“Anything that causes you pain or distress worries me,” she declared, moving forward to loop her elbow through his. Gently hugging his arm close, mindful of its damaged flesh, she added, “Of course, the final decision in this matter must be yours. It is you who will be taking the risk.”
“Not just I, Emily. You, too, will be taking one.”
She frowned and indicated herself with her free hand. “Me?”
He nodded. “Yes. Should I choose to decrease my treatments and the worst happens, you risk witnessing my fits, something, which I can assure you, is not an attractive sight. ‘Repulsive,’ ‘appalling,’ and ‘obscene’ are the kindest terms I have heard describing the spectacle thus far.” The bitter note of self-loathing that had tainted his voice when she’d glimpsed him in the pool was back.
Again compelled to banish it, she shook her head and earnestly reassured him, “It isn’t the sight of your spells that worries me, but their effect on you. I simply do not wish you to be hurt. Surely you know that by now?”
He seemed to consider her argument, his expression guarded and his eyes unreadable as he studied her face. Then he sighed. “Of course I know it. How can I not after all you have done for me?” A faint smile curved his sculpted lips. “Indeed, were it not for your care, we wouldn’t even be having this discussion.”
“If I might interject here, your grace, I would like to present my opinion for your consideration,” Eadon petitioned.
Michael nodded, though his now warm gaze never wavered from Emily’s face. “Please do, Eadon.”
When the man had stated his views and answered all of Michael’s questions, Michael, whose gaze had remained steadily on Emily throughout the entire exchange, tipped his head to one side and murmured, “You know my inclinations in this matter, Eadon. However, it is those of my wife that shall be the determining factor. I must know her feelings before making a decision.”
“I cannot see why they should influence you so,” she retorted, shaking her head. “As I said, it is you who must take the real risks … you who must endure the spells you might have and abide the pain of the treatments it will take to relieve them.”
“All risks I will gladly take for the chance to decrease Eadon’s bleedings and clysters.” His gaze bore into hers now, searching. “What I will not risk is you suffering the irrevocable disgust for me that seems to result in everyone who witnesses my fits. Truth be told, I would rather have my arms slashed and my backside abused a hundred times a day than risk losing you. And so I ask you, Emily, and please think carefully before you reply to make certain that you are confident of your response: Do you truly believe that you can witness one of my fits without forever turning from me in disgust? As I said, they are not a pleasant sight. If you wish details, I am sure that Eadon will be glad to furnish them.”
But Emily didn’t need details, nor did she need time to think. “I shan’t be disgusted, Michael, not a bit. And I most certainly will not abandon you. Ever! I care for you, deeply, and all the fits in the world shan’t change that fact in the least.” Compelled by a fierce surge of emotion, she impulsively threw herself against him, hugging him in an embrace that imparted the strength of her feelings far more eloquently than words alone could express.
He stiffened briefly, as if stunned by her action, then relaxed, his strong arms encircling her to return her hug. Beneath her cheek, which lay burrowed in the crisp folds of his linen shirt, she felt the faint rumbling in his chest as he began to chuckle. “Well, Eadon. You heard the lady.” He couldn’t have sounded more pleased.
“Indeed I did. Once a fortnight it is, your grace.” The delight in Mr. Eadon’s voice was unmistakable. In the next instant he raised that voice and called out, “Ho there, Josiah! It looks like you could use a hand with that line.”
As he walked off, the tall, autumn-bleached grass whispering against his boots as he went, Michael murmured, “Emily?”
She tipped her head to look up at him, her chin resting against his hard chest as she met his gaze in query. Smiling gently, he dipped down and lightly kissed her forehead. “Thank you, my dear.”
“For what?” she whispered, thrilling at the tenderness and joy in his eyes.
“For being you.”
Chapter 13
“They cannot possibly come in this storm,” Emily lamented, turning from the rain-splattered sewing room window with a dispirited sigh. “Even if it stops in time for dinner, the moors will be far too muddy for them to venture forth.”
