Tempting the Bride (28 page)

He read to her for days on end. She hung onto his words, his voice, whether he was reading the publishing primer, the news, or
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.
From time to time, when they were alone, he’d ask her to wake up, and tell her that he loved her, that he’d always, always loved her.

She’d never believed anything in her life as much as she believed in his love. With all her strength she reached for him. She
would
leave this invisible prison. She
would
be part of the world again. And she
would
meet him and tell him that she loved him every bit as fervently and fiercely.

Helena gasped. So that was why Hastings’s voice had
been familiar to her when she’d awakened. That was why she’d had a vague memory of listening to his impression of the Cheshire Cat. And that was why she’d had a much easier time wrapping her hands around the reins of her business than she’d anticipated, because he’d told her everything she knew.

She had never cried in public, but she did now, tears of joy and gratitude that she could not stop. The man she’d loved earlier had proved himself a lesser man, but the love of her life had proved himself worthy—more than worthy—at every turn.

And how fortunate she was to be going home to him.

N
o sounds had come from Bea’s trunk for the past twenty minutes. Perhaps she had fallen asleep inside—it had happened before, more than once. Bea, a heavy sleeper, did not mind being carried to bed—if she were actually asleep. If she were still awake and he opened the lid of the trunk, she would become twice as upset.

Hastings rose to his feet, rocking back and forth on his heels, mired in indecision.

“Is Bea all right?”

He turned stock-still with shock.
Helena!

Slowly, very slowly, he turned around.

She came toward him. “I’m back. And I’m terribly sorry for what I said earlier. Forgive me for being too blind to see the truth right in front of me.”

He couldn’t speak, but he must have beamed at her. Her face, at first so serious, softened into a smile, her eyes
resembling exactly the glimmering waters of Lake Sahara. He was dizzy with happiness.

“Lady!” Bea exclaimed, lifting the lid of the trunk and peering out.

“Yes, I’m back,” Helena said again, smiling even wider. “Would you like to come out?”

The trunk closed again. Bea’s voice was muffled. “Sir Hardshell died.”

“Oh, no, I’m so sorry!”

“Why don’t you tell Bea about Sir Hardshell’s cousins, Helena?” Hastings finally found his voice. “Mr. Stoutback and Miss Carapace, among others. We can invite one of them to come and live in Sir Hardshell’s old glass tank.”

“Oh, yes, indeed. I believe that’s what Sir Hardshell would have wanted. He wouldn’t wish his lovely home to remain empty, all that nice soil, those pretty rocks, and that solid pewter water dish. Why, what a waste.”

Silence greeted Helena’s enthusiastic enumeration of the virtues of Sir Hardshell’s old dwelling. Hastings grabbed her and kissed her hard. She kissed him back with equal force. He could scarcely breathe—but why breathe when he could kiss?

He didn’t hear Bea. It was Helena who pulled away and said, “What did you say, sweet girl?”

“Bath?”

Has she had supper?
Helena mouthed.

He nodded and imitated the motion of sliding a plate inside the little trunk door—he’d finally succeeded in feeding Bea something. “I’m afraid you’ll have to go without your bath tonight, poppet. It’s quite late. You’d better be in bed now or you won’t be able to get up on time tomorrow.”

More silence. He again kissed Helena until he was out of breath. But this time he did not miss it when Bea said, “Papa?”

He lifted her out and had her tucked into bed in no time at all. Then, hand in hand, he and Helena ran for their own rooms, not stopping until they’d slammed the door shut behind them.

T
wo hours later, Helena punched her David in the solar plexus.

“Oww. What was that for?”

“For being immeasurably stupid all these years. You didn’t need to wait until I was almost dead before telling me you loved me.” She next punched him in the arm. “And this is for pinching my bottom—I finally remembered it.”

“Hmm,” he said, putting a hand on her bottom and touching her freely.

She giggled and kissed the places where she’d hit him. “But I shouldn’t be too hard on you. You were an ass, but I was a thorough fool myself.”

“Thank you for saying it so I don’t need to.”

