A nice man. MacLean was about as nice as a Roman conqueror sacking a village. And in the space of one morning, Enid had compared him to a Greek god and a Roman conqueror. Next it would be a medieval knight, and he had nothing of chivalry about him. Nothing at all.
She glanced at him and found him watching her as he twisted one side to the other, putting his elbow to his opposite knee, back and forth, over and over. He had that expression on his face, like he wanted to pry open her head and peer into the contents.
Well, wasn’t that interesting. MacLean had suddenly decided he could be interested in her. Wouldn’t he be surprised to discover her thoughts?
Taking the Sunday News of the World—Mr. Throckmorton sent it every week—she walked to his bedside. “Would you like me to read to you?”
He nodded as he always did, for he exercised his mind just as he did his body. He listened to the stories, demanded explanations, and occasionally contributed a comment that proved he remembered . . . something. Yet he insisted his memory hadn’t returned, and she had no reason to doubt him. After all, if he remembered, he would know who he was and who he had been, and he would be apologizing to her for doubting him.
Pleased to discover her sense of humor hadn’t abandoned her, she grinned.
Placing a chair by his bedside, she sat, snapped open the paper, and read an article about the SS Great Britain, the first large iron-hulled screw-propeller steamship, and its launch on July 19.
He grunted. “She won’t make it across the Atlantic.”
She read about the statue of Lord Nelson being hoisted on the column in London’s new Trafalgar Square.
“About time,” he decided and curled up, then back down, then up again, until Enid’s abdomen ached to watch him.
She was reading a story attacking Prince Albert for being a foreigner when, without ceremony, MacLean interrupted. “Who are your family?”
There it was. A prying question put in the bluntest of tones. Dropping the paper into her lap, she said, “That’s the first personal thing you’ve said to me in three weeks, and you want to know about my family? There’s no, ‘I’m sorry I’ve been a knave,’ or ‘It’s been lonely without your gentle conversation.’ Just, ‘Who are your family?’ “
Unimpressed, he lifted an eyebrow and his heaviest weights. “So who are they?”
Of course, he’d gone right to the heart of the matter. He wanted to know why she’d been deemed an unsuitable bride by the ogre leader of his clan.
Well. She could easily tell him that. “I don’t have a family.”
“Everyone has a family.”
“Not bastards.”
That got his attention. He stopped lifting his weights; he swept her with a critical glance.
What difference did it make if he knew? When he recovered his memory, he would taunt her with her illegitimacy. He always had.
“No mother? No father?” His bare chest rose and fell, powerfully pulling in enough air to feed his body.
She watched, saw the muscles that rippled beneath the skin, the layer of auburn hair that curled across his pectorals, and imagined how he would appear when he had recovered all his strength. “Not to . . . to speak of.” She needed to concentrate on the conversation, not on the view. “My mother died in childbirth. My father paid my tuition to Mrs. Palmer’s School for Young Ladies, and I attended until I was fourteen years old.”
“So you do have a father. Who is he?”
“Was, MacLean. He was the honorable earl of Binghamton.”
“You have noble English blood running through your veins.” His Scots accent strengthened. “Blood of the silly, vain, useless aristocratic conquerors.”
“I’m English through and through, and proud of it, too,” she said fiercely. “Nothing you can do will ever change that, but there is never anybody less noble than a female child raised among her betters.”
“Your schoolmates were better than you?”
“They thought they were.” In her mind’s eye, she saw the long corridors of Mrs. Palmer’s School, lined with dull, pimpled girls with bad teeth, and all of them contemptuous of Miss Enid Who Had No Last Name. “Legitimate daughters of earls and barons, legitimate daughters of clergymen and knights, legitimate daughters of wealthy upstart merchants. In society’s eyes, they are all better than me.”
“So if they attended this Mrs. Palmer’s School, it was a fine, prestigious organization?”
“I believe it had that reputation.”
