The more he came to know this glowing, vibrant creature, the more convinced he became that he did not deserve to stand at her side. It was more than his former distance. Last night he’d lost control. Now he had truly begun to worry that he might undo her somehow, that he might bring her down into his dark and twisted homeland—where dwelled mewling slimy beings and demons and him.
She wasn’t an angel. She was far too gloriously real for that. She was odd and free-spoken and askew from the rest of Society—although it seemed she might be one of the most normal people in her bizarre family.
No, she was not a perfect being … yet her oddness became part of her appeal and her surprising insights kept him interested in spite of his attempts at withdrawal. Pretty Calliope engaged him fully, bringing him sights and sounds and scents and thoughts and dreams that he’d quite given up on. It was almost cruel, her deep joy in life. She would not let him be.
He ought to be longing for his former peace and solitude. He ought to resent her noise and her clatter and her constant disturbance.
The tip of his thumb traveled around the perimeter of those pink lips, more softly than a feather’s touch.
He was quite pathetic. I am sitting here, wishing she would wake up—eager to hear the next outrageous words uttered by that pretty mouth.
I like her. I hate how much I like her. The man who wins her when I’m gone will count himself lucky to be there, never knowing quite what to expect, never quite sure what she’ll say next.
What if that man didn’t appreciate her? What if he looked at her and merely saw a rather pretty woman, with a good figure and rather too much to say? What if he called her annoying and urged her to keep her thoughts to herself? What if he used that lovely body and returned no pleasure for the gift? What if he ignored her? What if he struck her?
I wouldn’t do that.
Shut up. You’re gone. You were beaten out of me, seeping out of me as I lay dying on the dockside. You don’t get a say in this.
I could love her.
You don’t exist.
I exist here now in this moment. I exist for her. She feels me inside, whether you feel me or not.
Giving up on his half-mad self-argument, Ren rose and went to the other side of the bed to turn down the covers. Sweeping his hands across the linens, he warmed them. Then he returned to her, picking her up as easily as if she were a child. He had become stronger in the last few days. His body drank of her life and vitality. She gave him strength and blood-pumping anxiety and heart-sinking terror, all at the same time.
He tucked her into the covers, pulling her limbs out straight and comfortable. She instantly turned upon her side, curling into a cramped ball. He smiled ruefully. Obstinate even in sleep. Yet, her hands and feet were so icy. He didn’t like leaving her this way, chilled and alone. What if she woke in the night, frightened of dream snakes … or real ones, in her memory?
I might stay with her, just to keep her warm. Just to soothe away the midnight terrors. I might stay.
You are a midnight terror.
Then I shall leave before light.
With mingled daring and longing, he undressed, tossing his things over the spindly chair at her vanity. At last he was naked. If she woke just then, she would see him in all his damaged, pain-racked deformity, his scars, his twisted back, his ruined face.
Abruptly he was too weary to care. All he wanted was to climb into bed with his wife, curl around her and warm her until he fell asleep upon her shining hair.
He lifted the covers and did just that.
Just this once.
* * *
Betrice paced her bedchamber, glaring at her sleeping husband in their large bed. If she lived in the manor, she would have her own lady’s chamber. Henry would visit her and then he would leave her be, in a luxurious suite, surrounded by her lovely things, and not make her listen to his snoring all night long. She strode to the bed and picked up her pillow, gripping it with fingers white with strain. She paced slowly around the bed, until she stood gazing down upon Henry’s face. One moment with the pillow, could she suffocate him before he even woke? He was ever a deep sleeper.
Then she snatched the pillow back to her bosom, with a small cry. She was terrible! What an awful, treacherous thought! Henry was a good man. She was terribly fond of him … most of the time. He’d never raised a hand to her, he’d never denied her anything, often going without something he liked so that she could have a new gown or order a new pair of kid slippers. He’d given up his tobacco for an entire winter just so she could go to London to shop for a gown, when she knew perfectly well that a pipe by the fire on a winter’s evening was one of his favorite pleasures.
He was a good man … a good man who should have been master of Amberdell Manor—who deserved to be master of Amberdell!
* * *
Callie opened her eyes. Her room was as dark as the cellar. She heard a noise—
“Shh.” A hard warm arm came about her, tugging her into a circle of heat and skin and man. “All is well. Sleep.”
Callie’s surprise was not enough to keep her exhausted eyes open. Her lids fluttered shut upon her, mid-thought. I think he’s na—
* * *
Naked. Callie’s eyes flew open.
What? Naked?
She ran a hand across her body, feeling the thin fabric of her shift. She wasn’t naked.
If not her, then who?
The morning light came streaming in through opened drapes. She clearly recalled closing them against the chill last night. She pushed herself to a sitting position. Her bedchamber was bright and warm and a most astonishing pot of tea steamed under a towel next to a cup on her side table. I have tea.
She blinked. The tea remained where it sat, the fat little pot jolly in the beams of sunlight pouring into the room.
Then Callie’s eyes fell upon the mussed bed. The other side of the bed.
Naked.
Had that been true? It could not have been true.
