Lost in Your Arms (9 page)

Chapter 9

Enid pretended she didn’t understand, but MacLean didn’t care. She understood, all right. She knew what had almost happened. The passion between them pulsed and burned with fresh blood and new fire.

He slid a deliberate, carnal finger down her arm and over the pulse point in her wrist.

Yanking her hand away from his, she stalked toward the stairs, where the patter of footsteps sounded.

A head popped up, a beautiful female who dazzled with a smile, who wore joy like a garment and made everyone around happy to be with her. Seeing Enid, she asked, “
Madame
MacLean?”

“Yes, I’m Enid MacLean.”

As the woman climbed into the room, he saw she was petite and pretty, and even without introductions he knew she was the woman Throckmorton was taking to wife. No other woman could have made that solemn old son of a bitch marry without money or title.

MacLean blinked. What a revelation! He
had
known Throckmorton before, and he’d been a friend, too, or MacLean wouldn’t reflect on him with the cheerful amusement of one trapped male about another.

Trapped . . . he slid a glance at Enid. Married. To her. He might not want to think he would marry an Englishwoman, but she was right. If Throckmorton wished to deceive him, he would have presented him with a beauteous maiden with honey on her lips, not this termagant.

Anticipation mixed with the bitterness of knowing he had failed to keep his mate happy. He didn’t remember, but Enid was his wife, and he would make new memories with her. Her seduction was something to plan, and something to look forward to.

Celeste wore her honey gold hair done in one of those intricate styles that irritated any sensible man, with braids going here and there, wrapping around her ears and over her head, and diamond-headed pins sticking about and sparkling until MacLean wanted to tell her to blow out the lights.

Enid, silly girl, took one look and touched her hands to that black net snood in an ineffectual attempt to straighten that magnificent mane of flyaway hair.

“Don’t,” Celeste cried, the faintest of French accents coloring her words. “Wait!” She hurried forward, her wide, vividly pink skirts flying, a listing bouquet of flowers clasped in her arms. “Let me.” Pulling the hairpins free from Enid’s hair, she snatched the black net snood away.

The curly mane fell about Enid’s shoulders in total disarray, and she lifted her hands and caught the strands. With her upswept arms and startled expression,
she looked so much like a female caught at her toilette that MacLean almost groaned from desire. Bending one knee, he hid his blooming thistle beneath the tented sheet and watched with a voyeur’s bliss as Celeste pushed Enid’s hands away and fingercombed Enid’s hair. It reached Enid’s waist. He’d caught glimpses last night in the candlelight, and now he wanted to stroke each strand, kiss her lips, cover her . . .

“Look at this!” Celeste exclaimed. “You are so lucky. My hair is straight and fine, but this—this is magnificent!” Turning to MacLean, she said, “
Monsieur
, don’t you love her hair?”

Today. Last night. Tomorrow, stretched across his pillow in a tumbled disarray.
But he said no more than, “It’s gorgeous.”

Enid glanced at him, wide-eyed and startled, and the passion he hid with his bent knee must have sounded in his voice, for she blushed a fiery red and snatched at that ridiculous snood.

“I would say so!” Celeste laughed, and charm oozed from every pore. “
Madame
MacLean, I have not introduced myself, and you’re wondering who I am. I am Celeste Milford. I’m going to marry Throckmorton.”

Celeste’s joy was infectious. MacLean smiled, and even Enid, intent on stuffing her hair into that hair-snare, chuckled with her and said, “I know.”

“Did he tell you?” Celeste hopped up and down, little hops that expressed her delight.

“He told us,” Enid said.

Celeste clasped her hands at her knees and chuckled. “Isn’t it wonderful that he should love me?”

“I would say he loves you because you’re wonderful,” Enid answered. The two women looked at each other, and some kernel of friendship leaped between them, for they burst into laughter, and hugged.

They reminded MacLean of his sister and her silly friends, always giggling for no reason and talking when they had nothing to say. He could see them now . . . he clutched at the sheets as the picture rose in his mind. His sister, standing on a rock at the seashore and waving her arms like a bird as the wind tore through her auburn hair . . .

Celeste babbled, “Throckmorton told me not to bother either of you because you were busy and didn’t need me to interfere.”

MacLean glanced up. He’d remembered something. He’d really remembered, but the women hadn’t noticed.

“All that means is that he wants me to mind my own business. So I brought the bouquet of flowers my father clipped for you just so I could meet you.” Celeste thrust the flowers at Enid. “Do you like them?”

