Lost in Your Arms (12 page)

Enid started. Dear heavens, these people knew of her father!

“Are you related to the earl of Binghamton?” Lord Featherstonebaugh asked.

“I believe I may be.” Enid kept her voice firm and her gaze steady, but she couldn’t control the blush that scorched her chest, her neck, the tips of her ears.

Lifting her quizzing glass, Lady Featherstonebaugh examined Enid from toe to top, and lingered on her crimson cheeks. “I remember a scandal a few years ago when Binghamton died. Something about a bastard daughter.”

“Yes.” Lord Featherstonebaugh drew the word out with a denture-accented hiss. “I remember. His family discovered he’d been supporting the girl, and they were none too pleased.”

Celeste wrung her hands.

“Lady Binghamton was such a pinchpenny, she could squeeze a guinea until the gold melted.” Turning
to Lord Featherstonebaugh, Lady Featherstonebaugh asked, “Was the child’s name Enid, dear?”

“I believe so.” Lord Featherstonebaugh looked harder at Enid. “By George, I think you’ve hit the nail on the head, my dear. She has the look of Binghamton about the eyes.”

I do not
. But Enid clamped her mouth shut. She didn’t want to be recognized, didn’t want to have this old couple gossiping about her before her face. And to have Celeste discover Enid’s past, and in such a way! Mortification writhed in Enid’s belly, and she didn’t dare glance toward Celeste. She could do nothing, for scandal provided a screen behind which MacLean could hide.

“It’s like seeing the old rascal alive once more,” Lord Featherstonebaugh said. “Tell us, m’dear, are you Binghamton’s daughter?”

For MacLean’s safety, Enid could sacrifice this much dignity. She supposed.

But he would owe her yet another debt. “I am,” she answered.

Enid had heard that couples who were long married frequently began to look alike. Lord and Lady Featherstonebaugh had obviously been married for a very long time, for their faces donned identical masks of delight. They blinked at the same rate, and they looked at each other at the same moment.

“Miss Seywell, I would be delighted to take you in to dinner,” Lord Featherstonebaugh said.

“I have to return to the Distinguished Academy of Governesses,” Enid lied smoothly.

Lady Featherstonebaugh straightened and said in a
stern tone of voice, “I’m sure that’s unnecessary. You can stay another day.”

Enid kept a smile on her face. “I can’t. I’m sorry.”

“She’s a working girl, so she must leave.” Celeste came to Enid’s side and slipped her hand through Enid’s arm. “I am so disappointed to lose my friend before the wedding, but duty calls!”

“Oh.” Lady Featherstonebaugh adjusted her parasol. “How disappointing. I had looked forward to a cozy chat with you, Miss Seywell.”

“And I,” Lord Featherstonebaugh said.

Enid thought him a disgraceful old gentleman, but she nodded as they turned away.

“Go on, Lord and Lady Featherstonebaugh,” Celeste called. “I’ll catch up.”

The young women wheeled about and marched as rapidly as possible in the opposite direction, keeping complete silence until they were far beyond the earshot of the elderly couple.

“I shouldn’t have come out.” Enid chewed on her lip and told herself she shouldn’t worry about MacLean, that louse with the come-hither eyes that had enticed her to come thither.

“It’s not your fault,” Celeste answered.

“I didn’t realize there were visitors to the estate, and I couldn’t bear to remain in that cottage for one more minute.” Because Enid would have been kissing MacLean, and a woman would have to be crazy to kiss him.

“It’s not even my fault, although I’m sure Garrick won’t see it that way.”

“Who? Oh, you mean Mr. Throckmorton. MacLean
is absolutely the most disreputable of cads.” And Enid was certifiably insane.

“Garrick accuses me of attracting trouble, as if I do it on purpose!” Celeste’s eyes flashed. “I am not the fluff-brained little miss he might wish.”

“I would say you are not! Nor am I a piece of feminine flesh to be petted or ignored.” No matter how enticing the petting might be.

“They don’t appreciate us.” Abruptly, Celeste halted beside a bench at the trunk of a massive willow, looked at Enid and, in a voice filled with kinship, said, “Every trouble begins with a man.”

Enid was tired of acting like an adult. She wanted to behave like a beast. Like MacLean. “Men are all alike,” she said sulkily.

Celeste tapped her lip and considered. “If only that were true, but each is exasperating in his own way.”

“I am done being a free finishing school for MacLean. Let him find out how to behave in civilized society without involving me.” In anything. Enid didn’t want to be involved in any more of MacLean’s escapades. He was well. It was time to leave him. That’s right, leave him as he had left her, and return where she was needed.

