by Liz Tyner
‘I do not have an affliction.’
Annie blinked. ‘It’s nothing to be ashamed of.’
His jaw firmed. ‘I’m not ashamed.’
‘Oh,’ the woman said, backing away from him. The man with the wig stepped behind the man with the garters. ‘We can’t be letting you stay if it might be contagious.’ She looked at Barrett. ‘You’ll have to leave. Both of you.’
Barrett saw the warm blankets flittering away and a long, cold walk ahead of them. ‘Annie,’ Barrett said. ‘It’s a fair way to London in the dark.’
She nodded. ‘He’s fine. I just don’t forgive easily as I’ve not been married thirty years yet.’ She raised her chin. ‘Why, it seems like just this very second I was married.’
‘That’s more like what my wife would say.’ The one with the garters chuckled and sat.
‘We will get you a room,’ the innkeeper’s wife said. ‘Just the one.’
‘One?’ Barrett asked. He heard a damn squeak trying to sneak into his voice and corrected it. ‘One. No. Two.’
‘Yes. Just the one.’ The innkeeper’s wife took the thin towel from the counter and gave it a flop to shake out crumbs, then smiled at Barrett. ‘A little quiet talking in the dark will be good for both of you.’
Annie gasped. ‘We’ve never talked quietly before. In the dark.’
The men snickered and the innkeeper’s wife took in a breath. ‘Well, it is time you learned.’ Her cheeks reddened. ‘For the sake of the children.’
‘Thank you.’ Barrett turned, paused, lowered his voice, frowned and said, ‘Children.’
The woman led them both out of the room, pointed to the doorway to the left. She raised a brow. ‘No fussing. No fighting. I want a promise from both of you.’
‘I won’t,’ Annie said, clasping her hands in front of her.
For the first time in his life, Barrett couldn’t find words. He just nodded.
‘There, now.’ The older woman reached out and patted his sleeve. ‘I can tell in my heart that you’re a good ’un. I know we women have our moments, but so do men.’ She cleared her throat and looked away. ‘A little quiet conversation, with tender forgiveness, makes everything better.’
She rushed away.
He doubted Annie’s cheeks would ever return to their normal colour.
Opening the door, he stood aside to let Annie precede him.
She took in a breath and raised her foot to step over the threshold, but then her movements froze.
He waited. She didn’t move and had one foot still in the air.
He leaned down, his lips near her ear. ‘Pardon me, but you’re blocking the path.’ He reached out, giving a tug on her arms while pulling her against him. He watched for her to flail him when he touched her, but she was more concerned with staring into the room. He picked her up and carried her over the threshold.
She sputtered, gasped and clutched at his arms. He moved forward, depositing her gently on her feet. She jumped back. ‘That was uncalled for.’
‘It’s a tradition.’
‘For brides.’
‘And people who will not step out of your way.’
He looked at the bed, shook his head, and then at her. ‘I can be tender.’
Her eyes opened wide.
‘If you were wondering.’
He shut the door behind him.
‘No.’ She stepped sideways, remaining close to the wall. ‘I wasn’t.’
‘Didn’t think so.’
He took off his frock coat and tossed it to a chair. He sat on the bed and tugged off one boot and then the other. He kept his waistcoat on, and the cravat.
He lay down on the bedcovers and stared overhead. The very act of taking off his stockings would terrify her. He lay immobile—in all parts of his body that he could control.
Glancing at her, he realised she’d taken some of his advice and was standing a safe distance, and could leave the room with minimal movements.
He shut his eyes, wishing for sleep and not wishing to sleep. How could one sleep when Annie was so close?
Without opening his eyes, he asked, ‘Do you usually sleep standing up?’
‘No. I’m learning a new skill.’
He slung out an arm, reached across the bed, grasped the covers and flung them over himself. He opened his eyes to slits. ‘You can be on bottom. I’ll be on top.’
Not a single blush. No notion of what he’d said. Innocence. ‘Of the blankets,’ he added unnecessarily.
She took in a breath ‘I suppose I would not want either of us to sleep on the floor.’
‘You may,’ he said. ‘It’s up to you.’
He shut his eyes again. Light footsteps. A slow sag in the bed. A bare scoot. A rustle. Innocent. Innocent. Innocent. And earning him a special spot in Hades if he touched her. His own Hades. He ground his teeth together. Perhaps he could say his prayers. He’d heard of people who did that before they slept and this might be the night for him to begin. He would need some help. No. Even that wouldn’t work. He’d be praying for the wrong things.
He flopped the covers over her without opening his eyes.
He felt her shuffling about, sorting the covers, fluttering a lavender scent from the fabric into the air. She managed to get a wisp of a bedcover over his stomach and legs. Then she snuggled back into the little nest she’d made.
He closed his eyes, wondering how he would ever fall asleep with her next to him.
* * *
‘Pardon.’ He heard her whisper, sounding quieter than he’d ever heard. ‘Pardon.’ Annie. Louder.
‘You’re snoring,’ she said.
‘I wasn’t asleep.’
‘Oh, yes, you were. You were snoring. Loud.’
