He headed back into the washroom to shave and bathe. For that matter, you’d think Felicite’s family would have made a move when they learned Nick was in residence at Belle Chene, perhaps inviting him to dinner. Julian hadn’t said anything about an engagement party, either, and with him spending nights sneaking in and out of Felicite’s bedroom, you’d think they’d be worried she’d get with child. An early-born babe would offer some speculation of its own to the gossips.
Of course, the betrothal wasn’t official at this point, so maybe that was the hold up. Or. . . . Nick frowned into the mirror. More likely, they were waiting until he left before things proceeded. Nick couldn’t blame them there. The attention would probably be on him instead of the betrothed couple at any gathering he attended.
They might have to wait a while then. Even though he’d told Wendi that he was on the verge of leaving, he couldn’t just up and go like that. He couldn’t leave her behind without some arrangements to take care of her, so he wouldn’t have to worry whether she had food and clothing on a day-to-day basis. Without giving one more try at getting her to marry him, so she would be safe.
He firmed his resolve while he dressed, heading for the manor house totally assured of his goal. He entered through the rear of the house, and at the foot of the front stairwell, he stopped as though a gate blocked the steps. Touching the small cut on his lip, he gazed upward. Wendi’s room was at the rear of the second-floor hallway, too far for him to be able to hear any voices even if she had her door open.
Straightening his shoulders, Nick climbed halfway up the stairwell, then stopped. Damn, maybe he’d better give her a little more time to cool off. She’d had a pretty horrible temper tantrum yesterday evening.
Yeah, he’d let her cool off a little more. Check with Sybilla as to the state of Wendi’s temper before he made an appearance in her room.
He practically ran back down the stairs and headed for the study, although his leg protested the hasty effort. He’d check to see if Julian had perhaps changed his mind and left a note about any other problem they needed to discuss, then go get
breakfast--
When Nick halted in the study doorway, Wendi rose from one of the chairs in front of the desk. Ethereal and beautiful in her filmy white gown and robe, she made Nick think for just a fleeting instant she might be a ghost. Or maybe the ghost of Sabine. Instead of fading away like she did in his dreams last night, though, she remained a tangible presence.
A womanly presence. Completely. The gown and robe did more to tantalize than hide, and the part of Nick that was tantalized let him know about it. It thudded to prominent attention when Nick saw a tiny, bare set of toes peeping out from beneath the gown.
Damn, he needed to get behind the desk, especially when he realized Wendi was aware of his response. The secret smile and the cat-like gleam in her eyes told him that. He wouldn’t be surprised if she licked her lips in anticipation.
But she didn’t. Instead, she ducked her head shyly, the innocent gesture causing a greater uproar in him than if she’d continued to remind him of a prowling feline, especially when she sneaked a peek at him through her lashes.
“Uh--aren’t you supposed to be in bed?” he asked. The corner of her mouth curled in reaction to his words, and she kept her eyes on him.
“Uh--I mean--uh--in your room. Yeah, in bed, too, but-- You’re still recovering. Don’t you need to be lying down? Resting, I mean?”
She giggled and sat down in the chair. “I need to talk to you, Nick,” she said. “And I’m lots better. Even Aunt Sybilla said I needed to start getting up now and then. That moving around would hasten my recovery more than lying in bed.”
Nick hurried around the desk and took his seat. When he noticed Wendi’s gaze on his mouth, he touched the small cut with one finger. “It’s nothing,” he reassured her worried look. “It doesn’t even hurt this morning.”
“How’s your leg?”
“It could use a massage,” he said, his voice lowering of its own accord to a sensuous growl. Clenching his fists, he shook his head. What the hell was wrong with him? She was recovering from injuries of her own, and here he was hinting she needed to expend the energy to soothe his pain.
“But it’s really not that bad,” he said. “Really. What’s important now is your regaining your health. Uh--” He stared around the room. “Uh--is your magic-- Has it--?”
“I warmed the water in my pitcher this morning so I could bathe,” she said, and Nick visualized her naked, with drops of water clinging to hidden, delectable places. Visible, delectable places, too.
Suddenly she placed something on the desk, getting his attention. “I wanted to give this back to you,” she said. “You left it in my room.”
Nick stared at the velvet ring box. His physical desire drained away, replaced by a deep, abiding emotional pain in his heart and a hollow feeling in his stomach. She could have cut his heart out and laid it beside the box and not caused him as much pain as her returning the ring did. Until that moment, he’d still had hope--hope she might overcome her anger at him and think of the repercussions of their lovemaking.
She sat there waiting for some response, but he had no idea what to say. Shit, the pain was so intense, he might cry if he tried to talk. That would be a hell of a note, wouldn’t it, letting her know how deep his feelings ran. She very obviously only wanted an opportunity to explore this disrupted karma thing, and his ownership of Belle Chene meant she had to go through him to do that. She’d made it extremely clear ever since he returned that her magic and smoothing this disrupted karma were the most important things in her life.
It would be a hell of a note to let her know he’d fallen in love with her, when she only wanted him for permission to be at Belle Chene.
