She felt him smooth a hand over the top of her hair. “I dreamed . . .” His voice was hoarse. “Well, I dreamed you weren’t here. Not anymore.”
She shifted, pressing her lips against the salty tang of his skin. “I am here. I am safe.” She hesitated, pushing up and away from him and holding up her hand. “Thanks to you. My hero.” She smiled, almost shyly, then held up the medal she’d carried with her from the bureau. “You were a soldier. Why did you never tell me?”
His demeanor abruptly changed. The look of relief on his face was kicked aside, and resolve settled into the line of his jaw. “You’ve got it wrong.” She could feel him stiffening. Retreating. “I wasn’t a soldier. And I certainly wasn’t a hero.”
Confusion swept through her. The whispers of who Eleanor thought he was poked at her. “Did you steal this then?” she asked, confused. “As one of your jokes?”
“No.” There was a moment’s hesitation. “I was a sailor, not a soldier. Rank of lieutenant. But only because I bought the honor, not because it was a position I properly earned.” He made a rueful sound. “And I didn’t earn the medal, either, so you can cease with the starry-eyed debutante routine. I am not a national hero. I am a national joke.”
She bit her lip, unsure of why his words sounded so bitter. He’d shown dramatic flashes of heroism, to her, at least. He’d plunged into the shadows of St. Paul’s Cathedral, chasing a possible traitor. He’d married her to save her from an assassin’s threats. If she was honest with herself, he’d even tried to save her from her own stupidity that night in the library, trying to shield her from the ruin she’d so naively stumbled her way into.
“Someone must have thought you were a hero,” she murmured. “The queen, most especially. Won’t you tell me what happened?”
Christ above, she wanted to talk.
West wanted to do something entirely different. He’d awakened in the grip of a ferocious nightmare, and was only now settling into the reality that his new wife hadn’t died at the hands of an assassin’s bullet. He wanted to sink inside her, bury his nose in the fragrant mass of her hair. Convince himself she was real, something more than a dream.
And Crimea was . . . best forgotten. The medal was ridiculous.
Nearly a prank in and of itself, to be suspected of such bravery.
“West?” She loosened his name like a question, stumbling into the silence.
“You don’t understand,” he ground out, not wanting to talk about it. In fact, he’d rather move on to more enjoyable tasks. Such as tipping her onto her back and tying her up this time.
“I would like to understand.” She clutched the edges of the white sheet to her throat. “I promise you, I am a very good listener.”
That made his teeth clench. He didn’t deserve her patience, any more than he’d deserved the damned Victoria Cross. But if a brief explanation would help them move onto more pleasurable things, so be it.
“My time in the navy was nothing more than a lark. Grant and I left university when we were twenty, seeking a bit of adventure, the same as many of the men who signed on.” He reached out a hand to tug against her clutched fingers. The sheet slid down a promising inch or two. “We spent our service aboard the HMS Arrogant, with little enough action to impress anyone,” he murmured, focused only on the business of uncovering her, one delectable inch at a time. “We didn’t even see the front lines. Sevastopol was where most of the action was. We were sent to Fort Viborg instead.”
She frowned. “One doesn’t receive a Victoria Cross for unimpressive actions.” She batted his hand away, her brow furrowed in concentration. “There was vigorous fighting at Viborg, too. I read the accounts in the papers.”
West’s hand fell away. Of course she would have read the details of the war. The woman never met a paragraph she didn’t like. He knew her well enough by now to know she would not leave off until she had what she imagined was the truth out of him.
Still, he hesitated.
He wasn’t even sure he knew what the truth was.
“It was all a misunderstanding. Something about a bomb and the ship.” He still felt too close to the clench of his nightmare, and her gentle probing was making the dark edges peel back on a day he preferred to forget. He could nearly hear the sound of the live shell, rolling across the wooden planks of the lower deck. The laughter of the sailors, thinking it was just another one of his pranks. He’d reacted on instinct, tossed it overboard just in time.