‘I wasn’t asleep.’
‘You were asleep. Unless you snore when you’re awake.’
He realised the covers were tossed aside. He’d not known he’d fallen asleep. But then, he had been up most of two days.
‘And you have taken up more than half the bed.’ She tugged at the covers and he saw that he lay on some of them.
‘It’s a small bed.’
‘It wasn’t until you started spreading out and took the middle as your half.’
He sat up and looked across at her. She was rather hugging the edge of the bed.
Turning to the side, he sat up and slipped his cravat out of its choking knot. He undid his waistcoat and threw it on top of his coat, and the cravat followed. He touched his shirt and pulled it out of his waistband, and her sharp intake of breath caused him to pause.
He stopped moving for a second.
‘Goodnight.’ He lay down, kept both on his side and to his side of the bed, and stretched his feet. He felt refreshed. Alive. Aroused.
‘Are you going to sleep?’ she asked.
Anyone else in the entire world who asked that question at that moment would have got a different answer. ‘I thought I might.’
‘I’ve never slept away from my home before.’
‘Ever?’
‘No.’ The covers rustled. ‘When we were younger, my sisters and I left our doors open so we could call out to each other. I never thought I would miss that.’
Carefully, he rolled to his back. At least it was dark. She couldn’t see him clamping his teeth. He raised his arm and put his elbow over his eyes. He wanted to listen to her. He did. His body did not.
‘When my sister Laura became betrothed, I knew those days were over. Father had the banns read. Mother cried and cried. Father would hardly speak. They were so despairing of the match. Honour confided she felt suffocated.’
He sat up, feeling the mattress shift beneath him. He turned away from her, stretching, shaking his body a bit, trying to change the subject within his head.
‘I live with my—my father.’
&nb
sp; ‘Even though he’s been so mean to you?’
‘It really makes no difference in my life now. He’s ill. May have always been so. Who knows? He’s being looked after now by a man I hired.’
He put his elbows on his knees and clasped his hands together, looking at the faint moonlight that came in through the windows.
‘He drinks too much. I have had his poison reduced,’ he said. ‘Although why I don’t let him drink himself into a stupor, I don’t understand. At times, I thought of having it delivered to him in crates. Crates and crates of it. Because he can be so much easier to control when he cannot find his fist and he cannot find anyone else’s face. He just doesn’t stay at that point.’
She rolled towards him. ‘He sounds miserable.’
‘I suppose. Making everyone else around him suffer diverts his attention enough that he doesn’t care. He’s been better after Grandmother had the apoplexy.’
‘What did you do when your grandmother died?’ She remembered how he’d said his grandmother danced around his mother’s body and she wondered if he’d done the same.
He moved a bit, softly shaking his head against the backboard of the bed. ‘That was years ago.’ He dismissed the words with a stretch. ‘Servants took care of everything, except Father swamped himself with drink and I propped him up for the service, which lasted all of a minute. Then I put him into the carriage and he didn’t wake up until the next day. It went much better than I expected.’ He tapped his foot against the floor. ‘It was a quiet day. I was able to get a lot of work done that evening.’
Closing his eyes, Barrett could feel Annie even though he didn’t touch her. He didn’t have to. She was so near.
But he kept himself immobile, staring at the window. Distancing himself just as he had when he was a child. He contented himself with listening, feeling, and the simple knowledge that she was there.
Annie could see the outline of his shoulder and the profile of his face. He looked strong. Stronger than anything she’d ever seen. And she’d really not minded listening to him snore. He’d not been as loud as she’d complained and the regular breathing had tempted her to sleep, but it had also teased her to stay awake.
‘You know,’ he said, settling back into the bed beside her, ‘I’ve never realised how much I swear.’
When he moved, even the smallest amount, he drifted over the mattress. She could tell he tried to stay in his area, but he just didn’t quite fit.
‘You don’t swear that much,’ she said. ‘Just those moments when you started out with me after leaving the camp.’
‘Well, I would say I’ve tempered my speech around you. I’m probably speaking about half as much as usual.’
‘I understand coarse talk.’
‘Has anyone ever talked such around you, other than me?’
‘Father says damn sometimes.’
‘Bless him.’ He chuckled. ‘I say it sometimes, too. Not usually my first choice, though.’
‘Well, Mother does correct him.’
‘My life has been one of swearing and yours has been one of sweetness.’ His breathing changed. ‘I didn’t have other children as companions, but I didn’t miss them. I had my governess, an old sow of a creature, and she was to keep me in line. She was a distant relation. But she didn’t stay long after my mother died. I enjoyed my moments alone. Most of them, anyway. They were rare. Even being locked in a cellar was a relief compared to being around Tizzy.’
Annie digested his words. Surely he exaggerated. Locked in a cellar?
‘Father insisted I spend some time with him, probably to please my grandmother. I was her project,’ he said.
She didn’t understand the contradiction. ‘But your grandmother...’
‘Not my favourite person. She kept me as far as she could from my mother’s parents. I was to be the heir, although she could barely tolerate that thought. I was the child she was to prepare to be Viscount even if it killed me. If I died, I didn’t deserve the title.’
