His heart thudded at her use of the word our. “She lives at Easton Grange, my—our estate in Kent.”
She was silent for some time, her eyes boring into his. Then she asked, “Have you ever considered that raising an illegitimate child under the same roof as your future heirs is highly irregular?”
The implied disapproval in her tone disconcerted him, but he met her gaze squarely. “I have. But I am her father and this is how I choose to conduct her upbringing, not from a distance and not diminishing my role to a mere provider of funds.”
“I object to that,” she declared flatly. “I demand that she be removed from my dwelling.”
His heart plummeted. She’d been ready to take Bea in hand only a few days ago. Had she changed so much with her loss of memory? And what could he say that would not alienate her and endanger this fragile new bond of theirs?
“I understand your objections,” he heard himself say. “But I will not relegate my daughter to the periphery of my existence simply to please my wife.”
Her countenance was unyielding as granite. He could scarcely draw in air. If they should clash on this point…if she should prove as obstinate as she was capable of being…
Her eyes softened. “Good. Her illegitimacy is not her fault.”
He reeled. “But you just—”
“I was testing you.” Her small smile was apologetic, almost sheepish. “You are a stranger, yet I must live with you and, well, be your wife. I wanted to know something of your character this instant. Forgive me my impatience.”
He breathed hard. “So I passed.”
“Beautifully.”
That might be the first word of sincere praise he’d ever heard from her.
It wasn’t just a new beginning, it was a whole new world.
He turned his face to the side. Helena blinked. His profile was perfect. Beyond perfect—the cameo brooch must have been invented so that someday it could be engraved with the silhouette of his features.
“I’d like to meet Bea at the earliest opportunity,” she said, so as not to be wordlessly gawking at him.
He looked back at her. “I’ll take you to Easton Grange as soon as you are well enough to travel. And thank you for taking an interest in her.”
“You don’t need to thank me. I am her stepmother, after all.”
He smiled, a warm, lovely smile. “Then I hope you won’t mind that I must leave to see Bea today.”
This surprised her. “All the way to Kent? Is it her birthday?”
“No, but she expected me on Wednesday. It is already Friday.”
“Why not have her brought to London?”
“Eat more,” he reminded her. “Unfortunately Bea does not leave Easton Grange.”
She dug into her porridge. “Why not?”
“She does not wish to.” He gave a barely perceptible sigh. “And she is not the kind of child who can be bribed with offers of sweets or dolls.”
“Not even for the woman who is raising her?”
“She doesn’t know you yet—you were going to meet her the day of your accident.”
“I see.” Helena supposed it made sense that she would leave London only near the end of the Season, but she found it less than impressive that she’d put off meeting the child. She should have introduced herself to Bea as soon as she became engaged to the girl’s father, especially given that Bea did not seem to be someone who adjusted easily to changes. “Are you departing now?”
“No, I’m loath to leave your side. I’ll probably need to ask Fitz to pull me away. In fact, it will probably take him, Lexington, and a few footmen to shove me into a carriage and then onto the train.”
When he’d told his story of turning into jelly at his first sight of her, she’d responded rather severely. There was a contrariness in her that refused to fall too easily in love with him: It would be the expected, expedient thing to do, and she did not want to commit to him simply for the sake of convenience.
But this time she couldn’t quite summon the same coolness. She dropped her gaze to her tray and ate the rest of her porridge without speaking.
The day nurse, Nurse Gardner, arrived alongside the maid who came to take away the breakfast trays. “My lord, Miss Redmayne asks that you engage in no further conversation after my lady’s breakfast. But you may read to my lady, if you wish, so that she may close her eyes and rest.”
“But it is not even midmorning,” Helena protested. “And I’ve been sleeping for three days, haven’t I?”
“Nevertheless, doctor’s orders,” said the nurse.
Hastings rose to examine a small, laden bookshelf by the window.
“You needn’t take the trouble. I’m not particularly fond of being read to—too slow.”
