He forced a crooked smile. Ah, but what did it matter. So this ended his plans. That was all. If she had gone, she'd gone. It left him...irritated, that was all. Yes, annoyed that she had outfoxed his schemes. Well, so it went. He would encourage the touch of relief that she had taken away the temptation to do his worst with her and to her.
With a hand pressed to his sore side, he made his way back to the bed. Rising fast had left him light-headed and he was glad enough to lie down. Had she left money for his room, or was he on his own there? No matter. He had survived worst. That winter in Russia for one. Their parting a decade ago for another.
Closing his eyes, he decided to worry about all of it later.
But the door creaked open and clicked close, a bustle of skirts came closer, and the pungent aroma of hot tea washed over him. So she had left someone to look after him—a comely tavern maid he would hope.
He opened his eyes to see not the maid he expected, but Alexandria, putting a wooden tray on the seat of chair that stood next to the bed.
He stared at her. It could not be fever dreams still. Could it? His eyebrows snapped tight along with his temper. "If you are here, then where's your coach gone?"
She offered a calm smile. "To Calais. Do you still take milk in your tea? I managed that, but no sugar." She poured dark tea into a pottery mug and served him as if using fine porcelain, not mismatched bits of china.
Easing himself up on one elbow, he took the mug and sipped. Realizing his thirst, he drank it back, the liquid going down warm and easy. It lacked only a splash of brandy.
"More?" she offered. "It took forever to teach the landlord's wife how to make a decent pot. She simply did not understand that one must leave the water on long enough to boil properly."
He smiled at her as she filled his mug again and added milk from a small, chipped pitcher. "I suppose I should not say this, but I thought you had abandoned me to my fate. What did you do—send your niece on without you?"
She glanced at him, those elegant, light brown eyebrows arching with surprise. At what? That he would confide the truth to her, or that he would think she might part company with her charge? "I sent my coach on with the landlord's cousin and her two daughters—and you may repay me for the amount it took to bribe them to make the trip. Are you hungry? The doctor left word that you might eat gruel today."
He made a face. "Spare me. But you may have a beefsteak sent up."
"I think not. The goal is to have you able to travel soon and not be down with fever again. Gruel and tea today. Tomorrow you—"
"Tomorrow I shall be up and ordering my own meals, and will be well able to travel. As to repayment—ma chére, my pockets are to let, though that may change if my luck shifts and if you care to stake me some coins. But how are we to go anywhere now you've stranded us? What were you thinking, Andria?"
She had poured herself a mug of tea and now she sipped from it and studied him over its rim. Amazing how little she had changed—a few lines more about those wide, gray eyes, and a less slender figure. But he had once thought her too thin—unhappily thin. How very long ago that seemed.
"I was thinking," she said, "that the doctor said at least three days of rest or you may risk an infection. And if whoever is after you thinks you might be in my carriage, why not send it along and give them something to chase. My brother will not be happy that I have lost his coach. But I suspect I should not have been able to get it across the Channel anyway, and I kept most of our luggage. And some of Gaston's clothes—he was one of my footman, and while his clothes will be too large for you, they look more respectable than your own."
He raised his mug of tea to her. "I am impressed."
"Please do not be. Expertise in deception is nothing admirable. However, since you have involved me—and my niece—in your troubles, I should like to know exactly who we are attempting to avoid. Those soldiers did not seem interested in you as just another Englishman to arrest."
Paxten sipped his tea and began to sift through what lies he might tell, but Alexandria surprised him again by stating bluntly, "Spare yourself the trouble of any inventions. I have already guessed this involves a Madam Lisette. And, no, I have not become a mind reader. You muttered the name last night when the fever had you."
"I suppose that's only fair."
"What do you mean by that?"
He only smiled for an answer.
Her lips tightened for a moment before she said, "I assume she is your paramour. And married to a jealous man?"
"How quick you are to think the worst of me."
"And how right am I?"
Unrepentant, he lifted one shoulder—the good one—but he winced at the effort. "Near enough to the mark. Though from the starch in your voice it sounds as if you thought I would become a monk after you sent me away." Color bled into her cheeks. He grinned. "Ah, you did think it—you imagined me pining for you."
She drew her back stiff, but he kept grinning. He did not want her to know he had spent far too long doing just that, dragging himself around the world and finding every other woman lacking when compared with her. He would be properly boiled himself before he admitted just how long it had taken to forever harden his heart.
Those eyebrows of hers arched over her gray eyes again. "I thought you not such a rogue as to take up with married women."
"Why not? I took up with you."
The color flamed in her cheeks, two bright splashes of hot pink against the soft cream of her skin. He thought for a moment that she might dash her mug of tea into his face. She swallowed hard, and gave a small nod. "Yes, you did. But you did not learn then that such liaisons only lead to grief?"
"Oh, with Lisette it was leading to something quite pleasurable."
"You have an odd notion of pleasure when it comes from nearly being shot to death."
He decided on blunt truth. To shock her. And to serve fair warning that what lay between them was far from finished. "That I did not plan. Actually, I displeased the lady. I called her by your name."
