“We dozed off a bit just now,” answered Millie.
Helena was astonished at how guileless Millie sounded. This sister-in-law was more complicated than Helena would have guessed solely by looking at her sweet features and self-effacing demeanor.
“You are late,” said Fitz. “Bea was not happy with you, I take it?”
“It took me ages to coax her out of her trunk. How is Helena?”
“Better. She wants to be served a beefsteak tomorrow.”
“I thought she doesn’t like beefsteaks.”
She didn’t?
“We’ll let her find out for herself whether she still feels the same way,” said Fitz. “About beefsteaks…and other things.”
What other things? Helena decided it was time to join the conversation. She made a soft, sleepy grunt.
“Is she still awake?” asked Hastings.
“She was asleep earlier. Perhaps we are disturbing her by speaking in here.”
Helena produced another small grunt and slowly opened her eyes. Hastings took a step toward her. “Did we wake you, Helena?”
His words were soft, but his jaw was tense. In fact, his entire person was tense, as if he were about to meet a battle of impossible odds.
“You are back,” she mumbled.
She must have said something comforting, for instantly the strain in his face was replaced by a look of indescribable relief. He smiled. “Yes, I’m back.”
“I haven’t remembered you,” she felt obliged to point out.
He touched his fingertips to the edge of her bed, a startlingly intimate gesture even though he’d done nothing suggestive. “That does not in the least diminish my joy at seeing you again, my dear.”
Fitz cleared his throat. If Helena didn’t have her stitches to mind, she’d have raised an eyebrow as high as the battlements of the Tower of London. She failed to see why a man who kissed his wife like a starving man devouring a fresh loaf of bread ought to interfere when another man greeted his own wife in a most decorous fashion.
“Did you have supper, David?” Fitz asked.
“I did, thank you.” Hastings turned to Fitz. “Where is the night nurse?”
“We told her to get up and stretch her legs. She’s been cooped up in that chair for hours,” said Millie.
Hastings nodded. “I see.”
“Fitz, Millie, why don’t you two go take your rest?” said Helena. Or be up half the night with noisy indecencies, if you so prefer. “Lord Hastings can stay with me until the night nurse returns.”
At her suggestion, a number of looks were exchanged among Fitz, Millie, and Hastings. Helena was vaguely disconcerted. Why did everyone always act surprised whenever she wanted a moment of privacy with her husband?
“Well, then, David, we’ll leave her safety and well-being in your capable hands,” acceded Fitz.
Fitz and Millie kissed Helena on her good cheek before they murmured their good nights. Hastings closed the door softly behind their departing backs. “How are you, my dear?”
“Much, much better. No more abdominal troubles, only one faint bout of nausea, and…” She lost her train of thought for a moment as he came to the foot of the bed. His long fingers traced the tapering segment of the bedpost nearest him—fingers that, given that they were newlyweds, must have freely traced the curves of her body only days ago.
“And what?” he prompted.
“And—the headache is far more tolerable.”
“Excellent.” Now he spread his fingers against the bedpost. She swallowed. “My apologies for waking you up. I wanted to be back sooner, but Bea wouldn’t come out of her trunk.”
He’d mentioned the trunk earlier, to Fitz and Millie. “What trunk?”
“She has a trunk she climbs into when she is upset.”
Belatedly she realized that he looked different: He’d put enough pomade into his hair so that only the very ends still curled. The pomade also made his hair look darker, more brown than blond. “Wouldn’t she asphyxiate inside?”
“I had holes drilled in the sides of the trunk. And there is also a small opening near the bottom through which one can hand her a cup of tea and a biscuit.”
An odd child. Helena could think of nothing worse than locking herself in a trunk. “She is not like other children, is she?”
“No child is like any other, but she does lack those instincts and skills to even remotely resemble other children.” He sighed softly. “Between you and me, I have no idea whether I am doing the right thing by waiting beside the trunk and coaxing her out. My uncle would have burned the trunk, forcing her to light the match, no less.”