“Think of it as a therapeutic luxury, then: My voice is generally considered to possess the power to lure unicorns out of their secret forests.”
She barely remembered not to raise her brows to her hairline. “Conceited, aren’t we?”
“You used to tell me I had enough hot air to power an armada of dirigibles. And when I countered that people thought my voice lovely enough to rival that of a chorus of angels, you said that particular band of angels must have been singing with their rear ends.”
It wasn’t until she felt the pressure on her stitches that she realized she was smiling. Yes, it hurt, but she did not stop. The sensation of pleasure and mirth was as unexpected as it was wonderful.
“Ready for a few sonnets by Mrs. Browning?” He sat down again and opened the book he’d retrieved. “‘How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.’”
CHAPTER 9
Helena realized, as she began to doze off, that Hastings didn’t have a nice voice, but an extraordinary one: dulcet, golden, yet subtly powerful, like a distant rolling of thunder, or the reverberation of a faraway sea.
As she teetered on the edge of sleep, he stood over her and murmured, “If you should remember everything before I come back…”
Perhaps sleep overtook her; perhaps he never finished his sentence. The next thing she knew, someone was tapping on her arms. Groggily she opened her eyes—to Venetia’s beautiful face.
“Hello, sister dearest,” she mumbled.
Venetia smiled. She had a smile as exquisite as Hastings’s voice, but it could not altogether hide her concern. “Sorry to disturb you, my love. But we’ve been instructed to wake you up from time to time, to make sure you haven’t again lost consciousness.”
She helped Helena sit up. Helena accepted a glass of water and drank thirstily. “How long have I been asleep?”
“Five hours, more or less.”
“Is Lord Hastings back yet?”
How odd that this morning his very existence was a shock to her, but now she wanted to know his whereabouts.
“No, sorry. He said not to expect him before dinner. Would you like to eat something? You are in time for a very late lunch, or a very early tea.”
“Porridge again?”
“Since you kept down your breakfast, Nurse Gardner has decreed you may have some broth and a bit of a convalescent pudding.”
“Hmm, pudding. I am in a state of unspeakable anticipation.”
Venetia smiled again and rose to ring for the pudding.
“Did you get any rest yourself, Venetia?”
“I went for a quick drive and a walk in the park with my husband—I’m only with child, not ill. I did, however, lie down for half an hour just now, since he presented me with an irresistible bribe.”
With great pomp and circumstance, Venetia revealed the “irresistible bribe.” What Helena had imagined to be a piece of pretty bauble turned out to be nothing of the sort, unless during her absence of memory it had become fashionable for ladies to wear sinister-looking talons as accessories to their silk and muslin summer dresses.
“What is that?”
“It’s a tooth from a prehistoric crocodilian. Those beasts grew to dizzying sizes. They could probably reach up from their swampy dwellings a
nd snap in two most of the smaller saurians coming for a drink of water.”
“Good gracious. And your husband gave it to you as a bribe?”
Venetia’s face fell a little. “Oh, I forgot you don’t remember. I—we—excavated a dinosaur skeleton on the coast of Devon the summer you were fourteen.”
“An entire skeleton?”
“Eighty-five percent complete, I’d say.”
The impotence of her mind vexed Helena. How could she not remember such a remarkable event as pulling a near-complete dinosaur skeleton out of the ground?
“I have pictures, if you should like to see them,” said Venetia tentatively. “You are in the pictures, too.”
Helena made herself smile. “Yes, of course. I’d love to see them.”
But seeing the pictures would be troubling, wouldn’t it, as if she were witnessing someone else live her life?
She changed the topic. “By the way, where am I? I can tell by the smell of the air that we are in London, but is this my house, yours, or—”
“This is Fitz’s house; he inherited it along with the title.”
“I always thought the title would go to that second cousin of ours, if the earl didn’t have any male issue of his own.”
“So did we all, but Mr. Randolph Fitzhugh was already quite elderly—he passed away before the earl did.”