“Ha, for that, I will tie you to a bedpost and
not
pleasure you.”

“But think of the waste, darling. Why let a perfectly good, hard cock wilt from disuse?”

She burst out laughing. He pulled her on top of him. “Tell me, my very demanding lady, when did you finally realize that you absolutely cannot live without me?”

She glanced at him askance. “Have I ever come to such a maudlin realization?”

“Yes, you have,” he answered, cheeky and confident. “Now tell me when.”

She rubbed her palm on the beginning of his stubble and thought about it. “Possibly when you told me you’d hold dinner for me before I left. Also possibly when Prince Narcissus took a knife to his pride. Again, possibly, the first time I learned of the existence of Lake Sahara. But definitely when I remembered the days I spent in a coma.”

She recounted her memory of those three days, of her frustration and helplessness, and, most important, of his lovely voice keeping her despair at bay.

He cupped her cheek and kissed her tenderly. “All I wanted was for you to not feel alone. And to love you as I’d always meant to.”

She returned the kiss. “All
I
wanted was to wake up and tell you I love you.”

They kept kissing. His body changed, again ready for love.

She broke the kiss and licked the corner of his lips. “And now that I’ve told you I love you, we can at last turn our minds to truly important matters.”

He raised a brow. “Such as?”

“Such as when you will have your next smutty story ready for me.”

He laughed. “That is indeed the pressing question of our time.”

“So when will it be ready?” she whispered into his ear.

He rolled her beneath him and kissed her again. “Soon, darling, very soon.”

T
he wedding of Helena Charlotte Fitzhugh and David Hillsborough, Viscount Hastings, was not the wedding of the Season—understandably, since the Season had already ended. But in scope, attendance, and the amount of gossip it generated, taking place long after the couple had been established to have eloped, it rivaled any wedding of the Season in recent memory.

The bride wore a blindingly white wedding gown. The groom dripped with diamonds and pearls—diamond cuff links, diamond stickpin, diamond shirt studs, and a mother-of-pearl pocket watch. The ladies of the bride’s family wept openly during the ceremony, and her brother was seen dabbing surreptitiously at his eyes.

To mark this momentous day, the bride and the groom each prepared a gift for the other. Given the grandeur of the occasion, one might be forgiven for guessing those
gifts to be comprised of legendary works of art, extraordinary pieces of jewelry, and perhaps exquisite ancient manuscripts. But one would be wrong.

The groom gave the bride a miniature model of a dirigible named
Hastings’s Pride
. The bride returned an even less costly present: a wooden sign, the sort to be found everywhere at crossroads and near landmarks.

This particular sign was staked into place by the pond at Easton Grange. One side of the sign read,
OLD TOAD POND
, the other,
LAKE SAHARA
.

The Bride of Larkspear
, Hastings’s smutty love letter to Helena, is available in its entirety at your preferred vendor of fine e-books.

The text of Helena’s book on publishing is borrowed
From Manuscript to Bookstall: The Cost of Printing and Binding Books, with the Various Methods of Publishing Them Explained and Discussed
, a volume published in 1894 by Arthur Dudley Southam, now in the public domain.

Cambridge, Massachusetts

1896

T
he ichthyosaur skeleton at Harvard’s Museum of Comparative Zoology was incomplete. But the fish lizard was one of the first to be found on American soil, in the state of Wyoming, and the American university was understandably eager to put it on exhibit.

Venetia Fitzhugh Townsend Easterbrook stepped closer to look at its tiny teeth, resembling the blade of a serrated bread knife, which indicated a diet of soft-bodied marine organisms. Squid, perhaps, which had been abundant in the Triassic seas. She examined the minuscule bones of its flappers, fitted together like rows of kernels on the cob. She counted its many rib bones, long and thin like the teeth of a curved comb.

Now that this semblance of scientific scrutiny had been performed, she allowed herself to step back and take in the creature’s length, twelve feet from end to end, even
with much of its tail missing. She would not lie. It was always the size of these prehistoric beasts that most enthralled her.

