Would his aroused state frighten her, or had her parsnip done the trick? Ash grinned despite his apprehension. Perhaps he would wear his inexpressibles at first, until she was ready for more of him, keep himself under a measure of containment.
For more than an hour, Ash paced, regarding the brandy container several yearning times, but he continued to deny himself. Gad, but with Lark’s help, he was getting good at this self-denial business, both with his drink and his sexual gratification.
Finally he shook his head, checked his watch, and made his way up the stairs, though for some reason he felt as if he were on his way to his own hanging. Perhaps because he knew she was frightened. God knew, he would take her pain to himself, if he could.
What the devil ailed him? He was not going to hurt her—well, not beyond the first barrier—if there were a barrier. “Damn it!” Should he explain that to her as well? Yes, he thought, and in great blathering detail. The notion of it made him sweat. He stopped in the stairs to take out his handkerchief and mop his brow. Then, rather than enter her bedchamber direct, he went to his own first, to give her a minute more.
Then he went through the dressing room, because he hated dithering, stopped short when he saw the results of her bath—a good sign. Then he saw a smear of blood on a damp towel and worry began to ride him. He stopped short of throwing open her door, but entered as if he belonged there, which he damned well did. Had she cut herself, done herself a harm … to escape the marriage act?
No, his bride had more strength of character than that. But her bedchamber sat empty. Her bed had been turned down, and a dresser drawer stood open, boys’ clothes spilling out. Atop her dresser, an empty inkwell had been employed, as if in the guise of a candleholder, to hold an erect … parsnip.
Blast and damnation! She’d bolted.
Ash found Grimsley reading beside the front door, where he’d stationed the man every night since he brought his bolting bride home.
“Sorry sir, but she did not pass this way. Brinks is bunking at the kitchen door, I suggest you check there.”
Lark hadn’t left, both men assured him. They’d been keeping guard since before she said goodnight in the drawing room earlier.
Ash began a methodical sweeping search of the house, until he remembered her questions about the towers. Rather than the tower rooms in use, he went, with a sinking heart, toward the ones he told her they used primarily for storage.
He found her there, in the west tower, as he suspected, on the family bedchamber floor, in the room he least wished her to find.
Wearing her trousers once again, his bride stood with tears in her eyes, staring down into the face of his mother, who stared blankly back, looking like a skeleton, swallowed by the huge bed in which she lay.
Nan stood to the side, horrified.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
“Who is she?” Lark asked when she saw Ash enter the beautiful round bedchamber. “She does not speak and Nan will tell me nothing.”
Nan curtseyed as if in apology.
“Go and have a cup of tea, Nan,” Ash said. “Then you may return directly.”
Ash placed his arm around Larkin’s trembling shoulders and together they stepped closer to the bed. “She is my mother, or what is left of her.”
“Why did you not tell me or bring me to meet her? Because you are ashamed of me?” She looked straight at him and lowered her voice. “Or because you are ashamed of her?”
Ash winced but did not deign to lower his voice. “Because I am ashamed of me, and because you said you were not ready to meet her, if you will remember, and were to tell me when you were. Besides, I did not wish you to be frightened here at Blackburne. She is like a ghost, you see, almost alive, not quite dead.”
“What happened to her?” Lark asked. “And why should you feel shame?”
“She suffered an apoplectic seizure when I went to war and never recovered. This is the result. Before his death, my father accused me of running off to war to escape my responsibilities, and in the running, of killing my mother. I am beginning to believe he was right.”
“She may yet recover.”
“It has been five years, Lark. Nevertheless, in that unlikely event, I am trying to keep from losing the Estate. She loves this place, you see. It is her home. I would not want to move her from it, in any state. I think she would know somehow, and mourn the loss, and die after all.”
“You should have told me.”
“What good?”
“I may be wrong, but was there not something in our marriage vows about good times and bad, sickness and health?”
“As I remember, you spoke also the words, obey, serve, and honor him. Should we now take our vows to heart, and begin again, for neither of us stands blameless in this unruly marriage of ours.”
Lark nodded, conceding his point. “I would like to begin again.”
That surprised him, but with no time to examine his feelings, he evaded the issue. “If it is any consolation, I did plan to bring you here at some point soon. That is the best I can offer in my own defense, though perhaps I did not feel hurried to reveal my greatest sin to you.”
“I see no sin, only sorrow.”
Ash looked away as Nan returned. He thanked her and made to leave.
“Will you not take your mother’s hand?” Lark said. “Speak to her or kiss her cheek? She will be hurt for the slight.”
Ash started as if struck. “Nonsense. She is aware of nothing.”
“And suppose you are wrong? You seem to like being touched. Why would she not?”
“Larkin, stop it,” Ash said, taking his wife’s arm and shutting his mother’s door behind them. He disliked her scold as much as he had disliked her underserved absolution.
Forgiveness he found to be as difficult in receiving as in giving. As for the reprimand of neglect, especially as pertained to his mother, he detested it, no matter the giver.
