Tempting the Bride

by Sherry Thomas

  Venetia smiled hugely. “Wait till I tell Lexington what a terrible bargain he received, getting my old, ugly self instead of the fresh, pretty one.”

  She did not need to go find her husband. The door swung open and he was right there. “Are you all right, Duchess? I heard you scream.”

  Venetia rushed up to him and grabbed his arm. “I’m perfectly fine. Helena remembered our dig.”

  “The Cetiosaurus?” enthused Lexington, placing his hand over his wife’s. “Excellent. That’s what? Six months later than what she could previously recall?”

  “At least seven,” Venetia corrected him.

  Fitz and Hastings now joined Lexington at the door, which was becoming quite crowded. “What is all the commotion about?” asked Fitz.

  “I remember Venetia’s dinosaur,” Helena announced, feeling as proud as the first time she read a book all by herself.

  “Thank goodness!” cried Fitz. “That is wonderful news.”

  Helena’s attention turned to Hastings, whose hair was still damp from his bath. He smiled, too, but there was a hollowness to the smile. “Venetia found the dinosaur only weeks before I visited Hampton House for the first time. Do you also remember that?”

  Helena’s glee deflated some. “No, not that. At least, not yet.”

  Hastings exhaled. “I suppose it will happen some other time, then.”

  His reaction puzzled her. Taken together with his relief the night before at her continued state of nonremembrance, and his general nonchalance over their years of shared history wiped clean, one might be tempted to say that he didn’t particularly long for the return of her memory.

  “My lady,” said Nurse Gardner, “we should have your new bandages on.”

  Helena belatedly remembered her bald head. “Gentlemen, would you mind?”

  They murmured their apologies and left. Hastings glanced back at her, his gaze fearful, as if she were not getting better, but worse, and any moment could be their last together.

  It was only a matter of time.

  Hastings sat by her bedside, his head in his hands. He knew this. He knew this all along. But he’d hoped for a little more time, a little more of this miracle.

  “I see you’ve wisely decided not to hide your curls from my ravenous sight,” she said, startling him.

  He straightened in his chair. “You are awake.”

  “And have been for several minutes.”

  He helped her sit up higher and rang for her luncheon. “Admiring my cross-between-golden-retriever-and-French-poodle hair?”

  One side of her mouth lifted. “I am ravished by the beauty of those curls.”

  She probably wouldn’t speak so flirtatiously had they not been alone. But the day nurse had gone to use the water closet. He retook his seat. “Ravished, eh?”

  “Indeed. But I would have been even more ravished if I weren’t wondering at the same time why you look so dejected.”

  Of course she’d notice. Hadn’t he himself told her, only hours ago, that she was wily, discerning, and clever? And he hadn’t been exactly subtle in his reactions, ricocheting from dread to hope and back again in dizzying succession.

  He raked his fingers through his hair. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to distract you from the pure joy that is my beauty.”

  She studied him for a moment. The bruises on her face were fading more rapidly now; in a few more days they would be only faint smudges of discoloration. And her eyes—her gaze was at once intense and sympathetic. He’d seen her look at others this way, but never him.

  “Why don’t you want me to regain my memory?”

  The bluntness of her question made him perspire. But he met her eyes and answered truthfully, “I do want you to regain your memory. You’ve made many friends and lived an interesting and accomplished life. It would be a crying shame if you can’t look back and see this path you’ve blazed for yourself.”

  She considered his answer for a moment. “But?”

  Was she ready for the whole truth? Was he?

  “Do you remember what I told you about melting into a puddle at my first sight of you?”

  She smiled just perceptibly. “Yes.”

  “My sentiments were not reciprocated. You took a look at me and went back to your books. You were not one of those girls who fell in love easily, not to mention I was five inches shorter than you. I, on the other hand…”

  He’d declared his love again and again when she’d been comatose. But if he uttered those words now, with her perfectly awake and lucid, he’d never be able to repudiate that sentiment. And she would always know.