Sighing as though tired of waiting, she rose to her feet. He kept his eyes on the ring box. Were he to look at her, he might make a total fool of himself. Beg her to reconsider. Tell her he wanted her to marry him because he loved her, not just because she might be carrying his child. Not just because he couldn’t live in California and be worried about how she was surviving half a continent away.
Tell her maybe he’d been wrong. Maybe he should think about them having a real marriage--one where he could take care of her every day himself. Watch any child he put in her belly be born and grow up into a man or woman they could both be proud of.
Who the hell was he, though, Nick Bardou the possible murderer and destroyer of his family, to think he might have a chance at love?
Aware of every nuance of movement, he listened to Wendi turn away. Satin rustled against silken skin, and bare feet padded across the carpet, then the floor just inside the door. Then down the hallway.
He very carefully got to his feet. Leaving the ring on the desk undisturbed, he headed out the door. He had to get out of here or go crazy. He had an almost unrestrainable urge to destroy everything in the study. Start throwing things, as Wendi had the previous day.
Instead, he’d go riding. On horseback, rather than in a buggy. The pain that caused in his leg might eventually override the emotional pain he felt.
If not, so be it. What ever made him think that Nick Bardou deserved to be happy, after all the misery he left in his wake the past ten years?
#
He didn’t come home all night. Wendi knew, because she only half slept once she finally went to bed after an endless day. Her emotions ran the gamut from hurt that he hadn’t even attempted to talk her into keeping the ring to outrage at his obtuseness. Couldn’t he see she wanted him to tell her that he loved her, instead of just offering her marriage in case she was with child?
The gamut peaked at fury. How could he think for one minute she’d abide a marriage where her husband lived completely across the continent from her? Damn it, she might someday find a man who actually loved her in return, find someone who was willing to build the relationship Thalia Thibedeau seemed to think there could be between a man and woman. Some man who believed love could be wh
ispered in the same breath as commitment. And divorces weren’t as easy to get in Nick’s world as they were in hers.
Staring out through the misty morning pre-dawn light, she glared at the garconniere, knowing it stood empty. More correctly, the bed inside--the bed she would give practically anything to share once more with Nick--was empty of the man who made the bed so desirable. Where was he? He had no business staying out all night in this humid weather.
There was all sorts of trouble he could get into. Not that she was worried about him. But his horse could throw him. Maybe into the swamp. There, a huge alligator could slide into the murky water and attack him before he could get out. She’d seen alligators in the bayous in the city huge enough to be extremely dangerous, and hadn’t she heard tales of them eating stray dogs that wandered too close to the banks?
Realizing how childish she was acting and thinking, she turned from the window and went back to her bed. Climbing the footstool, she laid on the mattress and stared at the overhead canopy. She let her mind roam again, but couldn’t make contact with even one person. By noon the previous day, she’d known her magic was returning, but slowly. She’d also became aware that Sybilla had deserted her again, and probably taken her hound and that pup with her. This morning she’d get dressed and go see for sure, but she didn’t think her aunt would leave the hound and pup behind.
Her stomach growled and she sat up. She hadn’t gone out to the kitchen house to fix her anything to eat the previous evening, making do with the leftovers from a lunch tray Sybilla had brought her just before she disappeared. Granted, she’d given her aunt cause to avoid her vile temper. She’d taken out her frustration over Nick’s total nonresponse at her returning the ring on Aunt Sybilla when she brought the breakfast tray. By noon, after seeing Nick ride off and not return, she had been in a fine fury.
But Aunt Sybilla didn’t have to treat her like a child.
Like a child banned to its room until it finished pouting. That thought flashing into her mind told Wendi that her aunt was at least checking on her now and then.
“I’m sorry, Aunt Sybilla,” she whispered. Sybilla had closed the communications between them again, though, as she had kept it all day and night.
Both her aunt and Thalia Thibedeau were right. She was acting like a pouting child instead of a woman grown. She slid from the bed and went over to the mirror. Sybilla had removed the bandage on her head yesterday morning, telling her the wound was healing nicely and the swelling nearly gone. Today she pushed her hair back and probed, finding a slight tenderness but that was all. She hadn’t had any dizzy spells recently either.
Her hair badly needed taming, and she picked up her brush. While she brushed, she studied her face. She didn’t understand how she could consider her mother so beautiful--have everyone tell her they looked so much alike--yet feel so. . . so. . . unpretty. Her own blue eyes returned her confused gaze.
Pretty is as pretty does. That didn’t sound like Sybilla’s voice in her mind. Could it be her mother’s? It had been so many years since she’d heard her. But when she probed, she met a blank.
She sighed. If anything, she supposed the voice was referring to her temper tantrum the previous evening. Sabine Chastain looked so calm and collected, she probably never gave in to the personality trait their hair signified and threw a hissy fit. Wendi frowned as a vague hint of a voice similar to her own but raised in anger fleeted through her mind.
Finishing with her hair, she gathered it up off her neck and bound it loosely, being careful not to pull on her tender wound. After she bathed and dressed, she tested her magic by making the bed and straightening up the room. Satisfied the magic was working once again, at least somewhat, she headed for the kitchen house, going down the back stairwell. On the kitchen house porch, she paused, hearing voices inside and peering through the window.