“What may I ask were you doing wandering the house at half past bloody midnight, and wearing your boys clothes besides?”
Lark stopped, pulling him up short. “You said this was my house now as well.”
“And so it is.” Ash urged her along.
“If you must know, I want to turn one of the tower rooms into a sitting room. I never had a room of my own.”
To Ash’s surprise, Lark was not walking with her usually manly stride but with short, careful steps, her head bowed, more yielding than he imagined possible. “The circular room above my mother’s current bedchamber was her own sitting room,” he said, watching Lark closely. “She would be pleased for you to return it to its former glory.”
“Thank you,” Lark whispered, all humility. “I am sorry for what she is going through, and for the guilt that must be your companion after your sire’s unjust accusation. I believe I am beginning to dislike your father every bit as much as you and your grandfather do.” She slowed. “Did your grandfather not visit his daughter when he was here? I do not remember that he took the opportunity.”
“He rarely does. I think he becomes upset, even ill, when he sees her like that, though he is too hard-headed to admit it as much.”
“Humph. And what do you think of so shoddy an excuse for neglect?”
Ash respected her anger on his mother’s behalf. “As I told you at the time, my grandfather and I dislike each other, and always have. His neglect does not surprise me.”
“You are a better man than he is, Ash.”
“I appreciate your vote of confidence,” Ash said, “and believe that you are a better woman than I had surmised upon first meeting. One who keeps her word … speaking of which, did we not have a bargain set to begin this night?”
Lark’s pallor negated the possibility of forgetfulness on her part. “No, but we cannot begin tonight after all.”
“Because of what you have just seen? It has given you a disgust of me?” Which he would comprehend, truth to tell.
They stepped into her bedchamber, and he saw that her face shown again li
ke pomegranates.
“I understand,” he said, “but I must remind you that however distressing my mother’s situation, you need to be with child by Christmas, or I may lose what she values most.”
“I would think that she would value you most.”
“Was a time she did,” he said, and then he chose to move from the maudlin past to the living present. “Why are you wearing trousers again?”
“Christmas is a long way off.”
“You are correct,” he said, “but these things take time, Lark, and since we do not know how much time, once you have recovered from the shock of this evening, we must begin as soon as possible.”
“You are right, of course.” She nodded as if she meant it. “But I am not suffering from shock. That is not the problem.”
“So we may begin tonight after all?” Ash reached to unbutton the flap on her trousers before she changed her mind.
She slapped her hand over his. “What are you doing?”
“Getting you out of those trousers.”
“You cannot!”
“We can hardly make a baby with you wearing them. Or have you changed your mind again?”
“Oh please no, not tonight … or tomorrow night. Next Tuesday would do. How about next Tuesday? Perhaps even Monday?”
“Lark, this is not about my mother, is it?” he asked, hoping to God it wasn’t and that she would be willing to take him into herself and obliterate his own memories.
“No, it is not.”
“Then remove your trousers, if you please.”
“I do not please. I cannot!” she wailed as tears filled her eyes.
Now this caught Ash off guard, gave him pause and a worry of no inconsequential magnitude. Larkin McAdams had beat him to a bloody pulp previous to their wedding, and though he had not fought back, precisely, he had kept himself from being injured to the point that she must have become at least half as bruised, and she’d shed not a tear.
Her father had swatted her that night as well, which made him furious to remember, and no tears had come to her eye at those times either. And now she swore that seeing his mother had not given her a disgust of him, so why the tears?
“Lark,” Ash said. “Please tell me what is wrong.”
“I must wear my trousers or something terrible will happen.”
Ash was startled by the melodramatic tone of her statement and tried not to smile.
She turned away. “I cannot tell you, because it is too terrible to say.”
“Show me then.”
“No!” she said with a gasp. “Good God, no!”
“Lark, I am your husband. Whatever is the matter, you must tell me, for husbands and wives should face the terrors of life together. Sickness and health, good and bad, remember?”
“You will know that you made a very bad bargain, if I tell you, and it will give you a disgust of me as well, then you will not want to make a baby with me. Better you should not know.”
Ash was intrigued no small bit and looked her over very closely for some clue as to her passionate concern. “Her honeyed hair, he saw still hung damp from her bath, the only sign she’d taken one, except for the towel with … a smear of blood.
Was it possible she did not understand the natural way of things?
With a father like hers? Entirely possible.
Ash sat Lark on the edge of her bed and knelt before her. “Do you have your monthlies, Larkin?”
She seemed relieved he’d changed the subject. “What are they?”
“They,” he said, talking to himself, wondering how to go on. “You do know that every woman of an age to bear children goes through a monthly bloody flux.”
Pomegranate cheeks, she wore once more, to match her dawning recognition.
“You do not remember your mother bleeding every month?” he asked.
“She died when I was born,” Lark wailed, her embarrassment flying at full mast.
“Your sister?”
“I thought that was because of what he did to her.”
“The bleeding is normal Lark, every month. It’s happening to you now, is it not? You never realized that it happens around the same time every month?”
“I do not read dates, so how would I?”
