A nervous flutter touched her stomach. Then she set a smile on her face. “You are very kind, Alexander. And you know I’m simply not yet quite ready to marry.”
He nodded, his expression not altering a jot. “Knowing the eventual outcome, I remain patient.” His fingers tightened briefly, then released hers. “Though you do realize that at least announcing our engagement would save me from invitations to dinners like this one. And it would save you from having to dance with the likes of Francis Henning.”
“Suffering builds character,” she returned, then had to push away the unbidden image of Bartholomew James lying pale and unconscious in his bed. By all rights he should have the most character of anyone she’d ever met. “Speaking of which,” she continued aloud, freeing her hand from his arm, “our hostess didn’t invite you here to flirt with me.”
With a mock scowl he sketched a bow and retreated across the room. For the remainder of the evening Theresa wandered from group to group—not so much to avoid monopolizing anyone, but rather because she couldn’t escape the restlessness beneath her own skin, the sensation that she would much rather be elsewhere. Finally she couldn’t stand it any longer. The moment her grandmother finished a game, and before they could begin another round, she hurried forward.
“Grandmama,” she leaned down to whisper, “I’ve a terrible aching head. Would you mind horribly if—”
Grandmama Agnes slid approximately two pounds’ worth of coins off the table and into her palm. “I am being a scoundrel,” she announced, standing, “taking my winnings and leaving.”
“You’re a cruel woman, Agnes,” Lord Wilcox returned with a grin. “Promise me a chance to win back my losses.”
“We shall have to see about that.”
She took Theresa’s arm as they went to find Michael. “You are so coy,” Theresa whispered with a smile.
“In all these years I’d like to think I’ve learned how to entice a man,” her grandmother returned. “Michael? Michael. Escort us home. Your sister doesn’t feel well.”
Dash it all. At her grandmother’s pronouncement everyone began crowding in, asking whether she felt ill and if they might call on her tomorrow. Generally she would have felt guilty for pulling attention away from the party’s hostess; she’d never been much for petty dramatics. Not since she was ten, anyway. Tonight, however, what she most felt was impatience—she was impatient to be home with her own thoughts, and she was impatient for tomorrow when she could go chat with Colonel Bartholomew James again.
“I’ll have Mrs. Reilly send you up some tea,” her grandmother said, giving her a brief hug as they walked into the Weller House foyer.
“I don’t think she needs tea,” Michael put in, stooping to scoop up one of their grandmother’s newest acquisitions, a fluffy white kitten they’d named Cotton. “I think she was trying to separate me from my new beloved, Sarah.”
Theresa grimaced at him. “Please don’t even jest about that. She’s horrid.”
“She is my dear friend’s niece,” the family’s matron put in, plucking an additional cat, brown Mr. Brown, from the hall table. “Though truthfully I don’t think Jenny is terribly pleased with Sarah’s wagging tongue, either.” She eyed the butler. “Why are my cats all over the foyer?”
Ramsey bowed. “Henry went up to feed them, my lady, and he claims they ambushed him in order to escape.”
“They missed me, no doubt.” Grandmama Agnes retrieved another of the purring animals. “Come, my dears,” she cooed, climbing the stairs, “Mama Agnes will find you some cream.”
A trail of cats ascended the stairway behind her. With an amused snort Michael set Cotton down, and the kitten clambered up after them. “How many are there now?”
“At least a dozen.” Theresa sighed. “I’m going up to bed.”
Her brother stepped around her to block the stairs. “What’s got you so melancholy?”
“I’m not melancholy. I’m thoughtful.”
“Also unlike you,” he countered with a teasing grin. “You know I would never seriously consider marriage to Miss Saunders.”
“I know that. I would kidnap you and lock you in the cellar if you attempted it.”
He grinned. “Now you sound like yourself. Proper, but fearsome.” Michael lightly pinched her nose as he moved out of her way. “Good night, Troll.”
“Perhaps you should marry Sarah,” she decided, shaking her head at him. “You would certainly appreciate my kindness and graciousness more in comparison.”