Michael looked up from the angel he sketched on what would eventually be his kite, his heart aching with tenderness at the disappointment lacing her voice. Rebecca and her pet goat were to have dined with them that evening, making what would have been their first visit to the abbey. But as Emily had so dejectedly observed, it would be impossible for them to transverse the moor in such foul weather.
Wishing that there was something he could do, that he could make a road magically appear on the moors so he could send his coach to fetch the pair, he gently replied, “I believe you are correct, Emily, and I am sorry. I know how you were looking forward to their visit. You must make certain to extend another invitation the instant the rain clears.”
“I will,” she murmured, listlessly trailing her hand along the smooth cutting table surface as she wandered back to her own kite. After pausing a beat before it, a frown forming as she studied it, she sank into her chair opposite from where he sat, her gaze never wavering from her handiwork as she seated herself.
Watching as she picked up her well-used India rubber eraser and began vigorously erasing a wide area, he responded with a nod, “Good. I look forward to meeting them.”
“Yes, I know, but not nearly as much as I look forward to them meeting you.” She paused to blow the soiled eraser fragments from her drawing, then glanced up with an impish smile. “After all the bragging I have done about you to them, I cannot wait to show you off. They are going to adore you.”
“I do hope that you haven’t bragged overly much, or they shall think you quite mad when they finally meet me. As I have pointed out on numerous occasions, I am hardly a bargain when it comes to husbands, though I must admit that my value has increased somewhat, thanks to your improvements,” he countered, shaking his head when he realized that he’d inadvertently used the term “they,” thus endowing the goat with the human distinction of being able to determine madness. Then again, perhaps the beast could.
Michael started in astonishment at his own preposterous conclusion. Damn if Emily’s tales about the goat hadn’t made him start viewing it as the person she was convinced it was. According to his ever-fanciful wife’s imaginative theory, Magellan was a man who had been transformed into a goat as punishment for some transgression against the fairies. It was a ludicrous theory, of course, ridiculous to the extreme. Still—
He paused to consider the concept, really consider it. Slowly he smiled. Who knows? If the beast turned out to be even half as amazing as she claimed it to be, perhaps … just perhaps … he might actually be persuaded to view her theory as a possibility.
Perhaps. Michael out and out grinned, absurdly pleased by his new sense of whimsy. If anyone in Dartmoor possessed magic, it was Emily, which she had clearly used to bewitch him. What other explanation could there be for the way she was making him, the rational, urbane, ever-logical duke of Sherrington, believe in enchantment?
At his grin, Emily grinned back, playfully tossing her eraser at him as she accused, “It is you who are mad not to see how very wonderful you are, Michael.”
“Indeed?” he drawled, dexterously catching the projectile with one hand. Inspired by her beautiful smile to put it to use, he began carefully erasing the mouth he’d drawn, wanting to broaden the curve of his angel’s luscious lips a fraction more.
“Yes, my darling husband,” she confirmed. “You are all that is good and kind, not to mention intelligent, charming,
witty, and too sinfully handsome for your own good.” By her impassioned tone, it was apparent that she meant what she said.
Michael’s hand stilled mid-erase, her words flowing over him like ice water. Charming, witty, intelligent. Too handsome for his own good. He must have heard those bombastic descriptions ascribed to him at least a thousand times before his illness, always uttered with the utmost sincerity, accompanied by long, worshipful stares. How he had loved hearing them! He’d adored being epitomized by the ton, hungrily feeding off their admiration and thriving on their adulation. After a time he’d come to actually believe their hyperbole and had taken to fancying himself the perfect archetype of the quintessential gallant.
But that was then; this was now. And now, after shamefully tumbling from grace, after paying the devastating price for his betrayal of society’s faith in his lionized perfection, hearing such praise fall so sweetly, so easily from Emily’s lips served only to shrivel his soul.
