Tempting the Bride

by Sherry Thomas

  His face only became more anguished. Why did he and Hastings both exhibit such extreme reactions? Was it possible he was afraid to lose her as a publisher? “Am I contracted to publish further works by you?”

  His teeth clamped over his lower lip. “Yes, two more volumes on the history of Anglia.”

  “Then I shall stand by my commitment. And I will read your works and familiarize—or refamiliarize—myself with them, so as to better prepare for your next manuscript. Our publishing agreement will not be in the least affected by my indisposition.”

  At her firm reassurance, however, he seemed only to become more dejected. He set down his teacup. “That is most kind of you. I’m glad to see you are doing well, and I really ought not to take up any more of your time.”

  He rose and bowed slightly.

  “Would you not care to speak to me of your books?” she asked, still disoriented by the peculiarity of his demeanor.

  But he’d already left.

  Hastings had long considered the addition of the Fitzhugh family to the murals. Their figures would be quite small, their faces too indistinct to be recognizable. But they’d be dressed in English fashion of the previous decade, quite unmistakably a band of tourists.

  He traced a finger on the path that wound down the side of a hill. He could put them on the path, and have a breeze lift the ribbons on the ladies’ hats. Their attention could very well be drawn to the ruined monastery on the next hill, except for Helena’s. Her face he would paint turned directly to the viewer—to him.

  “Do all my authors act so strangely in my presence?” Her voice came from the door. “And do you always turn white as a sheet and run when one of them comes to call?”

  His heart thudded in thunderous relief—Martin in person had not triggered a collapse of the dam that held back the greater reservoir of her memory.

  “Who is that man?”

  He tensed again. Something in her voice told him that this time her suspicion had been well and truly aroused, that there would be no distracting her with a head of golden curls, no matter how fluffy and springy.

  “Do you have any idea why he thought it acceptable to call on me at such an hour? And why, by the way, did you act so strangely?”

  He didn’t answer immediately.

  Her voice became more insistent. “What are you withholding from me, sir? Why haven’t you looked once in my direction? Do you know that you are appearing quite guilty, even though I can’t fathom what wrongs you might have committed?”

  The time for truth, the entire truth, had been thrust upon him.

  He slid the pad of his index finger along the top of the wainscoting. “I used to be secretly jealous of Mr. Martin, who was a great favorite of yours,” he said, still without looking at her.

  Her tone was one of utter bafflement. “Mr. Martin?”

  “Yes, Mr. Martin.”

  “But I married you, didn’t I? That ought to have settled the debate of who is my greater favorite.”

  His fingers gripped the edge of the wainscoting, as if so flimsy a hold could anchor him in place when the storm came. “We are not married,” he said. “We are only pretending to be married.”

  Helena understood the individual words Hastings spoke, but together they made no sense at all. “How can anyone pretend to be married? Did we hold a pretend wedding as well? And why would my family allow such a state of things to stand?” She sucked in a breath. “Or do they even know?”

  “They know, but they have no choice but to let the pretense stand, at least to the world at large.”

  Various muscles in her face contracted and tensed. She had no idea whether she was grimacing or trying to laugh at the ludicrousness of what he was saying. “Explain yourself.”

  He looked skyward, as if praying for a miraculous intervention. “In the life you no longer remember, it was not me you loved, but Mr. Martin.”

  Distantly, she marveled that she still remained standing. “I don’t believe you,” she said. Or perhaps she was shouting, for he seemed startled by the vehemence of her words. “I can’t have loved Mr. Martin. I felt nothing—nothing at all—when I saw him.”

  “Nevertheless, you have loved him since you were twenty-two years of age,” he said, his eyes melancholy.

  Was this a dream from which she couldn’t awaken? Five years of loving Mr. Martin? “Then why didn’t I marry him, if I’d loved him for so long?”

  He shrugged. “Circumstances.”

  She tried to peer through the curtain in her mind, but her past was as impenetrable as a London pea souper. “He is a gentleman and I am a lady. What kind of circumstances would prevent us from marrying if we so chose?”

  “He was already slated to marry someone else—not engaged, but under heavy expectations.” Hastings slanted his lips to one side. “He did not defy those expectations.”

  The implication of this last statement thundered in her head. “Mr. Martin is married?”

  “Very much so.”

  “When did he marry?”

  “February of ’ninety-two, six months after you first met.”

  She felt as if she’d been shoved to the ground. “And until just before my accident, I was still in love with him?”

  “You never took to any other suitor. He and his wife had little to do with each other. In time you persuaded him to have an affair with you.”

  She wasn’t just lying on the ground, she was being trampled by a stampede of wildebeests. “What? When?”

  A shadow of pain crossed Hastings’s face. “The two of you would be the only ones to know when it started. All I can tell you is that I discovered you in January of this year. Your sister and sister-in-law immediately took you out of the country.”

  As well they should—she’d have done the exact same thing.

  “Unfortunately the strength of your feelings for him was such that when you returned to London, you sidestepped the surveillance your family put into place, and met him at the Savoy Hotel. That meeting, however, had not been set up by either of you, but by his sister-in-law, intending on exposing wrongdoing on his part.”