“I am no hero,” he repeated gruffly, opening his eyes to face her. He’d never told anyone—not even his family—what had happened. Some pieces were buried too deeply to explain. “I was fortunate, that is all.” That fact, at least, was indisputable. Two seconds’ hesitation, and the shell would have gone off in his hands.
He saw the carnage that should have been nearly every time he closed his eyes.
But she was looking at him strangely now, as if she didn’t quite believe his dismissal of the events in his past.
“I didn’t deserve the medal, Mary,” he insisted. And he didn’t deserve her either. He felt dismantled by her questions, the look of pride he’d seen shining in her eyes when she’d waved that medal about. He was more comfortable, perhaps, with the confusion he saw flitting across her features now.
She bit her lip, her eyes lowering. And then her hand reached out to take up his own fingers. “In due time, then. I can understand being hesitant to talk about the darker things in one’s past. But you shouldn’t be ashamed of the medal, West.”
“If you like it, then you should keep it,” he said, trying to soften the gruffness that wanted to linger in his voice. God knew it ought to be kept by someone who appreciated it. He wanted to push back against her presumption that he would eventually offer her a better explanation for what had happened that day, but he held his tongue, not wanting to talk about it anymore. Better to let it lie. She was so damnably innocent . . . what did she know of darker things?
But her fingers felt warm and reassuring, curled into his, and he knew—because he was no gentleman—that he would take this empathy she’d allotted him and twist it to whatever advantage he could. He drew a breath. Repositioned his thoughts.
Time to seduce his wife.
“I am sorry if I awakened you with my thrashing about this morning.” He ran a questing finger up her pale, perfect arm. “I am afraid my nightmares aren’t pretty, but I’ve never had to worry about someone else in my bed before. You are the first woman I’ve ever had here, and this is the only place I suffer them.”
“Oh.” She breathed out, almost shyly. “You didn’t wake me. I was already awake. I am a dreadfully early riser.”
“Dreadfully?” he teased, his finger moving higher, hovering against the reddened mark his teeth had left on her neck the night before. “How early do you usually wake?” he said, imagining the dreadful hour of seven. Or eight.
“At five o’clock every morning.”
“Good God.” He tried to imagine it, and the havoc such a schedule would wreak upon his life. “Every morning?”
“Like clockwork,” she admitted. “I try not to disturb the household. At home, in Yorkshire, I usually go outside to the garden in the summer, read a book.”
Understanding trickled into him. “Is that why you were out in the garden that first morning we met?”
“Yes. I was hoping my sister’s garden might prove a similar retreat. In the winter, when the light comes late and the weather is foul, I am forced stay in my room, and those are long hours, indeed. I . . . that is, I am afraid my habit will disturb you. Eventually.” She bit her lip. “That’s why I put my trunks in the room next door.”
“There is no need to apologize.” In fact, he ought to apologize to her. He felt suddenly ashamed of how he’d treated her that morning when she’d been standing in the garden. “And there is no need to keep your trunks next door, either.” The idea of her sleeping somewhere other than his bed was appalling, and not only because he needed to make sure she was saf
e. “This dreadful habit of yours sounds promising.”
Her eyes met his, wide and questioning. “It does?”
He cupped her chin and lifted her face toward him for a tender kiss. “More time to spend with each other, I should say.”
“Oh,” she breathed, and he could feel her smile against his lips. “But, what shall we do that early every morning?”
With a grin, he flipped her onto her back and pulled away the sheet. “You’ve got a vivid imagination, Mouse. I am sure you can think of something.”
From the Diary of Miss Mary Channing
From the Diary of Miss Mary Channing
June 14, 1858
I may not have felt changed following the occasion of my ruin, but there is no doubt I feel changed after the occasion of my marriage. Last night was revelatory. All the time I spent reading about it, believing I knew what life was about, and yet the actual beauty of the act astonished me. Perhaps it is because I have married a man of some experience, but I no longer see this as merely a marriage of convenience.
