Tempting the Bride

by Sherry Thomas

  She ate breakfast at eight and went for a walk with her father at nine—sticking strictly to three paths, each for two days of the week, plus a special Sunday path. After arriving back at the nursery at ten, she had lessons until luncheon. Another hour of lessons followed in the afternoon, and then came activities particular to each day. Monday she watered the gardens, Tuesday she brushed her dolls’ hair and changed their clothes, and so on and so forth. She rode at four, had tea at five, which also served as her supper, took her bath, listened to a story, and went to bed.

  If her walk took less time than usual, she would wait outside the nursery until the clock struck the hour. Should a Monday be rainy, she’d still be out in the garden, a watering can in hand, a mackintosh over the rest of her.

  These, however, were but quirks. Whenever the integrity of her schedule became threatened, Bea’s eyes would grow larger, her face paler. She worried the inside of her cheek, her hands clasping ever more tightly onto each other.

  Once at tea, they discovered that the sandwich that had been prepared for her was the wrong kind for Wednesday. Normally a quick word with the kitchen would have fixed the problem. But Wednesday happened to be half day, and the staff enjoyed the afternoon off. By the time Hastings found all the ingredients to assemble the Wednesday sandwich, Bea was in a state of trembling agitation, for fear that she would be late to her bath.

  “What would have happened had she been late to her bath?” Helena had asked, as they waited outside the bath while Bea hummed and played with the water in her tub, calm again after the crisis had been averted.

  Hastings had tilted his head against the wall. “Disaster. She would have climbed into her trunk and not come out for hours. At least by teatime the day is almost over. God help us if something goes awry in the morning.”

  “Has she always been like this?”

  Hastings sighed. “I can’t tell you for certain. When I agreed to take her in, I hired a nanny who came with excellent character letters, set the pair of them in a cottage on the edge of the estate, and thought my duty done. According to the maids who cleaned the cottage—it was they who first alerted me that something was amiss—she’d been a docile enough baby. But about the time she turned two, she became impossibly stubborn. The nanny did not believe children should have any say in their upbringing—and what followed was not pretty.”

  He stared at the wallpaper on the opposite side of the passage. “I was furious with myself. My earlier excuse for not paying close attention was that I’d spared her a life in the poorhouse. It was not acceptable to be simply better than the worst. I was responsible for this child and I’d allowed her to be mistreated under my very nose, to become this quivering, screaming creature.”

  Sunlight still poured in from the window at the end of the passage, a bright stream that angled upward and lit him like a halo.

  “You’ve done quite well by her since,” said Helena.

  He sighed again and raked his fingers through his hair. She envied that hand. She hadn’t touched his hair since they came to Easton Grange.

  He rested his hand flat on top of his head. “I’m not sure whether we’ll ever be able to reverse the damage. You saw how she can be, and that was only at the thought of her schedule being disrupted. I’m not sure what she’d do if her life ever became disrupted—between you and me, I live in dread of the day something happens to Sir Hardshell.”

  Whatever misgivings Helena might hold concerning his suitability as a spouse, she did not doubt his devotion and dependability as a father. One could say his love of Helena still had a hope of a prize in the end: that she would love him back as ardently, and be his private paradise in bed. But his love of Bea sought no gain other than to do the right thing by the girl—and to improve her lot to such a degree that he might someday forgive himself for his earlier negligence.

  Every morning Helena walked behind father and daughter, her eyes fastened to the sight of their clasped hands, her ears wallowing in the music of their conversation—mostly a monologue on his part, sometimes regaling Bea with the medicinal properties of a native plant, sometimes recounting a story of the queen as a little girl, sometimes explaining why the housekeeper was miffed at one of the maids.

  Explaining the world, detail by detail, to a girl who did not have an instinctive grasp of many of the intricacies of life.

  He wasn’t content to simply provide for Bea’s current comfort; he was thinking of the day she would become a young woman, the challenges she would face. He wanted a normal life for her, or a life as normal as possible, given her various drawbacks.

