Tempting the Bride

by Sherry Thomas

  She turned her face to a nearby window. “Please leave me alone. You’ve said quite enough.”

  CHAPTER 13

  Hastings had feared that Helena’s displeasure would spill over into her meeting with Bea. He needed not have worried. Until they came to stand before the nursery door, she’d been coolly aloof. But once the door opened, she was nothing if not warm and smiling.

  Bea, however, was more sensitive than most children to tension—perhaps she sensed that Helena’s friendly cheer was forced, or that her father was completely distraught. She was never fond of meeting strangers, but today she was twice as frozen. Her motion, as she curtsied to Helena, was badly uncoordinated. Hastings, afraid she’d lose her balance, had his hand held out at the ready.

  “I am your stepmother.” Helena knelt down on one knee—she had a natural, easy way with children. “May I call you Bea?”

  Bea nodded jerkily, as if someone had yanked on a string to move her head.

  “I am a publisher of books. Do you like to read?”

  Bea nodded again.

  “But you don’t like to speak?”

  Bea looked down and gripped Hastings’s hand.

  “She is shy,” he said.

  Shy and afraid, his poor child.

  Helena did not acknowledge him. “I am very glad to meet you, Bea. I hope we will become good friends, as we will”—her voice faltered for a moment—“be spending a great deal of time together.”

  Had she been unable to speak because the thought of marriage to him was a spike through her lungs? His own lungs burned with a futile misery.

  Helena straightened. “I’ve heard it said that children should be seen and not heard. I’ve never believed it myself. It has been lovely to see you, Bea. I hope someday I will hear your voice.”

  She smiled again at Bea, but it was a wan smile. It startled Hastings to realize that she was disappointed. Without quite thinking about it, he said, “Remember what Papa told you, poppet? Lady Hastings was badly injured only recently, but she has come all this way to see you. Can you wave at her? Your special wave?”

  He realized his mistake as soon as he’d finished speaking. Even normal children often responded unpredictably to sudden demands made upon them. Bea, who was piously devoted to her routine and already nervous at the introduction of a stranger, would be entirely paralyzed by his unexpected request.

  And she was. She sucked in her cheeks, pressed her lips together, and stared down at the tips of her small boots. Like a tortoise pulling its head and limbs into its shell when faced with danger and uncertainties, Bea, too, had withdrawn into her shell.

  Helena bit the inside of her lips. She would have been fine taking her leave of Bea without any special gesture from the child. She did not need Hastings to apply pressure to the girl—or the scene that was likely to result.

  Hastings already looked defeated, as if he were about to tell Bea to pay no mind to what he’d just said and go back to what she was doing. But in the next moment, he took a deep breath and lowered himself so that his eyes were level with his daughter’s.

  “I don’t mean to make things difficult for you, poppet, and I apologize if I have. But you see, it is a very special day for Papa to bring Lady Hastings home. And I am so happy and excited.”

  That voice of his—he could have requested women to remove their corsets in public and some would have agreed. And his profile, that amazingly perfect profile, reminding her of an old-master painting of an archangel at prayer, wholehearted and…

  Humble.

  She was not accustomed to seeing him humble. Her mind could not recognize him as the same nasty boy she’d known in her adolescence, and therefore failed to superimpose the boy’s repellent sneers upon his features.

  All she could see was the young father of a child who must be handled with delicacy, treating that child with great care and respect.

  Bea kept rigidly still, giving no indication she’d heard her father at all. She was not an unlovely child. Her straight, fine hair was an almost icy blond. She had wide, blue eyes, a soft pink mouth, and a rather darling overbite to her teeth. But she lacked entirely the charm and vibrancy that one often encountered in pretty young girls who were much adored by their parents.

  “This is Lady Hastings’s first visit to the house, poppet. And Papa is thrilled she is here,” said Hastings quietly.

  Helena felt a hard twist of pain in her heart. Had it been only last evening that she’d thrown herself at him headlong, convinced of their perfect fit and future happiness?

