Bewitched

by Cullman, Heather;

  She sighed, her heart aching at his suffering. Her poor, darling Michael. For a man who flourished on feminine attention and thrived on manly sport, being ostracized by society had been the cruelest fate imaginable. Of course, not everyone had abandoned him. He’d had a few true friends who had remained loyal, or would have had he allowed them to do so. Unfortunately he’d chosen to view his condition with the same scorn as the ton, and his resulting shame had caused him to push away those who would have given him comfort. In the end, when it became clear that there was no cure for what ailed him, he’d shut himself away in this gloomy tomb of a house, rejecting company for fear of humiliating himself in front of others with one of his unpredictable spells.

  No doubt he would have shunned her as well had she allowed him to do so. But of course, she wasn’t about to allow any such thing. She loved him far too much to leave him alone in his torment. Besides^ she truly believed that there was hope for him someday having a happy and fulfilling life. And at that moment, she saw Emily Merriman as the key to that hope.

  Adeline nodded her affirmation. She’d contemplated Effie’s proposed match between Emily and Michael at length. And after much thought and several sleepless nights, she’d decided that her friend might very well be right, that it was the infirmity of Michael’s spirit, not his body, that was keeping him in his invalid state. Indeed, the very fact that he remained debilitated, despite his lengthy freedom from spells, gave credence to her theory. Thus, Adeline had decided that the best medicine for him was female companionship. A hoyden, to be exact. A beautiful one who would turn his world upside down and shock his thoughts away from his woes. And Adeline had no doubt in her mind that Emily Merriman was the very hoyden for the task.

  Why? Because the gel was an American. And if she was anything like the other American women she’d met, she was certain to be livelier and more headstrong than her prim English counterparts. Add that natural American audacity to the fact that she’d been raised by a houseful of men, and you were bound to get a chit with the mettle to deal with Michael’s foul moods. Indeed, after a lifetime spent in masculine company, there was most probably nothing he could say or do that she hadn’t already heard or dealt with before. That meant that she was unlikely to be intimidated or shocked by him, which gave hope to the chance that she would see the pain that fueled his bitterness and recognize him for what he was: a wounded man in desperate need of love and understanding.

  If she possessed even a shred of her grandmother’s enormous capacity for compassion, she would strive to befriend him and perhaps someday even learn to love him. As for Michael, once he saw that she was no milk-and-water miss to be scared away by his growls, there was a chance that he would respond to her kindness and that they might eventually become man and wife in more than just name.

  It was a chance. And she was willing to take any chance to heal her grandson. Now she must force him to take a chance as well.

  Fully comprehending the unpleasantness of the task before her, Adeline continued to trail the majordomo, stopping when he signaled for her to do so. With mounting dread of the coming battle, she waited outside the parlor door as he announced her, chanting Euphemia’s advice over and over again in her mind.

  I mustn’t give him a choice. I mustn’t give him a choice.

  Knowing how furious Michael was going to be when she voiced her command made it the hardest advice she’d ever taken. Breaking her chant to remind herself that she was doing what she was about to do for his own good, she nodded at Grimshaw, who was now motioning her into the room, and stepped over the threshold.

  Full of light and color, the summer parlor was the one room in the house of which Adeline actually approved. Dating from the early Stuart reign, it boasted not only what she considered to be the most magnificent plasterwork ceiling in England, but the grandest parquet floor as well.

  Done in a palette of green, gold, and red, the room was paneled in grained wood upon which was emblazoned the most exquisite arabesque painting imaginable. In the northeast corner stood a white marble fireplace, whose top was ingeniously worked into the paneling; spanning the entire west wall was an enormous oriel made grand by Venetian windows. Lounging on a daybed within the oriel, his long form swathed in an emerald damask dressing gown, was her grandson.