  Her skeleton felt as if it would rattle apart with the force of her shock. She stared at Hastings, wishing his words would stop. But he went on, his tiding of evil news relentless, inexorable.

  “I happen to know the sister-in-law’s husband, who’d said she was up to something. I also happened to intercept the message she’d sent to Mr. Martin, pretending to be you. I followed Mr. Martin from our club to the hotel. When I realized what was happening, I ran up the stairs to warn you, with his sister-in-law coming up the lift at roughly the same time. There wasn’t enough time to get Mr. Martin to safety, so we hid him in the bath and pretended that we had eloped and were enjoying our honeymoon.”

  A part of her still hoped he’d shout, “April Fool!” at any moment. But deep in her heart she recognized the inescapability of truth.

  She swallowed. “How much time elapsed between the incident at the Savoy Hotel and my accident?”

  “Your accident happened the next morning.”

  What had Mr. Martin said when he called on her? If anyone should apologize, it is I. I believe you were coming after me the day of your accident—probably concerning a matter having to do with my latest manuscript.

  Whatever she’d wanted to speak to him about, it would not have concerned his latest manuscript. She flushed. She could not imagine herself chasing him in broad daylight, so intent that she’d very nearly forfeited her life to that carriage.

  “You still don’t remember, do you?” Hastings asked quietly.

  She shook her head. Perhaps it was for the best. She was beyond mortified—a married man, and she pursuing him in the streets as if he’d made off with her reticule.

  “What did I see in him?” she asked no one in particular. She could not imagine herself breaking all rules of propriety for someone who inspired as little feeling in her as Mr. Martin.

  “He was a sweet, openhearted man. You truste
d him utterly.”

  “My judgment was obviously impaired. I set myself at the risk of ruin, and my family at the risk of utter humiliation and heartache. They would never have been able to acknowledge me again. And my God, Venetia’s baby. I’d never have been able to see my nephew or niece.”

  “This is your family we are talking about. They let you become a publisher with little more than a raised brow or two. They would have let you see Venetia’s child, but you would have needed to be extremely discreet.”

  She could scarcely breathe for her searing aversion to this reckless, selfish woman who had been described to her.

  “Don’t be so hard on yourself,” he said gently. “You are judging your action—and Mr. Martin’s—without context. He was a winsome young man, very well liked for his bright smiles and good nature. Caving in to his mother’s insistence on the matter of his marriage turned him more timid, more doubtful, and, ultimately, less joyful. But you’d fallen in love with someone who had not yet made that terrible mistake, who was full of hopes, dreams, and a sincere idealism.

  “You lost him when you loved him the most, a difficult blow that never quite softened with time. When you met Mr. Martin in subsequent years, you saw not the man he became, but only the one he’d been, the one you’d have gladly married if only you’d had the chance. Perhaps you forgave him too much, but who among us would not wish to be so generously loved and generously forgiven?”

  She leaned back against the doorjamb. His kindness was a balm to her badly singed soul. She let herself wallow in the magnificence of his compassion, the sweetness of his friendship.

  He took a step toward her, his brow furrowed with concern. “Helena, are you all right? I hope you are not angry that we haven’t told you sooner. It is a complicated story and not always a happy one, and we didn’t quite know how to—”

  She held up her hand for him to stop. The only person she was angry at was herself.

  “Helena—”

  She adjusted the cuff of her right sleeve rather unnecessarily. “Where were you in this doomed, idiotic love affair of mine?”

  His surprise at her question was followed by a wistful smile. “On the outside looking in.”

  “So all this—” She gestured at the glorious mural he’d created for her and didn’t quite know how to go on.

  “I’ve always loved you,” he said, his eyes a blue that was almost violet. “You know this.”

  She swallowed a lump in her throat. “I only wonder whether I deserve such devotion.”

  “Sometimes people fall in love with those who do not return the same strength of feelings. It is as it is,” he said with a quiet intensity. “What I give, I give freely. You owe me nothing, not love, not friendship, not even obligation.”

  CHAPTER 11

  Now everything was out in the open.

  Hastings felt at once exhausted and unbearably light, all his secrets unloaded. She, on the other hand, looked as if the weight of a continent had settled on her shoulders.

  He closed the distance between them and touched his hand to her sleeve. “It has been a long day. Would you like to take some rest? I can have some refreshments sent up.”

  She gripped his lapels and yanked him toward her with surprising strength. “How dare you leave me alone in my hour of need.”

  He had rarely been more startled. “That is not what I—”

  “I know.” She let go of him and smiled sadly. “And what I meant was, ‘Stay with me.’”

  “Of course. Would you still like to have tea sent up? There are books you like in the sitting room. I can read to you from—”

  She gripped his lapels again. “I thought you were more clever than this.”

  She looped her free arm about his neck and kissed him, her tongue seeking his with a need that had him all but moaning aloud.

  He forced himself to pull back. “Wait!”

  “No.”

  “Helena, you’ve just been told some shocking news. You are not feeling quite yourself. You should be taking a bath, or having something to eat, not leaping on a fellow you didn’t even like ten days ago.”

