Will stirred, and she felt his arousal pressing against her bottom. Temptation was at her fingertips. She could give up her futile search for usefulness and just be the wife he needed. . . Except he didn’t much seem to need a wife. He apparently liked wandering the length and breadth of the kingdom with his dogs, saving lives, training others to save lives. He’d found his purpose, and it wasn’t her.
“How do you read dog minds?” she asked, more to distract her wandering thoughts than because she wanted to know.
He grunted. Or maybe it was a chuckle. There was so much she wanted to learn about this fascinating man. Why couldn’t other gentlemen be as appealing?
He stroked her bare breast, and the tingle in her middle came alive. Then he ran his hand down to test her drawers, abruptly pushed away, and took his heat with him.
“We should have set our clothes out to dry,” he grumbled. He stood and fumbled in the dark, apparently looking for more books to sacrifice to the dying embers on the hearth.
“That meager fire won’t dry them before morning.” Shivering, Lela pulled the draperies over her shoulders and watched his shadow moving about. “I really am curious about how you can focus on a dog’s thoughts. Ives don’t leave journals for us to study, but from all I’ve read and heard, they have this uncanny ability to balance Malcolm gifts. Since you seem to shield me from noise, I thought there might be some connection with your gift.”
She heard him crumpling paper and a moment later a flame caught, casting his big frame into shadow. Every particle of her longed to be in his arms again, but she knew his damned honor wouldn’t allow it. He didn’t even have to explain why he kept his distance. She understood. She hated the distance and wished it could be otherwise, but she wouldn’t cause him harm just to have what she wanted.
“I don’t know how it happens,” he said. “I spent a lot of nights as a child, sleeping with my dogs in stalls. I often slept in the stable when I lived with my mother because she needed to rent out my room. So I was more comfortable in stables than in the fancy beds my brothers used. I started seeing and hearing things the way the dogs did. I didn’t think it odd, since they heard and saw the same things I did. It wasn’t until they sent me away to school, away from my dogs, that I realized the sharpness of my senses declined.”
He was explaining himself to her! Letting her see his difference was a gift greater than any other he could have offered. She had to treat this revelation with the respect it deserved.
“I am trying to relate what you’re telling me to what I suffer, but you apparently like the acuity and I don’t,” she said, trying to understand.
“It’s not a matter of liking. It just is.” He gathered their clothing from where they’d left it scattered across the filthy floor. “When I’m with the dogs, I can choose to stay inside my head or open to theirs. They can be trained to know my mental commands in the same manner they learn voice commands.”
“I need to be trained,” she said gloomily.
He laughed a little and dropped her still damp attire over her drapery blanket. “The question may be what is there about me that allows you to focus on immediate sounds instead of being bombarded by distant ones.”
“You,” she said promptly, sitting up and poking at her wet shirtwaist in disgust. Her breasts were daringly bare. Reluctantly, she wriggled into her damp chemise. “I think when I’m with you, I am focused, as you say, on you.” She heaved her stays at a distant corner and wrestled with her shirt.
“And music, you said.” He sat down on a crate and tugged the damp leather of his trousers over his drawers. “And the sound of the sea. If you can focus on a particular sound, would that block the other noises?”
Lela sighed, wishing there was more light so she could see him clearly. If this was the only time she’d ever. . . She couldn’t think like that. She needed to focus.
“What good would it do me to concentrate on piano music? I might not go more mad from noise, but I wouldn’t hear anything anyone said any more than I do now. And my governess would have tormented me for a month for such a circuitous sentence.” With a grimace, she finished fastening her shirt and picked up her riding skirt.
“Your sentence made perfect sense to me,” he said with a shrug. “If we’re communicating what we want to say, why do we need to put boundaries and restrictions on how we say and write the words?”
“We are not discussing grammar. We are discussing my inability to live without you by my side,” she said curtly. Now that she’d said it, she was glad of the darkness.