“That explains much about you.” He stared at Enid as if he could peel away the layers of equanimity and see the trembling child hiding within. “You speak with a high-class British inflection. You know the classics, you do needlepoint, and I heard you speak French with Miss Celeste. Very impressive.”
She didn’t appreciate the catalogue of her virtues as recited by a rude, most barbaric wastrel whose only real skill was dice games best played on the stable floor. Haughtily—and she had learned haughty from the best—she said, “Don’t forget my light touch at the pianoforte and my skill at the waltz.”
He flashed her a sharp glance. “In addition, you sport a quick wit—I imagine you developed that to fend off the other girls and their barbs. The earl of Binghamton made it possible for you to move in higher circles. You’re surely grateful.”
“Grateful.” The word dripped with sarcasm; in Enid’s early years, she’d been told often that she should be grateful that her father had supported her. Gratitude was not what she felt; instead, she experienced a vast impatience that a man unable to keep his trousers buttoned was deemed generous and even honorable. He certainly hadn’t made provision for her support after his death, and he had taken care that she never lay eyes on him.
“Not grateful, eh? You’re no dullard, Mrs. MacLean.”
“Oh, please, Mr. MacLean. Such flattery will turn this poor girl’s head.”
He grinned at her, a sudden, brilliant slash of untamed amusement.
Enid caught her breath. He hadn’t smiled for three weeks, and the transformation from brooding resentment to outgoing charm almost frightened her. If he acted like that all the time, she could forget all her grudges and, like an unwary maiden, fall in love with him as she had never been in love with him before.
Luckily for her, he couldn’t consistently stay charming.
“You said you were at Mrs. Palmer’s until you were fourteen,” he said. “What happened then?”
“Binghamton died. I was expelled from school and sent to the Home for Indigent Waifs.” A place that made Mrs. Palmer’s snob-lined corridors look like the passageways of heaven. “His Lordship’s wife and legitimate children didn’t care to continue his benevolence.”
Placing the weights on the table beside the bed, he said mildly, “That must have been a shock.”
“To go from a school where the dancing master arrived on Tuesday and tea was served every day precisely at three, to a place filled with dirty children suffering from all kinds of disease, where stealing was the only way to get enough to eat and the steward slapped me when I used proper English?” Enid smiled tightly. “Yes, it was a shock.”
To Enid’s relief, MacLean showed no surprise or sympathy. “How did you survive?”
“The steward’s wife saw a way to make money, and when I was sixteen sold me to the vicar’s wife as a governess. The vicar’s wife had pretensions of gentility; she wanted her children to learn to speak with an upper-crust accent, as she called it.” Enid smiled with a more genuine mirth. “During my stay there I realized my vocation did not embrace teaching.”
“Then you met me.”
“It would probably be better if we both forgot how we met.” She folded the paper and prepared to rise.
She’d never told anyone her story, had scarcely allowed herself to remember, but freed from the dam of reserve, the words had tumbled out. But pride and reserve stopped her from telling what was next. She had met MacLean, and no girl before or since had ever been so stupid. So gullible. She wanted t
o cry for the girl she had been, and she didn’t want to tell anyone the tale of her marriage—not even the man she’d wed.
“You said I abandoned you.” Leaning forward, he caught her wrist, halting her flight before it could begin. “Tell me those circumstances.”
“It would be better if we forgot those, too.”
“I have forgotten those circumstances. I’ve forgotten everything, but you resent them so much you will never forget them.” He held her wrist loosely, but she had no chance of escape. “So tell me so we can both know.”
“No,” she whispered, her gaze locked with his. “I don’t want to.” She wasn’t talking about their discussion; she was talking about the fact that he inexorably pulled her toward him. “MacLean, don’t.”
“What?” He wrapped his arm around her waist and lifted her on top of him. “Don’t what?”
Sweat made him sticky to the touch. He smelled like a working man. And still she slid her arms on the pillow beside his head and bent her face to his. “Why are you doing this? Is this some kind of revenge because I told you the truth about yourself?”
“You’re my wife. The other half of me. If I take revenge on you, I hurt myself.”
