“Look. At. Me,” Harry grated, and her eyes locked with his, and in that moment, joined in mind and body, they arched in a long, shuddering climax. He heard a faint high cry join with his hoarse shout of triumph, then everything splintered around them.
After some time, Harry became aware that she was lying on his naked chest, weeping silently.
Something in his chest clenched. There was nothing a man could do when a woman wept, except to hold her. He’d learned that from Barrow, when he was a young boy and was shocked to see Mrs. Barrow, the strongest woman he’d even known, weeping in Barrow’s arms.
“Men chop wood, or punch things,” Barrow had told him afterward. “Women weep. There’s naught to do, lad, except to hold them and love them until it passes.”
So Harry held Nell, soothing her with his hands, stroking her hair, holding her against him, loving her silently.
Loving her?
Oh God. He hadn’t expected that. He pushed the thought away. He wasn’t ready to think about anything like that.
He eased her down beside him, murmuring meaningless comforting phrases. “There, there . . . it’s all right . . .” Not having the least idea of what they meant.
Damp tendrils of hair clung to her cheeks and forehead, and as he smoothed them away, without quite thinking about it, he planted small kisses where each tendril had lain: her cheekbones, her temples, kissing her eyelids and tasting salt.
She looked up at him with tear-drenched eyes and he kissed the corners of her eyes, then down along her jawline to the sensitive spot beneath her ear. She curled against his mouth like a cat. Desire flared again as he tasted, kissed, comforted. And aroused.
This time, he resolved, it would be all about pleasuring her. Not copulation. Making love.
That word again. Love.
He closed his eyes and returned to kissing her.
“No,” she said suddenly and pushed him away.
He froze. What had he done?
“Didn’t you hear the clock chime just now?” She sat up. “It’s quarter to eight. Rafe and Luke will be here any minute.
We need to get dressed and get ready to leave.” She slipped out of his arms and out of bed.
Harry sighed and pulled a sheet around him.
Another fruitless day of searching. It had grown very cold, and Nell was huddled into a fur rug. Because of the rain this morning, Harry had hired a chaise, which had come with a driver. The closed chaise provided more privacy as well as protection from the elements. Nell sat beside Harry on the seat with her feet tucked up, leaning against him, tucked into the curve of his arm with her cheek snuggled against his shoulder.
However awkward and fraught with tension this morning’s lovemaking had been, the result had been a new physical easiness with each other. Harry was glad of it.
Nell had been silent for most of the last hour.
They couldn’t see much; the drizzle fogged up the windows, but the smoother ride told him they were back on main roads again and nearing London. The carriage lamps had been lit a short while before. Their blurry golden glow swung rhythmically in time with the horses’ hooves.
“Papa brought him to Firmin Court,” she said, as if continuing a conversation. “He’d been playing cards with him at some house party and he invited him home. For me, I suppose. Papa wanted me to get married, and Firmin Court was a tempting dowry.”
She was tempting enough as she was, Harry thought, but he didn’t interrupt. He’d known at once who she was talking about. He didn’t know what had prompted her to talk about it now—perhaps the intimacy of the closed carriage with the rain falling outside, the swish of the wheels, and the clip-clop of the horses’ hooves.
“I disliked him on sight,” she said. “You know how sometimes you meet someone for whom you have an instant, unreasonable antipathy?”
“Yes.”
“It wasn’t that I knew the kind of man he was,” she qualified. “I just disliked him. He was good-looking, I suppose, but his eyes were too close-set and he had a mean mouth. He smiled too hard at me and gave me all sorts of compliments but he never actually looked at me. All the time he was looking around the house, summing up its value.” She paused. “I could see he was disappointed. Papa always did put things in the best possible light. I was a beauty and the estate rich and full of priceless treasures.”
“You are a beauty,” Harry said. “And the estate will become rich, just you wait and see.”
She smiled. “Sir—he couldn’t see it.”
Damn, she’d almost let the name slip. Harry was determined to learn it.
She was silent for a while, then said, “He was the sort of man who chased the housemaids. Even when they’re not willing.” Her fingers tightened around his arm. “Especially when they’re not willing. Our housemaids were good girls. Both were betrothed to men on the estate. He didn’t care.”
“What happened?” Harry prompted.
“I caught him trying to rape one of them. I hit him over the head with a wet mop. He was furious. The mop was a bit smelly, but I didn’t care. I was furious, too. I berated him in front of her and all the other servants. I ripped into him, calling him all manner of unflattering epithets.” She grimaced.
“I made an enemy of him at that moment. It was too late for him to leave that night, but I told him he was to leave in the morning.”
She took a shaky breath and continued, “I didn’t trust him. I posted two footmen at the foot of the stairs to the maids’ quarters.” She shuddered. “It never occurred to me that he would come after me—a gentleman’s daughter in her own home.”
Harry hugged her tight, saying nothing.
“B-but he did,” she finished shakily. “And I brought it on myself.”
“Nonsense,” he growled fiercely. “It was not your fault in the least. You protected those girls and it was the right thing to do. Your father should have thrown him out then and there.”