Her bold declaration silenced him. So much for expecting a proposal. She could hear him rustling in the shadows, wrestling with his clothes as she was with hers. They might as well walk out dressed in draperies. No one would believe their innocence after they’d spent a night alone together.
“You’ve lived for over twenty years without me,” he pointed out. “What you want is to live better.”
“I don’t see how I could live worse.” Now it was her turn to sound grumpy. “If you walk far enough away from me, I would probably hear my father’s men shouting my name, hear half London shoveling coal into their grates, and a dying boar’s screams in the forest, if there is such a thing. How can one think like that?”
“Whereas I need to have the silence of the country to better hear inside the heads of my dogs. Living in the city is worse for me.”
He was telling her she was being selfish. Maybe her good deed was to let this good man go. She wanted to weep and kick her heels and throw a tantrum, but she would not force him to live as she did now, just so she could live better.
“Your gift could tell us if we’re anywhere near civilization and lead us there,” he suggested. “Your gift has its purpose, and I nullify it.” He sounded more irascible than reasonable as he stomped his foot into his boot.
She didn’t want him to nullify anything. She just wanted to be normal. She dropped the draperies to stand and put her feet into her riding skirt. “I need to learn focus. How does one do that?”
She took satisfaction in noticing his head swiveled as the drapery fell, exposing her near nakedness.
“By wanting to concentrate on something, I suppose. Do you want to hear your father’s men on the river? Focus your attention on that.” He stood and tugged his shirt over his head.
She could almost see the white of his bandage in the dusky light. Dawn must be close. She closed her eyes and tried to concentrate. She’d never been much at book studies because concentration eluded her.
She heard Will’s clothes rustling, mice scurrying, waves lapping. Those were all close and probably normal, sort of. It wasn’t as if she had a good grasp of normal. She closed her eyes and tried harder. “I think I hear men calling. And that could be oars hitting the water. I’m unfamiliar with the sound.”
“I’ll go down to the riverbank, but the fog is still thick. I’m not sure I can see anything. Keep focusing. Maybe you’ll hear better when I’m out of the way.” He shrugged on his coat over his wet waistcoat and climbed out the window.
She didn’t want him to go. But that was the problem, wasn’t it? She had to let him go. She couldn’t keep him as a pet forever.
Scowling, she tugged on her own coat while trying to listen to Will’s footsteps walking away. More sounds intruded. She could hear birds twittering in what had to be distant trees. She didn’t remember any trees growing along the riverbank where the mills and buildings were.
Concentrate on the river. It lapped more loudly now that Will was walking away. They never had measured how far he had to go before he lost his nullification ability. But if that came from her focus on him, then he needed to be in sight. She had to quit thinking about a man she couldn’t have.
Think of her father’s fear, of Rain’s terror at losing another sibling. They’d be scouring the riverbank for her body. She couldn’t allow them to suffer. If she could just hear the men looking for her and let them know she was alive. . . She knew her father would have sent m
en out from the moment he received word of her disappearance. She might be addled, but she knew she was loved.
Concentrate on their love, on their fear, on the men in the river. . .
She didn’t know if it was because Will had walked far enough away or because she’d conjured the sound from sheer willfulness, but she could hear the calls clearly now. They were frantically shouting her name and Will’s. Their emotions were so charged that she thought she almost recognized their voices.
And all the other sounds disappeared. She’d done it, she’d concentrated on just one sound.
Amazed and excited that she could hear only the one distant sound, she wanted to run to tell Will. Tugging her coat around her, realizing her neckcloth was around Will’s hand and that she looked decidedly wanton as well as shabby, she climbed through the window into the foggy dawn. Lifting her skirts, she concentrated on the despairing cries, using them to guide her down to the river. She couldn’t see Will. She could scarcely see her feet.
The shouts from the river intensified. Did that mean they were closer or she was getting better at this? She wanted to curse her useless gift, but it was her own stupidity that was the problem. Stomping over the muddy bank, she began shouting back. Could they hear her as well as she did them?
