The Short and Fascinating Tale of Angelina Whitcombe (6 page)

 

C
HAPTER
T
EN

“C
an't I help in some way?”

They sat in indolent nakedness, picking through the well-packed basket of food. Apparently the innkeeper had decided to fill it up with what was left over from Sunday dinner. She was hungry, for John, for food, all her appetites awakened. With that hunger was a new energy, a need to be doing. If that doing wasn't naked and sprawled around John's body, she at least wanted to be near him.

“No, you can't help me.”

She looked up, startled. “Why ever not?”

“You cannot climb the scaffolding in that dress. It isn't safe.”

“Then I'll borrow some of your clothes.” When he stared at her with one mockingly raised eyebrow, which matched the eternally mocking slant of his lips, she added, “I shall cinch them very tightly and roll up the legs.”

He laughed. “That would be worth seeing.”

“You do have other clothes, don't you?” She went over to his trunk and laboriously lifted the heavy lid. Was
everything
of his oversized? “Ah, yes you do.”

He stopped her before she could rifle through the neatly packed clothing.

“Let me.”

“As you wish.” She stepped aside and watched him bend over, carefully lift several layers of folded cloth as if looking for something specific. He lived so sparsely. Likely life in the army accustomed one to those sorts of habits but, really! How did one do the most basic of things when water must be brought in from the river nearly a quarter mile away and there were no proper kitchens? No kitchen gardens, no pens for chickens or pigs.

He handed her a pair of cream buckskin breeches, quickly followed by a snowy white shirt that looked freshly laundered and pressed. Interesting.

“Do you wash your own clothing?” she asked abruptly.

He handed her braces and a cravat, the last of which she stared at for a moment before realizing he meant for her to use it to cinch the fabric.

He closed the lid of the trunk, stood up straight. “That should do for now.”

She didn't move.

“Really, John. What do you do for dinner and breakfast?”

His eyebrows slanted down as if he were perplexed or irritated. “I take care of myself.”

“I'm sure you do,” she agreed wryly. “But this isn't a farm, and you are out here all by yourself . . .”

“I don't understand why you think I am a hermit.”

She laughed. Was he purposefully being obtuse?

“Maybe because you live alone? In a crumbling castle? And you were not very welcoming to me when I first stumbled upon you.” The last words tripped on her tongue. More and more she hated the pretense that she hadn't known who he was, that she hadn't come searching him out. It seemed so unfair to him. Although, the time to have told him was likely
before
sleeping with him. Or perhaps she should have had a conscience from the first and never undertaken such a deception. But she'd been desperate. And heartless.

Not that she'd known that or thought about it. That was simply the way things were. One couldn't stop to worry about other people's
feelings
when one needed to compete, to advance, to stay desirable and employed.

What was so different now? Why this delayed sense of right and wrong?

Was it because she'd sunk so low? Her reputation in London ruined?

Or because she cared?

Cared about John.

Of course, she cared about him. Who wouldn't?

“Angelina?”

She blinked. He was staring at her and she'd been lost in thought. Not conscious of what expressions crossed her face. She was losing all sense of herself here in this ridiculous place.

Losing her sanity.

“Well?” she pressed, as if she hadn't wandered off into thoughts better left unexplored.

He laughed, took the pile of clothes from her, and laid it on the chair. Then he pulled her into his arms. Still naked.

“If you were here with me every day, I don't think I'd have any need for laundering at all.”

So his thoughts were in the same place. Perfect. Exactly where they should be.

“But when you do have a need?” She pressed closer against him, thigh between his, against the hardening length of him. Had he answered her before when she'd been off in reverie?

“I take them back to the manor. And I bring food from the manor back here. It keeps well enough each week in the storage room, especially with this winter we've had. Sometimes I even visit the manor on a day that is
not
Sunday.”

She liked the teasing tone in his voice. It made her want to kiss him. Somewhere. Perhaps right there on his chest, that hollow where the muscle curved.

“If I were a hermit, would you be here with me now?” he continued. She sighed, rested her cheek against his skin. There was the rub, of course. The only reason she was here was because his mother considered him one.

Yes, he was wounded. But Angelina's first assessment had been incorrect. There was nothing wrong with Captain John Martin that time and this castle wouldn't heal.

“You're still upset about the theater,” he said softly.