His breath whispered over her skin. His voice was low, deep. His nearness vibrated through her in earthy seduction, and like a fool she wanted to kiss him as he had kissed her all those weeks ago.
He continued, “Marriage is a vow made until death do us part. I can’t kill you, no matter how much I might occasionally wish to.”
She tried to lift herself away from him, came up against the cage of his arms, and weakly retorted, “More than occasionally for me.”
He tightened his grip on her. “You and I can’t escape from each other, so we will learn to deal with each other.”
The light dawned. “You’ve been talking to Mrs. Brown.”
“I have. So have you.”
“Yes,” Enid admitted without enthusiasm.
“She’s right. I know it.” He smoothed her hair away from her face. “You know it.”
“I don’t want to be stuck with you.” She stubbornly preserved a few inches of space between their bodies.
“I’m going to tell Mrs. Brown you said that.”
“You wouldn’t!”
“Not if you give me a kiss.” He was laughing at her. “A kiss, Enid. You know you want to.”
She did, blast him, and she slid downward under his urging, her lips opening softly, her eyes closing. He slanted his mouth to hers so she tasted him at once. She relished the warmth and dampness of intimacy. Bliss echoed in her mind, her heart, her loins. She slid her tongue deep, and he sucked on it gently. He encouraged her with his hands, sliding up and down her back, and it felt so good . . . and so bad. Like temptation. Like sin. Like pleasure.
Those few inches between them that she had so carefully preserved disappeared, and her body collapsed onto his. She moaned softly at the sensation of another human form so close against hers. She’d never experienced this kind of toe-curling arousal; she wanted to eat him, drink him, absorb him into her system. She had to catch her breath, but she couldn’t bear to think he might get away—as if he could or would!—so she held his head in her hands as she lifted her head . . . and caught a glimpse of his triumphant smile.
The ass. The unmitigated ass. He dared to appear . . . to appear smug. As if her passion was . . . was surrender. As if he could command her when he was nothing but a vagrant, an adventurer, and a seducer of women.
And how could she have forgotten that?
Tearing herself free, she bounded toward the stairs.
Mr. Kinman was coming up as she dashed down. He grinned amiably as he always did when he saw her. He held a sealed white sheet of paper. “Mrs. MacLean, I brought a letter from Lady Halifax.”
Snatching it from him, she bobbed a curtsy. “Thank you, it’s good to know there is at least one gentleman left in this world.” Without looking back, she fled.
Chapter 12
Kinman looked after her, hands on his hips, and in the puzzled tone of a happily unattached man, he asked, “What is wrong with her?”
“Must you ask?” MacLean sat up and turned himself around so that his feet dangled off the bed. “She’s a female.”
Kinman looked at MacLean, and his broad face slowly darkened. “That’s not it. I know you. You’ve upset her again.”
“I was trying to make her very happy.” MacLean reflected sourly on the irrationality of all females, and his wife in particular. “She just doesn’t know what’s good for her.”
Hurrying over, Kinman reached behind the night table, brought forth a cane and handed it to MacLean. “I don’t know what’s wrong with you, MacLean. You’ve got a beautiful wife who cares for you—as if you’re worth saving—and what do you do? You make her run like the hounds are after her.”
With deliberate movements, MacLean put his feet on the floor and stood up. “We’ll come to an understanding soon.” He was determined on that. For the last three weeks, he’d been punishing her for telling him what she considered the truth. She’d allowed his sullenness, caring for him regardless of his resentment.
Of course, she’d answered him smartly whenever he’d snarled at her, and sometimes he’d scarcely refrained from guffawing when she’d snapped out some witty comment.
Kinman’s hand hovered beneath MacLean’s arm as he took his first steps, but eventually Kinman moved away. “You won’t need the cane for much longer.”
“Don’t really need it now.” MacLean’s feet tingled, his hips ached and the leg that had been broken throbbed, but everything worked remarkably well considering he’d been prone in that bed for over two months. Hooking the cane over his arm, he began the routine he’d established every day when Enid went on her walk.