  She knew what he’d said to her, that all his misconduct had derived from his inability to declare his love. But she could see no love in his long history of insults and innuendos, only a thorough rottenness.

  “I want to make her feel so welcome here that she never wants to leave,” he went on. “Will you help Papa, poppet?”

  His voice could melt the enmity between heaven and hell. Bea, however, would not be so easily won over. She only continued to stare at her boots, as if the rest of the people in the room no longer existed. Or, as if by ignoring them all long enough, she could conjure them into nonexistence.

  Miss McIntyre, Bea’s governess, chewed her lips nervously. Helena hadn’t meant to grow likewise anxious, hadn’t wanted to care about his success or lack thereof. But somehow she was holding her breath.

  He spoke no more, but rubbed his thumb gently across the back of Bea’s small, fragile-looking hand, and waited. Helena disliked waiting; it made her restless and cross. But he possessed the patience of a hermit.

  A minute passed. Two minutes. Three minutes. Bea’s governess was visibly fidgeting. Helena shifted her weight from one foot to the other, then back again. Another man would have banished Bea to her room without supper, but Hastings still waited, lifting his hand from Bea’s to smooth a strand of hair that had fallen loose from her braid.

  Just as the tension in the nursery was becoming unbearable, Bea lifted her free hand and waved briefly in Helena’s general direction, with just her little finger held out. The governess emitted an audible sigh of relief. Helena exhaled almost as forcibly.

  “Thank you, Bea,” she said. “I can’t tell you how touched I am. You have made me feel wonderfully welcome.”

  Hastings shot her a look unreadable for its intensity. The chaos in her head began to multiply again. “I need to go my room to change and rest,” she said to Bea. “I leave your father here with you. Will you look after him?”

  Bea nodded immediately, obviously relishing the thought. Her love for him made Helena’s heart pinch with a fresh pain.

  As she walked past Hastings, he said softly, “Thank you.”

  She left without answering. But once outside the nursery, she stopped and listened with the door slightly ajar. Contrary to what she’d expected, Bea did not suddenly become loquacious, “Papa” this and “Papa” that.

  In fact, father and daughter remained resolutely silent. Helena pushed the door open an inch more and saw Hastings and Bea’s clasped hands. They stood before a glass container that held a small tortoise, solemnly watching the creature making its slow but determined round.

  No grand murals awaited Helena in the mistress’s apartment, but an entire wall of books did, books that she had either already read and enjoyed or would dearly love to read as soon as she had the chance.

  Had the previous woman who occupied this room, Hastings’s aunt, possessed similar taste to Helena? Or was this another instance of—

  She did not let herself complete the thought.

  Several maids helped sort her belongings into drawers and wardrobes. She supervised distractedly. After the staff had left, she sat down with a stack of books and tried to read. A knock came at her door half an hour later, when she was still only on page two of the first book. It was a footman, bearing a message from Hastings.

  Dear Helena,

  If you are not too weary from the journey, Bea and I would like to extend an invitation for you to join us for tea. She has
decided, to my delight and surprise, to show you her favorite book. I hope you will enjoy reading it as much as we do.

  Your servant,

  Hastings

  Had the invitation been issued by Hastings alone, Helena would have turned it down: The rail journey had been excruciating with him so near; she needed some more time to herself, away from him. But she did not have the heart to turn down Bea, if indeed it was the girl’s own idea to share her favorite book with Helena.

  She was guided to a room that the footman referred to as Miss Bea’s tearoom. When the door opened before her, she stood for a moment on the threshold, taken aback by the painted vista that greeted her, a pretty pond surrounded by fetching little cottages that sprouted flowers from window boxes, pots affixed to the walls, and, in the case of one particular cottage, the entirety of an earth-covered roof.