“Mmm-hmm. By the way, I’m going riding with Gardner in the morning, if you want me to escort you over to see Leelee.”
Her breath caught, abrupt excitement coursing through her. “At what time should I be ready?”
“Nine o’clock. Frightfully early for you, I know, so I’ll understand if you—”
“I’ll be ready.” She’d thought to have to conjure an excuse to visit James House and the colonel therein, and now one had been handed to her. Little as she cared to trust in providence, this did seem rather lucky. Not for her fondness for proper behavior, but definitely for her tumbling mind.
“The physician said you were to remain in bed, Colonel.” Lackaby paused halfway through opening the bedchamber’s curtains and turned, frowning, to face the bed.
“I take anything a damned sawbones tells me with a grain of salt,” Tolly replied, shoving aside the sheets and pulling himself backward, toward the headboard. “And I’m still in bed. I’m merely sitting up in it.”
The valet squinted one eye, then returned to opening the room. “That was Arthur’s way, too. ‘No one on this damned continent outranks me, Lackaby,’ he’d say, and ‘I bloody well don’t follow anyone’s orders but my own.’”
Bartholomew lifted an eyebrow. “You called the future Duke of Wellington, Arthur?”
“Not to his face. But I suppose I can tell the story however I wish to.”
“I suppose you can.”
With a nod, Lackaby went to the dressing table and gathered all the neatly arranged shaving items there. “Since your lady isn’t here, I reckon I can hold the mirror if your hands are steady enough to do the shaving.”
“Yes,” Tolly agreed, somewhat relieved that he wouldn’t have to have that argument again today. Then he frowned. “But she’s not my lady.”
“No? It looked…well, never mind that, then. Whose lady is she?”
Bartholomew was fairly certain that servants weren’t supposed to pry—at least it had been that way the last time he’d been in England. Even so, he didn’t precisely give a damn. “She’s her own lady, I’m fairly certain. And my brother is wed to her cousin.”
“Ah. So she’s family.”
Oh, she was definitely not family. At least he had never for an instant thought of her as a relation. In fact, persons who thought about their family members the way he continually thought about her could be arrested for it. “Yes, family,” he said aloud, deciding he didn’t care to explain how or why the broken, battered weed was lusting after the Season’s fairest flower.
He flexed his toes again, as he had been doing every ten minutes or so during every waking hour. The motion still hurt, but less sharply now. Either that or he was simply becoming accustomed to the new pain, as he had to the old.
Lackaby leaned in to eye his knee. “I think the swelling’s gone down a bit,” the valet observed, handing over the brush and soap. “Your brother the viscount means to purchase you a wheeled chair.”
Anger stabbed through him. “Does he now? Why doesn’t he purchase me a damned headstone and be done with it?”
“A headstone’s less maneuverable at soirees,” the valet returned, holding out the cup of soapy water and the brush.
“You have a very clever tongue, Lackaby,” Tolly snapped. “Keep it between your teeth.”
With a slight bow, Lackaby angled the mirror so that Tolly could begin shaving. “Yes, Colonel.”
The process took longer than usual, but then his arm kept becoming fatigue
d and succumbing to the shakes. By the time Lackaby collected the razor and handed over a towel, Bartholomew was ready to lie down for a rest again. Clenching his jaw, he kept his seat.
“Dr. Prentiss says you are to have only tea, a beef broth, and toasted bread,” the servant commented as he replaced items on the dressing table. “What shall I fetch you for breakfast, then?”
“Tea, toasted bread, and a poached egg or two.” He didn’t have much of an appetite this morning, but he had no intention of remaining in bed for a second longer than he had to.
“Very good.” The valet didn’t bat an eye. “I’ll be back in a moment.”
Once Lackaby vanished, Bartholomew swung his good leg over the edge of the bed and reached over for the cane someone had left behind a chair. “Damnation,” he muttered, glaring at the polished stick of stout, scorched ash. His third leg, decidedly out of his reach.
“You even curse when no one else can hear you?” the cheerful female voice came from the doorway. “That’s very dedicated of you.”