Nor would MacLean tell them that a golden piece of past had floated up from the depths of his mind. Not yet. Not until he knew what it meant, if it was just a single treasure he would be granted, or if it was the beginning of an ever-widening lode.

Enid accepted the rather droopy flowers with such enthusiasm that it seemed she must never have received flowers before.

“Also, I have a letter for you.” Celeste delved into her pocket and presented Enid with a folded, sealed sheet.

Enid glanced at it, and, as if it contained some precious message that couldn’t be shared, she slipped it in her pocket. “Thank you! I’ve been waiting for this.”

“Who is it?” MacLean demanded. “Who’s writing you?”

“An old friend.” To Celeste, Enid said, “I don’t have a vase, so we’ll fill a bowl with water for the flowers.”

“That will do very well,” Celeste answered.

The letter. Enid was avoiding the letter, and that letter provided a link to Enid’s former life. The one MacLean knew nothing about. “Aren’t you going to read it now?”

As if she were embarrassed, Enid frowned fiercely at him. “We have company.”

MacLean subsided, but he wouldn’t forget.

Celeste filled the bowl from the pitcher. Enid put the flowers into the water, and MacLean saw his straight-faced, prickly wife chuckle when they fell over.

So Celeste cut and arranged them, and Enid took instructions with eager attention and without a hint of belligerence. MacLean had never imagined this transformation from responsibility-laden nurse to carefree girl.

“MacLean,” she called, “do you need anything?”

He wouldn’t dream of interrupting, not when he had a window into Enid’s behavior with someone she could call a friend. “I might sleep a little.”

“We must be quiet,” Celeste murmured as she tiptoed toward the chairs near the window and gestured Enid to a seat. “Sh, sh.”

Luckily for MacLean, he had a hunter’s hearing.

“You are from the Distinguished Academy of Governesses,” Celeste said.

“Yes, Lady Bucknell found my last job for me.”

Sheer curiosity swept MacLean into speech. “The Distinguished Academy of Governesses? What’s that?”

“I thought you were sleeping.” Enid sounded as if she knew very well he’d planned to eavesdrop.

“Not yet.” He thought he gave a reasonable imitation of innocence.

“We call it the Governess School. It’s the business which Lady Bucknell directs, and she finds jobs for many young women,” Celeste advised him. Then, as if he were of no importance, she turned back to Enid. “I’m from the Distinguished Academy of Governesses, too. Lady Bucknell taught me to be a governess, then she sent me to France, then I came back here because Throckmorton needed a governess and I wanted to marry his brother.”

Confused, MacLean asked, “So you’re marrying Throckmorton’s brother?”

“No, she’s marrying Mr. Throckmorton.” Enid shook her head as if he were obtuse.

Yet he knew very well he’d just heard Celeste say she’d returned to Blythe Hall to marry Throckmorton’s brother. How did women communicate in such a haphazard way?

“When did you return from France?” Enid asked.

“Only a few months ago, but Throckmorton courted me, although he did not wish to, really, but now he has changed his mind and desires to wed as soon as possible. His mother, chère Lady Philberta, didn’t want us
to stay in the house together, for she worries we will have a baby too soon. I could tell her we are, but that would spoil the surprise.”

“Oh!” Enid leaped to her feet and hugged Celeste. “Such good news! When?”

“Well done, Throckmorton!” MacLean grinned. Who would have thought Throckmorton would bend the rules enough to slip into this girl’s bed?

“I am sure our other babies will take nine months, but this one will be no more than seven.” Celeste dimpled. “You won’t tell Throckmorton, will you?”

Shocked, MacLean lifted himself on his elbow. “You haven’t told the father?”

Celeste flushed. “Go to sleep!”

“I am, but you should tell him immediately. You’ve already told us, and he doesn’t know.”

The two women looked at each other, and in unison, they shrugged.

“A woman likes to tell another woman this kind of news first,” Enid explained. “Men don’t understand.”

He massaged his forehead with his fingertips. “Of course we understand. She’s having a babe. It’s a natural occurrence.”

“That is what men don’t understand.” Celeste shook her head sadly. “They say it is a natural function. They even think they have something to do with it.”

“We . . . something to
do
with it? Yes, we do,” MacLean sputtered. “I’d like to see you do it on your own!”

Enid touched her bodice as if her heart spoke to her. “Babies are a miracle of God.”

Celeste agreed and dismissed him at the same time.
“Exactly. So my chère Lady Philberta whisked me back to Paris, where we bought my trousseau.” She spread her skirt wide. “This is the newest style. Do you not like it?”