  He played with the edge of her bedding, not quite meeting her eyes. “I, on the other hand, fell madly in love. And when I realized that I was invisible to you, I resorted to gaining your attention by any means possible.”

  “What did you do?” Her tone was amused, fond even.

  “The better question would have been, what didn’t I do?” He raised his face. “A week after we first met I tried to pinch your bottom.”

  She stared at him, halfway between outrage and laughter. “Truly?”

  “My only defense is that I knew I wouldn’t be able to feel anything—women wore enormous bustles then. All I wanted was for you to notice me.”

  “Did I hit you?”

  “A tremendous, well-deserved punch to my face. I walked around with a black eye for a week—and was a bit sad when it faded away completely.”

  Her lips trembled with mirth. “My goodness, such a romantic.”

  “You find it funny now. But imagine if your recently recouped memory had extended a few more weeks to include my first visit to Hampton House. You’d think me quite the despicable snot.”

  “And all you have to do is prove to me that you are not.” Her hand reached up and took a strand of his hair between her fingers. “Simple as that.”

  She gently pulled on that curl and let it go. “It’s so springy.”

  They’d barely grazed at the truth, but she was satisfied—and distracted. By his hair, of all things.

  “I feel like a sheep that has been overlooked during spring shearing,” he murmured.

  “Yes, adorably fluffy.”

  Another time he might have protested the use of that adjective. But now he was all too relieved. “Would you like me to pull my chair closer, so you may fondle my hair with greater ease?” he asked.

  She beamed at him. “Why, yes, I’d like exactly that.”

  In the evening she asked him to read Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. He gladly obliged, reprising his performance from earlier, with distinct voices and accents for the characters. He did so well that Nurse Jennings, the night nurse, clapped at the end of a chapter.

  Helena joined in the applause. “Bravo! Bravo! And you have read the book to me before, have you not? I have a sense that this is not the first time I’ve heard the Cheshire Cat purr like that.”

  “No, the only other time I’ve read the book to you was when you were unconscious.”

  She appeared mystified. “I don’t suppose I can remember anything from those three days, can I? Yet I’ve a distinct feeling I’d heard you do a similar reading.”

  Was she about to experience another opening of the floodgate? And how far would she remember this time? His fingers tightened around the pages. “I don’t know what to tell you.”

  She made a resigned pull of her lips. “I must be imagining things, even though I’d swear I’m not.”

  He looked down at the book. “Would you like me to go on to the next chapter?”

  She pondered her choice. “Nurse Jennings, would you care for a bit of fresh air just now?”

  Nurse Jennings did not need to be asked twice. “I should dearly love it. Thank you, my lady.”

  Hastings held his breath. Helena wanted to speak to him in private. Had she remembered something crucial?

  The door closed behind Nurse Jennings. Helena turned toward Hastings. “I must have been completely distracted by your ravishing curls earlier
. The more I think about it, the more I am puzzled. Why should you dread the return of my memory so much if the worst you ever did was put your hand once on my bum?”

  So no further recovery of memory—at least not yet. “Well, let’s see. When I visited your house the next summer, I’d grown two inches, but alas, so had you. You towered over me as much as you ever did and ignored me with vicious cruelty. So I set up a trap to lock the two of us together into a wardrobe in the attic. Unfortunately you were one step ahead of me and locked me in by myself instead.”

  She grinned toothily. “Well done, me.”

  “You didn’t let me out for six hours—it was only by the grace of God that my bladder held. And when you finally came to release me, you wore such a spectacular smirk—it haunted me for months upon months.

  “The summer we were both seventeen I was almost tall enough to look you in the eye, but still frustratingly half an inch short. On the other hand, I was no longer a virgin, having been freshly plucked a fortnight before, so I made sure to corner you at every opportunity and inundate you with all the lurid details.