Damn it! He didn’t want her to idealize him as the ton once had, to view him as some sort of bloody demigod. He wanted her to see him for what he was: a man, just an ordinary man with all the weaknesses and failings that went with being human. Doing so was her only chance to honor her vow—their only chance at a future together.
Though Michael knew that Emily genuinely believed herself immune to the disgust that inevitably arose in those witnessing his fits, he doubted if she would be able to maintain her conviction if she continued to view him in such a rarefied light. Indeed, he’d always suspected that the ton’s cruel rejection of him hadn’t been prompted so much by the fits themselves, loathsome though they were, but by the shock of seeing him, their crowned prince of perfection, stricken with such an appalling imperfection. Had he been someone else, someone less favored, they might have been more forgiving, perhaps even sympathetic.
Given his belief in that view, the only way he could see to protect Emily from suffering a terrible shock, and to save himself from losing the woman he loved more with every passing day, was to dash her innocent illusions about him and force her to see him as he really was.
Determined to do exactly that now, he shot her a sardonic look and curtly scoffed, “Bah! Missish rubbish, all of it! I am no such paragon. While I pride myself on being reasonably intelligent, I possess only moderate wit and charm, and my looks are ordinary, at best.” When she opened her mouth, clearly about to protest, he cut her off with a brusque wave of his hand. “Furthermore, I would very much appreciate it in the future if you would refrain from speaking of me as if I were a beau ideal. Not only do I find your misguided veneration embarrassing, it makes me question your wits and your ability for sound judgment.”
As he’d expected, she looked suitably lowered, crushed almost, her gay smile fading and her dark eyes growing liquid with hurt. What he hadn’t anticipated, however, was how terrible he would feel seeing her look so. Truth be told, had someone else been responsible for that stricken expression, he’d have been hard pressed not to throttle him within an inch of his life.
After several tense moments, during which she gazed at him with wounded eyes and he struggled to refrain from apologizing, Emily quietly uttered, “I am sorry, Michael. I didn’t mean to vex you. I just—just”—she shook her head, gesturing helplessly—“I just wanted to—”
“I know. I know that you meant well,” he gently interjected, unable to remain silent at the sound of the repressed tears choking her voice. “And I am sorry to have spoken to you so harshly. It is just that I do not wish you to foster an unrealistic impression of me. To allow you to do so will only result in pain and disappointment in the end.” Pain for him, disappointment for her. “I am just a man, Emily, nothing more. One with more than his share of flaws. Please do not make me out to be more.”
She returned his gaze solemnly for a moment, visibly searching his eyes, then nodded and looked back down at her kite. Apparently that was to be the end of the matter, for in the next instant she picked up the pencil she’d abandoned when she’d gone to the window, and resumed her work on her sketch. After a minute or two of watching her, sensing that he should say something more, but uncertain what that something should be, Michael, too, recommenced drawing.
They remained like that for a long while, the tranquil coziness of the scene belying the turbulence of the emotions seething just below the surface.
The sewing room, into which Michael had never so much as set a foot until the day before, when Emily had directed him there for their kitemaking venture, was small, with simple but comfortable furnishings and a row of round-headed windows that overlooked the kitchen garden and greenhouses. On the wall perpendicular to the windows, encompassing almost the entire white-stuccoed length, arched an enormous brick fireplace. A fire currently blazed upon the hearth, its dancing flames reflecting off the polished wood floor as it merrily chased away the damp October chill. Though it was only midafternoon, the colza lamps on the walls and table had been lit, and now lifted the cloud-grayed gloom from the room.
As Michael worked, now and again sneaking peeks at Emily to match her features to those of his angel, he couldn’t help noticing how tantalizing she looked in the lamplight.
