of her bed. She blinked at him and slowly mirrored his smile.
“I concede the point,” she chuckled. “You were enticed.”
“Hello, nymph.”
“Hello, Your Grace. How kind of you to answer my summons.”
“I live to serve you.”
“What brings you here, apart from my shameless invitation?”
“Lady Jane can be exhausting but she’s harmless.” He leaned against the bedpost. “You mustn’t let her put you out of curl.”
“She’s tiresome, certainly,” she replied, “but what has Lady Jane’s harmlessness to do with me?”
“You seemed out of sorts today in conversation with her.”
“I haven’t slept well recently.”
“Ah. You missed me.” He swept his hand slowly over the counterpane at the foot of the bed.
“You are mistaken,’ she retorted, the truth of his supposition made her indignant. “I simply haven’t slept well.”
“I should think you of all people would have a remedy,” he flirted.
“I should think a night of uninterrupted rest would put me to rights, Your Grace,” she replied with waspish emphasis.
“You imply that I’ve disturbed your sleep but I haven’t visited you for lo these many nights.”
“Even so, whenever I hear the slightest sound, I wake.”
“Hoping it’s me, hmm?”
“Your arrogance takes my breath away.”
“And you find me breathtaking. I blush,” he chuckled as she snorted. “Well, now that I’m here, you may rest easy.”
“Mummification isn’t particularly restful either,” Prudence snapped.
• • •
What is wrong with me?
Here stood the literal man of Prudence’s dreams. Truthfully, she was more than glad he came for another inappropriate visit, even if only to defend his Lady Jane. Indeed, her body pulsed, her spirits lifted and her lips curved into a smile she couldn’t stifle. Simply because he was here.
Each day for the past week, she hoped he’d return; each night he hadn’t and her disappointment deepened. Then last night they danced. After which, Lady Jane descended upon her like a biblical plague. Now, in he popped to defend the plague-y blonde. The more she thought it over, the angrier she became.
“Nor do I find having a man sprawled on my bed soothing,” she added tersely.
“Perhaps with repetition…” he murmured.
“I think not, Your Grace. I prefer undisturbed sleep,” she huffed and slapped her bedclothes into order around her hips. Though she risked his leaving, she couldn’t help her simmering fury. I may be an idiot to have fallen in love with the man but I won’t play the fool. Let him ply his wiles on Lady Jane Babcock!
“A gentleman wouldn’t be alone with an unmarried woman in any room, much less climb into her bedchamber at night,” she spat, “yet here you are, courting scandal. Again. Or is causing my ruin your revenge?”
“No,” he whispered, looking away.
“You would never dream of importuning Lady Jane this way!” She hissed at him like a distempered cat.
“No. I would not,” he said, his expression unreadable.
“Well, I won’t have you sneaking into my home at all hours to torment me because you wish to repay me for something I truly regret doing. I regret my mistake and most of all I regret it was you! Why won’t you leave me alone?” She vibrated with frustration. “Do you despise me so very much?” Her throat closed and tears stung her eyelids.
Now he would leave. There’d be no more risk of ruin. No more warmth or laughter. She’d never see or speak to him again. Never dance with him. She slumped back into the pillows.
“No, I don’t hate you, Miss Haversham,” he said softly, the teasing tone gone from his voice.
“Then why are you here?” She glared at him in the dim moonlight. When he moved, he didn’t stalk away as she expected. He came closer.
“It seems I cannot help myself. When we’re not at loggerheads, you’re the most restful woman I’ve ever known.”
“Meaning I bore you unconscious,” she retorted, crossing her arms over her chest. He had plenty of other, proper ladies hanging on his lips, toad eating him, flattering and cosseting him at every turn. Prudence refused to take her place at the rear of the duke’s parade of adoring and more eligible females.
“No. I mean restful. Like you, I value undisturbed sleep,” he said quietly, watching her. “Lack of it makes me cross as well. But perhaps I shouldn’t have come. I’m sorry I disturbed you.”
He sounded so wistful, she almost regretted being angry. Almost. Then her temper flared. If his sleep was disturbed, let him stay home in his own bed. Have a glass of port. Review his estates’ ledgers. Read a dull book. She opened her mouth to say as much but made the mistake of glancing up at him in the moonlight. It was then she noticed the shadows under his eyes.
“What disturbs your sleep, Your Grace?” She asked, reverting instinctively to Miss H., apothecary. “Do you dream of battles?”
His large, long-fingered hand swept hypnotically over the counterpane and he smiled to himself. “Yes, I suppose some moments made quite an impression,” he said, smoothing a crease in the counterpane slowly. “May I?” He gestured to the foot of the bed. She nodded and something off-kilt
er righted itself inside. Her heartbeat slowed. He sat and then lay down fully dressed across the bottom edge of her bed.
