by J. D. Robb
“I was not the only one who made a wish.”
“Where is the coin?” Harry asked, apparently intending to ignore that fact.
“The one you threw at me after you made your wish?” Bettina insisted, but did not wait for an answer. “How should I know? Didn’t we look everywhere last night? Today, when you are up and dressed, you must order the staff to search again. Roll up the rugs, move the furniture. It must be in this room somewhere.”
Bettina stood up and pushed the window curtains open. Sun poured into the room, and she turned quickly, hoping to see the morning light glint off the coin. She circled the room, even looked under the bed. Nothing.
“It cannot have rolled out the door. The door was closed,” Harry said, pushing the covers back but not rising from the bed. “Where did it come from? Maybe there is another one like it.”
“Harry, do you truly think there are two coins that grant wishes?”
“It’s the pain.” His voice sounded suspiciously tear-filled.
Until he was comfortable she would not be able to reason with him. Harry was such a bear when he was ill.
The countess strode to the door, doing her best to imitate a man’s stride. It was something she would have to practice. It felt forceful and aggressive, like she wanted to challenge someone to a shouting match.
Is that how men felt, or was it just that this sort of walk was not natural to a woman’s sensibilities?
As she expected, Freeba was attending the door.
“Bring the warmed soother.”
“I offered it to her, my lord, and have it at the ready, but the countess used a very crude word when I suggested it.” Freeba paused but seemed to steel herself. “My lord, she is not herself. This must be more than her courses. She would never call on you for feminine woes as common as that.”
“I know, but she told me recently that her pains have been so much worse since Cameron was born.”
“She told you that?”
“Yes, she told me.” Bettina tried for the curt tone her husband used so well.
It worked. Freeba nodded and even bobbed a curtsy.
“Bring the soother. I will stay with the countess.”
“You will?”
This time Bettina did not say a word, only looked at the maid with one raised brow. It was one of Harry’s most annoying tricks, fraught with disdain and annoyance.
Without a comment, Freeba hurried away, and Bettina returned to the bedside.
“You do that rather well,” Harry said with surprise. “Walk like a man, that is.”
“I have four older brothers.”
“Well, I have two sisters. What difference does that make?”
“As a child I followed them around as if they were gods and imitated them in everything.”
“Really? I didn’t know that, but that would explain why you are not at all missish, afraid of spiders and such.” He paused a moment and then added, “And why you are so tolerant of practical jokes.”
Bettina watched him grit his teeth, but he did not otherwise give in to the pain of the cramp.
“God, how I wish this was a joke or a bad dream I could wake up from. As it is, we must find a solution. And quickly.”
Freeba scratched at the door and handed her the soother.
“Go until I send for you.”
Freeba’s expression implied insult, but she nodded very slightly and left.
“Here, Harry, take this and lay it across your belly and lower. I find it very helpful.”
“What is it? It looks like a poor excuse for a pillow. One filled with very heavy feathers.”
“It’s a bag of soft wool filled with dried beans. You heat it inside a bed warmer and then lay it against what aches. Do you remember the time you wrenched your shoulder when you were thrown from your horse?”
Harry nodded, taking the bag from her hand. “Yes, I do. It worked wonders. Your mother invented it, did she not, and swears she could have made a fortune with it.”
Harry settled against the pillows and sighed with relief. He closed his eyes and yawned.
“Do not fall asleep.”
“I’m not!” he said, through another monster yawn.
Bettina began to pace the room, still unsettled at the thought of looking into her own face. “Let’s take a moment to reconstruct what happened last night. We may find a clue to reclaiming our own bodies.”
“Yes. All right,” Harry agreed. “It may be more simple than we think.”
Three
Bettina moved the chair and sat down again, doing her best to hide her anxiety. Harry thought this could be simple? Simple was the last word she would use. Insane. Impossible. Horrifying. The list of words only made her feel worse. What if this change was permanent? She would neither contemplate nor mention that possibility.
As usual, they sat in silence for a moment, for her part, trying to decide where it had begun. “We went to Ellsworth’s musicale.”
“Separately,” he added with censure.
“You could have waited for me. I was not being frivolous. The first dress I put on had a tear in the hem.”
She could see they were already poised on the downhill slide into their usual argument of who was at fault.
“I had to speak to Lord Osterman about my vote for his bill,” Harry explained, “and I knew he would leave early. He only attends those events to do Parliament’s business. His interest in music is nonexistent.”
Bettina was not going to start an argument by calling her husband a liar, yet she was almost certain Lord Osterman was not the only reason her husband had been in such a hurry.
“We should have left the musicale when he did,” Harry said. “That first performance was abominable. You would think the young man would be over his nerves by now.”
“He only missed one note.”
“Come now, his play was as tentative as a boy with his first whore.”
“Harry!”
“Oh, that’s right, I’m you now, aren’t I.” Harry raised a hand to pat her hair and spoke in a voice too high to be hers. “He will be a wonderful musician. He only needs more practice. I will admit, my lord, that his play was tentative, like a babe afraid of his first steps.”
