Tempting the Bride

chapter 17



Hastings’s day only went downhill. One of his grooms broke his arm while exercising a horse. The roof of the mushroom house fell in. And then the coup de grâce: Sir Hardshell gave up the ghost.

By the time Hastings learned the news, Bea was already in her trunk, so upset that when he tried to give her a biscuit and a cup of milk tea, she kept pushing the little tray back out the door at the bottom of the trunk.

After a while he gave up, ate the biscuit himself, and sat down with his back against Bea’s trunk, wishing he had a trunk of his own for sanctuary, where he could remain until the world changed.

He didn’t know how long he sat there, staring at the wall; he was startled out of his preoccupation only when he heard a small sob. Bea often became tense and distressed, but she rarely cried.

He turned around and tried to peer inside through one of the airholes, seeing nothing but darkness. “Bea, poppet, I know Sir Hardshell isn’t coming back, but we can invite his cousin to come and stay with you. I hear his cousin has been looking for a place to stay. Maybe he wouldn’t mind inheriting Sir Hardshell’s glass tank.”

She sniffed but did not answer.

“The cousin’s name is Mr. Stoutback. He has a very nice, even temperament. And he is much younger than Sir Hardshell, so he’ll be able to live with us for a long, long time.”

Bea sobbed again. Hastings wished for fairy godmothers—one for Bea and one for him. “Or we can invite a different one of Sir Hardshell’s cousins. What do you think of Miss Carapace? I’ll bet she wouldn’t mind if you tied a pretty bow around her shell.”

“Does lady have cousins?” Bea’s question came all of a sudden.

Hastings started. “Lady?”

“Our lady,” she said dejectedly.

He was astounded. “You mean Lady Hastings? She is the reason you are in there?”

“Does she have cousins?”

If only Helena were as easy to replace as tortoises. “She does have cousins, but none of them can come live with us.”

Bea hiccuped. “Is she coming back?”

The all-important question. Hastings sat back down again and resumed his staring at the wall. “I hope so, poppet. I hope so.”

As she rang the doorbell of Andrew’s town house, Helena came to a disconcerting realization: Since she left Easton Grange, she had not once thought of Andrew. Half the time she’d been rubbing her lips, as if she were still trying to feel Hastings’s kiss. The rest of the time she kept reliving her last glimpse of him, standing before the window of the study, shadowy except for his face and his bright, lovely hair.

He had not waved, but only watched as her carriage pulled away.

Andrew himself opened the door. “Come in, Helena, please come in. I’m so glad you are here.”

How different it was to see him when she was firmly in possession of all her memories. When he smiled shyly, she was instantly transported to the small library at Fitz’s estate where they’d first run into each other and immediately started discussing the Venerable Bede’s works—how his face had glowed with pleasure that afternoon.

She blinked. Was this what Hastings had meant when he said that she saw Andrew not as the man he was, but the one he had been?

Andrew showed her into a parlor and lit a spirit lamp for tea. “It’s the servants’ half day, so if you don’t mind, we will make do with my rusty tea-making skills.”

He bustled about, retrieving tea and sugar, then bringing her a plate of toast sandwiches. She was reminded of her first—and only—visit to his house on the beautiful Norfolk coast as part of a group of young people. At her arrival, he’d carried her luggage up the stairs himself. In the course of the high tea later that afternoon, he’d made innumerable trips to bring her everything from lobster salad to cream cake.

Helena frowned: again the throes of nostalgia.

“Is something the matter?” asked Andrew.

“No, everything is fine. Did Mrs. Martin inform you I might be coming?”

Andrew sat down and measured tea leaves into the pot. “Yes, she cabled. I didn’t believe her, but I am so glad to be proven wrong.”

The stickpin at the center of his necktie—she’d given him one quite like it, with a Roman eagle emblem on the head. It had been the first Christmas party Fitz and Millie had thrown at Henley Park. Mulled wine had flowed freely. She’d pulled him into an alcove to kiss him, and he’d tasted of nutmeg and cloves.