She sighed. “Papa had lost the game, he was drunk, insensible. Besides, he never would have suspected a gentleman would . . . do that.”
The way she always defended her father irritated him. The man was useless. He’d let her down in every possible way, and yet she loved him still. “He should have done it to protect his servants. It was his responsibility as their employer.”
“Y-yes, but it was I who humiliated him—”
“By stopping his nasty habits?”
“By insulting him in front of the servants.”
He snorted. “You heaped insults on my head at the top of your voice in front of the whole of Bath and it didn’t bother me in the least.”
She frowned at him and said slowly, “Yes, but you’re different.”
“Exactly. I’m not a filthy rapist who preys on women. I’m a man.”
She stared at him for a moment, her lips trembling. “Yes, you are a man—a wonderful man.” And she flung her arms around him and hugged him convulsively.
He gathered her against him. “It was not your fault, not in the least.”
“No, no, it wasn’t,” she mumbled into his neck. Slowly he felt the tension drain out of her.
After a long silence she sighed and rubbed her cheek against the fabric of his coat. “I feel so much better now that we’ve talked about it,” she told him. “There’s just one more thing I need to tell you, and then it’s done and I will never have to speak of it again.”
Harry tensed. His name. He wanted the bastard’s name. He’d sworn to avenge her.
“It was over very quickly,” she told him. “I was asleep and it was half done before I knew it.” She shivered. “So that’s it. Now you know everything.”
“Not quite everything.”
“I won’t tell you his name,” she said firmly. “He knows nothing about Torie and I want it to stay that way. A father has rights over a child, you know. He could take her from me and the law would allow it.”
“Nonsense. You’ll be married to me,” Harry told her. “And I would never allow such
a thing to happen.”
She shook her head. “No, I won’t risk it.” And that was her final word.
Harry brooded over the story that night, as he waited for her to undress. She was still too shy to let him help her disrobe and he wasn’t going to push it. He would sleep with her tonight and not wait for her to start sleepwalking.
He fetched a sheet of paper, a pen, and ink and sat down to write to Ethan. Someone at Firmin Court would know who that bastard was. That old woman, Aggie—she’d know. A few discreet questions would be all it took.
Ethan knew how to be discreet. He didn’t need to know any details, just find out who the visitor was who’d gone sniffing around the housemaids and been told off by Lady Nell.
When he’d finished the letter, sealed it, and sent it off to be posted, he knocked on Nell’s door.
“Come in.” She was sitting bolt upright in bed, that blasted nightgown buttoned to her chin.
“There’s not much point in starting the night separate,” he told her. “We both know where we’ll end up, so with your permission . . .” He waited for her assent.
She thought for a moment, then nodded and blushing rosily, flipped the covers back in a wordless invitation.
Harry stripped quickly and slid into bed beside her. “Now kiss me,” he murmured. She needed no further encouragement.
Fourteen
It was the most important letter Ethan had ever written, or was likely to write again. His whole future happiness hung on it. It was also the most difficult. This was one letter he wasn’t going to let the vicar read and correct.
Tibby was in England. Just a few miles away. The message had come the previous day. She’d come with Gabe and the princess and the two little boys. They were all staying at Alverleigh, the home of Harry’s despised half brother, the earl.
Harry wouldn’t like that, Ethan knew. But Ethan didn’t care. Tibby wasn’t over the sea in Zindaria; she was less than a day’s ride away.
My dear Miss Tibby . . .
No. He scratched it out.
My darlin Miss Tibby . . . No. He scratched out Miss.
My darlin Tibby . . . Would she think it was presumptuous? She was very proper, his Tibby. He groaned. She wasn’t his Tibby, that was the problem.
He put down the pen and wiped his palms for the fortieth time. He was sweating. In December.
He’d made a draft and corrected it as best he could without help. This was the final copy. He kept wasting paper trying to decide how to start. “Bite the bullet and get on with it, Delaney,” he told himself.
He picked up the pen and started again:
My dear Miss Tibby,
I have taken your words in your last letter to hart and I take leave to tell you that I will call on you at Alverly next Wednesday in the afternoon. I hope it is convenient.
Yours truely, Ethan Delaney
There. It was done. He blotted it carefully, then folded it and sealed it with a blob of red sealing wax. Red for danger. Red for blood. Red for love. In an old habit he’d thought long forgotten he crossed himself, kissed the letter, and whispered, “Godspeed.”
Then he pocketed the letter and headed outside. If he didn’t post it now, he’d get cold feet again.
t was the seventh day of their search. The weak winter I sun was sinking in the west and Nell and Harry were heading back to London. Nell sat hunched in the corner of the curricle, staring out at the passing scenery, silent and withdrawn.
They’d crossed off the last address on their list.
Between the four of them, they’d visited every parish workhouse, the foundling hospital, the asylum for female orphans in Westminster, every charitable institution who cared for orphans and unwanted children, and every wet nurse connected with every charity in and around London.
There was no sign of Torie at any of them.
In one last desperate effort, they’d decided to reenact Nell’s father’s journey from the house where she’d given birth to Torie, through the village where he’d died, and thence to London.
