Harlequin Historical September 2021--Box Set 2 of 2

by Annie Burrows

  ‘It doesn’t matter.’ He was plainly so agitated she forgot her own nerves in an overwhelming urge to soothe him. ‘I can see that I surprised you. Though I cannot imagine why. I am your wife after all. It is my job to make sure you have breakfast, isn’t it?’ Although she had never done so before. It had never crossed her mind to wonder if he’d eaten. Oh, but she had been such a bad wife so far. No wonder Ben didn’t know what to make of her coming here today.

  ‘I just...’ She trailed her finger along the edge of the desk. Now it came to it, it wasn’t so easy to broach the question of why he’d fled from her bed and given every appearance of a man who was avoiding his wife.

  ‘Actually, I am glad you’ve come,’ he said. ‘Because I need to apologise.’ He stood straighter. ‘And it is better to do so here, where nobody can overhear.’

  ‘Apologise? What for?’

  ‘For last night.’ His face darkened. ‘I was not...that is, I did not...’ He ran his fingers through his hair. ‘Dammit, Daisy, I shouldn’t have...’

  ‘Got up and left me? Sneaked out in the dark?’

  ‘What? No, not that. I mean, I couldn’t face you in daylight without...’ He made a gesture that somehow made her understand he was talking about their state of undress.

  ‘Why could you not face me in daylight? Did I...? I did wonder if I’d done something wrong...’

  ‘You? No! You did nothing wrong. It was me. I was utterly selfish. I behaved like a brute, ripping your nightgown...’

  Her nightgown. He was ashamed of having ripped her nightgown off.

  A smile tugged at her lips as a giddy sensation of relief fizzed through her.

  ‘Actually,’ she admitted, ‘I found that rather...thrilling.’ Because she could absolutely not let him think she hadn’t liked it when she’d been going over that moment over and over again this morning as she’d been getting dressed, mentally planning a shopping list to replace items she sincerely hoped he was going to rip off her on a regular basis.

  ‘You...’ He sat down heavily. ‘Thrilling?’

  ‘Yes. But the way you...vanished in the middle of the night made me wonder if something I had done had given you a disgust of me. I mean, I wouldn’t blame you. I behaved so childishly when we were first married. And then the moment you came to my bed I...well...’ She could feel the blood rushing to her cheeks, but she was determined not to give up, no matter how embarrassing this conversation was for her. ‘I wasn’t very ladylike, was I?’

  ‘You...’ He got up, came round the desk, and grasped her hands. ‘You did nothing wrong. You were perfect. More than I deserved. Especially since I know I was not the man you wanted to marry.’

  ‘I didn’t want to marry anyone, Ben. I just wanted to stay in my library, reading my books, and for everyone to leave me alone.’

  ‘Yes, I know,’ he said, raising one hand to his mouth and kissing the knuckles. ‘And I am so sorry that Walter and Horace forced us into a situation where you had no choice in the matter. To have to marry me, of all men...’ He trailed off, shaking his head ruefully.

  ‘Of all men? What do you mean?’

  His eyes flicked to one side. Then he gestured to his face. ‘Well, for one thing I am so ugly. Oh, I know I have always looked like a frog,’ he said, referring to his rather wide mouth, she supposed. ‘But since Salamanca I have looked like a frog that has been dropped in a tub of acid,’ he said bitterly.

  ‘Oh, Ben, you should know me better than to believe my opinion of you is based on how you look.’ She stroked his face, gently tracing the scars that puckered the left side of his cheek. He shut his eyes, breathing in on a gasp, as if he couldn’t believe she would voluntarily choose to touch his scars.

  Goodness. She had never considered before that other people might have insecurities because of the way they looked. She hadn’t thought it mattered to men. Beauty was a factor for women to consider, but men...

  ‘But if you must know, you have never looked any uglier, in my opinion, than any of my brothers’ other friends.’ No, that wasn’t enough. She sounded as if she was confirming his belief that she must think him ugly. She needed to nip that thought in the bud right now. She couldn’t say that it didn’t matter. He wouldn’t believe it. She had to tell him something that he could believe. Hold onto. ‘In fact, when I saw you in London, in your uniform, I thought you looked very...manly.’