  “You’ve always been a bit of a beanpole, so I made sure to tell you how enormous the barmaid’s bubbies were and how round her arse. Then I told you about her sweet cherry of a mouth—nothing but pout, but which managed to swallow me whole.”

  Her jaw fell—it was a somewhat shocking conversation, even between spouses. “What did I say to that?”

  “You said, ‘To fit entirely into a little cherry of a mouth, you must have a tiny endowment.’”

  She burst out laughing. “What did you say to that?”

  “I sputtered something, protesting that hadn’t been what I’d meant, but I couldn’t exactly pull down my trousers to prove you wrong. You, coldhearted wench, you retorted, ‘I’m sure you didn’t mean to divulge such embarrassing personal details, but don’t worry. Pay the barmaids enough and they won’t laugh at you.’ Then you winked at me. I was utterly humiliated.”

  She chortled with glee. “My, I was something else.”

  “So was I, one might say, quite the annoying twit.”

  And was that conclusion enough to explain his alarm at the possible return of her memory?

  She covered her mouth and yawned. “Excuse me. I can’t believe how much sleep I need these days.”

  He felt himself unknotting with relief. “Then sleep. Your health is the most important thing right now.”

  “Would you mind starting the next chapter of the book?”

  “Of course not. I’ll read until you fall asleep.”

  She took one of his curls between her fingers. “Fitz has a room for you. You don’t need to sit in a chair all night.”

  He rubbed a finger on the edge of the book. “I want to.”

  Now she lay her entire palm against the ends of his hair. “In case I wake up in the middle of the night crying again and need someone to smack some sense into me?”

  In case this was the last night he was allowed such a privilege.

  “Something like that,” he answered. “I might have been a twit and a snot earlier in life, but I’ve grown up to be the voice of reason and the repository of good sense.”

  Helena’s stitches were removed the next morning. She was also declared to be out of danger, no more fears of cranial bleeding. She immediately wanted to be out and about, but acquiesced under the combined weight of Miss Redmayne’s advice and her family’s insistence that she continued her bed rest for a few more days.

  At least she was allowed to read. Hastings introduced her to the book she’d written for writers seeking to understand the inner workings of publishing. He also brought her secretary, Miss Boyle, to her bedside, to furnish the necessary explanations for her to deal with Fitzhugh and Company correspondence that had accumulated during her absence.

  It was, interestingly enough, not as dispiriting a process as she’d thought it would be, trying to relearn in scant days everything that had earlier taken her years to master. She was more frustrated by the lack of progress on the part of her memory. Given that she’d regained a not insignificant portion soon after she awakened, she’d expected to make similar progress, if not every day, then at least every other day.

  But the recovery of memory, alas, followed no regular schedule. She was beginning to fret that nothing else would come back when, on the fourth day after she awakened, while Hastings was again away in Kent to visit his daughter, she suddenly recalled the weeks surrounding Venetia’s first wedding.

  Venetia had been seventeen and Helena and Fitz fifteen. Most of Helena’s thoughts at the time had revolved around her fear that Venetia might have made a terrible mistake in her choice of a bridegroom. Hastings, alas, did not feature at all in the resurfaced memories, except as an aside from Helena to Fitz, hoping he wouldn’t bring his stupid friend to the festivities, and Fitz replying that Hastings couldn’t come even if he wanted to, as he had to attend his guardian’s funeral on the same day.

  When Hastings returned, she eagerly recounted her new recollections and teased him for his unfounded fear: Her opinion of him in the present hadn’t been at all affected by the new revelations of the past.

  He took a deep breath. “But I wasn’t wrong. You didn’t like me in the past.”

  “In the distant past,” she pointed out. “And I already knew that.”

  He smiled rather wanly. “Well, congratulations. I know how much you wanted to remember more.”

  She fluffed his lovely hair. “Don’t be so afraid. I’ll keep you—if just for your curls.”