“Do you dream of being wounded?”
“Occasionally,” he casually dismissed night after night of violent, blood-soaked dreams.
“I could prepare a sleep draught for you.”
“I don’t take opiates voluntarily.”
“It’s tea, Your Grace, without poppy syrup. Just chamomile and gentian. Very soothing.”
Without turning his head, he asked, “Do you recall your dreams, Miss Haversham?”
“Sometimes.”
“What do you dream?” He asked in a low murmur, “Where do you go when you drift off to sleep?”
She settled back, relieved that he would stay a while longer despite her churlishness.
“They rarely make sense,” she began to explain. “I dreamt recently of finding a bird with a chipmunk’s tail. It tried to fly away but couldn’t…”
She rattled on about her dream. All the while her body yearned for him. Every day, she longed for him. Now, having him within arm’s reach was infinitely worse. As desperately as she wanted to feel the strength of his neatly bundled muscles, she didn’t dare touch him. She wouldn’t survive the mortification if, like his brother, he accused her of throwing herself at him. She kept her voice carefully modulated and described the odd creature about which she dreamt. When she exhausted the subject, she fell quiet.
He lay at her feet without saying a word, waiting for her to continue.
Rather than drone on about a pointless dream, she screwed up her courage and whispered, “I know you’re sorry you came here tonight but you needn’t leave right away. That is, if you don’t wish to. If you want to rest here, you may. You’ll be a gentleman, I know. Truthfully, you might have more to fear from me than I from you.” She added with a soft chuckle, “But if I promise to behave myself, will you stay? Will you tuck me in?”
No answer.
“I have shocked you. Tucked or not, I will behave, you have my word on it.”
His breath huffed out slowly.
“Your Grace?” She sat up and looked closer at the prone man. He slept!
For all his talk of having trouble sleeping, he certainly had no difficulty dozing off in her company, she thought glumly. She’d bored him unconscious a third time. Ah well, one must make the best of a sad situation, she reminded herself. Might as well look at him to her heart’s content. He’d never know. She clambered to her knees and leaned close to study his face.
There he lay: her maddening, over-stimulating source of all earthly temptation. The man’s lips turned up slightly at the corners, making his face in repose boyish and vulnerable. His hair fell away from his brow in waves with a slight widow’s peak endearingly off center. Even his ears, neat as a nautilus shells, pleased her. He lay sprawled on his back wearing only a linen shirt. His right arm rested on his stomach, his left hand lay on his sternum over his heart. All he needed was a suit of chain mail, an unsheathed sword resting under his hands and a little dog at his feet and he would be the picture of medieval nobility enshrined in a stone sepulcher. Her hand hovered just above his chest, warmed by his heat. He was anything but cold as stone.
He twitched and shook then relaxed with a sigh. Or was it a moan?
• • •
Miss Haversham’s soft voice lulled Ainsworth to sleep and into the midst of the nightmarish fight once again:
It had rained all the night before and the dank air was saturated with smells of battle. He breathed sulfurous clouds of smoke that carried the stench of burnt flesh and brimstone. He felt the gut-pounding concussion of cannon fire, heard the screams of fallen horses and men, the crack and whistle of shots fired. All of it left a man blinded, deafened, sickened and disoriented.
He scanned the battlefield shrouded in choking smoke. He rode through the chaos until his horse reared, fatally struck by a bullet. As it fell, he felt a punch in his side. Another bullet found its mark. He had seconds, less perhaps, to fall free. He must not stay in the saddle to be pinned down, a leg crushed, helplessly awaiting the coup de grâce from a Frenchman’s dirty bayonet.
Instinct saved him. Despite the searing pain in his side, he kicked out of the stirrups and tumbled clear. As he staggered to his feet, he felt woozy warmth spread over his side and flank. Punched again by a bullet through the meat of his thigh, he pitched over. His leg throbbed but he could move it, thank heaven. The bone was sound. He struggled to regain his footing, so difficult in the splay of bodies beneath him.
A lance pierced his back and forced him face down, to rejoin the fallen in red and blue littering the ground. He smelled the most intimate realities of war: human sweat in unwashed, wet wool uniforms and urine. It was the odor no soldier mentions but instantly recognizes as the final indignity of violent death.
The copper tang of his own blood in his mouth and nostrils nauseated him. He labored to breathe and live through it.
