“Maggie… Look at me,” he said, softly.
She flickered her eyes towards his face, but wouldn’t hold his stare.
“Look at me properly, Maggie.”
With obvious reluctance… she fixed him with her gaze. “Please don’t ever do that again. You could have been killed, Maggie. You could have been-” God, he couldn’t say it. The words caught in his throat.
“But I wasn’t.”
“You were damned lucky you weren’t,” he snapped out. “Damned lucky I found you.” He wasn’t angry. Not really. It was terror. Alicia had been right that day she’d hidden in the gardens. When he was afraid, it came out as a spill of rage. His voice was trembling as he spoke. “I was so afraid for you, Maggie,” he confessed, in a shaky voice.
It was then that Maggie broke. A sob broke from her, she dropped the scissors, and she hid her face in her hands. She wept so fitfully that her shoulders shook. “I’m sorry,” she sobbed. “I wasn’t thinking. I-I never meant for you to get hurt. Never.”
Just like that, all of Henry’s anger vanished. His tension melted out of him and he reached for her hands with his. “Oh, my darling, don’t cry. Please, don’t cry.”
“I-I thought we were more. And then when I heard what the Baroness said, the truth was too much.”
“We are more. Maggie, I’m not that man anymore. I’m different every day. And what I have with you-” His voice caught with rising emotion. “It’s like nothing I’ve ever had with anyone.” He gently pried her hands away from her face. Her cheeks were tracked with tears, but she still looked beautiful.
With the backs of his fingers, he gingerly brushed away her teardrops. “My feelings for you are different.”
“How can I trust that?” She asked, though she wasn’t sobbing so wildly anymore. She blinked up at him through her wet eyes.
He smiled sadly. “You can’t. I can’t expect you to know that I won’t hurt you, Maggie. All I ask is that you give me a chance to prove that I’m changing. That I’m trying.”
“Why now?”
“Because of you.” It had felt impossible to say these things to her earlier that evening, when she’d overheard him and the Baroness speaking. He hadn’t been willing to put his neck out there and risk her wringing it. Hadn’t been willing to make his heart vulnerable.
But having seen her come so close to harm… keeping it in had become harder than letting it free. He wanted her to see his heart. He wanted her to take possession of it, and he wanted possession of hers.
Maggie hadn’t answered him. She looked like she was in shock. Her pink lips were faintly parted. “We’ll take it slow,” he murmured, thumb pad wiping away another tear. “We moved fast. We skipped so many steps,” he admitted. “But I want to go back. To show you that I can be trusted.”
She sniffed back the last of her tears. “You mean… courting?”
He smiled and nodded.
Maggie looked down at his leg again. His trouser leg was only half off. “I need to finish this,” she replied, in a soft and raspy voice. She picked up the knife again and finished cutting away the trousers. She put the material aside and looked at his wound.
Henry was silent for a long time after that, and so was she. He wanted to give her time to think about his offer, as he knew she would while she was tending to his injury. She cleaned it and bandaged it, before finally looking up at him again.
“Alright,” she answered, quietly.
Henry’s brows rose, and he started to smile. “Truly?”
She smiled back and nodded. “Truly.”
He tried to hide how much that pleased him, but his delight was clear in his countenance. His thigh was sore, and he’d had the evening from hell, but her agreement made him feel like he’d touched heaven.
“Thank you,” he said to her, as she stood.
Maggie looked down at him and put her hand out to help him to his feet. “I hope you don’t squander the chance,” she said.
Henry smiled. “I won’t,” he promised. “You have my word on that.”
Chapter 28
Miss Magdalene Riley, Daughter of the Baron of Brambleheath
Maggie did not sleep well that night. She had terrible nightmares, which had her waking in a sweat every couple of hours. In her dreams, she saw two figures encroaching on her. They were like colossal, faceless shadows. She kept telling herself that Henry would come and save her, but she’d always wake panting before he made his presence known.
Her mind was cruel to her at night.
When morning came, Maggie was absolutely exhausted, but she didn’t want to stay in bed and risk anymore nightmares. She threw back the covers and stepped out of bed. She felt cold from the sweat that had created a sheen over her body. She was pale from sleeplessness and had dark purple rings under her eyes.
Despite her tiredness, she had one thing on her mind. Henry’s leg. She dressed quickly and went out into the hallway. It was still early, so she imagined that he’d still be in bed. She went to his bed chambers, but didn’t waste any of her energy on being stealthy. After the night before, keeping her relationship with Henry hidden seemed like a small and petty concern.
She knocked gently on his door.
“Come in.”
Maggie stepped inside. It was dark, because the curtains were drawn. It created a feeling of closeness and intimacy, which she wanted to avoid. He’d promised to slow things down, and Maggie intended to take full advantage of that promise.