  “Michael, my love!” she exclaimed, rushing to where he lay. “I cannot tell you how happy I am to see you.” Grimshaw was on her heels carrying an ornately carved Yorkshire chair, which he stood ready to deposit wherever she chose to sit. This location, of course, was right next to her grandson, who didn’t so much as open his eyes in acknowledgment to her presence.

  Settling into the chair, Adeline took his alarmingly cold hand in hers, noting with a pang how ill he looked. The poor, poor dear. He was so very thin, far thinner than she’d ever seen him. And beyond pale. Why, even his lips were ashen, blanched to the same sickly grayish-ivory hue that resulted when wool was improperly bleached. In truth, the only thing about him that appeared in health was his overlong hair, which at the moment tumbled in a tangle of glossy dark waves and curls across the gold velvet pillow beneath his head.

  Wanting to weep at the sight of him, she lovingly chided, “My darling boy, whatever have you been doing with yourself? You look positively dreadful.”

  It wasn’t until Grimshaw took his leave that Michael responded, though he still didn’t open his eyes. “You would look dreadful, too, if you had been purged twice, bled half to death, and forced to swallow three emetics in as many days,” he snapped, the strength of his voice at odds with his wan appearance.

  Adeline gave his hand a sympathetic squeeze. “I know your treatments are difficult at times, dear, but—”

  “Yes, yes. I know. They are for my own good.” He made a derisive noise. “So you and Eadon keep telling me.”

  “Yes, and it appears that they are working. Don’t forget that you haven’t suffered a spell in almost seven months. Even you have to admit that that fact alone marks an amazing improvement.”

  His lips twisted sardonically, though he still didn’t bother to open his eyes. “Whether or not I have ‘improved’ is a subject up for debate. Indeed, as you, yourself, so tactfully pointed out just now, I look dreadful, and I can assure you that I feel ten times worse than I look.”

  “Michael,” she began, desperately wishing that there was something she could say or do to alleviate his misery.

  He cut her off with an impatient wave of his hand. His voice reflecting the brusqueness of his gesture, he growled, “What do you want, Grandmother? Has Eadon reported some transgression for which you have come to scold me? Or have you, heaven forbid, found some new cure to inflict upon me?”

  Had he not been so obviously wretched, Adeline would have replied in like curt coin. Since, however, he was clearly peevish from illness, she let his surliness pass and gently responded, “Can’t I visit you simply because I love you?”

  His thick black lashes lifted at that, revealing the stunning jade eyes that had once caused such a fervor among the ladies. Gazing at her with undisguised cynicism, he replied, “You could, but you haven’t. The only reason you ever come to Dartmoor is to make my life miserable. Why, even at Christmas, which, if I remember correctly, was the last time you visited, you couldn’t resist the temptation to foist one of your quacks upon me.” He snorted. “As I recall, the man was Italian, and a very merry Christmas gift he turned out to be. I couldn’t stir from my bed the entire month after he had finished with me.”

  He smiled then, but in a way that held no humor or pleasure. “So, Grandmother, what sort of lovely surprise do you have for me this time? A Russian obsessed with the bowels, perhaps? One who will blister my belly and deluge me with yet more clysters? Or have you found an Egyptian who wishes to shave my head and cover my scalp with leeches?”

  Adeline felt a niggle of guilt at his words. Several of the cures she’d insisted he try had been, in retros
pect, rather harsh, though the hope they had presented at the time had made it seem worth her forcing him to endure them. Remembering that hope and telling herself that any one, or even all, of those cures could be responsible for the current abatement of his spells, she replied, “Let me assure you that I am quite content with the progress you are making under Mr. Eadon’s care. And unless you start suffering frequent spells again, I see no reason to seek other cures.”

  Michael stared at his grandmother, not certain whether to be relieved or alarmed by her news. While Eadon’s remedies weren’t exactly what anyone would call pleasant, they weren’t as brutal as some he had endured. Of course, had he been given a choice in the matter, which he hadn’t, thanks to his grandmother and her manipulation of the English courts, he would have chosen simply to be left alone. In truth, as repulsed as he was by his spells, he was beginning to think that they were easier to bear than the hideous weakness he suffered from this latest course of treatments.