“I told you she’d be here,” said a familiar voice that belonged to Venetia’s younger sister, Helena.

“And right you are,” said Millie, the wife of their brother, Fitz.

Venetia turned around. Helena stood five feet eleven inches in her stockings. As if that weren’t attention-grabbing enough, she also had red hair, the most magnificent head of it since Good Queen Bess, and malachite green eyes. Millie, at five feet three inches, with brown hair and brown eyes, disappeared easily into a crowd—though that was a mistake on the part of the crowd, as Millie was delicately pretty and much more interesting than she let on.

Venetia smiled. “Did you find interviewing the parents fruitful, my dears?”

“Somewhat,” answered Helena.

The upcoming graduating class of Radcliffe, a women’s college affiliated with Harvard University, would be the first to have the Harvard president’s signature on their diplomas—a privilege roundly denied their English counterparts at Lady Margaret Hall and Girton. Helena was on hand to write about the young ladies of this historic batch for the
Queen
magazine. Venetia and Millie had come along as her chaperones.

On the surface, Helena, an accomplished young woman who had studied at Lady Margaret Hall and currently owned a small but thriving publishing firm, seemed the perfect author for such an article. In reality, she had vehemently resisted the assignment.

But her family had evidence that Helena, an unmarried woman, was conducting a potentially ruinous affair. This presented quite a quandary. Helena, at twenty-seven, had not only come of age long ago, but had also come into her inheritance—in other words, too old and too financially independent to be coerced into more decorous conduct.

Venetia, Fitz, and Millie had agonized over what to do to protect this beloved sister. In the end, they’d decided to remove Helena from the source of temptation without ever mentioning their reasons, in the hope that she’d come to her senses when she’d had some time to reflect upon her choices.

Venetia had all but bribed the editor of the
Queen
to offer the American assignment to Helena, then proceeded to wear down Helena’s opposition to leaving England. They’d arrived in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts at the beginning of the spring term. Since then, Venetia and Millie had kept Helena busy with round after round of interviews, class visits, and curriculum studies.

But they wouldn’t be able to keep Helena on this side of the Atlantic for much longer. Instead of forgetting, absence seemed to have made Helena’s heart yearn ever more strenuously for the one she’d left behind.

As expected, Helena began to mount another protest. “Millie tells me you’ve even more interviews arranged.
Surely
I’ve collected more than enough material for an article. Any more and I’ll be looking at a whole book on the subject.”

Venetia and Millie exchanged a glance.

“It may not be a bad idea to have enough material for a monograph. You can be your own publisher,” said Millie, in that quiet, gentle way of hers.

“True, but as outstanding as I find the ladies of Radcliffe College, I do not intend to devote much more of my life to them,” answered Helena, an edge to her voice.

Twenty-seven was a difficult age for an unmarried woman. Proposals became scarce, the London Season less a thrill than one long drudgery. Spinsterhood breathed down her neck, yet in spite of it, she must still be accompanied everywhere by either a servant or a chaperone.

Was that why Helena, whom Venetia had thought the most clear-eyed of them all, had rebelled and decided she no longer wished to be sensible? Venetia had yet to ask that question. None of them had. What they all wanted was to pretend that this misstep on Helena’s part never happened. To acknowledge it was to acknowledge that Helena was careening toward ruin—and none of them could put a brake to the runaway carriage that was her affair.

Venetia linked arms with Helena. It was better for her to be kept away from England for as long as possible, but they must finesse the point, rather than force it.

“If you are sure you have enough material, then I’ll write the rest of the parents we have contacted for interviews and tell them that their participation will no longer be required,” she said, as they pushed open the doors of the museum.

A cold gust greeted them. Helena pulled her cloak tighter, looking at once relieved and suspicious. “I’m sure I have enough material.”

“Then I will write those letters as soon as we’ve had our tea. To tell you the truth, I’ve been feeling a little restless myself. Now that you are finished with your work, we can take the opportunity to do some sightseeing.”

“In this weather?” Helena said incredulously.