She slid her hand into her pocket and touched the letter from Lady Halifax. In those weekly missives, Lady Halifax had sounded as stout and brave as ever, but Enid knew the truth. Death hovered very near, and none of the sprightly letters she wrote in return were the same as being there for the dear, cantankerous old lady.

But her mind shied away from the scene in which
she told MacLean she was departing, so she abandoned her own problems and for a moment considered Celeste’s. “Mr. Throckmorton adores you. I’m sure that’s why he’s irrational.”

Celeste collapsed on the bench. “Do you mean men need an excuse to be irrational?”

Enid grinned and seated herself beside her friend.

Her irritation appeased, Celeste said, “The Featherstonebaughs are old family friends, kind old people—”

“I didn’t notice,” Enid said, cold with offended pride.

“No, they weren’t kind to you. I’m sorry.” Celeste glanced from side to side. “And to tell you the truth, I am not so fond of them as are the other members of the Throckmorton family. The Throckmortons excuse the Featherstonebaughs’ ill behavior by saying they are the most terrific gossips in all of England, but I have been the brunt of their gossip, and it’s not pleasant.”

“Nor is it excusable.” Enid tried to broach the subject delicately. “I must thank you for not spurning me. I know it’s not agreeable to discover that someone to whom you have been kind is illegitimate, but—”

Celeste’s eyes snapped with ire. “You are not to say another word, or I will be offended. I do not choose my friends by who their parents are, nor do you, or you would not be so generous to me, who is the daughter of a gardener.”

“I would think nothing of—”

“Neither would I.” Standing, Celeste shook out her skirts. “So that’s settled. You’re my friend, we have an affinity, and I think you will be leaving soon, but when your adventure is over you will visit me. Promise?”

“I promise.”

Celeste touched Enid’s shoulder. “Now I must find Lord and Lady Featherstonebaugh and divert their questions about you, and then I must tell Garrick you have been seen and listen to him complain.” With a grimace and a wave, she walked off.

Celeste’s declaration touched Enid’s heart and made her remember the letter in her pocket. Digging it out, she stared at the familiar, noble Halifax seal, then turned it over to see unfamiliar handwriting. Lady Halifax had dictated to yet another one of her attendants. Carefully Enid freed the seal from the paper and unfolded the sheet.

She read the first line. Read the first line again. Then she scanned the remainder. Dropping her head onto her knees, she cried.

Chapter 13

MacLean recognized the tap of Enid’s footsteps, and he didn’t even wait until Enid’s head cleared the top of the stairs before snapping, “Where the hell have you been?”

Enid stood aside as Sally slipped past her and down the stairs.

“In hell, of course.”

The candles gave off insufficient light, but she looked unharmed, and that, as well as her cool tone and her reply, infuriated a man who had been remarkably patient after what had surely been a minor tiff. Punching the pile of pillows that helped him sit upright, he accused, “You made me wait.”

“For what? There’s always someone here if you need anything.”

“Was it some kind of petty revenge because I tried to kiss you?”

She glared at him, then with a flourish slammed the trapdoor shut so hard that it shook the floor. “No.”

And that made him even angrier. “Because you’re being childish. You’re my wife, and if I want to kiss you, I can.”

She shot the bolt with her foot, then meticulously articulated, “Not if you can’t catch me.”

Lifting himself onto his elbows, he said, “You’re damned saucy for a woman who, not six hours ago, had her tongue in my mouth.”

“I didn’t want to kiss you. I was being polite!”

He laughed. “Come here and show me how polite you can be.”

“Rot first!” Going to the basin, she washed her hands, then groped for a towel. When she didn’t immediately find one, she wiped them on her skirt.

He stared. Enid had wiped her hands on her skirt. This woman, so dainty in her habits that she scolded him for drinking out of the water pitcher, had wiped her hands on her skirt. Something very odd was happening.

Moderating his tone, he said, “You’re being unreasonable. It was just a kiss.”

She snapped her fingers and turned away. “It was nothing.”

She dismissed him. Just like that. He wanted so badly to stand up, walk over, take her by the shoulders, and shake her.

But she was already shaking. Just a fine tremble in her fingers, which she immediately tucked into her pocket to hide from him. “If it was nothing, then why are you acting as if I demanded my conjugal rights?”

“You’re not well enough to demand anything, much less conjugal rights.”

He could have lifted the sheet and shown her proof
of her error, but either the shadows were playing tricks with her features or she had been crying. Her eyes were red. Her nose was blotchy and swollen.

Crying. Hell. He studied her. She had come in cranky. He knew of an easy explanation, but a man didn’t live with a woman as closely as he had lived with Enid without knowing a bit about her, and she’d suffered through her monthlies a good ten days ago. So what was wrong now?