“No, no,” she quickly denied, because, while likely she would be when she thought about it later, right then it was the farthest thing from her mind. She stepped away from him, smiled coquettishly, falsely, hiding the truth as she knew well how to do. “I'm simply thinking that I'd better get dressed or I'll never learn how to build a castle.”

He laughed, accepting that excuse.

But as she dressed, slipping his voluminous shirt over her head, the deception lay heavy on her chest. Except for the first lie about why she was here, everything else had been the truth. She rolled her stockings back on. Then stepped into the breeches, which were too long and roomy in certain places, but nearly snug in the hip.

A long, low whistle sounded, and she looked up to find John watching her appreciatively.

She rolled her eyes. She'd dressed in male clothes before, on the stage as Viola in
Twelfth Night.
Still, she liked that look in his eyes.

The one that made him step toward her, grab her close to him, lower his head, his lips to hers. His hands on her backside.

She sighed against him, giving in to the sensation, pushing away the useless guilt. He was enjoying this too. Who cared about the whys?

“I think I should keep you here,” he murmured against her lips. “I could use a good laborer.”

“Hah!” She pulled lightly on his lower lip with her teeth. “Is that what they call mistresses these days? How very unromantic.” She tried to keep kissing him playfully, even as she froze inside at her words, shocked at her lack of thought.

No. Not shocked.

Desperate to tell the truth.

He peeled her away from him. Despite the perpetual smirk, he looked upset.

“You aren't my mistress.”

She forced herself to laugh. “No, I'm not, and if you weren't so concerned that I am sleeping with you for all the right reasons, you would have laughed with me.”

He still looked terrified.

Nothing that time wouldn't heal.

Her smile faded.

“I lied to you earlier,” she said slowly, feeling the air still around them, her words weighted with everything else she could not say. He was truly worried now and she wondered what he feared she would say. “I was neither upset about the castle earlier nor upset about that mess I left in London. I was thinking about you.

“About your wounds.”

His wounds. He touched the scar at his cheek reflexively.

“Not that one,” she said, the words piercing through him. The back of his neck went hot.

“You are referring to earlier,” he said with difficulty. Took a deep breath. He'd never imagined having that problem. But then, in the last few years, lust, desire, sexual relations, had all been rather unimportant to him. “My thoughts wandered.”
To how perfect everything was with her.
“To how terrible the world can be. To Badajoz.” The one word said it all.

She seemed to be deciding what to say.

“Thank you for telling me,” she said at last. “I admit, I did wonder, but I understand. I can't imagine . . . anyone staying . . . aroused . . . amidst such a memory. You must think of it often.”

“No.” He shook his head emphatically. “I do not. When I work, when I plan, it's far from my thoughts.”

“Good.” She smiled—tentatively, he thought. “But I wasn't asking about that. I just . . . I didn't want to have lied to you.”

He nodded. Caught between the sweetness of her intention and the embarrassment of having misunderstood, having shared more than she had wanted.

“Shall we get to work, then?” he asked tightly, guiding her toward the tower with one hand on her back, toward something that he understood. “We've a castle to rebuild.”

 

C
HAPTER
E
LEVEN

S
he was distracting. From the touch of her fingers as he showed her how to properly hold the nail, to the sight of her moving around in his breeches that molded to her body in a way he'd never imagined breeches would, her presence made his usual focus difficult. Her hips, the curve of her buttocks, her thighs . . . it was ridiculously arousing that she was wearing his clothes.

But aside from the occasional heated glance she sent his way, she did exactly as he said. Eventually they found a rhythm, finishing the scaffolding and starting to lay the wide planks that would form the first floor across the stone vaulting.

“What will you do after you finish the castle?”

Her question cut through the companionable silence and she caught his gaze over the smooth oak plank they carried. Her forehead was damp, with tendrils of hair matted against her skin. This wasn't fit work for her and yet she looked rosy cheeked and alive.

“Hire myself out to other owners of ruined castles. England is cluttered with them.”

She laughed. “I believe they call those follies, and they are artfully placed.” He laughed too, imagining the shock of a gentleman who discovered his carefully planned picturesque ruin had been “un-ruined.”

They set the plank down carefully. When she had stepped back, he adjusted its position to his satisfaction.

“But in all seriousness, John,” she prodded.