  This second recovery of memory dispelled much of her anxiety: It was only a matter of time before she had everything back. And in the meanwhile, her physical self grew ever stronger and more energetic, her siblings were both well and happy, and she had Hastings, who, when her eyes grew sore and weary from reading correspondence addressed to Fitzhugh and Company, read the letters aloud to her, making even the driest business dispatches sound like love letters from Keats to his beloved Fanny Brawne.

  One afternoon, Helena awakened from a short nap to find Fitz, rather than Hastings, sitting by the bed, reading a business report of his own.

  “David is at a meeting with his business managers,” he informed her before she could ask the question.

  “Excellent,” she said, “so he does have something else to do. I was beginning to worry that I was his whole life.”

  “You don’t seem worried,” Fitz replied wryly. “Indeed you seem greatly pleased that he has devoted so many hours to you.”

  She grinned and chose not to directly address that comment. “I’m surprised to see you without your wife.”

  “So am I, as a matter of fact. But she has a charity committee meeting to attend, and I thought I’d profit by calling on another one of my favorite women.”

  He smiled, the corners of his eyes crinkling very slightly in the sunlight streaming in through the window. Fitz had always been a handsome young man, but she could see now that he was also going to be quite a handsome older man someday.

  “I’ve been such trouble to you,” she said impulsively, feeling a rush of love for this dear brother.

  “I’m torn between answers.” His expression turned mischievous. “Should I say, ‘Not at all’? or, ‘We are used to it’?”

  She chortled. “Either way, you—and everyone else—have been too kind to me.”

  Fitz set aside his report. “Including David?”

  “Yes, including Lord Hastings.”

  He leaned forward in his seat and regarded her for a moment. “You like him.”

  She was not yet quite comfortable admitting to an outright attraction to her husband, but she was able to say, “I could do far worse waking up to a stranger as my husband—I am quite grateful to my own good taste.”

  “Hmm,” said Fitz.

  She raised a brow—how wonderful to be able to use every muscle of her face without fear of pain. “Now, what does that mean, sir?”

  “It means, dear sister,
that I’m glad to hear my friend spoken of so highly. He was devastated when you ejected the contents of your stomach upon being introduced to him.”

  She grimaced. “That was a complete and utter coincidence. My stomach had been feeling unwell from the moment I opened my eyes. The nausea happened to build to a crescendo when Hastings was presented to me—nothing to do with him at all. Besides, I’ve since formed a favorable opinion of him.”

  Fitz tented his hands under his chin. “So are you ready to decamp to his house and be his wife?”

  “I can’t live under my brother’s roof forever when I am already a married woman. But as for becoming Hastings’s wife in truth—I’ll make him court me a little more. Mother always said, bless her memory, that a girl ought not to bestow her favors too easily or too quickly.”

  She was half jesting, but Fitz’s brow furrowed. “You are not planning to flirt, then thwart him, are you, my dear?”

  That was not an opinion she’d expected from her own dear brother. “You believe that’s what I will do?”

  “The truth is, I haven’t the least idea what you will do.” Fitz sighed. “I only ask that you have a care with my friend, Helena. He is entirely besotted with you, and that puts him utterly in your power. Keep in mind that while he is perfectly capable of making fun of himself, he is far from thick-skinned. If anything, he is more sensitive than most.”

  This surprised her—Hastings had seemed utterly fearless. “Is he?”

  “Yes, very sensitive. And very proud.”

  She was disconcerted to be reminded that she’d known her husband for only a few days, that her knowledge of him, however intimate to her own mind, was far from complete. “Thank you, Fitz. I will remember that. And…” She hesitated a second. “And his heart is safe with me.”

  Fitz regarded her another long moment before he smiled again. “I’m glad to hear that. Shall I ring for some tea?”

  On the last day of Helena’s convalescence, Hastings was obliged to travel to Oxford to attend the funeral of a classics professor under whom he’d studied and with whom he’d corresponded regularly in the years since.