She didn’t know why she found his uncertainty so attractive. She supposed she must like a man who was both humble enough to question his decisions and brave enough to admit it. “Is she genuinely distressed when she goes into her trunk?”
“Yes.”
“Then you are not doing anything wrong by being patient and kind.”
He smiled again at her, a smile both tired and happy. Something tugged at her heart. She slid her fingers along the top of the bedcover. “I never had a trunk—I could not tolerate being inside one even for hide-and-seek. But we did have a very tall tree at Hampton House. When I became particularly upset for any reason, I’d climb to the highest branch and then be stuck there, not knowing how to get back down to the ground.
“My father had a ladder especially built for retrieving me. He married quite late and was forty-five by the time Fitz and I were born. So he was at least fifty when I developed my habit of angry tree scaling. But he always came for me himself instead of sending a servant, and some of my happiest childhood memories consist of being carried on his back while he negotiated his way down that long, long ladder.”
He’d gazed at her steadily as she recounted her story, but now that she was silent, she found it more difficult to hold his gaze. “You probably already know the story,” she said, for something to say.
“No, it’s the first time I’ve heard it,” he answered, sounding thrilled about it. “You think someday Bea will speak of the trunk and her waiting father to someone?”
“She should. I would.”
The praise felt too warm—so warm that her cheeks turned hot. The way he watched her, she was sure he sensed this rise in her surface temperature. She cast about for something less warm. “What did you do to your hair? I don’t like it as much.”
His brow knitted. “How do you like it?”
“I prefer the curls.”
He looked as if she’d told him she preferred him with three eyes. “You used to make fun of them. You told me that if Bo Peep had a child with one of her sheep it would have hair like mine.”
She burst out laughing—and gasped at the pain that shot through her scalp. “You are not making it up, are you? Did I really say that?”
“Sometimes you called me Goldilocks.”
She had to remind herself not to laugh again. “And you married me? I sound like a very odious sort of girl.”
“I was a very odious sort of boy, so you might say we were evenly matched.”
She didn’t know enough to comment upon that, but when he was near, she was…happier.
Neither of them said anything for some time. The silence was beginning to feel awkward when he glanced at the door and asked, “Fitz and his wife weren’t actually dozing, were they?”
That seemed a much safer topic of conversation. She seized upon it. “No, they were kissing as if there were no tomorrow.”
He grinned. “And you were peeping as if there were no tomorrow?”
If only she could toss back her head. “I will have you know that once I realized what they were doing, I kept my eyes firmly shut. They should have made sure I was truly asleep before pawing each other.”
“It was probably all they could do to dispatch the nurse elsewhere.” He looked toward the bedpost, where his fingers probed the depth of its spiral grooves. “When one has kissing on the mind, it becomes difficult to
think of many other things.”
The man was doing something to her. Despite her weakness and discomfort from the accident, and despite the fact that only hours ago on this same day she’d had no idea who he was, she felt…stirrings. “Did we used to kiss like that?”
Surely she hadn’t meant to ask such a question. But there it was, hanging bright and shameless between them.
His fingers stilled. “Occasionally.”
She bit the inside of her lower lip. “Only occasionally?”
He glanced at her askance, a half smile about his lips. “How often do you recommend we should have done it?”
She had no choice now but to brazen it out. “As often as I wanted, of course.”
Had it not been deep in the night she might not have heard the catch in his breath—or the subsequent unsteadiness as he exhaled. Heat curled in her abdomen.
“In that case, we did it as often as you wanted.” His hand was again on the edge of the bed, fingers rubbing against the linen sheets. “And you liked it very, very well, if I may add.”
That same heat was now everywhere inside her. “Am I supposed to take your word for it?”
He took a step closer, his eyes the color of a clear sky. “You can have a demonstration if you don’t believe me.”