She wore red today, and though the gown was a warm woolen affair with a high neck and prim lace collar, the color did wondrous things for her skin. It made it glow a lustrous ivory, against which the satiny sheen of her cheeks bloomed like rose petals dusted with pearls. Her hair, which she wore in a cascade of curls down her back, shimmered ever-so-slightly with copper fire, imbuing it with a silken warmth that made him ache to touch it and see if it felt as deliciously soft as it looked.
On they worked, the silence of the room broken only by the whispering scratch of their pencils and the crackling of the fire. Now and again the rain splattered violently against the windows, hurled by the driving force of the storm, reminding them of the fury that raged outside.
Michael had just corrected his angel’s mouth to his satisfaction and was considering the slant of her eyebrows, when Emily murmured, “Why must you hate yourself so, Michael?”
He glanced up, utterly taken aback. “What?”
She made one final, bold stroke with her pencil, then looked up and solemnly met his gaze. “Why must you hate yourself?” she repeated softly. “It is clear from everything you say and do that you dislike yourself immensely. I do not understand why.”
He returned her gaze for several beats, strangely unnerved by her question, then snorted. “I should think it would be obvious.”
“But it isn’t,” she replied, her voice touched with a note of sweet pleading. “I can find no reason whatsoever why you shouldn’t feel pride in yourself.”
No reason? He stared at her dumbfounded, wondering if she had taken so far a leave of her senses that she couldn’t recall all that she had seen and heard during the past month. Determined to remind her, to force her to once and for all desist in her romanticized view of him, he harshly grated out, “Must I keep pointing out that I am an invalid … a weak, ineffectual, sorry excuse for a man who must be constantly tended by a nursemaid?” Another snort. “After the way you have coddled me this past month, you, of all people, shouldn’t require a reminder of that pathetic fact.”
She sniffed. “Stuff and nonsense! I have seen invalids before—real ones—and I can tell you without the slightest reservation that you, Michael Vane, are no invalid. An invalid could not possibly walk out to the moors for a swim, nor would he have your appetite. He most certainly wouldn’t have your complexion, which, in case you haven’t looked in the mirror of late, has taken on a decidedly healthy glow.” She nodded with a resolution that made her curls dance. “You are nowhere near being an invalid.”
Another snort from Michael, this one explosive. “Tell that to Eadon and my grandmother. Oh, and while you are at it? Why don’t you go before the magistrate and tell him as well? According to the courts of England, I am so invalid that I c
an be declared incompetent at any time and be stripped of my duchy.”
She drew back, her eyebrows drawn together, visibly stunned. “What?”
He nodded curtly. “If you must know, I was divested of my ducal rights and duties during my illness, and have only recently regained them.”
“But—why?” She was shaking her head over and over again, as he’d noticed was her habit when she couldn’t quite believe what she was hearing. “From what I have seen of a nobleman’s duties, you needn’t be particularly sound of body to attend them. Indeed, judging from the conversation I heard while in London, most aristocratic business is attended to by solicitors, clerks, estate agents, and any number of other such parties.” Her head shaking smoothly transitioned into a nod. “Why, it seems to me that a nobleman’s only real duties are to make an occasional decision and sign a few papers, both of which you are, and no doubt have always been, equal to doing.”
Michael smiled faintly at her naiveté. “There is a bit more to being a duke than simply signing papers and making decisions, I am afraid, though I must admit that those two acts do figure prominently among my duties.”
“Be that as it may, I cannot think that it was necessary for the courts to divest you of your ducal rights, just because you fell ill. Surely your grandmother or some other family member could have attended to matters in your stead until you were well enough to do them for yourself?” She was shaking her head again. “Indeed, I cannot imagine how your grandmother could have allowed the courts to do such a thing. From what I have ascertained from my own grandmother, your grandmother wields a great deal of power in England, both socially and economically. I also hear tell that she has the ears of those high in power. Surely she could have done something to halt the courts’ decision?”
“Why would she halt it when it was exactly the decision she sought?” he inquired darkly.
“What!”
Bewitched Page 23