She wanted to protect her heart as much as she could.
“Do you mind if I open the curtains?” She asked, without taking a step closer to his bed.
“Of course,” Henry answered. His voice was still groggy from sleep, and the covers were tangled around his body. He started to sit up, as Maggie went to the windows and threw open the curtains. Light spilt into the room.
“I came to check on your leg,” Maggie said, as she went to his bedside.
“It’s doing fine,” he insisted, but Maggie was determined to see for herself. She pulled the covers back. He was wearing loose fitting bed trousers, which she rolled up very carefully until she reached the wound. With gentle hands, she lifted the edge of the bandage so she could peek underneath.
“It doesn’t look infected,” she noted. The wound was still a little grisly looking, but it was beginning to harden which was a good sign. She put the bandage back in place and looked up at his face. He was staring at her.
“How did you sleep?”
“Not too terribly,” she said, because she didn’t want to worry him.
Henry frowned. “You look tired.” As he said this, he reached out towards her as if he meant to cup her cheek. Before he could touch her skin, she caught his hand to stop him. To keep him from feeling stung by the rejection, she pressed a light kiss against the palm of his hand.
“I’m alright,” she promised, as she released his hand. “I was thinking of taking Alicia to the stables today, so she can go for a ride. But I think you should stay here and rest.”
“I want to come,” he said, with a shake of his head.
“You’re still injured, Henry,” Maggie reminded him, with a frown. He tried to get out of bed, but she put her hand on his chest to stop him.
“I can manage,” he assured her. “I want to spend time with Alicia today. I don’t want her to worry.”
Maggie pursed her lips, looking concerned. But when his resolve didn’t seem to sway, she dropped her hand from his chest and sighed.
Pleased with her resignation, he tried to get out of bed again. It wasn’t easy for him, but he was determined. He managed to put some weight on his leg and get to his feet.
“Are you sure you can manage?” She asked, putting her hand beneath his arm.
“Don’t mother me,” he answered, but he was smiling as he said it.
Maggie was reluctant to let him go. She had visions of him falling to the ground the moment she did. But, with his insistence, she released his arm. He tested the leg by taki
ng a few steps, which were a bit tentative, but not faltering. “There,” he said. “Good as new.”
Maggie rolled her eyes at this. “Are you sure you won’t consider seeing a doctor?”
“Nonsense,” he answered. “Now come, let’s fetch Alicia.”
She took things slowly, giving him opportunities to rest if he needed to, though of course he never did. Maggie couldn’t tell if he was in pain or not, because she was certain he would have hidden it if he was.
They didn’t talk as they made their way to Alicia’s bed chambers. Maggie wondered if Henry even knew what to say. He didn’t strike her as the sort of man who was accustomed to taking things slowly. After all, women fawned over him. He didn’t need to take things slowly.
But he was trying. For her.
After their argument and all that had happened the night before, it didn’t surprise her that he didn’t know what to say. Neither did she. They were both still reeling from it.
When they got to Alicia’s room, Henry knocked on the door. She opened it the moment his knuckles hit the door. She was already wide awake. “Good morning,” she said, brightly.
They took her downstairs and out to the stables. The walk was slow, though Alicia wanted to move fast, which prompted her to ask what was holding them up. When she noticed that Henry was hobbling, that was all she could think about.
“What happened?” She asked. “Did you fall? Did it happen last night? Miss Riley, do you know what happened?”
Henry evaded these questions as best he could. “It’s nothing for you to worry yourself with, my darling. Just a little accident.”
Alicia might have questioned this, had she been a little older. But Henry’s assurance appeased her. Maggie was glad that she didn’t know the full truth. She didn’t want anyone to know what she had done the night before. She felt such an unbearable amount of shame for it. And Alicia wouldn’t benefit from being given cause to worry about her father either. So it was best she didn’t know.
Appeased, Alicia ran on ahead to the stables. When Maggie and Henry joined her, she was trying to look over the top of one of the paddocks, but she wasn’t tall enough. “Can you lift me, papa?”
Before Henry could agree, as he surely would, Maggie said, “I’ll lift you. Let your father rest his leg.” Maggie went towards her, but just as she was about to lift her, the horse in the paddock put his head over the edge of the paddock and snuffed at Alicia’s hair.
Alicia squealed in delight and put her hands up to stroke the horse’s ears. Seeing that she was perfectly content, Maggie returned to stand beside Henry. They followed Alicia through the stables. She stopped at every paddock and knocked gently on the wood, offering hay until the horse came to see her.
“She’s happy,” he noted, in a soft voice.
“That’s because you’re here.”
He smiled. “Is it so simple as that?”
“It is,” Maggie answered. She looked up at his face as she spoke. “Half of being a father is just showing up.”
