Tempting the Bride (16 page)

He raised her hand and pressed a kiss into the center of her palm. “What’s a little discomfort compared to the joy of being near you? Now sleep, my dear; you’ve much convalescing left to do.”

S
he did not take much time to go back to sleep. Hastings remained awake for much longer, savoring each moment of her nearness.

It still felt like a dream to be allowed to sit next to her for hours on end. The sweet intimacy of watching her fall asleep was a privilege he’d never hoped for, not even when he wrote fiction about them. And to converse as they did, exchanges that meant something—a whole new world indeed.

He didn’t know when he fell asleep, but it was a little past four in the morning when he suddenly awakened with a stark fear in his heart. He immediately looked toward her. In the muted light from the covered electric sconce, she lay flat on her back, her chest rising and falling with
a comforting cadence. He let out a sigh of relief—and only then saw that her eyes were open and a trail of tears glistened on her temple.

He touched her hand. “What’s the matter?” he whispered, not wanting to wake up the softly snoring night nurse.

“Nothing.” Helena wiped away her tears, grimacing a little as her fingers touched still-bruised skin. “I’m just being sentimental.”

“May I ask about what or whom?”

She inhaled unsteadily. “My Carstairs cousins. Do you know them?”

“Yes. I went to a great many of their funerals.”

Another teardrop rolled down the side of her temple into her hair. “I can’t believe they are all gone—especially Billy.”

His eyes widened.

She, staring at the ceiling, did not notice his reaction. “He was probably my father’s favorite among all my cousins. And mine, too. Such a gentle way he had with animals—they loved him, one and all. And the way he died was so horrible, I can’t help feeling heartbroken for him. Which is silly, of course, since I must have already shed buckets of tears earlier.”

“You didn’t shed any tears for him,” he said.

Her lips quivered. “I probably wouldn’t have let you see me cry, since we weren’t married then.”

“You didn’t attend his funeral, Helena.”

This stopped her tears. “What? Was I ill?”

“No, you were perfectly fine. You didn’t go because you loathed Billy.”

She scooted higher to rest her back against the headboard. “That’s impossible. I adored Billy. You should have seen how sweet he was with my puppy—or even stray dogs.”

He recognized her digging in her heels. And he, alas, possessed the questionable talent of making her dig in her heels even harder. But he had no choice but to go on. “Billy was nice to puppies, but he was loathsome to women. He raped five women in his service. Each time it was hushed up, but everyone knew. By the time of his death, there were no women working in the Carstairs house.”

She stared at him, her jaw slack.

“You had trouble believing it the first time, too. It wasn’t until you were eighteen and walked in on him trying to corner a fourteen-year-old maid that you changed your mind. So if you don’t believe me, I understand.”

She shook her head much harder than she ought. “No, no, you mistook me. Of course I believe you.”

Now it was he who stared at her, incredulous and—ecstatic. She took him at his word. She trusted him. Nothing like this had ever happened before.

“You’ve no reason to speak ill of the dead,” she went on, the fingers of her free hand flexing restlessly. “And it would have been to your advantage, in fact, to say something nice when I was weeping over him. I’m only speechless at how wrong I was. Father died when Billy was twelve, so he can be forgiven for not realizing what a monster Billy would become. But where was I for the next so many years? It should not have taken me that long to see the truth—and here I thought myself so clever in all things.”

“You are clever in just about all things,” he told her. “Clever, discerning, and wily. But there is also a streak of
sentimentality to you. You don’t form attachments easily. When you do, you love with a great intensity and you are forgiving of flaws and weaknesses.”

She seemed surprised by his defense of her, then grateful, then bashful. “You are not speaking of yourself here, are you? You look like a man full of flaws and weaknesses,” she said, her tone half-teasing.

“That I may be, but you’ve never forgiven a single flaw of mine, much to my disappointment.”

She looked away for a moment, her fingers plucking at the sheets. “Well, at least that put an end to my silly weeping.”

He reached forward and placed his hand over hers. “Why don’t you go back to sleep? You need your rest.”

She cast him a sideways glance, but didn’t say anything.

“What is it?” he asked.

She only smiled—or perhaps smirked—with her eyes.

His heartbeat accelerated. “You are thinking of something.”

“Maybe I am.”

“Tell me.”

His hand still covered hers. But now she turned her hand so that her thumb grazed a slow line down the center of his palm. His breath caught; heat coursed up his arm.

“That demonstration you offered—I’ll take you up on it.” Her eyes turned even naughtier. “But not just yet. You must wait more time.”

“Really?” he drawled.

He rose from his seat, set his arms on either side of her, and closed the distance between their lips until only a bare inch remained.

She was surprised—and excited. Even in this dingy
light he could see her pupils dilating. She licked her lips; his fingers clawed into the pillows. Their agitated breaths mingled, and all he had to do was lower his head a little farther…

He pulled back, sat down again, and smirked as she had. “You are right—not just yet. You must wait more time, my dear.”

I
n the morning light, Helena examined her pate, wondering whether Hastings would have kissed her during the night if she’d had a cloud of soft, wavy hair spread out on the pillow, the visual equivalent of a siren song. “I believe I may declare with great authority that I prefer not being bald,” she said ruefully.

She was surrounded by women: the day nurse, waiting to wrap fresh bandaging around her head; Venetia, holding up the mirror; and Millie, one finger on her cheek.

“You are not completely bald,” pointed out Millie. “Your hair is already growing back.”

“Never mind the hair,” said Venetia. “That hoof could have taken out your eye; at least hair grows back.”