  And it touched Helena—even more than the murals he’d painted for the girl. Both were labors of love, but on this one he would never stop working for as long as he and Bea both drew breath.

  One of Bea’s walking routes ended in a pond that must have served as inspiration for Old Toad Pond. It didn’t quite possess the whimsical charm of its fictional counterpart, but it did have clear water, abundant fish, a small forest of waving bulrush, and a grassy, sloping bank on which sat a pair of stone benches.

  On this day, Bea walked Sir Hardshell on a harness and Hastings sketched, while Helena read letters that Miss Boyle, her secretary, had forwarded. Helena was apparently more ambitious than even she had supposed. Not content to publish only books, at the time of her accident she had also been in the planning stages of a new magazine, aimed at the increasing population of young working women. The editor she’d hired, a Mrs. Edwards, had written Helena about the articles she’d gathered in readiness for the first issue. Helena jotted down her notes in the margins of the letter, including a proposed meeting so she could reacquaint herself with Mrs. Edwards, whom she did not remember in the least.

  The next letter, funnily enough, was from Miss Evangeline South, replying to Miss Boyle’s inquiry concerning the progress of “her” revisions on some of the later stories of the Old Toad Pond collection. Miss South stated that due to an unanticipated emergency in the family, “she” would need an additional fortnight for the revisions.

  Helena showed the letter to Hastings, seated at her feet.

  “She wrote me,” he said, smiling, “so I had to reply.”

  He had a gorgeous smile. Sometimes she still wanted to shake her head. He could very well have used that smile on her, instead of that leer. “And are you in fact working on the revisions I wanted?”

  “Every morning before you get up.”

  He did seem to be always up before her. “You had better be working on the revisions, and not writing another one of your naughty tales.”

  He glanced up at her, his eyes as naughty as certain parts of his story. “You never told me how you liked it, my one and only smutty story.”

  “I haven’t finish reading it and therefore cannot render an opinion.”

  He made a face of exaggerated disappointment.

  She shook her head. “You authors, so anxious and delicate. Very well, I liked the passages I’ve read.”

  Now he bent his face to his sketch and smiled again. And all sorts of hot sensations sizzled along her nerves. She didn’t tell him, but she’d been saving the rest of the story for him to read aloud to her.

  But she wanted to wait until the remainder of her memory returned—and everything she’d once felt for Mr. Martin was dealt with—before she began developing a collection of silken cords to use on Hastings.

  And for him to use on her, too, should the mood strike him, since she was a sharing soul.

  “Why are you wearing that smirk?” Hastings demanded. “That is an up-to-no-good smile if I’ve ever seen one.”

  She grinned toothily at him. “If you were ‘married’ to a pornographer, wouldn’t you smirk to yourself once in a while? Now, enough talk of subjects unfit for genteel ears like mine. What is that you are drawing?”

  He glanced back at his sketch. “The design for the last wall of Bea’s mural. I am thinking of introducing a new family of characters and adding a new cottage to Old Toad Pond.”r />
  The design of this particular little cottage made her exclaim. “My goodness! It looks just like the miniature cottage my father had built for Venetia and me when we were small.”

  “You are right. I might have been thinking about it—I’d seen that miniature cottage quite a few times when I visited Hampton House.”

  “We still have it, as far as I know,” she said excitedly. “I can have it shipped to Easton Grange and set down right at the edge of the pond for Bea.”

  He gazed at her, one long, steady look of longing. She realized that she’d made a commitment, however minor, to Bea—and to him.

  “Don’t look so overcome,” she said, now a little unsure of the wisdom of her gift. “It is an old toy that will need refurbishing, hardly an extravagant gesture.”

  “Indeed,” he said, letting her off the hook, “nothing of the sort. It’s probably all maggoty and covered in bird droppings.”