They’d spent some time in the village where he’d died questioning people. They established that no, he hadn’t had any basket or any child with him when he’d collapsed. And no, nobody in the area had suddenly acquired a baby.
Yes, it was certain he’d been seen coming toward the village from the direction of London.
Nell had laid flowers on Papa’s grave and they’d continued on their way, stopping at each hamlet and village and inquiring. It was hopeless, Harry thought. It was seven weeks ago now.
He just hoped the asking would help Nell to accept the loss of her daughter. His fear was that she never would.
They slowed to pass through a flock of geese being herded through a tiny hamlet that consisted of a lone church, surrounded by farms and scattered cottages.
As they passed the church, Nell sat up suddenly. “Stop!” she shouted. “Stop here. Stop!”
Harry pulled up the horses, but she’d already scrambled down from the curricle and was racing back toward the church.
“Here, hold the horses,” he said to a goose herder and tossed him the reins. “There’s a shilling in it for you.” And he hurried after Nell.
She stood in the entry porch of the church, staring at a basket of vegetables sitting there.
“What is it?” Harry asked her.
She turned a glowing face to him. “It’s a basket.”
He frowned and shook his head, mystified.
“People leave things on church doorways in baskets,” she said excitedly. “Babies. They leave babies. How many times have you heard of babies being left on the steps of a church?”
Practically never, Harry thought. It was fairly common in Spain, he knew, but they were convents, and nuns took children in. English vicars seemed less likely to do so in his opinion.
“We never thought to check the actual churches.”
Harry’s heart sank. Another recipe for slow heartbreak, he thought. It had been agonizing enough to watch her slowly killing herself with worry and to know there was nothing he could do to stop it.
“And this is St. Stephen’s,” she said feverishly.
He gave her a blank look.
“Papa’s middle name was Stephen. It might be an omen. He believed in omens. We have to ask,” she said and headed around the side toward the vicarage at the rear.
Harry followed. She was clutching at straws.
It was a small house, with a neat, well-kept garden, bare now in the cold season. The brass bellpull gleamed with elbow wax and polish. Nell pulled on it, dancing impatiently from toe to toe as the musical jangle echoed within.
A middle-aged woman with iron gray hair answered. “Yes?”
“Did anyone leave a baby here?” Nell blurted without preamble. “Seven weeks ago, a baby in a basket?”
The woman frowned. “Was it seven weeks? I thought it wasn’t near as long ago as that.”
Nell paled and staggered. She clutched the woman’s arms in a convulsive grip. “You mean there was a baby?”
The woman nodded, clearly rather taken aback by Nell’s wild-eyed intensity. “A little girl, poor wee thing.”
“Where is she now?” Nell demanded, panting.
The woman pointed and, almost without looking, Harry knew where.
“Where? Which house?” Nell stood on tiptoe, peering eagerly at the houses in the distance.
Harry took her arm. “In the churchyard, Nell,” he said quietly.
She frowned, puzzled, not understanding. “The churchyard. Who lives in the churchyard?” And then she knew. “Noooo,” she wailed, turning back to the woman. “It can’t be. She’s alive, tell me she’s alive.”
The woman’s eyes filled with sympathetic tears. “I’m sorry lass. Nobody knew she was there, see? The vicar had gone off to London for the night and I was at my sister’s, so there was nobody to hear the poor little creature crying.”
Nell gave a choked sob.
The woman went on, “It was a bit
ter night and the frost killed the last of my flowers. The babe, too. She was dead when we found her in the morning. So pretty she looked, like a little frozen angel in her satin-lined basket.”
“S-satin-lined ...” Nell fainted. Harry caught her before she fell. Refusing all offers of help from the woman, he carried Nell back to the curricle. She wasn’t ill, just brokenhearted.
She sobbed most of the way home, not normal weeping, but terrible wracking sobs that seemed torn from her body.
Harry held her hard against his heart. Each convulsive sob that juddered through her was like a cut to his body. If only he could have made it end differently. He held her and rocked her gently, hating being so damned helpless. He was furious. He needed to punch someone.
He’d come back. He’d do something about the grave, but for now, all he wanted to do was kill. He’d never known such anger.
Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord, but Harry burned to avenge the wrong done to her. He had nobody to punch. Yet. And when he did find the swine, it would be a damned sight more than a punch.
In the meantime, he had a precious, distraught woman to care for.
He took her home, gently undressed her down to her chemise, put her to bed. “I want to stay with you,” he told her and waited. He wouldn’t force himself on her.
“Stay,” she said in a thready whisper.
Thank God. He didn’t know how he would have left her if she had wanted to be alone. He quickly stripped and climbed into bed with her. She was shivering. She reached for him immediately and pressed herself against him as if she couldn’t get close enough. “Don’t leave me,” she whispered.
Something cracked deep within him. “Never,” he croaked. In her grief she had turned to him. She needed him. He was no damned use to her, but she still wanted him.
For a long time they lay together silently. Eventually she stopped shivering. He thought she’d fallen asleep when suddenly she said, “I keep thinking of her, crying, and nobody to hear. Such a horrible, painful way to d—”
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