Helena sighed. That was quite true. “Not to mention I can’t remember anything of your dino—”

Into her mind tumbled the recollection of warm summer air brushing against the skin of her nape, alternating with salty, cool breezes from the coast. She’d been sitting under a tree with a book in her hand—
Wuthering Heights
, to be exact—hadn’t she? And Venetia had shouted from somewhere behind her,
Fitz, Helena, come look at what I’ve found.

“I remember,” she said very softly, not wanting to
scatter her newly returned memories. “I
remember
. It was a big brute, your fossil. We knocked about it for an hour before we decided that the three of us were no match for it. Fitz suggested we ask for help from the village, so we did. And every male over the age of five volunteered.”

Venetia stared at her for a few seconds. Then she shrieked and hugged Millie hard—the way she couldn’t hug Helena. “That’s exactly what happened. You do remember! You do, you do!”

She let go of a startled Millie, laughed, and wiped her eyes at the same time. “Well, actually, not exactly what happened. There were no five-year-olds following me. Seven-year-olds, perhaps, but not five-year-olds.”

Helena laughed, too, and didn’t care at all about the discomfort it caused. “Maybe not
five
-year-olds, but there was that one boy who must have been no more than four, and for the remainder of the excavation he stood six inches from you, staring.” She turned to Millie. “You think Venetia is beautiful now, but she can’t hold a candle to her sixteen-year-old self. She used to pack the streets with spectators.”

Venetia smiled hugely. “Wait till I tell Lexington what a terrible bargain he received, getting my old, ugly self instead of the fresh, pretty one.”

She did not need to go find her husband. The door swung open and he was right there. “Are you all right, Duchess? I heard you scream.”

Venetia rushed up to him and grabbed his arm. “I’m perfectly fine. Helena remembered our dig.”

“The
Cetiosaurus
?” enthused Lexington, placing his hand over his wife’s. “Excellent. That’s what? Six months later than what she could previously recall?”

“At least seven,” Venetia corrected him.

Fitz and Hastings now joined Lexington at the door, which was becoming quite crowded. “What is all the commotion about?” asked Fitz.

“I remember Venetia’s dinosaur,” Helena announced, feeling as proud as the first time she read a book all by herself.

“Thank
goodness
!” cried Fitz. “That is wonderful news.”

Helena’s attention turned to Hastings, whose hair was still damp from his bath. He smiled, too, but there was a hollowness to the smile. “Venetia found the dinosaur only weeks before I visited Hampton House for the first time. Do you also remember that?”

Helena’s glee deflated some. “No, not that. At least, not yet.”

Hastings exhaled. “I suppose it will happen some other time, then.”

His reaction puzzled her. Taken together with his relief the night before at her continued state of nonremembrance, and his general nonchalance over their years of shared history wiped clean, one might be tempted to say that he didn’t particularly long for the return of her memory.

“My lady,” said Nurse Gardner, “we should have your new bandages on.”

Helena belatedly remembered her bald head. “Gentlemen, would you mind?”

They murmured their apologies and left. Hastings glanced back at her, his gaze fearful, as if she were not getting better, but worse, and any moment could be their last together.

I
t was only a matter of time.

Hastings sat by her bedside, his head in his hands. He knew this. He knew this all along. But he’d hoped for a little more time, a little more of this miracle.

“I see you’ve wisely decided not to hide your curls from my ravenous sight,” she said, startling him.

He straightened in his chair. “You are awake.”

“And have been for several minutes.”

He helped her sit up higher and rang for her luncheon. “Admiring my cross-between-golden-retriever-and-French-poodle hair?”

One side of her mouth lifted. “I am ravished by the beauty of those curls.”

She probably wouldn’t speak so flirtatiously had they not been alone. But the day nurse had gone to use the water closet. He retook his seat. “Ravished, eh?”

“Indeed. But I would have been even more ravished if I weren’t wondering at the same time why you look so dejected.”

Of course she’d notice. Hadn’t he himself told her, only hours ago, that she was wily, discerning, and clever? And he hadn’t been exactly subtle in his reactions, ricocheting from dread to hope and back again in dizzying succession.

He raked his fingers through his hair. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to distract you from the pure joy that is my beauty.”

She studied him for a moment. The bruises on her face were fading more rapidly now; in a few more days they would be only faint smudges of discoloration. And her eyes—her gaze was at once intense and sympathetic. He’d seen her look at others this way, but never him.

“Why don’t you want me to regain my memory?”

The bluntness of her question made him perspire. But he met her eyes and answered truthfully, “I do want you to regain your memory. You’ve made many friends and lived an interesting and accomplished life. It would be a crying shame if you can’t look back and see this path you’ve blazed for yourself.”

She considered his answer for a moment. “But?”

Was she ready for the whole truth? Was he?

“Do you remember what I told you about melting into a puddle at my first sight of you?”

She smiled just perceptibly. “Yes.”

“My sentiments were not reciprocated. You took a look at me and went back to your books. You were not one of those girls who fell in love easily, not to mention I was five inches shorter than you. I, on the other hand…”

He’d declared his love again and again when she’d been comatose. But if he uttered those words now, with her perfectly awake and lucid, he’d never be able to repudiate that sentiment. And she would always know.

He played with the edge of her bedding, not quite meeting her eyes. “I, on the other hand, fell madly in love. And when I realized that I was invisible to you, I resorted to gaining your attention by any means possible.”

“What did you do?” Her tone was amused, fond even.

“The better question would have been, what didn’t I do?” He raised his face. “A week after we first met I tried to pinch your bottom.”

She stared at him, halfway between outrage and laughter. “Truly?”

“My only defense is that I knew I wouldn’t be able to
feel anything—women wore enormous bustles then. All I wanted was for you to notice me.”