Will stepped out of the fog to halt her. “Don’t go too far. The bank is slippery. What are you hearing?”
He wrapped his arm protectively around her waist, and she wanted to melt into him, let him take care of her, be all that she was not. That was even more stupid. She straightened and stepped away.
“I can hear men calling our names. Can you not hear them?”
He didn’t protest her retreat but tilted his head to listen. “No. I hear only the river. What else do you hear?”
“Too much,” she said with a sigh, “and not enough. Now that I’m near you, the cries are more distant. But I’m sure they’re out there. How do we signal them?”
“We wait until they’re closer and start shouting, I assume. I don’t know if I can make a torch of anything in this damp. It’s hard to wave a burning book,” he said.
“They should have brought Ajax. She’d smell us, I wager. Half the city ought to smell us,” she added in disgust, pulling at her nasty coat.
“I don’t think they’ll be noticing our stench once they discover we’re alive. They might drown us later for terrifying them,” he admitted, touching on only one of her fears. “Ashford will be having tantrums and demanding the old bridge be torn down and the river paved over.”
Lela giggled at this odd perspective of their fates. “That would be an amusing solution to the public sewer that is the Thames. I don’t think shipping merchants will appreciate it though.” She lifted her head, suddenly alert to closer sounds. “I do believe that sounds like Lord Erran. Do we shout at him or let him go on by?”
“Erran is better than Ashford. He’s probably using his mob-inducing bellow. Shout away.”
Lela cried, “Over here! By the mills! We can hear you! Can you hear us?” And then she realized if she was using her gifted hearing, that they might still be too distant. She mimicked one of her brother’s curses under her breath. “They may be too far away.”
“Keep shouting. I’ll fetch a stack of books. And draperies. That ought to do it.” Will stomped back up the bank, leaving her to halloo into the distance. The voices she heard clearly now did not sound as if they heard her. The desperation in the cries wrung her heart. She had not meant to cause so many people so much pain.
But despite the pain, she couldn’t restrain her excitement. She was hearing them and not ten thousand other irrelevant sounds—because she needed to hear them. Because she was concentrating on hearing them.
She didn’t know how she could apply this lesson to social situations when she really didn’t want to hear any of the chatter, but that was for another time. She now knew that when she was desperate, she could concentrate.
She’d probably done that when she’d heard Rose crying in the wilderness and simply hadn’t realized she was doing it. She really was quite stupid.
Will carried down a heavy load of books and fabric and laid them in a clearing that should be visible from the river. He crumpled book pages and used one of his lucifers to light them.
Lela kept yelling. She thought the voices were coming closer, but in the muffling fog, it was difficult to tell.
Once the fire flared into a beckoning beacon, Will took her hand. “After this night, I am yours to command. Whatever you need, you must let me know. I do not know how to say it more plainly.”
If that was a proposal, it was a poor one. Unfortunately, she understood. It was so strange that this man, so different from any she knew, could speak to her as no other could. She squeezed his warm fingers. “I will be fine. My father is not an ogre.”
He offered no reassurances but turned toward the river and added his cries to hers.
“They hear us,” she murmured in wonder. “I can hear them shouting in excitement. They just haven’t seen us yet.”
Will bent and planted a hasty kiss on her mouth, one that had her knees buckling all over again. “You are a gem above all others. Never forget that.”
She barely had time to recover before he straightened and waded out into the river, roaring at the top of his lungs. “We’re over here, you lazy landlubbers! Where have you been?”
Lela laughed at recognizing his brother’s voluble curses. The refined barrister knew how to use Anglo Saxon English to good purpose.
Chapter 20
Once the boat reached the shore, Erran jumped over the side to hug Will, pounding him on the back in relief and probably annoyance. Uncomfortable with showing emotion, Will was still moved by his half-brother’s embrace. He’d never felt quite part of his successful, aristocratic family, but it was good to know they might have missed him had he drowned.