  She stuck her tongue out at him. “Now you insult me.”

  He smiled a little and squeezed her hand. “Bea will be very happy, thank you.”

  He hadn’t touched her since they came to Easton Grange. A thrill raced up her arm.

  As soon as her memory came back…

  The miniature cottage from Hampton House arrived a few days later, weathered and worn, but in better condition than Helena had expected. Hastings took charge of the exterior of the structure, painting it himself after the carpenter had done the necessary repairs. Helena arranged for the interior: new wallpaper, new curtains, a small table and chairs with a tea set, and even a little bookshelf to hold, eventually, all the published copies of Tales from Old Toad Pond.

  To prepare Bea, they showed her a drawing of what the miniature cottage would look like, had her choose the spot where it would be set down, and reviewed with her, almost to the minute, her altered schedule for the day of the grand unveiling.

  When the day came, everything went off without a hitch. The weather was lovely: bright sun, fat white clouds, and an endlessly blue sky. The picnic was delicious. The cottage, with its muted pink walls and leaf green trim, almost had Bea drop Sir Hardshell in her rapture.

  The perfection of the day did not end there. That afternoon, instead of riding on horseback to accompany Bea on her pony, Hastings and Helena rode safety bicycles—Helena, indeed, remembered how to ride. And Bea did not raise a single complaint.

  Helena was delighted. Thrilled, even. But she was still determined to be patient, and to wait for the rest of her memory to come back.

  That was, until the stethoscope.

  Bea brought Sir Hardshell to tea and presented the tortoise to Hastings without comment. Hastings excused himself, left the tearoom, and came back a few minutes later with the smallest, most adorable stethoscope Helena had ever seen—who knew stethoscopes could be adorable?

  He put on the earpieces, then set the chest piece, no larger than a button, on Sir Hardshell’s back.

  “Very lethargic heartbeat,” he said after about fifteen seconds, “but that’s normal, considering he is cold-blooded.” He turned over the reptile, which had by this point withdrawn both its head and its wrinkly limbs, and listened to its armored stomach. “The same here, more or less. He is still alive, so that is good news.”

  He held out Sir Hardshell toward Bea. “But he is tremendously old, ninety years we know of, and who knows how many more before there was ever a record on him. And when a creature is this old, even if it doesn’t look sickly, it still might not last much longer.”

  Bea took her tortoise back, seemingly not having heard a single word of her father’s gentle warning. As she tucked enthusiastically into her sandwich, he gave a small sigh.

  The chaos and the sweet pain swept back into Helena’s heart. She knew then, with absolute certainty, that she not only loved him, but would love him for the rest of her life. And she would stand by his side, holding his hand, as he guided Bea through Sir Hardshell’s inevitable demise—and all the other certain-to-come upheavals in any young person’s life.

  He caught her staring at him and raised a brow. She merely grinned and asked, “Do you, sir, happen to have a music stand in this house?”

  Hastings had just taken off his shirt when the door of his dressing room opened. He turned around to find Helena, a green ribbon in her still quite short hair, leaning against the doorjamb, her fingers casually playing with the sash of her dressing robe. They sometimes opened the connecting door when they needed to speak at bedtime, so it was not an unusual sight to see her dressed so—except tonight there was no nightgown beneath. In fact, the thin green silk did nothing to disguise the shapes of her erect nipples, which pointed directly at his eyes.

  His mouth went dry. “I will not further sample your”—she shifted slightly, and now the dressing robe clung slavishly to the outline of her hip and thigh—“admittedly considerable charms until you first remember everything.”

  She smiled. “I have no intention of letting you touch my”—she glanced down at her person—“indeed considerable charms. I only need your help moving something.”

  He was not assured. She looked far too…wolfish. “Not my person to your bed, is it?”

  “Not in the least.”

  Her words were uttered without hesitation, but something in her tone made his blood rush south in arousal. “So what then is this something you need moved?”