He lowered his hand. Warmth eased through him, from his shoulders down to his toes. It felt as if the room had suddenly become bathed in sunlight. “I’ve already shaved,” he said, as Theresa Weller swirled into the room, all sparkling eyes and yellow muslin gown. “Apologies, but I didn’t know how far afield your services to the wretched might take you.”
“Hmm.” With a coy smile she walked up to the side of the bed and leaned in to run her forefinger along his cheek. “Very smooth,” she said, her voice oddly pitched.
That was bloody well enough of that. Bartholomew grabbed her hand. “I think I warned you about teasing me,” he murmured.
“Don’t kiss me; it’s not seemly,” she returned, placing her free hand on his shoulder and leaning in to brush her lips against his.
And he’d thought to be the aggressor. Bartholomew drew her forward to sit across his thighs, lifting his hands to cup her pretty face. Whatever the devil was wrong with her, she seemed to like him—and he hoped with an odd fierceness that nothing would happen to alter her opinion.
She moaned softly, the sound spearing through him. Abruptly the ten months he’d been celibate felt like years, and he shifted. For a great while he’d never expected to want anyone ever again, but Theresa Weller decimated that thought with no more than a sigh and a kiss.
A male throat cleared from the doorway. With a stifled yelp, Theresa leaped off his lap. Pain tore through his knee as he tried to catch his balance. “Damnation,” he rasped.
“Oh! Oh, I’m sorry!” Tess, her cheeks flushed, clutched her fingers into his shoulder as though she thought he would fall out of the bed. “I forgot.”
His attention immediately arrested, Tolly looked up at her. “So did I.”
Her smile drove away every shadow in the room. “Then I take it back. I’m not sorry.”
“Should I go out and come in again?” Lackaby asked. A large tray of food in his arms, the grinning servant looked from Tolly to Tess.
“No. And stop bloody grinning, you cheeky bastard,” Bartholomew ordered.
“One thing’s been clarified,” the valet said, coming forward to fold down the tray’s short legs and set it across Bartholomew’s vacated lap. “You ain’t family.”
“I’ll see to feeding him, Lackaby,” Tess commented. “Will you fetch me some tea?”
His satisfaction with the kiss fading, Tolly frowned. “I’m not helpless. Not today, at any rate.”
“Then pretend you’re making me feel helpful.” She gave him an assessing look, then reach out to tug on a lock of his dark hair. God, he hadn’t been so intimate with anyone in months.
Bartholomew glanced at Lackaby. “You heard her. Get some bloody tea for the chit.”
Lackaby saluted and vanished out the door. “You know,” she said immediately, brushing a finger along the edge of the mattress, “if you weren’t bedridden I wouldn’t be able to sit here with you.”
He swallowed. “Seems a shame, then, to waste the moment.” Reaching out one damnably unsteady hand, he gripped her wandering fingers. “You are rather compelling, Theresa,” he murmured, “even to a man half dead.”
Her cheeks darkened. “Thank you.” Clearing her throat, she eyed Bartholomew’s overflowing breakfast tray. “That looks…ambitious,” she commented.
It was. “I requested eggs and toast, which was more than Dr. Prentiss recommended. I can only assume that Lackaby is attempting to kill me.” He gestured at the chair still resting beside the bed. “I don’t suppose you’d care for any of this.”
Tess grinned again, the expression lighting her gray-green eyes. “I thought you’d never ask.”
So she wouldn’t take the hint and kiss him again, but she would share his plate. That was something, anyway—though he wasn’t quite certain what it all meant. At the moment he was more than willing to take the time to figure it out.
As Lackaby returned with a tea tray, Amelia and Violet appeared in the doorway. He knew they weren’t there because of the kiss, since neither of his female relations looked ready to shoot anyone. At least Lackaby knew when to hold his tongue, then. Perhaps he and the valet would make do, after all.
“Tess!” Amelia exclaimed. “Lackaby said you were here.”
“Oh, yes,” she said, around a mouthful of sweetbread. “I came with Michael. I didn’t think you’d risen yet.”
“Of course,” Amelia said, in a highly skeptical voice. “Might I have a word with you, cousin?”