  But what stopped her in her tracks was not the scenery, but animals dressed in country garb going about their business. Here a squirrel in a large white cap and a brown sack of a dress watered her rosebushes with a dreamy look in her eyes; there stood a group of rabbits in tweeds and short trousers in the midst of a game of cricket; and on the pond, in a small blue rowboat, a pair of ducklings fished, one in a bowler hat with a pipe clamped in his bill, the other, a girl, sporting a straw hat piled high with fresh flowers, much like those Eton rowers wore for the annual Procession of the Boats.

  “Thank you for joining us,” said Hastings, rising from a table spread with half a dozen small plates of sliced cake and sandwiches.

  Helena nodded, not quite looking at him, and took a seat on the other side of Bea, who seemed to be in a much happier frame of mind. She did not smile or speak when Helena greeted her, but she did hold out a thick, clothbound notebook.

  When Helena tried to take the notebook into her own hands, however, Bea did not let go. “Ah, I see,” said Helena. “I’ll be happy to look at it on the table, my dear, if you will turn the pages for me.”

  Hastings sent her a small, grateful smile as he took his seat again. She did not smile back, but bent her attention to the notebook. “So this is your favorite book, Bea?”

  After a few seconds, Bea nodded.

  “Will you open it for me?”

  Bea lifted the blue brocade-bound cover. The first few pages were blank, high-quality paper that appeared heavy yet soft, separated from one another by layers of translucent rice paper—this was not so much a book as an exceptionally well-constructed artist’s sketch pad.

  The next turning of the page revealed a duckling in country tweed and a deerstalker hat, a jaunty-looking fellow, despite the very staid elbow patches on his jacket and the even more staid tobacco pipe sticking out of one pocket flap.

  Helena turned toward the murals and noticed for the first time that they were not yet complete: One wall remained blank; the outlines of a small bridge and a tree with a swing hanging from one branch had been drawn with pencil, but no paint had been applied. The room was a work in progress.

  She didn’t know why that should cause a twinge in her heart.

  “The duckling in the boat on the wall, he is the same one as this?”

  Bea nodded again. Helena did not need to ask Hastings to know that he was the artist. Where had he hidden so much talent during their long and unprofitable association?

  Next to the duck’s feet was written the name Tobias. “My goodness,” said Helena, “I’ve just noticed he has four feet. Why does Tobias have four feet?”

  Bea turned the page. Now Tobias was shown leaning to the side, revealing a girl duckling behind him: the girl duckling from the boat, wearing another flower-laden hat.

  “Do you have a hat like this?” Helena asked Bea.

  Bea looked toward her father. He gave her an encouraging smile, an expression of infinite kindness and affection. Helena didn’t know she was staring at him until Bea tugged at her sleeve. And when Helena pivoted her attention back to the girl, Bea nodded slowly and emphatically, as if she were repeating her answer.

  Helena had very nearly forgotten the question. The hat, right, the flowered hat. “Do you like flowers very much?”

  Her question was answered with another nod.

  “Do you garden yourself?”

  This time the answer was more complicated. Bea nodded, frowned, then shook her head, seemingly slightly discouraged.

  “She waters a part of the garden on Mondays,” Hastings explained.

  He hadn’t spoken for a few minutes, leaving the conversation to Helena and Bea. At the sound of his voice, she was suddenly back in her sickbed, listening to his reading of the sonnets of Elizabeth Barrett Browning.

  She pushed away the memory and bent her head forward a few inches so she could look Bea more directly in the eye. “I have published a book on gardening, a very good one. If you like, Bea, you can ask Papa to read it to you, so that you can learn how to grow the most beautiful flowers. Also, my sister-in-law, Lady Fitzhugh, has one of the finest gardens in England. When you are ready to start your own garden, we will ask her for seeds and cuttings.”

  What Helena said was not something perfectly suited to either a nod or a shake of the head. Bea appeared disoriented for a moment. After a while she simply looked down and turned the page again.

  Now there was a thatch-roofed cottage, its windowsills brimming with asters and geraniums. The cottage was located at the edge of a pond. A flower-lined cobblestone path bisected the lawn and led down to a small pier, where a rowboat was tied.