“What did you think the blood signified then?”
“I suppose I thought that someday I would … bleed to death. Sometimes I wondered when, or if I would have time to help Micah before it was too late.”
“So you basically thought you were dying for years?”
Lark raised her chin, pride in every line of her high cheekbones. “After a while, when I didn’t die, I … put up with it and worried less.”
Ash knew he’d been right; his Lark shed no tears for the possibility of dying, or even the reprieve thereof. Only extreme embarrassment brought tears to the eyes of Larkin Rose. That, and the suffering of another—her sister, her nephew, his mother.
“It occurs to me, Lark,” Ash said, “that your sister’s bleeding might have been natural at the time you found her. She might not have been forced but simply gave herself in the midst of her flux.”
Lark looked horrified.
Ash stroked the hair from her brow. “Do not fret; I will not importune you at this time. Not for your first experience, though I would hope, there might come a time when you would offer yourself, whatever your state.”
His bride looked as if she doubted his sanity, while he faced the happy realization that her virginity, or lack thereof, mattered not, for now he had physical proof that she carried no child of another, though her innocence had long since implied as much.
“Whatever you think,” he went on, “a man and woman may come together then and ‘twill be messy. Just know that you might have misunderstood the blood, and your sister might not have been hurt after all. Did she complain of pain? Did she weep afterward, for instance?”
“She wept always when he was done with her. She loved him you see, but he would not have her for wife, not even when she got herself with child and begged him to take her.”
“But no bruises afterward, no mention of pain?”
“No,” Lark said, her brows furrowed in thought.
“Your fears, I believe, have been magnified,” Ash said, “by an unfounded assumption made by a young girl who did not know better.”
“And your conclusions,” his bride snapped, “have been drawn by a man looking for a means to his own end.”
Ash grinned despite himself in appreciation of her strange blend of cleverness and naiveté. “We shall see then, for only time can prove me correct.” He reached for her trousers once more, but once more she stopped him.
“Larkin, I have undressed you previous to this, so why not let me take your trousers off you now? Or I will leave, if you would be more comfortable, so you may don your night-rail and climb into bed to await me.”
“The trousers hold everything up … It’s ugly, Ash.”
“It’s not, it’s natural.”
“The folded cloth gets ugly. How do women in fancy dresses hold them up without trousers, anyway?”
“I … have no idea, but I’ll go fetch cook, shall I, and get her to show you?” He rose.
Lark caught his hand. “No, please. Let me just wear my trousers for a few days and then I will wear dresses.”
“You would wear trousers to sleep as well?”
She nodded, and he raised a finger to her lips as she made to respond.
“I intend to continue sleeping with you,” he warned, “in whatever state you find yourself, but I would like to see you sleep comfortably.”
Lark threw herself back on the bed with a sigh, her legs hanging off the edge. “I cannot believe I am having this conversation with a man.”
“With your husband,” Ash corrected as he made to leave the bedchamber, “and do not forget it. Do not move from that spot. I will return shortly.”
Ashford Blackburne. Her husband. Teaching her about the bloody ailment that had been scaring the bejesus out
of her for half her life. The bleeding between her legs, where he would put himself, if he were to be believed, and she believed everything he had to say, for as he himself had affirmed, he was an honest rogue, and he respected honesty a great deal in others.
Lark sighed for her own shortcomings, for the blasted dishonesty he would never forgive, which set her in his path, in his life, his bed, at his mercy, even into this most embarrassing situation. She supposed she deserved whatever he doled out, blast him.
Lark sighed, rolled to her side, raised her legs against her belly, and closed her eyes while she waited for her honest, gentle, tyrannical husband to return, with whatever new torture he could concoct for her.
By the time he woke her, Lark thought she’d been sleeping for some time, and could barely rouse herself. Besides, she was too embarrassed to open her eyes, as he slipped her trousers off her legs. Then she refused to open them as he slid the bloody rag from between her legs, washed her with a warm cloth, and replaced the soiled rag with something soft and tender. Then he slipped something akin to trousers, but not, up her legs and fastened a binding of a sort around her waist to keep the padded rag against her.
She should not become attached to him, Lark thought, as he went so far as to slip one of her new attic nightshifts over her head and place her beneath the covers. She would be foolish to become fond of him, which was why she set the condition that he stop coming to her bed when she found herself with child.
In the moment she made the stipulation, she had been afraid that she was already in danger of liking him too much. That was another reason why she had told him they could part, if he wished, after he received his inheritance, because she owed him that much at least, for cheating him into marriage.
And though she owed him a babe, she already wanted his child as much as he did, perhaps more. She must remember that however much he wanted a child and a wife before Christmas, she could be left in the literal cold after Christmas, if she were not cautious.
Yes, they had talked about a babe as if they would raise it together, but you never knew what the rich might do. Simply regard his grandfather’s machinations. No, she would be wise to be strong-willed where her bridegroom was concerned and not become overly sentimental or dependent.
Untamable Rogue (Formerly: A Christmas Baby) Page 10