Bettina sat back and folded her hands. Did he have any idea how hurtful it was for him to mock her so? She never spoke in such a shrill voice, and the boy would do better once he was accustomed to an audience.
“I’m sorry, dearest,” Harry said quickly. “I can be a fool when things are not going as I would like.” He reached for her hand but stopped. Bettina looked down at the hand that responded to her commands: dark hair about the wrist, a smattering of lighter hair around the knuckles ending in the blunt nails of Harry’s very manly fingers. Harry looked away. Ah, so he, too, was having a hard time adjusting to the change of body.
“I am sorry,” he said again. “I must remind myself that you are in my body, wearing my clothes, but you are still very much my Bettina. Even now I can tell I have hurt your feelings by the way you move back and become so formal as though I am preparing to strike you.”
“Oh no—!” She began to reassure him, but he spoke over her protests.
“Yes, you know I would never take a hand to you. Never.”
She did always move back. “That was something else I learned from my brothers. If I wanted them to stop teasing me, or otherwise being mean, I would pretend that what they said did not bother me at all. How odd that I do that even now.” Bettina laughed. “I wish—”
“No!” Harry yelled. “Do not wish anything.”
She bit her lips, pressing them together, and nodded. They were silent a moment. This time he touched her wrist, covered by shirt and coat.
“Continue with your memory of the evening. Where could we have been given the coin? Someone must have slipped it to us.”
“The butler when he handed us our hats and things? No, Harry, someone put it in this room while we were out. There is no sense in asking Freeba. She will insis
t she knows nothing if it might mean trouble for her.”
“I will ask her anyway. Later, when I am dressing.”
Bettina could tell he wanted to send for Freeba this minute but restrained himself. “You can try, but you will have to question her with my sensibilities and not with your inclination to browbeat her for the answer you want.”
“I do not browbeat the servants.”
“Yes, you do. Last week you left the footman in tears when you found him chatting with one of the serving girls while at his post. And just yesterday you practically gave a sermon on honesty when the youngest groom admitted he said he had checked the horses and was caught in the lie.”
“Both of them are lucky to still have their positions, but we will discuss the subject another time, Bettina. Right now we are supposed to be talking about what happened last night so we are not faced with another night in each other’s bed.”
“Please do go on, Harry,” she said with all the hauteur she could summon and forbore to mention that his mattress was much too soft for her liking.
“Very well,” Harry said and thought for a moment. “We left Ellsworth’s before supper, and when we arrived back home, you suggested that we have a glass of champagne here in your bedchamber, and I hoped that meant we would end up together in bed. Instead, you brought up an affair with Patricia Melton and were thinking the worst of me.”
“Oh no, Harry, the worst would be if you went from her bed to mine.”
He was silent for so long that she was afraid that is exactly what had happened.
“Patricia Melton lives to tempt and tease, Bettina.” The edge in his voice made it clear this was a subject he had no desire to discuss.
“I was so angry with you last night.” And still am, she thought. “I was about to tell you to leave my chamber when I was distracted by the coin.”
“Why did you pick it up?”
“Because I didn’t recognize it, and I wondered how it came to be on my night table.” She could see it still, glinting as though demanding her attention. “Then we made those misguided wishes.”
They stared at each other, her anger and his frustration replaced by the memory of the hideous moment of their transformation. The silence was long. Bettina had no idea what was going through Harry’s mind, but for her part, she was praying, praying, praying that this would end soon.
“Bettina, we have to pray that this ends tonight and prepare for the fact it may not. But we cannot give up trying to find a solution.”
“Of course not, but Harry, please, we have to teach each other how to go on. If this continues, we may well be sent to Bedlam. This morning, Roberts looked at me askance when I told him that he could choose my clothes.” Bettina shrugged. “I had no idea what your calendar called for.”
Harry nodded. “Yes, I see your point.”
Bettina went on. “I’m sure Freeba thinks something is terribly wrong. We never spend this much time together in the morning. Cameron is most likely missing his mama, and Lord Osterman is wondering why you are not in Parliament.” And tonight we both know that Patricia Melton will wonder at your absence.
“Do you not think that we should take a few days to teach each other what we need to know? Besides, you will not want to be in society this week.”
He shuddered.
She waited while he thought about it.
“It seems that while we are in different bodies, our minds are very much our own.” Harry waited for her nod before he went on. “Looking at myself when I look at you is not all that different from looking in a glass.”
“Oh, yes, it is. I’ve noticed it as we’ve been talking. Look at the eyes, Harry.” She moved from the chair to sit on the bed opposite him. “The color might be correct, but when I look into yours, I see you. You must surely see me.”
They sat still a moment, staring intently at each other. He smiled, that rakish smile that was the first thing about him that fascinated her. It might be her lips, but it was his smile.
“Why don’t we kiss,” he said, moving closer.
“No!” Bettina jerked back. “It would be like kissing myself.”
“Just a little kiss. I do not feel like any more than that. A kiss of comfort. Close your eyes. Let’s see if it feels different.”