Then she saw it, loitering in the dent someone’s—his!—head had made in the pillow. A single gleaming pearl, nesting there, all round and shining and impossible.
Callie reached a hand to the teapot, pouring black hot tea and gulping deeply, scalding her tongue. She sucked air into her mouth as she regarded the new pearl in wonder. Then a slow smile crept across her face.
Then she spotted the basket on the side table—a basket full to the brim with green apples.
Snakes or no, Mr. Porter had given her a gift!
* * *
That afternoon, after a flurry of pie-baking with the lovely apples, Callie set up her drawing area in the library. There were tall, lovely windows with marvelous views, and just the scent of old books made her feel at home.
First she set the carefully cleaned cowslip plant upon a small stack of books, holding the petals in midair so she could see them in their natural state. A proper botanical artist would have a little stand made, where a plant could be clipped onto a glass vase. It would stay fresh for more than a day like that.
Carefully, she dried the roots, pressing them softly with a clean cloth until the plant could be laid down upon a blotting sheet. Callie preferred to work fresh, what with all the bounty currently blooming all around her. If she wished, she could press this plant and continue to work on drawings for a year or more, yet it was the live plant that drew one’s gaze in the wild. That life was up to her to convey, the life and the death, too, for the final portion of the drawing would be the seedpod, which would not be formed until later in the summer or even possibly the autumn. She would simply leave a portion of each drawing empty, a ghost space that would someday be filled.
The cowslip lay playful and bright in the shaft of light coming in the large window. She would have to work quickly. Now she was very glad she’d spent so much time sketching in the wild. Her fingers felt nimble and it was only moments before she was imparting the petals, pistils, and stamens with concise, delicate strokes of her pencil. The drawin
g went so well she decided to get the entire plant in one go.
Drawing came easily enough. She used a small magnifier she’d found in the library. The cunning little thing was no more than a round lens held by a small bone handle, but in good light she was able to see the tiny hairs upon the plant’s stem and even the way the veins in the leaf were three different shades of yellow-green.
Her drawing complete at last, Callie studied it for a long moment. This was always the difficult part. How she wished she could preserve it somehow before she possibly spoiled it with the paints. Still, she could clearly see the colors in her mind’s eye, the way she would tip the petals with just a touch of orange, to bring out the sweet lemon-yellow of the inner construction.
With her tongue pressed to her top teeth in concentration, she bent to make the first wash of green upon the stem. Her gaze flicked back and forth between the drawing and the plant. Yes, it was an excellent version of the stem color … she only needed to wash a narrow line of yellow-green into the junctions for the leaves and stem …
Ren leaned one shoulder on the frame of the library door and watched his bride bend over her work, looking ever so slightly mad with her brow scrunched and her tongue poking out of the corner of her mouth. She looked intense and ridiculous … and adorable.
He wanted to enter the library, pull her away from her efforts, and put a pearl upon that tongue … no, he wanted that tongue in motion, chattering away about some mad childhood adventure of hers while he took down her hair and unbuttoned her gown.
He did nothing. He wouldn’t dream of disturbing her, or of robbing himself of a moment of this delightful view of her. She had a pencil thrust into her wound hair. It poked above her brow rather like a unicorn horn. Indeed, she was as rare a creature, his mad Calliope.
She scratched her nose thoughtlessly, leaving a streak of green pigment there. Ren rubbed a hand over his covered mouth, forcing back a rusty chuckle. How he wished he were an artist, as well, to capture her ludicrous charm. He would simply have to remember it instead. Always.
In the silence there was nothing but the faint stirring sound of her brush in water and the ticking of the clock on the mantel. Ren eyed the polished wood of the mantel and all the shelves in the room. His books had never looked so fine. The ticking soothed him—a long-silent heart, beating again.
At last she sat up, tilting her head comically as she frowned at the paper. Then she pursed her lips and blew across it to dry the color washes. Ren imagined he could feel her cool breath upon his naked skin, as if her lips were pursed for him …
She was fair to making him mad with lust for the simple act of drying a sheet of paper!
He forced his gaze away. Her stunted little weed looked a bit worse for wear. Callie noticed it drooping at the same moment and plucked it from its roost, dropping it back into a beaker of water with her eyes full of concern.
I should like to be that plant, looked after with such care.
Bloody hell, he was jealous of a plant.
What had she done to him? More importantly, what would she do to him when she left?
Since her concentration seemed well and truly broken, Ren cleared his throat. “You’ve left pencil shavings on my carpet.” His tone was meant to be teasing. He feared it came out gruff and accusatory.
She didn’t even glance at him. “Our carpet,” she corrected him absently.
Ren halted even as he was about to enter the room. Our carpet. Two of the oddest words to ever bring light to a man’s dark corners.
Carefully keeping his tone mild this time, he gestured toward the painting. “May I see?”
She nodded, although she didn’t look happy about it. “It’s only the first one. I should like to try again, I think, although I will have to collect a new specimen.”
Ah, more woodland strolling. Ren couldn’t deny the appeal of another day of watching Callie clambering over fence stiles. Such a charming view when she hiked her skirts.