In all seriousness.
He squinted at the encroaching shadows that clung to the walls of the keep.

“I expect it will be many months before I must contemplate such a fate,” he said as he stepped back over the plank to where she stood on the scaffolding. “In any event, we have a more pressing issue at hand. It will be dark soon,” he noted. “Either you head back now or you stay here tonight.”

“How scandalous,” she teased. “
My
reputation is not a concern, but I do like a real bed. Perhaps you should walk me back to the inn and stay the night with me there.”

“That
would shock the village.” He crouched down by the edge of the wooden platform where the ladder rested. Began the descent.

“Would it?” she called down after him. “What, do they think you a monk?”

“I would hope they don't think of me at all.”

He stepped down onto the stone. “Are you coming?”

He held the ladder steady while she descended, enjoying the view of her breeches-clad bottom as she moved carefully down, one rung at a time. If she decided to stay the night, he'd show her again how decidedly un-monklike he was.

“Everyone knows . . . you live out here . . . all by yourself,” she said, the words punctuated by short pauses with each movement of her body. “I assure you . . . they are talking. The word is . . . that you are an eccentric.”

Chattering fools. So what if they thought him odd? The better that they left him alone.

When she was only a foot off the ground, he reached for her, lifted her into his arms. She fit perfectly there. He rather liked her in his clothes, with none of the concealing fabric of female dress.

She sighed, molding to him. “Not the Golden Lion, then. If I'd known you cared so much for society's approbation, I would never have compromised you.”

He pressed his lips to the place where her neck met her shoulder. Tasted the smooth skin. He liked that he could touch her, that he could elicit that small moan of pleasure from her.

“Or perhaps, I would have anyway,” she continued. He licked a trail up the side of her neck, wanting to hear her break, to stop talking and moan again. “You know I was determined to have you.”

He laughed. She had rather seduced him. Campaigned her way into his bed—the straw pallet she decried as uncomfortable—with stalwart determination. A bit backward, considering that it was the male who was supposed to pursue the female.

As if she'd read his thoughts, she turned in his arms and continued, “I wonder if we'd met in London, amidst the fashionable crowds, if we would ever have started an affair.”

He looked down at her face, at the pale eyes that he'd come to know over the past week, at the strong features of her face, the decisive nose and wide mouth tempered by high cheekbones and a gently rounded chin. She was equally strong, a woman who worked, provided for herself. There was an intensity to her that would be magnetic on the stage. As intensely compelling as he found her here, in the middle of Yorkshire, far away from the sophisticated revelry of London.

In London she'd been part of a society with which he'd never associated, not even as a cadet, spending his breaks at a friend's home in Mayfair.

Perhaps he would have seen her in some play, but he would never have lined up by the stage door, hoping to trade flowers for a smile.

“I think not,” he said finally, even though none of it mattered, because that alternate world did not exist. Events had shaped him, had shaped her, and here they were now. Lovers. Something wonderfully bright arisen out of the darkness.

Even though the light outside was fading, he found himself expanding as if it were morning, the first rays of sun urging his eyes open.

“I suppose you wouldn't have deigned to look at an actress?” There was a tone in her voice that made him wary and she stepped back out of his embrace. “Or perhaps it is your antipathy to have a mistress? Why is that, John? Why can I not be your mistress?”

The word itself bothered him. But she was upset and he struggled to understand why. Not that he wanted to discuss it at all. He wanted to kiss her, to hold her again, to breathe in her scent.

“You said quite clearly” ––he remembered her mocking expression— “that you were completely uninterested in being
kept
by me.”

“And then you tried to convince me of how wealthy and consequential you are.”

He let out a small embarrassed laugh.

“Does it disgust you?” she pressed, shocking him with the very idea. “That I've been with other men. That they've
paid
me?”

Her expression hardened as she challenged him, and for the first time he wondered what
she
thought of her past. He'd thought her proud of it, matter-of-fact. He'd accepted it as part of her, as much as everything that he had done was part of him.

He struggled to put into words that which he knew instinctively.

“Angelina, we came to each other as equals. You owe me nothing.” She seemed to soften a bit, as if curious. “Our relationship is pure.”

“Such a romantic!” The words were mocking but she swayed toward him, shaking her head. “What am I to do with you?”

Finally, a question for which he had an answer.

“Stay the night.”