“It’s lovely.” Enid touched the fabric with her fingertips. “Voile, I think.”

How did a woman know that? MacLean wondered. They looked at some other woman, dressed in some gown that looked just like all the rest of them, and pronounced the color as being peacock or foam or cream or some other substance that was a thing, not a color. They could tell the material, the weave, whether the lady wore ruffles on her drawers and the number of seamstresses who had sewn on it. All for a dress!

Now, if they could talk that way about horses, it would be worth something.

“The sleeves and the bodice are velvet. I don’t know if I like such a material in the daytime, but the couturier insisted it was chic and Throckmorton likes the feel of it when we—” Celeste clamped her mouth shut and glanced at MacLean.

He closed his eyes and pretended to be asleep.

“I have little experience with men, but Throckmorton is very virile,” Celeste announced in a loud whisper. “Very passionate all the time. Is your husband like that, too?”

Oh, he couldn’t wait to hear what Enid said to that!

“He was always more interested in cards and dice.” Enid didn’t bother to whisper, and he would wager she knew he was awake.

“I’m surprised. Throckmorton thinks the world of your husband, and he doesn’t approve of gambling or
wild living.” Celeste sounded disappointed, then brightened. “Now that Mr. MacLean forgets everything, maybe he will remember how to make love.”

“Maybe.” Enid inveighed the word with doubt. “But never mind him. You were saying you’re from the Governess School, too.”

“Yes, and do you know who I met here at Blythe Hall? The founders of the Distinguished Academy of Governesses!”

Enid gasped. “Really? They’re legends. What did they look like? What did they say?”

“They are young, they are pretty, they are smart—of course—”

Feeling drowsy, MacLean listened to the prattle with one ear. He was clean, he’d just been given a glimpse into the mind of his wife, and he had remembered his sister. A good day. Tomorrow would be better. Tomorrow, he would find out about that letter, and he would remember everything about himself, his family—and his wife. His difficult, complex, enticing little wife.

Chapter 10

This time when he woke, it was the middle of the night. A single candle burned low, elongating the shadow. On the bed by the wall, Enid lay, her braid draped across the pillow, her pale hand open and softly curled. She snored in complete relaxation.

He grinned. She snored—softly, to be sure, but still she snored. How good to know his perfect wife possessed at least one human vulnerability.

On the other hand, he hated to wake her from so deep a sleep, and he badly needed a drink. His gaze measured the distance between his bed and the table where the pitcher rested. Five steps, no more. Except for a few aches and pains, and the persistent weakness in his leg, he felt healthy. Only five steps. Surely he could walk it and could pour himself a glass.

Swinging his legs over the side of the bed, he leaned a hand on the night table. His head swam for a minute but cleared.

Yes, he could do this.

He stood—and his damnable leg gave way. He toppled over. He hit the floor with a thud that reverberated through the floorboards and every bone and muscle in his body. The night table came with him. Towels flew. The porcelain washbowl smashed into pieces and scattered everywhere.

The shards had not yet settled when Enid appeared at his side.

Furious, embarrassed, in pain, MacLean said, “I’m fine. I’m fine!”

Enid was having nothing of it. “Are you hurt? Is anything broken?”

His pride. Nothing of importance. “The washbowl,” he snapped.

“I mean you.” Her voice lashed at him. “Are you hurt?”

“I’m fine,” he repeated. “Have a care of the broken crockery.”

Two men appeared at the top of the stairs, pistols drawn.

Reacting on instinct, MacLean grabbed Enid and thrust her to the floor.

She squawked like a chicken.

The men glanced about the room, and MacLean realized that they were his bodyguards. Relaxing his grip on Enid, he allowed her to sit up.

“What are you doing? Are you crazy?” She glanced at the men as they put their pistols away. “Oh.” She switched back into the role of caretaker. “Don’t worry. It’s just Harry and Sandeman. They won’t hurt you.”

MacLean wanted to tell her that he did not appreciate her soothing him like a child who had woken from a nightmare, especially not in front of the men, but she
had wrapped her arm around his shoulders to assist him as he pushed himself up to a sitting position, and her arms constituted a first-rate place to be.

Holding him as if he were a child that had tripped and cracked his head, she directed the gunmen. “You! Harry, Sandeman! Help me put him back into bed.”

MacLean possessed the strength to push her away. “Go put on some shoes first. You’ll hurt yourself.”

“We’ll take him, miss.”

MacLean recognized the man who spoke. Harry.

“You do as MacLean says and put on some shoes,” Harry said.