A knock came on the door, startling her. “That…must be the nurse.”
“Drat it,” he said, a touch of rue to his smile. “So much prowess, so little chance to prove it.”
“Maybe when you have curly hair again.”
“Maybe I’ll make you kiss me first and prove your sincerity,” he said as he walked toward the door, “before I will stop pomading my hair.”
After the nurse took her seat, he did not leave, but sat down in the same chair he’d occupied in the morning to read Mrs. Browning’s sonnets.
“My lord, my lady needs to rest,” the nurse reminded him.
“Yes, of course, good nurse. I will not bother Lady Hastings, but sit here quietly.”
Helena was both pleased and surprised. “You don’t wish to sleep in a nice bed of your own?”
He shook his head firmly. “I’ve been away from you long enough this day.”
Her heart pitter-pattered. “It will be uncomfortable.”
He raised her hand and pressed a kiss into the center of her palm. “What’s a little discomfort compared to the joy of being near you? Now sleep, my dear; you’ve much convalescing left to do.”
She did not take much time to go back to sleep. Hastings remained awake for much longer, savoring each moment of her nearness.
It still felt like a dream to be allowed to sit next to her for hours on end. The sweet intimacy of watching her fall asleep was a privilege he’d never hoped for, not even when he wrote fiction about them. And to converse as they did, exchanges that meant something—a whole new world indeed.
He didn’t know when he fell asleep, but it was a little past four in the morning when he suddenly awakened with a stark fear in his heart. He immediately looked toward her. In the muted light from the covered electric sconce, she lay flat on her back, her chest rising and falling with a comforting cadence. He let out a sigh of relief—and only then saw that her eyes were open and a trail of tears glistened on her temple.
He touched her hand. “What’s the matter?” he whispered, not wanting to wake up the softly snoring night nurse.
“Nothing.” Helena wiped away her tears, grimacing a little as her fingers touched still-bruised skin. “I’m just being sentimental.”
“May I ask about what or whom?”
She inhaled unsteadily. “My Carstairs cousins. Do you know them?”
“Yes. I went to a great many of their funerals.”
Another teardrop rolled down the side of her temple into her hair. “I can’t believe they are all gone—especially Billy.”
His eyes widened.
She, staring at the ceiling, did not notice his reaction. “He was probably my father’s favorite among all my cousins. And mine, too. Such a gentle way he had with animals—they loved him, one and all. And the way he died was so horrible, I can’t help feeling heartbroken for him. Which is silly, of course, since I must have already shed buckets of tears earlier.”
“You didn’t shed any tears for him,” he said.
Her lips quivered. “I probably wouldn’t have let you see me cry, since we weren’t married then.”
“You didn’t attend his funeral, Helena.”
This stopped her tears. “What? Was I ill?”
“No, you were perfectly fine. You didn’t go because you loathed Billy.”
She scooted higher to rest her back against the headboard. “That’s impossible. I adored Billy. You should have seen how sweet he was with my puppy—or even stray dogs.”
He recognized her digging in her heels. And he, alas, possessed the questionable talent of making her dig in her heels even harder. But he had no choice but to go on. “Billy was nice to puppies, but he was loathsome to women. He raped five women in his service. Each time it was hushed up, but everyone knew. By the time of his death, there were no women working in the Carstairs house.”
She stared at him, her jaw slack.
“You had trouble believing it the first time, too. It wasn’t until you were eighteen and walked in on him trying to corner a fourteen-year-old maid that you changed your mind. So if you don’t believe me, I understand.”
She shook her head much harder than she ought. “No, no, you mistook me. Of course I believe you.”
Now it was he who stared at her, incredulous and—ecstatic. She took him at his word. She trusted him. Nothing like this had ever happened before.