  ‘Manly?’ He looked into her eyes with suspicion, as if half expecting her to declare he was a fool if he could believe such a thing.

  ‘Yes. The first time I saw you, at the Danverses’ ball, my heart fluttered.’

  ‘It did not.’

  ‘It did.’

  ‘But...if... Then why did you never smile at me? Or give me some sign...?’

  ‘I do have my pride, you know. It is not my style to cast out lures to men who make it blatantly obvious they are not interested. Which you did. In spades. You made no effort at all to come and speak to me. And when Jasper practically forced you to do so, you looked so grim. As though you would rather be anywhere else than at my side...’

  ‘No, no, Daisy, you have it all wrong. I was...so worried that I’d react...that is, here, feel this.’ He pulled her in close. ‘This is the way I always react whenever I see you.’ And now that she was a married lady she understood exactly what he meant. She could feel his reaction, pressing into her belly.

  ‘Oh,’ she said, picturing that...straining against a pair of skin-tight evening breeches. ‘Oh,’ she said again, smothering a giggle.

  ‘Precisely,’ he said grimly. ‘I couldn’t risk disgracing myself in a ballroom. Embarrassing you. Offending your brothers. So I had to keep thinking of all the most unpleasant things I could to get it to...stay down.’

  ‘I... I would never have guessed. I didn’t think you even liked me, let alone...’

  A pained expression came to his face. ‘Like you? I more than like you. You have been my ideal woman ever since that summer I broke my collar bone.’

  ‘No. That cannot be.’ She pulled back from him and looked at him with suspicion now. ‘The next time you came to stay, you barely spoke to me. You positively avoided me.’

  He lowered his head. Gave it a small shake. Swallowed. ‘I...’ He lifted his head. ‘I could not just take up where we left off...because I...’ He whirled away from her. Thrust his fingers through his hair. Turned back.

  ‘I was covered in spots,’ he said. ‘Don’t you remember?’

  ‘Spots.’ He’d crushed her girlish heart, made her feel as if she was nothing to him, that he was only interested in being friends with her brothers, and not her, because he’d had spots?

  ‘Ben, everyone has spots for a year or so. It is part of growing up.’

  ‘Not like mine. My face looked like a...a pigsty after a rainstorm. Pitted and pustulant. Whereas your skin was always...’ he scanned her face with a kind of admiration, tinged with jealousy, that filled her with equal parts exasperation and fondness ‘...perfect.’

  She sighed. ‘My skin was most certainly not perfect. There were a few years when I had to bathe my face several times a day in a mixture of rosewater and witch hazel.’

  His eyes widened.

  ‘Even during my Season, there were occasions when I had to resort to rice powder, to conceal the occasional blemish that popped up.’

  ‘You...used cosmetics?’ He looked stunned.

  ‘Don’t make it sound as if I am some sort of...scarlet woman,’ she snapped. ‘Every female needs a little help sometimes to look her best.’

  He frowned. ‘So what was all that about not trying to lure men into a matrimonial trap, then?’

  ‘I didn’t powder my face in order to lure anyone anywhere! I just...didn’t want to disappoint my mother. She was so...proud of me being hailed as the beauty of the Season. She worked hard behind the scenes to make sure nobody could steal my
laurels. And I...’ She didn’t know how she could make him understand. ‘I enjoyed being the focus of her attention for once. All my life she’s always been so focussed on my brothers and all their scrapes that I always felt like second-best. No, make that sixth-best,’ she added bitterly.

  He looked relieved. ‘I knew you couldn’t have a single ounce of vanity, not even though you are so beautiful.’

  He thought she was beautiful?

  Daisy experienced two emotions, very strongly, at the same time. One was a thrill of pleasure at hearing this man, with whom she was going to live for the rest of her days, declare that she was beautiful.