I see it as a marriage of great potential.
Still, there is a good deal I do not know about the man I have married. He clearly carries wounds from Crimea not easily seen. And however it happened, the scar on his shoulder is a reminder that there is more than my own safety at risk here. Danger follows him, and now it is following me as well. But it isn’t fear for my own safety that makes my throat swell tight. This man means something to me. In my life, I’ve lost too many people who meant something to me to accept such an emotion without worry.
What if I lose him, too?
Chapter 19
The line of household servants snaking down the hallway outside Lord Ashington’s study at ten o’clock on that Monday morning was long. Restless. Nervous.
And well they ought to be.
Because when West found the person who placed the note in Mary’s journal, there was going to be hell to pay.
He’d left his new wife sitting in the drawing room at Cardwell House, reading some Dickens novel out loud to her sister. He might have liked to have plopped down into a chair, listened to his new wife’s voice for a few minutes. Tossed aside the dull book they were reading and livened things up with The Lustful Turk. Instead, he’d taken advantage of her devotion to her sister and slipped away without her knowing to walk three doors down.
Though he truly had no right to be here in Ashington’s study, conducting interviews with the man’s staff, the housekeeper, Mrs. Greaves had not objected. Though West had not divulged the reasons for his demands, the woman had seemed nearly relieved to see him. Was it any wonder Mary had been able to slip away from the poor woman so easily? The household staff ran slipshod circles around the aging housekeeper. He decided he ought to introduce Mrs. Greaves to his butler. If anyone could force a bit of starch into a person, it was Wilson.
“Next!” he called out, waving away the gardener who’d just stood in front of him, hat in hand, to confess to a dalliance with a somewhat promiscuous scullery maid. Which was all well and good for the gardener, but as the man appeared to have no idea who Mary was, much less where her room abovestairs might have been, West dismissed him and moved on to the next worried soul. He interviewed upstairs maids. Downstairs maids. A cook, a butler, and a handful of kitchen maids. There were two unimpressive footmen, a gardener’s apprentice, and a groomsman who saw to the horses in the mews. Most of the staff appeared to think he was interviewing them about a piece of silver that had disappeared from a locked cabinet last week.
One of them even produced said piece of missing silver.
None confessed to an association with terrorists, or appeared capable of anything more sinister than picking a lock on the silver cabinet or lusting after someone they oughtn’t.
Two hours into the interrogations, Mrs. Greaves popped her head through the door. “That is the last of them, Mr. Westmore. I trust your inquiry went well?”
West held up the previously missing piece of silver, which Mrs. Greaves accepted with a relieved “thank you”. But he himself frowned. How could that be everyone? There was no valet, though it made sense the man was traveling with Lord Ashington. But in reviewing the frightened faces, he could not recall speaking with anyone who professed to be a ladies’ maid.
And as there were two ladies who had been residing in the house . . .
“What about Lady Ashington’s personal maid?” he asked gruffly.
“O’Brien?” Mrs. Greaves looked startled. “Did no one tell you? She followed Lady Ashington to Cardwell House.”
West lurched to his feet, panic slamming through him. The missing maid was at Cardwell House? And named O’Brien?
It was a distinctly Irish name, and thoughts of Fenian rebels urged him onward. His feet flew out of Ashington’s study and through the front door. Bloody, bloody hell. How could he have been so stupid? To be sure, he’d left a well-armed footman discreetly guarding the drawing room door, but even so, he raced down the street and burst through the doors of Cardwell House without even a greeting for poor Wilson. He skidded past the drawing room to see that his new wife and her sister were still calmly—and safely—reading aloud, then took the stairs two at a time.
He didn’t even bother to knock, just threw open the door of Lady Ashington’s room.
A pretty woman in a plain gown looked up, startled. “Mr. Westmore!” she exclaimed indignantly, lowering her needlework to her lap. “You may not be in Lady Ashington’s room.”