Nick. Nick and Cecile. She couldn’t believe she hadn’t been aware of Nick returning.
Both of them looked up, as though something told them she stood at the window. Without speaking further, Cecile rose and went up the stairway to her living quarters. Nick motioned for Wendi to enter, but she couldn’t make herself open the door. She’d wondered off and on all night what she would say to him when she saw him again, but achieved nothing conclusive. And the sight of him so solid and substantial right there in front of her blew any tentative thoughts out of her mind.
She walked back to the top of the porch steps, but instead of leaving, sat down. Propping her elbows on her knees and chin on her hands, she gazed out at the garden, concentrating on the morning smells she hadn’t paid any attention to on her walk out here.
Roses. She smelled lots of roses. They grew in profusion despite the lack of care in the garden. She’d never been one to enjoy gardening and plants, although she helped Sybilla around their yard at times. It did seem a shame for the garden here to be reverting to wild when it had probably been carefully tended for over a hundred years.
A board creaked on the porch, but she’d known Nick was coming up behind her without that tell-tale sound. He sat down beside her, far enough away that she could feel his heat but not close enough for her to lean against him, as she longed to do. He laid something between them, and she glanced down to see two biscuits on a snowy linen napkin. Butter oozed from their middles, and her stomach chose that moment to utter a loud growl.
She silently chastised her belly, telling it that it could have at least made a more subdued sound. Nick picked up one of the biscuits and broke off a bite, holding it in front of her lips.
Oh, she wanted so badly to take that piece of biscuit from him with her lips. Kiss his fingers while she did. Maybe lick off that little drip of butter on his thumb--
She took the biscuit from him with her fingers and put it into her mouth. Before he could break off another piece, she picked up the other biscuit herself and started nibbling on it. He sat beside her silently until she finished.
“There’s coffee and milk in the kitchen,” he finally said. “Can I get you one or the other?”
“I can go in there myself.”
She started to rise, and he put a hand on her arm. When she looked at him, he said, “I’d like to stay out here where it’s a little cooler and talk for a while, if you don’t mind. Or do you think you need to get back to your room and rest?”
“I need fresh air more than I need rest right now.” She dropped her gaze. “And I need us to talk, too. There’s things that need said.”
“Yes,” he agreed. “Do you feel like going for a buggy ride? I know a pretty spot where we won’t be disturbed. I can pack something to take with us to eat.”
“That would be nice.”
She could feel his eyes on her for a long moment, then he heaved a resigned sigh and rose. She stood, too, and said, “Why don’t I go on out and tell your stable hand to get the buggy ready?”
She moved on down the steps without waiting for his acquiescence and walked to the back garden gate. He must have watched her during the time it took her to get down the path--she knew he did--and she didn’t hear the kitchen door squeal until the same moment she opened the gate and went through. She walked on to the barn, went inside and took a moment to close her eyes and feel before she searched for the stable hand.
It was no use. She heard little scurryings and the “meowrrr” of a mother cat calling its kittens. A flutter of wings as a barn swallow sailed out a window. The stomp of a horse’s hoof, somewhat muffled in the straw on the floor of its stall.
She smelled hay and dust. The sharp tang of leather and horse sweat. Even the odor of the manure pile drifting in the door, which counteracted the overall sense of cleanliness inside.
Something caressed her face, and her eyes flew open.
Mother?
But no, a stray sunbeam had filtered through a tiny clear spot on a window pane high on the wall beside the barn loft. She’d felt it when it hit her cheek. Funny that it had managed the exact angle to make her think her mother’s fingers ha
d touched her.
From her position, she could see more than just hay stored up on that loft. There were boxes and crates, shadowy things she couldn’t make out but which could have been old plows and what looked like a rusty iron wagon wheel. Something white gleamed for a brief second in the sunbeam, then died into the dimness.
A ladder led up to the loft, and another loft bisected, holding hay for the animals. Wendi turned away and went looking for the stable hand. She would have to handle the coming talk with Nick without any guidance from another woman--alive or dead.
Chapter 22
Damn it, he couldn’t believe how nervous he was! Nick halted the horse beside the small pond where he and his brother had spent so many pleasant summer hours swimming. Their grandfather had shown it to them as soon as they were old enough to learn to dog paddle, explaining the pond was there because of their grandmother. She’d refused to allow them to dig out the clay they needed for bricks close to the house, adamant that she wouldn’t allow a pool of water there that might spawn mosquitoes. This area was the nearest they could find with the appropriate type of clay soil, and Grandfather had conceded to his wife, even though it meant more work transporting the bricks for building purposes. It even had the requisite vine--an old, gnarled grape vine--to swing out over the water and fall with a gleeful splash.
He’d thought one day that sons of his own might. . . .
Wendi smiled, so she must like his choice of a picnic spot. There was a slight breeze today, so hopefully the bugs wouldn’t bother them. Nick got down and tied the horse, then held up his hands to Wendi. As much as he longed to let his touch linger on her, he removed his hands from her waist as soon as he set her on the ground.
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