  The other was a definite twinge of disappointment. Because her so-called beauty was the only thing that any male she’d ever met had thought gave her value. Her father, for instance. His only consolation in having a daughter, he’d said more than once, was the fact that she’d inherited his looks, rather than her mother’s. Which was so hypocritical, considering the way he kept on insisting, to her brothers, that they needed to beware of judging a woman with their eyes...

  ‘But, anyway,’ he continued, his jaw jutting as though he was summoning his resolve to say whatever he had to say next, ‘it wasn’t just the spots. I...’ He did that looking away to one side thing, as if he was finding it hard to admit to whatever it was he was going to say next. ‘Well, you know there is a sort of unwritten rule about a fellow’s sisters. A man doesn’t trifle with the sister of his friend. It just isn’t done.’

  Ah. Now, that she could believe. It explained the way her brothers had reacted when they’d discovered Ben naked in the boat with her. Even though Jasper had been the one to urge his own friends to try to save her from the dire fate of spinsterhood, they’d behaved as though he’d broken some mysterious masculine code of honour.

  ‘Which was what made it so shocking when Jasper told us all to...’

  ‘Do whatever it took to get me to the altar,’ she finished for him.

  ‘None of us knew how to deal with it, I don’t suppose. We couldn’t suddenly admit that all along we’d thought you...attractive. It would have meant admitting that we’d been secretly lusting after the sister of our friend.’

  Lusting? Surely not! ‘Walter and Horace made it very clear what they thought of me,’ she reminded him tartly.

  ‘I am sure they didn’t mean it. I think they were saying those things by way of excuses because they thought they had no chance of winning you, no matter what they did. Not after the silly ass ways they’d tried to gain your attention when they first began to...’

  She frowned. ‘What? What are you trying to say?’

  ‘Daisy, a lot of those pranks the fellows played on you,’ he said patiently, ‘were clumsy attempts to get you to notice them.’

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  ‘What? They thought I would enjoy discovering beetles in my teacup? Or slugs in my shoes? Or having live fish flung at me?’

  He shrugged. ‘What can I say? We couldn’t just...flirt with you, could we? Not with your brothers watching us all like hawks.’

  ‘My brothers were among the worst offenders,’ she protested.

  ‘Your brothers made sure you didn’t get tangled up with unsuitable males before you were old enough to know how to handle them,’ he corrected her gently.

  She frowned. Re-examined their behaviour in the light of what Ben had just said. And saw that, indeed, their pranks had been much, much worse when their friends had been staying at the Priory. That they’d made sure she’d never wanted to be in any of the public rooms or anywhere that she might be vulnerable when the savage hordes, as she’d always thought of them, descended.

  They had been...protective.

  Which was in keeping with the way they’d been during her Season, she suddenly perceived. They hadn’t suddenly changed their attitude to her, they’d just adapted their behaviour to fit the changed circumstances.

  And then something else struck her about what he’d just said.

  ‘You wanted to...flirt with me? When you came to the Priory covered in spots?’

  He swallowed, looking guilty.

  ‘I would have been content,’ she said with exasperation, ‘to just sit and talk to you sometimes, the way we did the summer before.’ Instead, whenever she’d approached him he’d ducked his head and looked at her feet, then blushed scarlet and perhaps grunted before beating a hasty retreat.

  ‘I wouldn’t have known what to say. You kept frowning at me and making yourself scarce whenever I came near. I was so sure that my spots disgusted you...’

  ‘No, I was hurt and angry because you made me feel that it was my brothers you liked, and not me. I had been looking forward to your return, practically counting the days, and then...’ She grimaced.

  ‘You had been looking forward to my return?’

  ‘Well, yes. It was often very lonely, you know, being the only girl among that pack of boys. And I thought at last I would have one friend amongst the hordes. One person to whom I could talk about the books I’d been reading. But...you never really liked reading, did you?’ she finished sadly.

  ‘That’s not true. That summer you showed me that I could take pleasure from many things I’d never considered before...’

  He’d always been a rather morose boy, she reflected. As though he truly hadn’t known how to find any pleasure anywhere.