Then Ren realized what he was gazing at with some surprise. He’d studied enough botany to know a good representation when he saw one, and her painting was entirely accurate. Yet, she’d somehow managed to do something else with it, something that made him think of strolling through spring meadows, and hearing birdsong and feeling the warm sun on the back of his neck.
You would have to take off your hood first for that one.
He nodded. “I like it.”
“Truly?” She glanced up at him.
Ren realized that she always did, although there was no possibility that she could see his face. Most people whom he was forced to deal with either stared searchingly into the shadow of his hood or kept their gaze elsewhere, like somewhere over his left shoulder, or hovering around his knees. Callie looked at him, looked through the hood as if for her, the cloth was not even there.
“… something is missing, I think.”
He caught up on the conversation with an effort. “I don’t think there’s anything missing.”
She frowned and stuck her paintbrush into her hair, causing a mad counterpoint to her unicorn horn pencil adornment. Ren didn’t laugh. He made sure of it.
“I think the yellow is off.” She sighed. “I wish I had my own paints. I scrounged these from the nursery.”
I have a nursery? Ren resolved to get her better paints on the next coach from London.
“Well, I’m glad to see you so recovered from your ordeal yesterday.”
She glanced at him, then blushed. He tilted his head. “What is it?”
She fiddled with her little weed. “This morning … there was a pearl.”
Ren kept his tone offhand. “Yes. Did you mind?”
She shook her head quickly. “No, not at all. It’s just that … well, I think I woke once … were you…?”
“Was I what?” Damn, she was going to say it. She was going to writhe and blush and ask him if he’d slept naked wrapped around her and then he was going to have to kiss her …
“Nothing.” She lifted her chin. “How are we going to find out who locked me in?”
He drew back. “I believe we know what happened.”
She brightened. “Oh, excellent. Who was it? What are you going to do about them?” Her brows drew together. “I don’t think you should punish them too harshly. It was only a prank—”
“You locked yourself in and then panicked because the door stuck just a bit.”
Oh! Callie couldn’t believe it. Mr. Porter had the nerve to stand there and—
She whirled, pacing to the fireplace and back. “It stuns me that you persist in denying that something is going on here! First the ladder…”
“You were very careless to endanger yourself with that ancient ladder.”
“… and now with the cellar door. I told you how I braced it with the log!”
“I’m sure that while you sat in the dark you wished you’d thought of that…”
“Oh!” She stalked back to the fireplace again. “You unbearable lout!”
Offended, Ren folded his arms. “Now you’re just being silly. I admit I didn’t realize I had such a serpent problem, but they have been cleared out and you’ll see no more of them. Perhaps if you’d used a bit more forethought when venturing into the cellar—”
The peculiar noise she made, something between a shriek and a growl, was drowned out by the ringing sound of a sword being drawn. Ren realized she was arming herself with one of the ornamental sabers that were mounted, crossed, over the mantel.
She swung about, pointing the sword at him. “You insist on calling me a liar or labeling me a fool! En garde!”
Chapter 16
At the sight of his dainty bride wielding a sword, Ren laughed out loud. Then he heard the whistle of steel in the air and the top button of his weskit flew away, landing with a pinging sound on the floor halfway across the room.
“What?”
His dainty bride returned to a quite proper fencing stance. One delicate eyebrow rose. “Arm yourself, sir, or lose every
button you own.”
She tossed him the other sword. He caught it automatically, shaking his head. “You realize that now I will be compelled to tie you up and lock you in the attic, like all the other mad wives of legend.”
Her smile was equal parts sweetness and poison, like treacle syrup laced with cyanide. “You, sir, shall be too busy crawling about the floor looking for your buttons.”
Ping.
“Bloody hell.” This time it was from the arm of his surcoat.
He went en garde. The battle was on. She was rather good, he realized, as she blocked and parried and almost managed to rob him of another button. “You’ve been trained.”
“My aunt Clemmie trained us all,” she said nonchalantly. “Dade is better than I, but not by much. He had no one to practice with. You see, being older than his brothers gave him such an unfair advantage.”
“But no unfairness in your being female?”
Swing. Block. Clash, clang—oh, bloody hell!—ping.
“At first he quite bullied me, I admit. I didn’t give him a truly fair fight until I realized that while he had the reach on me, I was just a hair … quicker.”
She flew past him. Ping.
Ren felt good with a sword in his hand again. He was an accomplished swordsman … or at least, he had been. Now he feared his spritely bride was about to debutton him most ignominiously. Perhaps a distraction?
When next she whirled by him, he twitched his saber. Ping, ping, ping.
Three tiny buttons disappeared from the back of her dress.
“Oh!” She glared at him. “You rat!”
Now that she was distracted by her damaged gown, Ren managed to get in past her defenses once more. Rip.
The seam of her tiny cap sleeve parted. The left side of her bodice began to slither most interestingly downward. “My gown!”
She flew at him, fury redoubled. His weskit hung open now, and his sleeve dropped down over his wrist, entirely parted at the shoulder.
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