Dimly he heard, or rather felt, the pounding horses’ hooves as cavalry charged. Theirs or ours, he didn’t know. They came galloping over ground strewn with bodies. Even horses at full gallop try to avoid stepping on the fallen but amid all the butchery, the ground was carpeted with the dead and dying. He felt a horse’s hoof, its crushing weight bearing down on him. Just before blessed oblivion, its iron shoe flayed away meat and skin as if to sever his shoulder joint.
Ainsworth awoke with a violent twitch to find Miss Haversham temptingly close, watching him, with a hand poised over his heart. She snatched it back without touching him.
“Oh! I thought you…” she stuttered and scrambled away from him.
Perhaps he’d cried out and she thought to soothe him. He would’ve remained longer in his nightmare if it meant she’d lay her hands on him. He hungered for her touch. He would gladly relive all of Waterloo so long as she held him throughout the ordeal.
“I apologize for the intrusion, Miss Haversham.” Ainsworth waited for her to excuse him but she said nothing. She watched him with her luminous, changeable eyes. Her silence confirmed his worst fear. Much as he wanted to be with her, she preferred him gone. Though patient and caring, she would rather have a night’s peace. He should’ve known.
Why must I want what I cannot have? A simpler life. The love of a good woman. A night’s sound sleep.
“If you’ll permit me, I’ll rest a moment more then be on my way.”
Miss Haversham bit her lip and looked away, “As you wish.”
Ainsworth accepted the pillow she offered him and tucked it behind his head. For her sake, he shifted to the very foot of the bed to put the greatest distance between them.
“Would you like some tea?”
“No, Miss Haversham. Thank you.”
“Are you comfortable, Your Grace?”
“Yes,” he lied. “Just tired. I shouldn’t have come.” In the dark, his voice faded to little more than a murmur. There was so much he shouldn’t have done, he realized too late. He shouldn’t have lost his heart, for one.
Ainsworth intended to rouse himself a short while later but when he finally opened his eyes, the night sky glowed cobalt blue in the east-facing window. Miss Haversham lay under the counterpane and he lay on top of it spooning her. His head rested beside hers on the pillow. Her hair tickled his nose. Her back pressed warm against his chest. His arm draped over her ribs with his hand palming her soft breast through the covers. His erection lay snug against her muffled bottom. All in all, it was a splendid way to greet the dawn.
The next instant, Miss Haversham jerked awake and wriggled away with elbows flailing, crying, “Drat! Not again. Wake up. You must wake up!”
Grinning but still groggy, he croaked, “Sleep well, nymph?”
“I slept too well,” she replied with a scowl. “Why are you smiling?”
“That’s progress, isn’t it?”
“Lunatic,” she snarled and shoved him for good measure.
Chapter 19
In which our
heroine reproaches our hero for his good behavior.
His vow of avoidance in shambles, the duke entered the Trim Street Apothecary the following day without an appointment. Ainsworth hadn’t the slimmest pretext for his call; his shoulder felt remarkably well. He simply wanted Miss Haversham’s cool, bare hands on his body. Anywhere. Even if she detested the sight of him, he would suffer whatever punishing cure she cared to mete out – even the dreaded pump syringe — so long as her hands touched him.
This, he concluded, had to be a form of madness.
Murphy escorted him to the treatment room and left him to fidget on his own. His heart raced and his palms sweated. He ran a hand roughly through his hair, his left hand, and quickly let it drop limp at his side as Miss Haversham entered at a brisk pace.
“To what do I owe this honor, Your Grace?”
“Wanted to see you.” Ainsworth shrugged out of his coat with no trouble and hoisted himself onto the padded table. Too late, he realized his mistake and added, “For treatment.”
“As far as I can determine you’ve mended quite well.”
“I’m merely stoical, Miss Haversham. We mustn’t stop now. I’m too pleased with my progress.”
The word ‘progress’ sparked fire in her incandescent eyes and she shook a finger at him. “I-I know what you’re about. Indeed, I do! I’m some sort of remedy to you!”
He unbuttoned his waistcoat, untied his cravat and chuckled, “I believe the term is ‘antidote,’ nymph, and you are far too attractive to be an antidote if that’s what you’re flying into a freak about. On or off?”
“On!” She snapped because he had begun to tug his linen shirt from the waistband of his buff doeskins.
“I mean remedy…a sleep potion, a nostrum, which is far worse than being an antidote,” she retorted, her glance flitted over the solid topography of his chest and lingered at the hint of dark hair in the shirt’s open gap at his neck. In a whisper, she hissed, “A remedy. Because I can be counted on to put you to sleep.”
The Duke's Tattoo: A Regency Romance of Love and Revenge, Though Not in That Order Page 13