  ‘Yes. I certainly taught you that books had their uses. To hide your hands at cards, to be specific.’

  ‘No, that was not all,’ he said earnestly. ‘After that summer, even though I never plucked up the courage to talk to you on my own, I was never lonely, the way I’d been before. Books became my companions. The way you promised me they would be.

  ‘I always had a book on the go wherever I went, especially during my years in the army. I...didn’t always like the thoughts expressed in all of them, it’s true. Found some of them dashed hard going. But what I discovered was that many other men, better educated and wiser than me, had contemplated the same things as me, and reached conclusions they expressed with far greater eloquence than I ever could. Thoughts that I had never dared voice aloud, thinking I was the only man who thought them. It made me feel that I wasn’t so very different from everyone else after all. And I had you to thank for it.’

  He bent and kissed her hands again, one after the other. ‘It wasn’t your beauty that bowled me over, to start with. That came later. It was the kindness you showed me. I couldn’t...accept, at first, that you had no ulterior motive for coming in and...’

  ‘Reading at you,’ she said with a smile.

  He nodded. ‘I was surly and suspicious, wasn’t I? I’m so sorry for that but, you see, nobody had ever just...been kind to me, for no reason, not like that, and I...’

  ‘Nobody?’

  He shook his head.

  And she believed it. Having seen the wreckage that had been left in the battleground that had been his parents’ marriage, she could see exactly how one small boy could have become a casualty. Why, even back then it had been clear that his parents were, at best, indifferent to him.

  ‘You opened a door into a world I would never have discovered had you not visited me, day after day, and persisted until you’d found a way to cheer me up. That was what first made me...admire you so much.’

  Something surged through her then. Something she’d never felt before. A sort of wild exhilaration. Because Ben was saying that it wasn’t the way she looked that had made him develop feelings for her. It was because of something she’d done. Something she was.

  He valued her as a person.

  Nobody had ever valued her as a person before. To her father she was the runt of the litter, the girl her mother couldn’t be blamed for producing, considering she’d given him five strapping sons as well. To her mother she’d been a way to re-create the disappointing season she’d experienced as a girl. To her brothe
rs...well, she wasn’t sure what they thought of her, although Ben had just convinced her they had always been protective of her, in their own, peculiar fashion.

  ‘Oh, Ben. You don’t know what that means to me. And then, to know that something I did helped to make your time in the army less of an ordeal...’

  She gazed at him in wonder.

  ‘Daisy,’ he grated. ‘Don’t look at me like that. Or I will have to...’

  She didn’t have to wonder what he’d have to do for more than a second. Because he gave a strangled groan, pulled her close and kissed her.

  ‘Daisy,’ he panted after a while. ‘We can’t. Not here...’

  He was breathing heavily. So was she. And somewhere through the haze of...lust that had her in its grip his words began to make sense. She had never thought of...the marriage act as anything other than something that happened in the bedroom. In the dark. At night. But the feelings that were ripping through her, just because he’d kissed her, were compellingly strong even though it was daylight and they were nowhere near a bedroom.

  ‘Do you mean to tell me,’ she said, feeling very let down, ‘that I am going to have to wait until tonight before we...finish...this?’

  ‘I...’ He looked torn. ‘Anyone might come in and see us. It wouldn’t do to expose you to...’

  ‘I suppose you are right,’ she admitted reluctantly, leaning her forehead against his chest and breathing in deeply. Which didn’t help because she got a lungful of him. His scent. Which was now, it appeared, inextricably linked in her mind with bedroom activity. ‘It would be more sensible to restrict ourselves to the bedroom. With the door locked and the curtains drawn.’

  ‘Are you telling me,’ he grated, ‘that you’d be willing to...right now?’

  ‘It is not a question of willing.’ She wriggled against him. ‘It is more the fact that when you kiss me like that, and let me feel what you have in your breeches, I... I...’ She looked up at him. ‘I don’t feel,’ she admitted, ‘as if I can wait until tonight.’