She stared at him, suspicion in her eyes. He met her gaze with one as open as he could make it. "I do not believe you," she said.
"As you like. She certainly was not amused. She began screaming rape, and then I found out about the wisdom in not bedding a general's wife."
Alexandria's eyebrows snapped together and he expected her to blister him now with righteous disapproval. Instead, she said, her tone indignant, "Rape? You? Honestly, what a ridiculous charge? As if you ever had the need for such a thing when you had but to smile at any woman to have her melting at your feet!"
Amused, he sipped his tea. Still the innocent, despite everything. To think that a woman's availability and interest had much to do with some men's appetites. But she was right in one thing. The dark violence of rape had never stirred him. He preferred to court a woman's surrender, to coax it from her, to steal it with kisses and soft touches. As he intended to do with her.
But telling her that much truth would spoil his plans.
So he only sipped his tea, and he said, "I did not feel inclined to defend myself to General D'Aeth." Her eyes widened and he asked, "Ah, so you know the general?"
She nodded. "And his wife—she is, well, I should call her a flirt."
"I should call her a racoleuse—and, no, I will not translate that for you."
"I have not asked, now have I? But I can guess it is as far from polite as you are. I do wish, however, that you would have thought twice before taking my maid's place. You are a good deal of bother, you know."
Reaching out, he gave her his mug, but after she took it from him, he gripped her wrist. "Yes, I know. So you must allow me to make it up to you."
She stiffened. "Please, do not."
His thumb brushed her skin. "Qu'est-ce que c'est?"
"You know very well what it is. And I know at least that in French."
"Ah, but I only meant that I could repay you in that I could see to obtaining transportation for us. What did you think I meant?
"
"I know what you meant and it is not that. Do not make me regret my decision to help you."
"But we have so many regrets between us already. What are a few more?"
"You are going to force me to pour the rest of the tea in this pot over your head!"
He grinned. "You may try—but if you think I will allow that, you mistake me for that doddering old fool you married?"
"Bertram was not that old."
"You don't, I see, defend his doddering. But I do misspeak. He was not as great a fool as I. Why did you not leave me here, ma chére? Why stay? Are you still making choices from what you think is your duty?"
The color rose in her cheeks, but she met his gaze, her own assured, even though he could see her chest rise and fall with rapid, short breaths. "Is that all you think you are to me? A case of Christian charity? That I have no feelings here? That what we...what we once meant to each other does not matter to me?"
His hand tightened around her wrist. "It did not seem to matter to you when last we parted."
She shook her head. "You always judged my feelings by how well I capitulated to your own, and I failed you there. However, I do still have some care for you, even though you have obviously not changed one bit!"
"Oh, I've changed. How could I not?"
One skeptical eyebrow lifted. She glanced down at the hand he still held. She had not tried to pull away. A perverse desire swept into him to tug, to drag her onto the bed with him and have her, whether she willed it or not. To let out the violence in him.
And he had just thought himself beyond such tastes.
But perhaps he was. For he could not do it. She had put him in her debt by staying. And he wanted more than her body—he wanted her heart, vulnerable, open, ready to be cut out. He wanted to know she could—and would—feel anguish.
For that he needed time.
Letting go of her, he lay back on the bed. He slipped a smile in place. "I am a demon to torment you when you bring me tea. Of course, I might be better behaved if you brought me something to eat—you can satisfy at least one of my hungers."
With a swish of skirts, she strode to the door. There she paused. "When were you ever satisfied with anything, Paxten? I shall have your beefsteak sent up to you."
She slammed from the room. He stared at the door a moment, and chuckled. The Alexandria he had once known would never have slammed a door. No, she had always been too afraid of giving offense. Of not doing the right thing. It seemed he was not the only one to have changed.
But had she stayed with him out of that damned chain of responsibility that had once bound her? Because of the memory of affection? No—he could not believe that. She had stood still in his hold, her face indifferent, but the pulse had quickened in her wrist.
She still loved to lie to him.
And he was indeed a demon to torment her. He smiled again, but without any humor, for he had just begun. With her, he would prove himself an utter devil. But first he would have to earn her trust. And that meant starting to act like the gentleman he had never been.
#
As soon as she was out of the room, Alexandria leaned against the door, fury racing through her. Not fury at him, but at herself. She wished she had some impolite words in French that she could mutter to vent her feeling. Instead, she only had the proper English taught to her.
Oh, curse it all!
A quarter hour with him and she was explaining herself, wanting something from him that he could not give, and back to defending poor Bertram.
Poor, poor Bertram. He ought to never have married. But she had realized that only in the year after Jules had been born, when it had become apparent that Bertram considered his duty done to get an heir, and that there would be no more children. Nor any attempts in bedding her to get them.
Poor Bertram indeed. He would have made a wonderful bachelor uncle—always pleasant, ever the correct gentleman, ready to offer light flirtation and capable of doing not much more than that with any woman. He had not done so well as a husband. Perhaps she ought to have paid more heed when her mother told her—after Bertram had asked her parents for her hand—that he would never give her a moment's concern. He had not. He never took a mistress. Never glanced at other women. Never stayed late at his club. Never did anything that might upset the routine of his life.
