Tempting the Bride (15 page)

“Your blood seems to be pumping sluggishly and that is never good for one of the extremities—atrophy might
result. In my opinion, dear Bea, you should take a walk. Exercise strengthens muscles and will make your foot better in no time.”

She didn’t say anything.

“I’ll come with you on the walk, of course.”

A long silence. “And supper?”

“I will stay for supper. And I will read you a bedtime story, too. Now will you come out? Or at least give me a time for when you’ll come out.”

Another long silence. “Four.”

It was only a few minutes past three, but at least it was something to look forward to. He murmured a silent thanksgiving.

“Sir Hardshell?”

“Of course, poppet.”

Sir Hardshell was Bea’s pet tortoise and one of Hastings’s potential headaches. No one knew exactly how old it was, except that it had been a resident at Easton Grange since the estate was first built sixty years ago, long before the property’s acquisition by Hastings’s uncle. And before that, Sir Hardshell had served for nearly thirty years as a ship’s mascot on various merchant marine vessels.

Hastings could only pray that Sir Hardshell would live to a legendary age. Bea did not deal well with changes, and there was no change more permanent than death. He made a show of listening to the tortoise’s heart and various other organs. “He sounds old, poppet, ancient. A hundred twenty, at least. You should brace yourself for the possibility that he might not make it through another winter.”

Bea made no reply. He exhaled—at least Sir Hardshell was still alive today. He set the tortoise on the floor to roam
the edges of the nursery. “Shall I have some tea and biscuit sent up for you, Bea? And read you a story in the meanwhile?”

“Yes,” she said. “Yes, Papa.”

His insides invariably turned into a warm puddle when she called him Papa. He rang for her tea, sat down again next to the trunk, and closed his eyes for a moment—awash in both exhaustion and gladness—before opening the storybook he’d hand-made for her. “Shall we start with your favorite, the one about Nanette’s birthday?”

T
he clock struck ten.

Marking at least fifteen minutes of continuous kissing for Fitz and Millie.

Helena hadn’t meant to be a Peeping Jane. Around half past nine, after she’d been talking to her brother and sister-in-law for some time, she’d dozed off. When she’d heard the next quarter hour chime on the clock, she’d forced herself to wake up, not wanting to sleep too much too early and then be wide-awake at night.

Also not wanting to miss Hastings. He’d cabled before he left Kent to let them know he was on his way, and she’d experienced a small flutter of anticipation when she’d learned the news.

But when she’d opened her eyes, she’d witnessed Fitz and Millie engaged in a passionate embrace, Fitz’s hands in his wife’s hair, one of Millie’s hands at her husband’s nape, the other somewhere too low for Helena to see from her supine position.

The polite thing to do, Helena decided, was to close her eyes and let them finish their kiss before making it known
that she was once again conscious. But apparently there was no such thing as finishing a kiss, as far as those two were concerned.

She was mortified—the sounds they made could not be unheard and she’d never be able to look either in the eye again. But at the same time, she was…

She would not mind being party to a similarly heated kiss.

How would it feel to grip Hastings’s soft curls? To have his lips against hers? And to hear him emit involuntary noises of desire and relish?

A soft knock came on the door. At last Fitz and Millie pulled apart. There came hushed giggles and whispered words as they tried to make Millie’s hair look less disheveled.

The knock came again, slightly louder.

Again giggles and whispers, followed by Fitz clearing his throat. “Come in.”

The door opened. “I’m sorry,” said Hastings. “Were you already asleep?”

That voice of his—it might not lure unicorns out of their secret forests, but it could conceivably make howlingly bad verses sound like a lost Byronic masterpiece. And the question was quite tactful, giving Fitz and Millie an easy excuse for their delay in answering the door.

“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.”