  Helena glanced toward the murals again and found a house exactly like it—except the rowboat, instead of being tethered to the pier, was in use on the pond. “Is this where Tobias and his friend live?”

  Bea turned back a page to show the girl duckling’s name, written above her shoulders. Nanette. She then proceeded to the page after the illustration of the cottage, where the first lines of text appeared, and waited expectantly.

  She meant for Helena to read the story aloud.

  Helena complied. “‘It has been a while since Tobias and Nanette encountered an Adventure. Two weeks, to be precise. Now, you might say two weeks is hardly any time. But for ducklings, Adventures are like cake. Once you have tasted cake, two weeks becomes a long time to go without.’

  “Are you the author, too, Hastings?” she asked without turning her face in his direction.

  “Yes.”

  The Boy Who Leered would grow up to write and illustrate children’s stories. Why did that make her feel so…cross? Or was she angry because she preferred the simplicity of anger to the staggering complexity of the rest of her emotions?

  Bea, who’d already turned the page, tapped on it to gain Helena’s attention. Helena smiled apologetically and went on. “‘But on this bright, late-summer morning, they did not need to seek Adventure. Adventure arrived all the way from Egypt on four legs. For you see, it becomes unbearably hot on the Nile this time of the year, and Mr. Crispin Crocodile therefore takes his annual holiday in the north, where the summers are as cool and refreshing as a lemon sorbet.’”

  And there was Mr. Crispin Crocodile, in his seersucker summer suit, mopping his brows with a handkerchief. He looked huge and hungry.

  “‘Tobias was taking his usual morning walk around the pond. All his neighbors—the squirrels, the beavers, the bunnies, et cetera—seemed to have disappeared. “It must be the time of the year for holidays,” he mused to himself. But he was quite happy to remain at the pond with dear Nanette, until he saw Mr. Crispin Crocodile setting down his travel satchel to feel for his keys in his pocket. All of a sudden Tobias understood why his neighbors had fled, and why he was able to purchase his marvelous little cottage the previous autumn at such a bargain.’”

  The Boy Who Leered would grow up not only to write and illustrate children’s stories, but to do so with exceptional charm and assurance.

  Bea tapped at the page again, waiting for Helena to continue.

  “I can read for her if you’d prefer not to,” Hastings offered.

>   Still without looking at him, Helena said, “I’m fine. I’ll read the rest.”

  Miss McIntyre, Bea’s governess, came to retrieve her at the end of tea, leaving Hastings and Helena alone in the room. He expected Helena to depart on Bea’s heels, but instead she leveled him a severe gaze and said, “That is a very good story.”

  His heart almost left his chest at her compliment. “Thank you. I’m glad you like it, since you are publishing that story—and eleven others like it.”

  Her brow furrowed in fierce concentration, as if she were trying to gather every last detail from all the correspondence and documents she’d recently read. “So you are Miss Evangeline South and this is one of the Old Toad Pond tales.”

  “Correct.”

  She leaned forward and picked up a cucumber sandwich. He stared at the line of her arm. She had wonderfully long, lissome arms. In a ball gown they were a sight to behold.

  “You could have asked for more than one hundred and ten pounds for the copyright,” she said.

  He shrugged. He didn’t need the money and he’d been thrilled she’d offered as much.

  “Let me guess: You never told me that you are the author.”

  “Correct.”

  Her expression was not revolted, as it had been earlier, but merely, though deeply, irked. “Why not?”

  He shrugged again. “I didn’t want you to make fun of me.”

  “I won’t deny that I might have made fun of you—at first. But in the end I do not laugh at talent and hard work. And that would have been a far superior way to earn my attention than those loathsome methods of your choosing.”

  He looked into her eyes, lovely, imperious eyes that had enslaved him from the very beginning. “You are right. I’m sorry.”

  Her lips parted. For a moment it looked as if she were about to say something in response, but she didn’t. She ate the remainder of her sandwich in silence, wiped her hand on a napkin, and left.