“Wasn’t there still someone else between Fitz and the title?”
“Yes, another cousin—he also didn’t outlive the former earl.”
“Do we have cousins who survived?” Helena tried for a joking tone, but she couldn’t help a twitch of fear in her heart.
“Our Norris cousins are all doing well. Margaret married a naval officer. Bobby is a naval officer. And Sissy is a missionary in Hong Kong.”
Sissy who could never sit still in church?
A week ago Helena would have known that Sissy had turned devoutly religious. A week ago she’d have been able to give vivid descriptions of the prehistoric monster Venetia had excavated. A week ago her entire life would have been in a state of perfect order: happy siblings, a thriving firm, and a devoted husband.
She ate some pudding, trying to calm herself. “What about our Carstairs cousins?”
Venetia’s expression instantly turned sober. “We don’t have any Carstairs cousins left.”
“What? There were four of them!”
“Unfortunately they all died within an eighteen-month span. Lydia in childbirth, Crespin from influenza, Jonathan of bad oysters, and Billy”—Venetia grimaced—“Billy died by his own hand—it was whispered he was suffering from an advanced case of syphilis.”
The pudding now tasted of mud; Helena set down her spoon. She’d been fond of Billy Carstairs, a moody but kind young man, always saving scraps from the table to give to the village strays. And the rest of the Carstairses had been a noisy, fun-loving bunch, the youngest born on the exact same day as her.
All dead, all gone, leaving behind only a row of headstones in the graveyard of a parish church.
She gripped Venetia’s hand. “I’m so glad you are still here, and Fitz, too. If I should have woken up to find either of you gone…”
She couldn’t quite continue.
“Now you know how we felt, love.” Venetia kissed the back of Helena’s hand. “And you can scarcely imagine how thrilled we are to have you back. Don’t worry about old memories. We’ll make new ones. We are all together now and that’s the only thing that counts.”
Hastings swung between wild euphoria and feral fear.
Helena liked him. She genuinely liked him. It was as if he’d looked up from his lonely altar in the Sahara to find it raining. Barely a drizzle, to be sure, but still it was actual precipitation, when there had been nothing but burning sky and parched sand for centuries upon centuries.
Yet by the time he returned to her side…
It was one thing to have never been given a drop of rain, quite another to have felt the cool, sweet sprinkling on his face, and then to be denied the experience ever again.
If only he could have stayed with her, soaking up every last ounce of her lovely attention. And if only he could leave this moment to rush back to her side. But he was on one knee before Bea’s trunk and likely there to stay for a good long while.
“I know I didn’t come when I said I would and I am very sorry for that,” he repeated himself for the hundredth time. “But I couldn’t, you see. Miss Fitzhugh—Lady Hastings, my wife, your new mother—was injured and I didn’t know whether she’d live or die. I couldn’t leave her.”
No response. Bea hadn’t had such a bad case of the trunk for at least six months. But then again, for the longest time he’d been scrupulously careful about his schedule.
“If you were badly hurt, you’d want me to stay with you, wouldn’t you, Bea? You wouldn’t want me to fly off and visit someone else.”
Still no response.
He sighed. He had no idea how long they’d been at it. There were now three telegrams from Fitz in his pocket—he’d asked Fitz to cable him hourly to keep him abreast of Helena’s condition. At least she had not succumbed to cranial bleeding. He lowered himself to a sitting position, with his back against the side of the trunk. “Want me to read you a book? One of our stories?”
“I am badly hurt,” came her little pip of a voice.
It was the first thing she’d said to him since his arrival. He smiled ruefully, but also in relief. “Where are you hurt, poppet?”
The trunk had a little door at the bottom. It opened and out came her small, thin foot. He took it in hand, turning it one way, then the other.
“Listen,” she said.