Turning her back, she said, “I don’t feel like fighting with you.”

He tested her. “That’s a change.”

She didn’t bite. “I’m going to bed.”

Glancing out of the west-facing window, he saw the faint red tint still staining the purple sky. “The sun has barely set.”

“I want to go to bed.”

Because he’d kissed her? He kept a watchful silence as she removed her snood and hairpins and slapped them on the table.

Her curly, dark hair tumbled around her shoulders. Tossing it back with a flip of her head, she ran her fingers through along her scalp, then clutched her head and closed her eyes as if she held in reason with her bare hands. Opening her eyes, she saw the way he observed her, and in the tone of a woman driven to the limit of her patience, she said, “You know, I didn’t want to come to Blythe Hall and take care of you. I had a position with Lady Halifax. I had a responsibility to that lady. And I abandoned her to come and care for my husband. My worthless, good-for-nothing, cad of a husband who abandoned me nine years ago. There’s an
irony there if you care to examine it, but I don’t.” She unpinned her collar. “I don’t.”

She unpinned her cuffs, too, and threw them on the table atop her hair trinkets. She, who had never so much as unbuttoned a button in front of him before, removed clothing without a thought to the consequences. Kicking off her shoes, she sat down by the table.

“Aren’t you going to pick up your shoes?” he asked.

“Why? They’ll be there for me in the morning.” She shoved the little pile of clothing aside. “It’s not as if
you’re
going to pick them up.”

The woman was forever tidying the room, and folding towels and putting them away when five minutes later she had to unfold them to clean something up.
A place for everything, and everything in its place
, she always said.

“
You
never picked up anything even when you could walk.”

And cruel. This woman who tenderly cared for him was being cruel. He would have asked her what was wrong—but she hiked up her skirt to her knees.

His mouth dried.

“Do you know who you were? You were a traveling player.” She managed to imbue the term with stinging disdain. “You were handsome, dashing, older. You recited poetry with a Scottish burr, you lured me with the promise of adventure, and I was so feeble-minded, it worked.”

He would have been offended and enraged if not for a peek at her white drawers, her sleek, stocking-clad calves and the garter perched close to her knee.

“I had a position as governess, and I ran away with
you so we could be married.” She untied the garters and removed the stockings—all of which she dropped on the floor, too.

When she stood and shook out her skirts, he released an unsteady sigh. His heart pumped in deep, rapid throbs; he sucked in air in great gulps. “Enid, that happened a long time ago. You cannot still be upset . . . um . . . that . . .”

She dealt him a withering glance, her extraordinary blue eyes fierce with derision, then she marched to the dresser and pulled out one of her plain, white nightgowns. Clutching it tight against her chest, she said, “My position with Lady Halifax was the second job I have forsaken for you, but only because Lady Halifax said I had to. I had learned my lesson when I left my responsibilities as governess and got what I deserved. You abandoned me. There. I said it again.
You
abandoned
me
.”

She was goading him. That little woman with her slender ankles and her wild, black cape of hair was poking at him as if he were a bear to be baited! “Why?”

Her forehead wrinkled. “Why . . . what?”

He could have asked why she provoked him, but she wouldn’t give him an answer. “Why did I abandon you?”

In an awkward, savage imitation of his Scottish accent, she said, “Because, dearling, ye’re an anchor aroond my neck.”

Interesting. “Were you an anchor around my neck?”

“I most certainly was. I wanted to settle down. Be married in a real home with a garden and a fence. Have children. Be normal.”

He would like to do that with her, starting with the making of children.

She continued, “You wanted to be feckless, reckless and immature.”

But first he would have to get to the bottom of this baffling, illogical temper that possessed her. They were alone, the door was locked, the room flickered with candlelight, and a warm, summer-scented breeze blew through the open windows. It was a good night for confessions.

“So in Little Bidewell, when you had gambled away your horse, you stole it back and ran like a thief—which you were—leaving me to pay your debts.”

He glanced toward the pitcher of water on the table beside his bed. “Please, may I have a drink of water?”

She marched toward him. “That was a dirty trick, Stephen MacLean, and I have never forgiven you. Do you know how close I came to the workhouse?” She slopped water into a glass. “All those years of shame, knowing my husband cared so little he left me in dire straits and never even inquired after my well-being. Finally I get to a place where the mistress needs me, really needs me . . . and I have to leave to take care of you? I just can’t”—her voice wobbled—“believe I let Lady Halifax talk me into coming here when she was so—”

Here it comes.
Taking Enid’s hand, he pulled her toward him.

“—So sick and near death—”

Although Enid set her heels, MacLean tugged hard and sat her on the bed with him, then removed the glass from her hand and placed it back on the table.