Enid . . . he now knew why, in some distant, unremembered past, he’d married her.
Much as he had tried not to, he liked her. In spite of her tainted English heritage, if he met her today he would pursue her with all his resolve. He knew the details of her form. Each night he waited for her to step out from behind that screen clad in a sheer nightgown and a tattered pink robe, and although he didn’t remember any other women, he knew that he anticipated that glimpse of her feminine form more than a mouthful of pleasure from another.
Enid clutched him by the short hairs.
He would do his damnedest to make sure she never knew it, for if she knew how easily she could manipulate him, she would hold the reins in their marriage. His wife already had a tendency to be domineering, when she should, as a female, be submissive, so he would take control. When he got close to her once more—and that time would be soon—he would cajole and seduce her, and make theirs a good marriage regardless of what it had been in the past.
Kinman dragged the tub out from its corner. “You want to make Mrs. MacLean happy? Tell her you can walk.”
“Not yet.” These last few weeks, MacLean’s sense of jeopardy had been steadily increasing. Disaster hovered just over the horizon, he didn’t know why or how, but he would be prepared, and his full strength eluded him. He didn’t want people knowing what he could do. He needed the element of surprise on his side. “Where’s Throckmorton?” For Throckmorton came every day to chat and apprise him of any events, and also, MacLean knew, to verify that his memory hadn’t returned.
“He’s on his way,” Kinman said. “I thought he would be here by now, but guests have started arriving for the wedding. He’s been busy today.”
“Already?” MacLean paced back and forth across the room, counting laps. “The wedding isn’t for another four weeks.”
Kinman shrugged. “These aristocrats have nothing to do but visit the great manor houses, and Throckmorton’s hospitality can’t be faulted.”
When MacLean had done as many laps as yesterday, he added another ten. “He serves good brandy?”
“The best.”
MacLean jerked his head toward the stairs and Kinman descended. When he returned, h
e said, “The coast is clear.”
Gripping the cane in his hand, MacLean climbed the stairs, up and down, until his muscles clenched. His thighs, especially, burned from the exertion, but he didn’t give up until he’d exceeded his previous record. Then back and forth across the room again, pushing himself, always pushing himself. Only when he’d walked so long that he feared Enid would return did he sink onto a chair to rest.
“Are you ready for your bath?” Kinman asked.
MacLean nodded, taking deep breaths, pleased at his improvement and at the same time cursing the weakness. He needed to be prepared. For what, he didn’t know, but he needed to be prepared now.
“I’ll call for the water, then.” Kinman leaned out the window and waved, and almost at once MacLean heard the sound of activity in the room below. At this time of day, the water was always boiling in the cauldron. Men’s voices sounded, then the first of a long line of footmen clomped up the stairs, carrying up the heavy buckets of alternately hot and cold water. Two maids, Sally and Jennifer, dusted and swept, stripped the bed and remade it with fresh linens, and took his dirty clothing away. Jackson brought fresh linens and an ironed white shirt, sans collar and cuffs, and an ironed pair of trousers, cut off at the knee.
MacLean grinned as the valet made clear his opinion of the trousers with sniffs and disgusted head shaking. Jackson really was a stick, a slump-shouldered English fool. MacLean would have dismissed him with the scorn he deserved, except for the fact that he was a genius with a razor. Despite the scars that marred MacLean’s cheek and neck, Jackson could shave him cleanly with never a nick, and MacLean refused to risk his skin just because the little worm suffered a misplaced sense of importance.
MacLean rubbed his hand across his chin. His day-old beard chafed his palm. That would never do. Enid’s skin was as softly tinted and delicate as a peach, hinting at the delights within, and he wouldn’t take the chance of marring it when he kissed her again, as he intended to do—and soon.
With a flick of the wrist, Jackson placed a towel on the table beside the basin and laid out his razor, his cup and his brush. He clapped his hands and pointed at one of the footmen. “I need hot water!”
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