Theresa nodded. “Certainly.” As she stood, she placed a hand on the headboard and leaned closer to Tolly. “I have some news for you, as well,” she whispered, her voice pitched so that only he would be able to hear it. “And you won’t like it.”
As long as the news wasn’t that she’d decided to stop calling on him, he didn’t much care what it might be.
Chapter Ten
“As young ladies we are taught embroidery and the pianoforte, decorum, and hopefully French. I have never encountered a circumstance where one of those things hasn’t served to save an evening or a conversation or a reputation.”
A LADY’S GUIDE TO PROPER BEHAVIOR
Theresa followed Amelia into the upstairs hallway of James House. “What is it?” she asked.
“What are you doing?” Her cousin glanced toward Tolly’s open bedchamber door and retreated a few additional steps. “Aside from sharing breakfast with my brother-in-law.”
“I’m not doing anything.” Theresa shrugged. “I think Tolly is interesting, and quite witty when he’s not spitting profanity at everyone. And he’s stuck in bed. Shouldn’t he have some friends to keep him company?”
“Yes, he should. But you aren’t one of them.”
Theresa frowned. “I have to disagree. In fact, I’ve likely exchanged more conversation with him than you have, and you sleep across the hallway from him.”
“He doesn’t want to talk to me,” Amelia returned, her jaw tight. “And frankly, I find him a bit frightening.”
“Well, that’s the difference, then. I don’t find him frightening.”
“You should.”
Resisting the urge to stomp her foot and fold her arms across her chest, Theresa gazed at her cousin and dearest friend. “Are you asking me to leave him be? Because if you are, I hope you have a better reason than the fact that a man who’s fought and been wounded for his country gives you the shivers.”
“It’s not that. For heaven’s sake.” Amelia took a breath. “People talk, Tess. You know that. And with even a hint of…peculiarity about the incident, people stay away from him. You, however, are balancing how many suitors now?”
“Oh, I don’t know. Several.”
“You’re quite popular, and you’re generally so careful of your reputation. But you’re not married yet. If you stand too long with Tolly, all of your beaux will go elsewhere. What will you do then?”
A slight shiver of uneasiness ran through her, and she shoved it away again. She’d worked so hard for so long
at behaving. She’d never been tempted before to kiss rogues. Why did Tolly have that power over her? “You’re being ridiculous,” she said aloud. “I enjoy jesting with your brother-in-law. No one will hold that against me. In fact, you should be thanking me. Heaven knows he could stand to recall some manners.”
“Something which most everyone has noted.”
She didn’t mention the kissing, or the fact that while she did feel like they were becoming friends, it wasn’t friendship that had her waking up with her first thought being that she would see Tolly James that day. “I think I know what’s acceptable and what isn’t,” she said aloud. “In fact, sitting with a wounded soldier is much more admirable than ignoring him. This is practically a duty.”
Amelia looked at her skeptically. “Who are you attempting to convince?”
“I’m already convinced. And perhaps I’m just a bit…tired of frivolity. Tolly’s not overly concerned with the state of his cravat, for example.” That was a large part of his attraction, in fact, now that she considered it. Lionel or Francis might see picking the Derby winner as the most telling moment of a lifetime, but Tolly’s world was much larger than that. His experience colored their every conversation. And their every kiss.
“So you’ve operated on him, shaved him, and now you intend to feed him?” Amelia was saying, her expression still unconvinced.
“Yes.”
“He has a valet.”
“He doesn’t trust anyone else to hold a sharp implement close to his throat.”
“But he trusts you?”
Blood rushed just beneath her skin. “I suppose he does.”
“Why?”
Theresa shrugged. “All I’ve done is speak plainly to him. Perhaps he appreciates honesty.”
“I don’t think that’s all he appreciates.”
“What do you mean by that?”
Her cousin took a deep breath. “Men adore you, Tess. Why shouldn’t he be one of them? I know he’s handsome, but as I recall you’ve been keeping a journal on proper behavior for the past thirteen years. This doesn’t seem to fit into any chapter you’ve published.”
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