  It was that weakness that now left him too fatigued to formulate a proper, stinging comeback. Hating his malaise and resenting his grandmother for forcing him to endure it, Michael closed his eyes again and testily muttered, “Would you please just say what you have come to say and leave me alone? I wish to rest.”

  “Of course you do, poor dear. And rest you shall. We can speak later, when you feel more the thing.” Her hand moved to his hair then, gently stroking. It was a soothing gesture, one that over the years had become as familiar and reassuring as his own heartbeat. And despite his bitterness toward his grandmother and his wariness of her motive for visiting, Michael began to relax.

  For a long while thereafter they remained like that: Michael drifting between consciousness and slumber, wanting to sleep but still too apprehensive of his grandmother’s reason for visiting to do so; Adeline, wondering how best to approach the subject of his marriage to Emily Merriman.

  It was Michael who finally broke their uneasy trance. “Grandmother?” he murmured, his eyes still closed.

  “Yes, darling?”

  He shifted his head slightly, urging her to stroke all the way down to his nape. When she complied, pausing to massage the back of his neck, he sighed his pleasure. “Feels good.”

  “Of course it does. Now hush and go to sleep.” She expertly kneaded her way down to where his neck curved into his shoulder.

  He released a soft moan of appreciation. “Mmm … can’t sleep … not until you tell me what you wish to discuss.”

  “I told you that it can wait until you feel better.” There was a note of gentle chiding in her voice.

  He smiled faintly, another moan escaping him as her fingers found a particularly stiff muscle in his shoulder. “I doubt I’m going to feel much better than this. In fact, I cannot recall feeling so very good since the last time you did this.” He moaned again to illustrate his point. “Ahhh. Think you might be able to teach Eadon to rub my shoulders like this? I promise to stop grumbling about him if you do.”

  She chuckled. “Unfortunately, no. He is a man, and the pleasure you are currently experiencing comes from what is commonly called a woman’s touch.”

  Ah, yes. A woman’s touch. His gut gave a sudden and painful twist. Of all the things he missed about his former life, women and their touch was what he missed the most … especially those touches that teased and tantalized his most intimate parts. Unfortunately, such touches and the pleasures that inevitably followed were the things he was least likely to experience again, at least in the foreseeable future.

  As he dejectedly contemplated that bleak fact, his grandmother’s hand stilled. “Michael, love? What is amiss?” There was a sharp note of urgency in her voice.

  He grunted and shook his head. “Nothing out of the ordinary … well, at least nothing out of my ordinary, such as it is.” Smiling at the bitterness of his own irony, he opened his eyes and gazed up at his grandmother. When he saw her expression, oddly perplexed and full of worry, he added, “What makes you ask?”

  She frowned. “You look so grim all of a sudden. Why?”

  “I always look grim these days, or so you and Eadon are always saying,” he reminded her, evading the question. There were some things a man simply didn’t discuss with his grandmother, and his sexual desire was one of them.

  “True, but never while I am plying my woman’s touch,” she countered, outmaneuvering him.

  “Mmmm, yes. Speaking of your woman’s touch—” He jerked his head at her hand, which now rested on his shoulder, indicating his wish that she resume her stroking and massaging.

  She shook her head and folded her arms over her chest. “Oh, no. Not until you tell me what had you looking so devastated just now. Something is clearly distressing you, and I want to know what it is.”

  Michael sighed, easily recognizing the expression on her patrician face. How could he not? He’d seen it hundreds of times while growing up. And as it had back then, that expression now told him that she expected an immediate answer to her question and that she would brook neither argument nor evasion.