Surely he was having a jest at her expense, or he exaggerated as much as he swore. ‘I had my sisters and we were close. We disagreed, but we were together. Almost all the time.’
It was a shame he’d not had more siblings.
The darkness in her house had enveloped her after her sisters left. Her mother had taken to the sofa and hardly moved except to moan. Her father paced. The only time either one of them had spoken had been to mourn for their lost family and then they’d remind each other that they still had her. It wasn’t that she’d wanted to tumble headlong into a disastrous marriage or have a child, but she’d not planned on being a nursemaid to her parents either.
Even as they had returned more to the routine of their days, she could feel them turning to her more and more. They’d almost seemed to devour her in their need for her.
At first she’d stayed in the attic at times to give herself a place to breathe, but when her father had asked her to move there, she’d felt too far away from the doors. Too far to go anywhere. A prisoner who could only escape by marrying the man they put in front of her. The sentence outweighed the crime.
‘My father—the Viscount—always, in public, encouraged me to have an interest in books.’
His voice remained low and swept over her, capturing her attention.
‘Father had some volumes,’ he continued. ‘Illustrated beautifully. The artists were quite good and he would boast to me how precious the books were. But then he decided he must get rid of them and he had me take them to a bookseller. When I arrived at the bookseller’s and was let in the back door, I realised the books had been stolen and Father was selling them.’
She turned her head sideways. He didn’t move.
‘You think the books were stolen? That you, a child at the time, helped sell them? How can you say such a thing?’
‘There’s no proof.’
She looked at his face. Too dark to read well. Her sisters had claimed her gullible when it came to the tall tales they’d sometimes tell her. But he didn’t seem to be watching for a reaction from her. In fact, he hardly seemed aware of what he was saying. She’d heard a bit of exasperation in his tone.
‘It was just another day, Annie.’
‘Why?’
‘You need to know I’m not a saint. Never was and never will be close enough to see one’s face. If something had been left unattended in a church, it could have ended up in my home. That is the way of it.’
She turned away. He’d tried to warn her that the world was an evil place. That he warned her surely was a reflection of his goodness. Beside him, she felt safer than she had before.
‘I have a jewelled hairpin in my waistcoat pocket,’ he said, his voice softening. He stretched his legs again and yawned so large that his jaw popped.
She opened her mouth to speak to him, and he dragged out a long inhale and followed it with an exhale. Almost an exclamation point to end the conversation.
She burrowed a bigger spot for herself and it brought her closer to him and she didn’t care that he kept the jewelled pin for safekeeping. ‘Thank you,’ she said.
He huffed from his chest and groaned. ‘Goodnight.’
The heat from his body radiated across the bed, but she didn’t feel warmer. She felt she’d been pushed out of bed, or at least, far, far to the other side.
* * *
Annie woke to the sound of three quick raps at the door. Barrett was gone from the bed.
Another knock. ‘Miss. Your husband sent me to see if you need any assistance.’ The innkeeper’s wife. Annie looked around, saw she was alone and rushed to open the door and let the woman in. She carried a tray of bread fresh from the oven, the aroma preceding her. A platter of butter and jam. A pitcher finished out the arrangement. She put the tray on the table.
‘He’s a mite impatient,’ the woman spoke. ‘And he’s managed to talk my h
usband out of a horse with a side-saddle brought from the Andrews’ house. I can understand why the two of you might bicker. He’s snappish.’
‘Not always.’
The older woman shook her head. ‘The man is more surly than an ill-tempered dog.’
‘He’s just used to having his way.’ Annie grabbed a roll, quickly buttered it and said, ‘He’s a viscount’s son.’
‘That thinks he’s a prince,’ the woman grumbled. ‘And we ain’t the type what princes prefer.’
She pulled out a cloth tucked into the waistband of her apron and wiped her hands on it. ‘You’ll be leaving him again, miss, unless you have much more patience that I do. Only next time, take my advice. Plan better.’ She stepped out the door.
Annie rushed through breakfast, then hurried downstairs to a man standing with crossed arms, who’d not shaved in several days, had slept in his clothing and looked as if he might chew up the devil himself and spit him out.
He took Annie’s arm and led her outside, handing her a strangled rag of a bonnet.
She took it, surprised that he would be thinking of her complexion at a time like this, but strangely pleased. The couple was wrong about Barrett.
‘The sun is hardly shining,’ she said.
He gave a growl from the base of his throat. ‘But there’s enough of it to see your face. I don’t want you recognised when we arrive.’
She stood in front of the horse—a beast that looked no different than a hundred other horses she might see along the way to London. She touched its brown pelt and looked at its uninterested eyes.
She patted the horse again. She really didn’t want to get on it and go back to her old life. She’d rather liked having Barrett with her.
From behind, two hands grasped her sides and lifted her straight into the heavens and out of her breath.
Before she knew it, he’d told her to hang on and stood ready to catch her for the first few steps of the horse.
‘Secure?’ he asked.
She nodded, aware of the determination in his face and in his hands. He couldn’t make it any more plain that he wanted her out of his life.