  She set her hands to just below his ears, her fingers cool upon his skin. “I want this. And I want this to be our wedding night. Now.”

  She was looking at his lips. It took a moment for him to remember what he meant to say. “Helena, you can’t disown a past you don’t even remember by taking me to bed.”

  “I don’t want to disown my past,” she whispered. “I just want you. I have never wanted anything as much as I want you at this moment.”

  His head spun. His ears burned. And his lungs must have collapsed in shock, for he couldn’t draw in another breath. It was not only raining in the Sahara Desert; it was pouring like the beginning of the deluge.

  In the back of his mind a voice begged him to disengage. This was no time to give in to his yearning, the voice beseeched. She would hate him for it when her memory came back.

  But an entire jubilant chorus shouted in objection to the timidity of the lone voice of reason. Why allow all the old memories to have supremacy? Make new ones, memories of such luster and beauty that, should the old ones come back, they would be pallid and impotent in comparison.

  “David,” she murmured.

  His heart thumped. She’d never before called him by his given name.

  “David. David. David,” she repeated.

  Their gaze locked. He tried to find some irrational desperation in her eyes, but he could see only wonder, affinity, and undisguised desire.

  Suddenly he was the one yanking her to him, the one kissing her as if this were his final hour on earth, the one lifting his arms heavenward in awe and gratitude as rain came down in torrents in the heart of the Sahara.

  Helena already knew that her husband was a man of many talents. Now she added supremely deft fingers to that list of gifts. She had no idea he’d opened the bodice of her dress all the way to her waist until he was pushing the sleeves down her arms.

  She slapped him lightly on the hand. “This is for dallying with all the other women when you should have been chastely waiting for me.”

  He kissed her again. “What penance will you order for me? Will you make me fall to my knees and worship you between your beautiful thighs?”

  The place between her thighs quivered rather forcefully at his suggestion. She couldn’t say a word in return.

  “Yes, I believe I shall do just that,” he murmured.

  “You’d better do it very, very well.” She somehow found her voice. “Or I’d consider it not done at all.”

  He spoke directly into her ear. “I love it when you order me to do precisely what I want to do.”

  The brush of his breath, the nip of his teeth on her earlobe—she trembled with the unexpected rush of pleasure and shoved her fingers into his hair.

  He kissed her neck. “I never knew I wanted a woman to tug at my hair—until you.”

  She pulled him to her by his hair and kissed him hard. “Like this?”

  “Dear God, exactly like that.”

  So she did it again, her throat, on its own, issuing little noises not very different from those Millie had made when she and Fitz had been going at each other in Helena’s room.

  Distantly she heard a thud and realized it was the sound of her corset hitting the floor. She pushed him back. “You will not remove another article of clothing from me until you remove a few of your own.”

  He grinned as he yanked out his necktie. “You are such a pushy woman.”

  “I am.” Her hand lifted to play with the curl at her ear, only to remember she had no hair to flirt with. No matter, she tossed aside her turban and batted her eyelashes at him. “But I am only ordering you to do exactly what you want. I’ll bet you’ve been waiting to show off your ‘perfectly built’ body for years.”

  His jacket fell to the floor, followed by his waistcoat. He glanced at her sidelong as he extracted his cuff links. “Are you ready? You won’t swoon on me, will y
ou?”

  She gave her lower lip a long, slow lick. “Make me, darling.”

  His shirt disappeared. She sucked in a breath—he had not exaggerated. Everything was shapely: his shoulders, his arms, his flat, well-muscled abdomen.

  “Decent enough.” She exhaled. “Now the rest.”

  Which she was suddenly most eager to see.

  He tsked and came closer. She might be slim, but she was tremendously tall and not precisely fine-boned. But he lifted her out of her dress as if she weighed no more than a good pair of gentlemen’s riding boots. “I’ve wanted to see you naked for far longer. You’ll just have to wait for your turn.”

  “There had better be sky-high praises waiting for me,” she warned him as he divested her of her petticoats. “I do not disrobe for anything less.”

  “Young lady, you had better earn those sky-high praises.” He caught her lips for another kiss. “The youth of today are spoiled with unmerited applause, and I have no intention of giving a single compliment before it is warranted.”

  He opened all the buttons on her combination and pushed it down to the floor. Then he took two steps back, squinted, and studied her. She grew nervous as the seconds passed. She didn’t have the most womanly of figures. When she’d been a child she’d been all sharp knees and sharper elbows. Her breasts were probably the smallest pair God had on hand. And He never did send hips, leaving her with a body about as curvaceous as a plank.

  The man before her let out a breath. “I don’t know if this constitutes sky-high praise, but I will tell you this: I’ve spent many, many years imagining what you look like without your clothes. And I have a very fine imagination, one of the best in our generation, I daresay. And you, in person, have put that imagination to shame.”

  Her heart pounded at the hunger in his eyes. He kept looking at her, his gaze hot, his breath uneven.

  “Well, don’t just stand there.” Her voice, too, had become uneven. “Do something.”

  Before she’d quite finished speaking he’d already closed the distance between them and placed his palm against her breast. She let out a small whimper.