“You’ve no reason to speak ill of the dead,” she went on, the fingers of her free hand flexing restlessly. “And it would have been to your advantage, in fact, to say something nice when I was weeping over him. I’m only speechless at how wrong I was. Father died when Billy was twelve, so he can be forgiven for not realizing what a monster Billy would become. But where was I for the next so many years? It should not have taken me that long to see the truth—and here I thought myself so clever in all things.”
“You are clever in just about all things,” he told her. “Clever, discerning, and wily. But there is also a streak of sentimentality to you. You don’t form attachments easily. When you do, you love with a great intensity and you are forgiving of flaws and weaknesses.”
She seemed surprised by his defense of her, then grateful, then bashful. “You are not speaking of yourself here, are you? You look like a man full of flaws and weaknesses,” she said, her tone half-teasing.
“That I may be, but you’ve never forgiven a single flaw of mine, much to my disappointment.”
She looked away for a moment, her fingers plucking at the sheets. “Well, at least that put an end to my silly weeping.”
He reached forward and placed his hand over hers. “Why don’t you go back to sleep? You need your rest.”
She cast him a sideways glance, but didn’t say anything.
“What is it?” he asked.
She only smiled—or perhaps smirked—with her eyes.
His heartbeat accelerated. “You are thinking of something.”
“Maybe I am.”
“Tell me.”
His hand still covered hers. But now she turned her hand so that her thumb grazed a slow line down the center of his palm. His breath caught; heat coursed up his arm.
“That demonstration you offered—I’ll take you up on it.” Her eyes turned even naughtier. “But not just yet. You must wait more time.”
“Really?” he drawled.
He rose from his seat, set his arms on either side of her, and closed the distance between their lips until only a bare inch remained.
She was surprised—and excited. Even in this dingy light he could see her pupils dilating. She licked her lips; his fingers clawed into the pillows. Their agitated breaths mingled, and all he had to do was lower his head a little farther…
He pulled back, sat down again, and smirked as she had. “You are right—not just yet. You must wait more time, my dear.”
In the morning light, Helena examined her pate, wondering whether Hastings would have kissed her during the night if she’d had a cloud of soft, wavy hair spread out on the pillow, the visual equivalent of a siren song. “I believe I may declare with great authority that I prefer not being bald,” she said ruefully.
She was surrounded by women: the day nurse, waiting to wrap fresh bandaging around her head; Venetia, holding up the mirror; and Millie, one finger on her cheek.
“You are not completely bald,” pointed out Millie. “Your hair is already growing back.”
“Never mind the hair,” said Venetia. “That hoof could have taken out your eye; at least hair grows back.”
Helena sighed. That was quite true. “Not to mention I can’t remember anything of your dino—”
Into her mind tumbled the recollection of warm summer air brushing against the skin of her nape, alternating with salty, cool breezes from the coast. She’d been sitting under a tree with a book in her hand—Wuthering Heights, to be exact—hadn’t she? And Venetia had shouted from somewhere behind her, Fitz, Helena, come look at what I’ve found.
“I remember,” she said very softly, not wanting to scatter her newly returned memories. “I remember. It was a big brute, your fossil. We knocked about it for an hour before we decided that the three of us were no match for it. Fitz suggested we ask for help from the village, so we did. And every male over the age of five volunteered.”
Venetia stared at her for a few seconds. Then she shrieked and hugged Millie hard—the way she couldn’t hug Helena. “That’s exactly what happened. You do remember! You do, you do!”
She let go of a startled Millie, laughed, and wiped her eyes at the same time. “Well, actually, not exactly what happened. There were no five-year-olds following me. Seven-year-olds, perhaps, but not five-year-olds.”
Helena laughed, too, and didn’t care at all about the discomfort it caused. “Maybe not five-year-olds, but there was that one boy who must have been no more than four, and for the remainder of the excavation he stood six inches from you, staring.” She turned to Millie. “You think Venetia is beautiful now, but she can’t hold a candle to her sixteen-year-old self. She used to pack the streets with spectators.”
Tempting the Bride Page 12