“I want to help—”

MacLean observed that both men were staring fixedly up at the ceiling. He glanced at Enid.

Dear Lord, but for the long, sheer summer nightgown, she was almost naked.

He looked, because he couldn’t help it. He enjoyed, because a man would have to be dead not to enjoy. Then, using small words and speaking very slowly, he said, “Go put on a robe.”

Glancing down at herself, she said, “Men!” in a tone that expressed her total disgust for creatures that could think of a woman’s nudity in such a crisis.

MacLean could have told her that men could think of a wench’s nudity during the most gruesome of tortures, during an audience with the queen, during a direct lightning strike. But sometimes too much knowledge was bad for a woman.

She flounced away, the men still looking elsewhere, and as soon as she’d left, Harry knelt at MacLean’s side. “Break anything?”

“No.”

“Bleeding?”

“No.”

“All right, then.” The two men hefted MacLean back onto the bed with a minimum of fuss.

MacLean grunted as he assimilated the various aches and pains he’d added, but he’d done no permanent damage, so he cast his gaze on his bodyguards. Harry had been in the room that first day when MacLean had opened his eyes, and although Harry had put his pistol away, MacLean wouldn’t soon forget how at home he looked with it in his hand. “Are you always downstairs?” he asked.

“Someone is.” Harry glanced behind him. “Here she comes.”

Enid had gotten her pink cotton robe and shoes on in record time, and Harry and his friend stepped aside for her. She leaned over MacLean, all anxious concern. Her braid fell over her shoulder, and he caught the scent of flowers and spring breezes, captured during her walk. “Did you fall out of bed?”

“No, I tried to get up for a drink,” MacLean said.

“Don’t be silly. There’s nothing to be embarrassed about falling out of—” She shook her head as if his sentence had finally penetrated her mind. Somehow she realized he told the truth, and there, right before his eyes, she transformed from a tender caretaker to an outraged wife. Squeezing the ties of her robe in her hands, she asked, “Do you mean to tell me after two days of sustenance and with your injuries, you thought you could walk to the table?”

“Couldn’t be more than three steps.” He subtracted two from his original estimate.

“You haven’t walked for two months! Your leg is
broken!” She took an outraged breath. “Don’t you have any sense at all?”

“No!” he roared at her. “I don’t! I’m just a stupid man who doesn’t understand where babies come from, remember?”

The silence that fell in the room was awesome in its magnitude. The men with the guns looked at each other, then at the floor.

Enid stared at him, then at the men. She looked at him again. And she started to laugh.

He gave a sigh of relief. He detected a note of hysteria in her merriment, but hysteria was better than the alternative—he had thought she would re-break his leg herself.

Covering her forehead with her hand, she said, “You thought you could walk to the water.” She staggered toward the window, laughing again.

“What were the guns for, lads?” MacLean asked in a casual tone.

“Someone tried to kill you in the Crimea, and that makes Her Majesty’s government unhappy,” Harry answered.

“Only three steps,” Enid whooped.

MacLean found himself remarkably calm. “Is Her Majesty’s government expecting a repeat of the attempt in England?”

“Perhaps.” Harry nudged his companion, then they backed down the stairs.

“Don’t know where babies come from.” Enid’s glee was dying a slow, bitter death.

It wouldn’t last much longer. Too bad, because MacLean knew recriminations would be next. He allowed himself a glance toward the window.

She sat down on the windowsill, crossed her arms, and gazed at him.

He might not remember being married before, but he knew a few things about handling a woman. “I’m sorry,” he said. “That fall was stupid, and my fault.”

She fingered her braid.

He tried again. “You’ve made me feel well so quickly, I was overconfident.”

Sighing, she stood and walked to the pitcher.

“Please, may I have water?” he asked.

She turned on him so quickly that she almost burned the floorboards. “Is that so hard to ask? ‘Please, Enid, bring me water.’ ‘Water, Enid, water.’ Even, ‘Get up and get me water, woman.’ I might not like it when you’re a rude barbarian, but I don’t ever refuse you anything, do I? Do I?”

The return of her fury caught him by surprise, and he used his most reassuring tone. “You are everything a man could want in a wife.”

“No, I’m not. You always made sure I knew that. But I’m a wonderful nurse.” Stalking toward him, she handed him the water. “Here.”

He took a sip, then, when he noticed how forbiddingly she stared, he hastily swallowed the rest of it.

“Are you hurt?” she asked in a more reasonable tone of voice.

“Bruised,” he admitted. “Nothing serious.”

She took the glass and filled it again. “Are you hungry?”