  “My music stand.” She walked back toward her room and beckoned him to follow.

  She never had told him the purpose for which she needed the music stand: She played no instruments and, as far as he knew, had never learned to read stave notation.

  The music stand was in her bedroom, only a little distance from the connecting door, a delicate-looking specimen that was much heavier than it appeared, having been crafted from solid rosewood.

  She returned to his bedroom and indicated a spot by the foot of his bed, a monstrous piece of furniture that had served as inspiration for the master of Larkspur’s marital bed. “Here, please.”

  He hefted the music stand across the distance and set it down where she wanted, right by the bedpost, in his mind at least, to which the bride of Larkspur had been tied in the opening scene of his erotic story. “What devilry are you scheming, Helena?”

  She did not answer him, but only gave orders. “Stand with your back to the bedpost.”

  And when he had done so, she considered the stand—which had last been used by a much shorter person, possibly a child—and raised the music rest as high as it would go.

  He still wasn’t quite sure what use she could wrest from the music stand, but he was beginning to grasp what she had planned for him. The question was, did he want to acquiesce to her wishes?

  He must, because as she pulled out the sash from her dressing gown, causing the latter to fall apart and reveal her from sternum to mons pubis, he only stared, his breath coming in gulps. She took his wrists and tied them together behind his back and to the far side of the bedpost. He did nothing to impede her, but only continued to stare, the size of his lust doubling with every glimpse of her pretty, pretty nipples.

  “If you will excuse me for a second,” she said with excessive politeness, her eyes gleaming.

  She disappeared into her room and did not come back with the dressing robe. He’d seen her naked in bed, but to see her in motion, her pert breasts bobbing ever so slightly—he panted.

  “Read this aloud for me, darling.”

  He hadn’t even noticed that she’d put two sheets of paper on the music stand—two pages from his manuscript. “Read that?”

  “Yes, that. Or I’m going to put my clothes back on.”

  He knew that must not happen, but it was nearly impossible to tear his eyes away from her legs and the juncture of her thighs.

  She came closer, took his chin, and turned his face toward the music stand. “Read.”

  He cleared his throat and tried to concentrate on the words before him. “‘Now I am the one tied to the bedpost. She inspects me fro
m all angles, smiling as if she has been let in on a marvelous secret.’”

  He looked toward Helena; she, too, was smiling, one hand on the bedpost, the other reaching out to trail down his arm. “Keep reading.”

  Her touch burned. His voice turned unsteady. “‘She pulls out her hairpins and shakes her head. Her hair falls free, a glorious cascade, strands of it brushing her taut nipples.’”

  “Hmm,” said Helena. “Alas, I can’t reenact the hair. But at least I still have taut nipples, do I not?”

  She touched one nipple, lightly squeezing it between two fingers. Unseemly noises escaped him; his cock swelled to painful dimensions.

  “Keep reading if you want anything to happen,” she reminded him, licking her lips slowly to emphasize her point.

  God help him. He was going to turn illiterate very soon, at the rate he was losing his mind. “‘My throat tightens. “You make me mindless with lust,” I tell her. She laughs softly. “No, Larkspear, I am going to make you mindless with lust. And the first step is the removal of the rest of your clothes.”’”

  Helena unfastened his trousers and pushed them down. “I like the bride of Larkspear—a woman with a plan.”

  The next moment Hastings’s underlinen, too, had pooled at his feet, exposing his naked desire. She pressed herself into his side and rubbed one nipple along his arm, while her hand wrapped along his shaft; she gave a soft, throaty laugh as it leaped against the prison of her fingers.

  “You are deviating from the story,” Hastings somehow managed to say.

  “I know. But in the story you have her on her knees too soon. I can’t do that—I have a reputation to maintain.”

  She stroked his length; he groaned with the pleasure of it. Now she sucked on the skin of his shoulder, then bent her head to lick his nipple. He bucked against his restraints.

  “Don’t forget to read.”