How had he actually managed to get her with child, and to produce a son? He had done so little else in his life.
But that sounded unkind, and she had never wanted to be unkind to him. He tried to be decent in his own way. He never raised his voice or hand to anyone. Never drank too much. Never gambled away his fortune. And he had no need for companionship or affection, other than from his male friends.
He had also been shocked down to the soles of his perfectly fit boots when she had asked for a divorce.
"Chetwynds don't divorce," he had said, sounding as horrified as if she had suggested they both walk naked down St. James's Street. Those, however, had not been the words that had finally turned her away from her plan to run away with Paxten.
Why had she learned too late that the sort of man who did give a woman concerns was the sort who lifted her pulse? Paxten's sort. Hot-tempered, hot-blooded, a man who admired every woman who crossed his path, who created trouble around him and laughed at it. He had been the opposite of staid Bertram. And he had come into her life just when she needed that madding, passionate disorder to fill the hollow emptiness of a barren marriage. She had almost thrown away everything for him.
If only she had not....
That will do. You promised yourself no regrets.
Still, she had them. Paxten had been right about that.
Straightening, she pushed her feelings back into place. She would not indulge them. Not after so many years of strict discipline to hold herself together. But her son no longer needed a capable mother. And she no longer had the ties of her husband and his family. She only had...what? Dutiful choices?
Bother Paxten for always knowing her better than she knew herself!
She could admit it now that he had forced her to look. She had told herself that she stayed at this inn from a sense of concern for him. She had felt so virtuous to be sending her carriage away, sacrificing for another. She had convinced herself that she owed him such an obligation. But now she saw that hidden excitement, the shimmer of hope that there might be more between herself and Paxten again.
Paxten had stripped the pretense away between them. She saw the truth in herself now. She had stayed in the hopes of rekindling past feelings. But he had shown her that while physical sparks might be there still, so did deep scars that still hurt if touched.
With a shake of her head, she started down the stairs. At the foot, she paused and glanced back. If she had any real courage, she would stride back up, go into his room, pin him to his bed and kiss him until she knew for a certainty that all this was between them was a physical attraction that could be mastered.
But what if that was a lie too?
Skin warm, she bit her lower lip. Could she bear to let go of the past and embrace the stark truth that he was no longer the man she'd once almost loved beyond anything? Or could she…bother, but she might as well offer to fly back to England. She could not let go her upbringing, her years of duty and responsibility—something Paxten had never known.
This seemed a dangerous, one-sided game. Paxten might know her better than she did herself, but what did she really know of the man he had become? Oh, yes, he could attract with that sensual charm of his, but she had also seen the calculation in his eyes. A dark edge ran though him, one that had not been there before. And now she had stranded herself with him.
Oh, but perhaps, just perhaps, she was just being overly sensitive about all this. They had been shocked to see each other last night; and they were both fatigued yet. Perhaps that was what left them edgy with each other. She could not tell—and that alone ought to warn her to keep her distance from him.
However, they had once m
eant so much to each other. And she found she could not let go of that. She did not want to. With Bertram in his grave and Jules grown, the only thing that stood between them was the shadow of their past. Such an insubstantial thing. Such an uncertain thing.
So why did it seem so insurmountably large?
#
Paxten's good intentions to mind his manners lasted until the gruel arrived instead of his beef. A thin slip of a maid with dark hair and sallow skin brought it to him, along with Alexandria's niece, who bustled about, opening windows, chattering in schoolgirl French, and pausing only to arrange in a white vase the spring wildflowers she had picked. The girl's chatter amused him until he glanced at the watery gruel in the bowl on the tray.
He looked at the maid, picked up the bowl and threw it. He had good aim and the startled squawk of chickens came in through the window that the bowl had gone out. He wished them bon appétite with any remains they could find. And he said, "I asked for beef."
Wide-eyed, the maid started to hurry out to fetch what he wanted, but Alexandria's niece stopped her. "Please forgive my uncle, and bring him more gruel. Aunt's orders, dear Uncle," she added, showing small, white teeth in something that might be meant as a smile.
He lifted one eyebrow. "She told me she would send me the beefsteak I wanted."
"Well, that is not what she—what are you doing? Stop that! You are not supposed to be out of bed!"
He paused with his bare feet swung out and onto the floor and the bedcovers the only thing between his skin and the world. "Am I not? But if no one will bring me food I can eat then I must fetch my own."
"But...but you are not decent."
He flashed a grin. "I've not been that for years. But if you mean I have no clothes, either bring me breeches and a shirt or close your eyes. Or bring me real food."
With a good imitation of her aunt, her chin lifted and she folded her arms. "You are bluffing."
He winked at the maid, and said to the niece, "Hungry men do not bluff, my little one." Pushing up off the bed, he started to stand. The girl's blue eyes widened. The maid stared, her mouth hanging open.
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