Tentatively, Bettina moved toward him. She closed her eyes as she felt that first brush of lips. His lips were soft. So soft and full. Opening her eyes, she stared directly into him and forgot reality.
She opened herself to him. His tongue felt delicate as it swept into her mouth, then Bettina moved, taking over the kiss. She was in the bed beside Harry, fitting her mouth to his or his to hers.
It was so confusing, but then she forgot all about pronouns as sensation flooded her body.
Bettina had never felt this need before; anticipation raced through her, pushing all thought from her mind, arousing her so that all she wanted was to join together and find the pleasure that the kiss tortured her with.
She wanted more than the feel of his lips. She needed more than his tongue teasing her. Her body was barely within her control but not for much longer. She pulled her mouth from his. “I want you now, Harry.”
Harry stiffened, pulled away. “All I wanted was a kiss, Bettina.”
His words sobered her. “What’s wrong?” she asked and then recalled him asking the same question with the same edge to his voice in their first days of marriage.
“I wanted only a kiss of comfort. Do you think I am trying to seduce you? Who would want to have sex feeling as I do?” His hand swept down to his lower abdomen. “Nor do I think that you would want to have sex while I am in this condition. All I wanted was a little soothing kiss.”
He sounded like a . . . She paused. He sounded like a woman. He sounded like her.
Four
As Bettina paced the hall waiting for Harry to join her, she found herself actually praying. She had given up praying when her sister died in childbirth five years ago, despite hours on her knees in church, begging God to spare her.
Bettina’s prayer today was proof that she had not abandoned her belief in God but rather that she had given up on the idea that prayers made a difference to His plans. But a man and a woman switching bodies had to have involved some kind of divine intervention, and she was not about to let Him forget what was going on in her corner of the world.
Now that they were facing their first public outing, she prayed. Help us, Lord. A simple prayer she repeated three times with her eyes closed, her hands folded, and all her concentration centered on those three words.
For her part, she felt well prepared for her role as the Earl of Fellsborough. She wished she was as sure of Harry’s acting ability.
This moment was like so much of the last four days. A mix of anxiety and anticipation with a healthy dose of frustration to guarantee that neither of them grew overconfident.
The most significant moment, definitely not fun, had come when nothing happened as midnight approached, twenty-four hours after their wish on the coin.
Bettina had cried. Harry had thumped her on the back, which had not been at all comforting, and told her, “Stop that whining. You make me look like a weakling.”
“Harry, if I remember correctly, I wished you to be in my shoes. I did not think to say for how long. Cameron knows something is wrong, and he is only six months old!”
“We each hold him differently, that is all. Since neither of us holds anyone else, that will not give us away.”
Harry was angry all the time. He had dismissed one of the footmen for no good reason and sent word to Cook that dinner was a disappointment. Finally Bettina had confronted him. “If you keep on like this, we will lose every servant in the house.”
“They are all too sensitive,” Harry insisted as they practiced dancing.
“Stop criticizing them!”
They separated, and Bettina had to concentrate to recall the man’s steps for even the simplest of reels.
When they came together for a pro
menade down the imaginary line of couples, she went on, “By the way, I hired Kennet back. He is supporting his aging mother and cannot afford to be without a position. As for Cook, the housekeeper managed to convince her that ‘The countess is still not herself.’ She explained that Cameron’s birth has left me short-tempered and indisposed. Thank you for that, Harry.”
“Bettina, sarcasm is not attractive,” he said with narrowed eyes. “I am doing the best I can. You have done me no favors. Your refusal to go to Parliament until ‘you feel more sure of yourself’ has raised concern for my health, not to mention making me appear less than reliable. I have a proposal of my own and no expectation of when I can present it or if I will have the support I need.”
Aha, she thought, that is why Harry is so irritated by almost everything the servants say or do. Lack of control was the crux of his peevishness.
That was what unnerved him, Bettina thought. And, she admitted, it might well be what appealed to her. The chance to be in charge, rather like being king for a day, or maybe a week. If she knew how long it would last, it could prove a very interesting experience.
Like her, Harry refused to consider that this curse would last forever, but neither of them could think of a way to undo the wish, especially if they could not find the coin.
The coin was definitely not in her bedchamber. The servants had searched. It seemed to her that its disappearance was as magical as the magic it created.
Cameron’s nurse had suggested that they stop searching for it. “If you stop tearing the house apart,” Martha said, “I am sure it will turn up. At least that has always been my experience with lost things.”
If she had not at that moment succeeded in quieting a wailing Cameron, Bettina was sure that Harry would have dismissed her for voicing an unsolicited opinion. Martha seemed to sense her error, though, and had kept her thoughts to herself ever since.
In the end they had abandoned the search for the coin, not because they thought that would make it turn up again, but because they had to prepare in case it did not.
She and Harry had begun to work at understanding how the other passed the day, up to and including the things that each should know about the other’s friends and Harry’s political colleagues, not all of whom would count as friends. When Harry balked she had insisted. “I need to know as much as I can if I am to go places without you.”