Her hip rested against his. She didn’t look at him. Her voice was almost inaudible when she added, “And now I’ll never see her again.”

How could he have misread the signs? Enid struggled not against misplaced passion but against guilt and grief. Her Lady Halifax had died, and his proud, defiant wife crumpled before his eyes. “Come here, sweetheart.” Wrapping his arms around her, he brought her alongside him so her head rested on his shoulder. “Sh.” He kissed her forehead, smoothed her hair back from her face. “It’s all right, darling. She sent you to do the right thing, and you did it, and now you’ve both proved your stout hearts.”

“But she’s dead,” Enid whispered, and her voice broke. Her shoulders shook, and the tears she had fought against burst forth in a torrent. She pressed her mouth against his bare skin to muffle her sobs.

MacLean lifted her, adjusted her, brought her whole body up to rest on him. “God will care for her. Let me care for you.”

She still held the nightgown tight in her arms, gripping it as if the pad of soft, worn cotton could provide comfort in a bleak world.

He tugged it free, then wiped her cheeks with the hem. Holding it up to her nose, he ordered, “Blow.”

With sobs interrupting almost every word, she said in horror, “I’m . . . not going to . . . blow my nose on my . . . nightgown.”

If she hadn’t been so tragic, he might have laughed. As it was, he said wryly, “So Enid is still in there.”

Sitting up, she grabbed a clean towel from the pile on the bedstand, lowered her face and sobbed into it.

She didn’t understand. Even now, she didn’t understand.
Hauling her back into his arms, he pressed her cheek to his chest. “No matter how many times you pull away, I’ll still be here to hold you.”

Sobs wracked her. “She’s . . . dead. Cold . . . alone in the grave. Dying . . . I’ve seen it.”

Of course she had. She nursed the ill. But he hadn’t considered how it would affect her.

Her fingers clutched at his skin, and she writhed as if the sobbing hurt. “Dying is so . . . lonely.”

His heart ached for her. He slung his leg over hers to envelop her in solace. He smoothed his hands up and down her spine.

“I wanted . . . wanted to hold her . . . hand as she . . . she slipped away.”

He stroked Enid, murmured disjointed bits of comfort in her ear—and marveled at the depths of her caring.

And she must be right. He must be a selfish pig of a man, or else he’d not be holding her as she sobbed, wanting to comfort her, at the same time wanting her fierce devotion for himself. By God, she would adore him with all the fervor and passion of her being. He would make sure of that. But for now he hid his intentions with comforting murmurs and long, slow caresses.

“I can’t . . . help . . . her . . . now. I can do . . . nothing now.” Enid’s voice rose, and she hit him once, right on the chest.

He caught his breath. The lady railed at fate, held him responsible, and she packed a good wallop.

“I want to go back in time. I want to be with her.” She rolled her head on his chest. “Fix it. Fix . . . it!”

“I will.” Her hair caught on the stubble of his chin,
and the faint scent of gardenias and outdoors rose from the strands. “I’ll fix everything.”

At last her sobbing slowed. She hiccupped. Wiped her eyes on the towel. And her fingers smoothed over the place where she had punched him, and lingered to tangle in his silky chest hair.

She was distraught. She didn’t know what she was doing, how her slightest touch would affect him.

For the first time, he held her willing body in his arms. His own body demanded he comfort her in a physical way. He knew well enough to ignore his body; his cock directed his other organs, and his cock never gave good advice. By concentrating hard, he retained a modicum of good sense. “Show me the letter.”

Sitting up, she dug the crumpled sheet out of her pocket and for a moment held it as if she couldn’t give it up. Slowly she handed it over. “Lady Halifax’s solicitor wrote it. I wish you could have read one of hers. Witty and”—her voice wobbled again—“sharp.” She settled back onto his shoulder.

Just as if she belonged there. He managed, barely, not to raise his fist in victory. Instead, he took a towel, wet it in the basin and blotted her hot cheeks. “Better?”

She nodded, took the towel and pressed it to her swollen eyes.

He perused the letter in silence, then folded it again and handed it to her. “She must have loved you. She left you a legacy.”

Enid cleared her throat and thrust the letter back into her pocket. “I’m sure she left all of her servants a legacy.”

She should not dismiss herself so easily. “You weren’t her servant. You were her companion.”

“I imagine she left everyone in her employ a gift.”

“After all that you’ve done for me, if I were to die today, I would want you to have the world. I know you, Enid MacLean, and you gave Lady Halifax no less than your best.” Taking the towel, he wet it again and stroked Enid’s forehead. “Her legacy to you is no token, but a personal message of affection.”