She was always thinking of Andrew as he’d been years ago. How, then, would she judge the man he was today? “I’ll admit I haven’t always been fond of Mrs. Martin,” she said. “But after our chat today I’ve come to quite admire her. I like that she has taken her happiness into her own hands.”

“So you will leave Lord Hastings?” Andrew gazed at her. “Assuming, that is, you two have not yet married.”

“If I do leave him—”

“Then we can be married,” he said breathlessly.

“But what do you plan to do if I can’t leave him?”

Andrew fidgeted, rubbing a corner of the tablecloth between his fingers. “I don’t know.”

“Will you still grant your wife the divorce?”

“I suppose not, then.”

This was not the kind of answer she would have liked to hear from him. She kept her face blank and her voice uninflected. “What do you know of her situation?”

“According to her, she has an American chap she fancies. He has promised to marry her if she can obtain a divorce.”

“Why not let her go?”

Andrew took the kettle off the spirit lamp and poured hot water into the teapot. “Well, it’s a nuisance, isn’t it, a divorce?”

She watched him closely. “If you let her go now, she can marry the man of her choice and build a family with him.”

He shrugged. “She and I were all right as we were. I know I’m used to it. We’ll just carry on as we’ve always done.”

When Helena had awakened from her coma and found herself married to a stranger, she’d administered a test of character. Hastings had refused to put his own happiness above his daughter’s welfare and passed the test with flying colors.

Andrew did not. They’d already established that he had no particular objection to a divorce—if Helena would marry him afterward, he was more than willing to go through with it. But without the prospect of personal gain, he would keep his wife in their utterly unprofitable marriage, denying her everything for which she’d striven with such purpose and dedication, simply because he didn’t care for the “nuisance” of the process.

“Do one thing for me, Andrew.”

“Anything.”

“Grant your wife the divorce. Don’t keep her tethered to you just because it doesn’t matter to you. It matters intensely to her. She is no more at fault in this marriage than you are, and I’d like to see you treat her fairly, the way you yourself would have liked to be treated.”

He blinked, confused. “But what will I do then?”

“Anything you like. Your life will hardly change, since you and she haven’t been in the same house for years. You will go on writing your histories and I will go on publishing them.”

He bit his lower lip. “But you won’t marry me?”

“I can’t leave Lord Hastings—we are already married.”

“Oh,” said Andrew.

“Promise me you’ll let Mrs. Martin go?”

He nodded dejectedly. She kissed him on the forehead and left the table. “Be sure to send volume three of your history to me as soon as it is finished. And don’t dawdle, Andrew—I will not tolerate a manuscript of yours being six months late again.”

Helena climbed into her train compartment, despondent. She might have known, even before she left Easton Grange, that she would not choose Andrew, but it was still disappointing to have him turn out to be a lesser man than she’d believed.

The train began to move. The last time she’d been on the same train, going toward Kent, the sudden return of four years of memory had completely staggered her. This time it was unlikely anything particularly earth-shattering would happen, since she’d already regained the vast majority of her—

So many different voices. She recognized Venetia’s and Fitz’s, but none of the rest. They were all talking about her. Why hadn’t she woken up yet? Shouldn’t she be conscious by now?

What did they mean, she was unconscious? She tried to let them know that she was perfectly aware of what was happening around her. But to her horror, she couldn’t move her lips, her eyelids, or a single fingertip—she’d been imprisoned inside her own body.

The voices gradually died away. No one spoke anymore. The silence was excruciating, as if they’d already forgotten her existence. She shouted. She screamed. She might as well have been at the bottom of the Atlantic, for all the notice they took of her.

Then came his sensationally beautiful voice. Would anyone mind if I read to her? At last, someone still remembered her.

He read her a fascinating primer on the inner workings of publishing. Helena loved books: the sight of them, the feel of them, the smell of them. She adored tracing her fingers over embossed titles and gilded edges. She cherished the almost inaudible creak a new book’s spine made when it was opened for the first time. And were it at all possible, she’d like to capture in a vial the scent of a room full of books antique and new, the redolence of vellum and parchment commingled with the perfume of fresh ink.

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.

No 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.

Two 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.”