  He returned her gaze for several moments, trying to concoct an appropriate lie. Then he remembered her uncanny talent for seeing through fibs and resigned himself to telling the truth. Feeling as if he were fourteen again and had been caught with his hand up the chambermaid’s skirt, he muttered, “If you must know, your mention of women’s touches reminded me of my past mistresses and how much I miss their—er—physical intimacies.”

  Rather than looking shocked or embarrassed, as he had expected, she smiled faintly and nodded. “Of course you do. You are a young man, and young men have certain appetites that need to be satisfied on a regular basis.”

  “Indeed?” he murmured, for lack of a better response. What else could he say to that?

  She nodded again. “Yes. It is something that Effie and I were discussing—”

  “You and Effie discussed my—my appetites?” he sputtered, genuinely appalled. That two such respectable old dragons would even consider his sexual needs was a notion that utterly staggered his mind.

  “Of course we discussed them,” she retorted primly, eyeing him as if he had just asked a very stupid question. “I discuss everything with Effie, especially those things that concern you. She is, after all, my bosom-bow, and she loves you almost as much as I do.”

  “Be that as it may, my manly needs are hardly an appropriate subject of discussion for women,” he pointed out stiffly.

  She snorted. “Pshaw! Don’t be such a prig, Michael. You know as well as I that men discuss women in such a manner all the time and see no harm in doing so. What is wrong with us women doing the same?”

  A prig was he? A prig! Michael met his grandmother’s steady gaze with indignation, his eyes narrowing as he noted her sparkling amusement. All right, then. If she indeed saw nothing wrong with discussing sexual matters, then he would forget that he was a gentleman and do so. Carefully donning his most blasé expression, the one he always assumed when discussing such matters at his club, he nodded and replied, “Fine. If you truly wish to have this conversation, then perhaps you would be so good as to tell me what you and Effie decided should be done about my appetites.”

  “Why, they must be satisfied, of course, and we have just the plan to help you do so.”

  “What!” He more roared than said the word. So much for being blasé.

  She nodded, clearly unperturbed by his towering outrage. “We decided that your grimness stems from your spending much too much time alone in this dreary heap of stones. And that the very thing to raise your spirits is a lovely gel.”

  Michael’s eyes narrowed at her response. “You didn’t, by chance, just happen to bring a ‘lovely gel’ with you, did you?” Heaven help him, but he would strangle her if she had.

  “Of course not.”

  He exhaled a sigh of relief.

  “But one will arrive next week.”
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br />   “What!” The walls practically shook from the force of his shout.

  His grandmother nodded, smiling as if she hadn’t heard his eruption. “The gel is Effie’s American granddaughter, Emily, and she is reputed to be quite a beauty.”

  For several moments Michael remained too stunned to reply. When he finally managed to speak, his words came out in a hiss. “Are you telling me that Effie wishes me to satisfy my manly needs on her granddaughter?” And here he’d thought he had been shocked before.

  She couldn’t have looked more pleased with herself. “Yes, but not until after you are wed, of course.”

  Michael’s mouth opened and closed soundlessly several times; then he bolted upright and thundered, “Good God, woman! Have you gone mad?”

  “Of course not,” she returned calmly, “and if you don’t wish all of England to continue to believe that you have, you will wed the gel and get her with child.” Firmly grasping his shoulder, she tried to force him back down on the daybed. “You really must lie down and rest. You are going to need your strength for when your bride arrives.”

  “Like hell I am,” he spat, resisting her efforts. “If you think that I am going to wed some American chit whom I have never even met, you can think again. I will not do it!”

  “You will,” she shot back, her eyes growing hard as their gazes clashed. “I command you to do so.”

  Michael glared at her, too incensed to do more. After a beat he found his tongue and bit out, “You have heard the rumors, I assume? The ones my most recent mistress has been spreading?”

  She shrugged. “Of course. Everyone has.”

  “And has it ever occurred to you that they might be true?”

  Another shrug. “You know that I never heed such gossip.”

  “You bloody damn well should, because in this instance it just happens to be true!” He spat the words through gritted teeth.