Henry didn’t say anything, which made Maggie’s thoughts turn pensive. “Are you so afraid of disappointing her?” She murmured, keeping her voice quiet to ensure that Alicia wouldn’t hear. “Is that why you kept your distance for so long?”
Henry expelled a breath. She knew that it was a heavy question, but it had been one she’d wanted to ask for a long time. It was clear that Henry loved his daughter. He loved being with Alicia, but that hadn’t kept him from avoiding her.
“For a long time, it was because I thought she looked too much like her mother. Every time I looked at her, that’s all I could see.”
The woman who’d left him.
“It’s hard to imagine that she won’t grow to hate me,” he went on, in a voice that was so reluctant that it was almost inaudible.
“Why would you think that?” Maggie could barely conceive of the notion. Alicia adored her father. She practically worshipped him.
A moment of silence passed. It was clear that he was deciding how much he wanted to confess. She half-expected him to say nothing at all, but he was true to his word; he was trying. He was changing.
“When my wife left,” he murmured. “Initially I hadn’t been able to understand why. I’d thought I was a good husband. Perhaps not the best, but a good one. After a time, I realized that there were things I hadn’t been able to give her. I wasn’t interested in the things she liked. I didn’t want to go to a ball three times a week. I didn’t want to spend my money on what I considered to be frivolous things. So… perhaps she left because we didn’t really have very much in common.”
He looked down at the ground as they walked, with him still limping, but disguising his discomfort well. “I think she hated me in the end. I think I bored her. Towards the end of our relationship, she became stiff and cold in my presence. I tried to win her affections back, but she was unresponsive to my efforts.”
He sighed and shrugged his shoulder, in a transparent effort to pretend that the memories didn’t bring him pain. “I say that I didn’t see it coming… but that’s not the truth really. There were signs. I just chose to ignore them. I never imagined she’d actually leave.”
“Henry…” Maggie whispered. She put her hand out to stop him walking and stepped out in front of him. “That didn’t make you a bad husband. And if she did hate you, it was unjustified. Your daughter’s love for you isn’t so fickle.”
Henry looked at her in a way he never had before. He looked half-perplexed, half-surprised. Like a child who’d learnt that something they’d once thought to be impossible was true. Before he could say anything in answer, Alicia returned to them. She pulled Maggie by the hand and took her to one of the paddocks.
As Maggie was pulled away, she looked back over her shoulder at Henry. Seeing him standing there, determined to be with his daughter despite his injury, she felt butterflies dance through her stomach. And she suddenly didn’t care about the Baroness. She saw the goodness in him, as brightly as the sun shone beyond the stable doors.
Chapter 29
Lord Henry Rivers, the Earl of Radingley
“I have questions,” Maggie said.
They were sitting in the drawing room playing cards. He was smoking a cigar.
“Go on,” he said, without lifting his eyes from his cards.
“When did it start?”
His eyes flickered towards her momentarily. “When did what start?”
“When did you start…” She pursed her lips. It was obvious that she didn’t know how to word her question. Perhaps she thought it was improper. He noticed her discomfort in the way she held herself and shifted in her seat.
“You mean the Baroness,” he deduced.
“Not just her.”
Henry nodded slowly. “Are you asking me if I had mistresses before my wife left?”
Maggie hesitated before answering. Then, with a grim expression, she nodded.
Henry tried not to look stung by the question. He looked back down at his cards and cleared his throat. “No,” he answered, as he played one of his cards. “I didn’t.”
“Then your wife…?”
“She wasn’t the first,” he admitted. “I’d been intimate with a couple of women before we were courting. But once I met her, it all stopped. After she left, things changed. I was…” Heartbroken. Henry refused to say that. “You understand,” he said instead.
“I do,” she answered, softly. “I’m sorry for asking.”
He didn’t look up at her, but nodded his acceptance of her apology. He couldn’t blame her for asking.
“What were you like before?” She wondered, as she played a card of her own.
Henry smiled a little at this question. “Are you sure you can trust me to give an honest answer? It would suit my purposes to paint a very merry picture of myself for you.”
Maggie smiled too and peered up at him from beneath her lashes. “Your purposes?”
His smile grew into a roguish grin, and he quirked his brow. �
�Don’t be coy,” he remarked, with warmth in his voice. Maggie knew what he wanted, though he’d never explicitly said it aloud. He wanted her. He wanted her to like him, to desire him, to need him.
“I think I can trust you,” she replied, with a smile. “I don’t think you’ve ever lied to me before.”
He looked at her face and smiled softly. Her trust meant more to him than he ever could have imagined. It was strange how this conversation made him feel so tender and raw. Like at any moment she’d say something that would feel like a stab to the heart.
Title Sinful Tales of Desirable Ladies Page 79