“Please, may I have bread?”

She must have anticipated his request, for she removed the towel from a loaf on the table, tore off a small piece, and presented it to him.

He considered the golden crust. “I never thought you’d let me have bread. You told me I could only have broth and vegetables.”

She reached for the bread.

He held it out of reach. “But I’ll keep it.”

“Take small bites,” she advised, then she knelt to pick up the pieces of shattered crockery.

Prickles of discomfort ran up his spine. He didn’t like to see her on her knees, cleaning up after him. It made him feel . . . uncomfortable. “Call a servant to do that.”

“They’re asleep.” She sounded brisk and unaffected as she bent her head to her task. “Besides, I’ve done worse jobs.”

The bread tasted yeasty, rich, and so wonderful that he wanted to stuff the whole thing in his mouth. Curiosity stopped him. He had questions he wanted to ask. “Jobs like being a governess?” he inquired.

“I’ve never been a governess.”

“But you said you worked for the Distinguished Academy of Governesses.”

“No, I said Lady Bucknell found me my last position.” She tossed the big pieces of the washbowl in the dustbin and fetched the broom from the corner. “I’m a nurse.”

He was a proud man. He knew he was. Yet he had allowed his wife to become estranged from him? And that woman had been forced to toil for her living among strangers? As a nurse? Nurses were little better than prostitutes.

Enid must have read his mind, for she stopped sweeping and asked, “Would you rather I’d had a man support me?”

“No.” He looked at Enid. Slim, straight, with a clear gaze. She didn’t look as if she’d ever been touched by a man. She certainly didn’t look as if she’d ever been touched by the filth of a sickroom. He didn’t believe she had worked as a nurse. He didn’t believe he had allowed such a thing.

Yet . . . yet she exuded scorn, resentment, distrust—of him. Surely no female could simulate such intensity.

“You cared for . . . people. Who?”

“The ill.” She knew what he was asking, and she taunted him with too little information.

“Men?”

“Yes.”

He wanted to shout at her. Instead, he coaxed, “Enid, talk to me.”

Leaning against the broom, she sighed and yielded. “I stopped caring for gentlemen. Even the most elderly would bring themselves back from the brink of death to offer me a position as their mistress.”

He hated this. He could feel the fury coiling in his belly, but his fury was for the circumstances that stood between them, for his loss of memory, for his helplessness in her resentment. He didn’t want to hear, and at the same time he needed to understand. “How did you come to be a . . . a nurse?”

“There was a doctor in the village where we lived for awhile.”

“Where you and I lived?”

“Yes.” She swept beneath the bed, beneath the nightstand, chasing pottery into every corner.

“A village in Scotland?”

“No, in Little Bidewell north of York.”

“Why was I living in England?”

“You probably got thrown out of Scotland.” She used the dustpan to collect the shards. “We’re going to find bits and pieces on this floor for months.”

“Enid.” Silently, he demanded she tell him all.

“You aren’t going to like this,” she warned him, and she seemed to regret having to tell him. “You were an adventurer. A gambler. You moved about a great deal. We would live somewhere for perhaps two weeks, and then you would have worn out our welcome by beating the constable in cards or wagering the innkeeper out of his best silver. So we’d be off again.”

“I can’t give credence to this.” If Enid were to be believed, he was the kind of man he despised. And yet . . . yet, he couldn’t
not
believe her. He didn’t know about himself. He didn’t remember any of his past. And more than that, through the last few days of care and dissention, he’d grown to trust her.

A glow radiated from her like the clearest of candles. She did her duty without self-pity, cleaning up the broken bowl and replacing the dustpan and broom, feeding him at any hour, answering him smartly, her astringent replies like the slap of a crashing North Sea wave. She made him think, she made him feel, she made him want. He wanted to warm his hands on her, hold her against him until she filled him with her light—and he filled her with himself.

“Since you’ve come awake,” she said, “I’ve thought that you have changed.”

There had to be a reason that she so uncompromisingly disdained his former self. He could not be so wrong.

Staring at her, he saw a handsome female clad in a worn pink robe, beautiful in her intelligence and the
force of her personality. The kind of female who would look on a situation, decide how it was, and stick to her opinion regardless of how mulishly wrong she was. That had to explain this discrepancy between who he was and who she recalled. She saw their relationship through the eyes of uncompromising youth, and what she remembered could not be the truth.

Yes, that had to be it. When his memory returned, he would discover their marriage had been a series of youthful errors, that for her, time had altered the facts, and that with the maturity of their years, they could mend old mistakes.