He punched his brother’s shoulder in acknowledgment, then turned to tighten the drapery around Lela’s shoulders. Everyone stayed blessedly silent as he helped her aboard the small craft. To prevent them turning into icicles on the river ride home in these dawn hours, Erran insisted they both wrap in the dry fabric. Beneath the bulky material, Will held Lela close. She lay her fair head on his shoulder, possibly for the last time.
Will tried to fix the memory in his head of her flaxen hair falling over his shirt. He soaked up her scent as a dog might. But in his head, he recognized he was no dog and neither was she. Lela was far, far more than river stench and wet clothes, and he thought his innards might shrivel and die at knowing he must let her go.
At the duke’s grandiose palace, Will was grateful for Erran’s officious presence. Despite the early hour, the whole household was awake and frantic. The duke and Rainsford had left to organize the search in the dead of night, and there was no one about to limit the tears and cries as he and Lela straggled in looking like sorry fish.
But his lawyer brother was a no-nonsense sort who didn’t suffer questions. Erran simply used his commanding voice to send servants hunting for the duke and Rainsford. Will gratefully hurried Lela upstairs where they could both recover, wash, and change into warm, dry clothes. Will had his hand freshly bandaged. It ached but the wound would mend. He didn’t think his heart would.
It was past noon by the time Erran left and the duke returned to summon Will to his study.
The door knocker had been rapping steadily for half an hour or more with Lela’s visitors, and footmen were informing callers that she was regretfully unavailable. As yet unaware of the prior night’s events, society bumbled on as usual. As he strode down the stairs, Will noted bouquets and cards decorating the tables. In the wide foyer, he passed an eager suitor standing, hat in hand, at the door.
Will wanted to punch all society and rip the knocker off the door. But those fops were the lady’s future, the kind of powerful gentlemen he would never be.
He could only be grateful that word hadn’t spread yet about their disappearance. He feared that w
ouldn’t last long. They needed to straighten out their stories for their families to spread.
The duke of Sommersville looked more gaunt than usual when Will entered the gloomy study. The day was still overcast, and a fire crackled in the grate, but no one had lit the lamps. His Grace wasn’t one to imbibe heavily, but he had a brandy bottle at hand Will noticed. He could use a good stiff drink right now. The bath hadn’t warmed his innards at all. But the duke didn’t offer brandy or chair.
Will knew what was coming. He’d practiced his response as best as he was able. But no matter how he answered, his future was doomed.
“I wanted to die when they fished Lela’s hat out of the river,” the duke said bluntly.
Will bowed his head. “I nearly died when she went in. There are no words to offer in apology for what you must have suffered.”
The duke waved a hand in irritation. “Your lawyer brother’s tongue is as glib as rumor tells it,” the duke said sourly. “He’s convinced my heir that all is well because that’s what Rainsford likes to believe—that the world turns fine without him.”
“I believe your heir prefers to concentrate on what can be changed,” Will said respectfully, puzzled by the change in topic. “Rainsford is a good man.”
“He has no understanding of human nature. His mother was like that—removed from all messy emotion suffered by the rest of humanity. Good minds but no passion. As much as you pretend otherwise, you aren’t like that. Neither is Lela. You wouldn’t have gone to so much trouble to save a deaf child and her mother if you were. Tell me what really happened.”
Will wanted to be like that. People were unreliable. It was safer to lavish affection on animals who returned it. But Lela was far better than most people, and his gut churned in anguish. He prayed he was strong enough to do what he had to do. “First, did the groom release the girl? Lady Aurelia will wish to know her fate.”
“Jack left the tart on the bridge to make her own way home. He rode directly here and roused the household. This past night has been hell.” The duke reached for the brandy, pouring a finger, then slammed the decanter on the desk. “I want facts, not whatever cock-and-bull tale your brother and Lela have concocted. I’m counting on your honesty.”
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