“O’Brien, I presume?” At her uncertain nod, he stalked into the room. “Surely you don’t think I am here to proposition Lady Ashington,” he scoffed, trying to rein in his temper to something that might have a hope of producing a proper interrogation. “For heaven’s sake, I’ve just married her sister.”
Her eyes widened at his approach. “I truly don’t know what you might do.” A faint pink bloomed on her cheeks. “I’ve heard plenty of rumors regarding your behavior.”
West clenched his teeth. “I know you left the note in Miss Channing’s journal.” At her gasp of surprise, he circled her chair, making her twist to watch him with fear-filled eyes. “What I want to know is why.” He forced his voice to stay even, given that the girl looked about as sturdy as a feather in the wind. “Who put you up to it?”
She squirmed in her chair, her hands knotting in her needlework. “Please, Mr. Westmore. Do not tell anyone. It was just a little fun. What harm was there in it?”
“What harm?” West gave in to a growl of frustration. “Are you kidding me?”
The maid frowned. “I only passed the note on as a favor for a friend. I do not even know what it said!”
“You passed on a note from your friend.” West circled back around to glare down at her from in front of the chair. “And delivered it to an unmarried, wellborn woman. But you did not stop to think about whether the contents might prove harmful to the person receiving it? Did you not wonder, O’Brien? Were you not tempted to take a little peek?”
“No.” She began to look panicked now. “I . . . I presumed it must be a note requesting an assignation.”
“An assignation?” West began to feel murderous. He placed his hands on the arms of the chair and leaned in, until he was eye-to-eye with the frightened maid. “And why, pray tell, would you think Miss Channing might be receptive to such an offer?”
“It was just . . . after the gossip rags . . .” O’Brien began to tremble, her voice trailing off. “Well, I thought she must enjoy such things.”
West balled his fists. With the maid’s unmistakably Irish surname, he’d presumed this interview would lead directly to information about a Fenian cause, Irish rebels bent on recognition. But instead, he’d stumbled into a conversation leading to nowhere, and with a girl whose accent told him she’d actually been born in London’s Cheapside, not Cork.
And he couldn’t quite contain the rage he felt at the notion that everyone—this maid, included—presumed his new wife to be of such loose morals she would glad
ly accept notes from strangers asking to meet in darkened corners. Particularly when he’d had to work so hard to take off her corset last night.
“I will have your friend’s name, O’Brien.”
Her face went white. “I meant no disrespect. If the note hurt Miss Channing’s feelings, it was not my intention. I thought she might want such a note, after that business with the scandal sheets. You must help me make her understand. I cannot afford to lose my position.”
“You should have thought of that before you set Miss Channing up to become a plaything for your lover. His name, please.”
She gasped, her eyes growing wider still. “No, you have it all wrong! He isn’t my lover. I only just met him, really,” she cried, wringing her hands now. “His name is George. George Carlson. And it wasn’t a note from him. He said he was only paid to see it delivered, by his employer.”
West glared down at her, his instincts sharpening. This didn’t feel like a woman feeding him a lie. O’Brien wasn’t trying to dodge out. Not trying to run, the way Vivian had. A woman with so much to lose would be unlikely to face her accuser so meekly. He wasn’t quite sure what to think. Either she was a very good actress . . .
Or she was telling the truth.
His gut told him it was the latter, and he was inclined to trust his gut, given that he’d had several excellent actresses in his day.
“Who employs your friend?” he demanded.
“H-he’s a gardener.” She shrank into her seat, tears welling in her eyes. “For the Duke of Southingham.”
West reared back. The room felt as if it was spinning. Memories pushed in, knocking against the roar in West’s ears. Southingham. Could it really be so simple? A duke, and one he had known for over a decade? He thought he’d recognized the voice, of course, but this was a connection he’d not considered.
“Describe your friend,” he said gruffly, needing to be sure.
The Perks of Loving a Scoundrel Page 22