“Ah, of course. If you will excuse me for a moment.” He fetched the stethoscope from his room, returned to the nursery, and rubbed his palm against the chest piece to make it less cold. He put the earpieces into his ears—Bea, who took her medical diagnoses seriously, could see out from the airholes that had been drilled into the sides of the trunk—and listened to her foot.
“Your blood seems to be pumping sluggishly and that is never good for one of the extremities—atrophy might result. In my opinion, dear Bea, you should take a walk. Exercise strengthens muscles and will make your foot better in no time.”
She didn’t say anything.
“I’ll come with you on the walk, of course.”
A long silence. “And supper?”
“I will stay for supper. And I will read you a bedtime story, too. Now will you come out? Or at least give me a time for when you’ll come out.”
Another long silence. “Four.”
It was only a few minutes past three, but at least it was something to look forward to. He murmured a silent thanksgiving.
“Sir Hardshell?”
“Of course, poppet.”
Sir Hardshell was Bea’s pet tortoise and one of Hastings’s potential headaches. No one knew exactly how old it was, except that it had been a resident at Easton Grange since the estate was first built sixty years ago, long before the property’s acquisition by Hastings’s uncle. And before that, Sir Hardshell had served for nearly thirty years as a ship’s mascot on various merchant marine vessels.
Hastings could only pray that Sir Hardshell would live to a legendary age. Bea did not deal well with changes, and there was no change more permanent than death. He made a show of listening to the tortoise’s heart and various other organs. “He sounds old, poppet, ancient. A hundred twenty, at least. You should brace yourself for the possibility that he might not make it through another winter.”
Bea made no reply. He exhaled—at least Sir Hardshell was still alive today. He set the tortoise on the floor to roam the edges of the nursery. “Shall I have some tea and biscuit sent up for you, Bea? And read you a story in the meanwhile?”
“Yes,” she said. “Yes, Papa.”
His insides invariably turned into a warm puddle when she called him Papa. He rang for her tea, sat down again next to the trunk, and closed his eyes for a mo
ment—awash in both exhaustion and gladness—before opening the storybook he’d hand-made for her. “Shall we start with your favorite, the one about Nanette’s birthday?”
The clock struck ten.
Marking at least fifteen minutes of continuous kissing for Fitz and Millie.
Helena hadn’t meant to be a Peeping Jane. Around half past nine, after she’d been talking to her brother and sister-in-law for some time, she’d dozed off. When she’d heard the next quarter hour chime on the clock, she’d forced herself to wake up, not wanting to sleep too much too early and then be wide-awake at night.
Also not wanting to miss Hastings. He’d cabled before he left Kent to let them know he was on his way, and she’d experienced a small flutter of anticipation when she’d learned the news.
But when she’d opened her eyes, she’d witnessed Fitz and Millie engaged in a passionate embrace, Fitz’s hands in his wife’s hair, one of Millie’s hands at her husband’s nape, the other somewhere too low for Helena to see from her supine position.
The polite thing to do, Helena decided, was to close her eyes and let them finish their kiss before making it known that she was once again conscious. But apparently there was no such thing as finishing a kiss, as far as those two were concerned.
She was mortified—the sounds they made could not be unheard and she’d never be able to look either in the eye again. But at the same time, she was…
She would not mind being party to a similarly heated kiss.
How would it feel to grip Hastings’s soft curls? To have his lips against hers? And to hear him emit involuntary noises of desire and relish?
A soft knock came on the door. At last Fitz and Millie pulled apart. There came hushed giggles and whispered words as they tried to make Millie’s hair look less disheveled.
The knock came again, slightly louder.
Again giggles and whispers, followed by Fitz clearing his throat. “Come in.”
The door opened. “I’m sorry,” said Hastings. “Were you already asleep?”
That voice of his—it might not lure unicorns out of their secret forests, but it could conceivably make howlingly bad verses sound like a lost Byronic masterpiece. And the question was quite tactful, giving Fitz and Millie an easy excuse for their delay in answering the door.
Tempting the Bride Page 11
