The Touch of Love

by Platt, Meara

  He nodded.

  “A suitable vessel into which to spill my seed,” he said ruefully. Had Olivia put Beast through this nonsense? He supposed if his friend could tolerate it, then he could as well.

  “Let’s move on to the sense of hearing. Do you like the sound of her voice? Her laughter?” Poppy leaned forward as he began to write. “You’re frowning again. Why is this so difficult for you?”

  “It’s a stupid assignment.”

  “Goodness, were you always this bad-tempered as a schoolboy? Do stop frowning. Does she have a nice voice? A nice laugh?”

  “I never paid attention. I don’t think she laughs much.”

  “That’s interesting.” Poppy was staring at him as though expecting him to drop a brilliant revelation. “Nathaniel, why do you think she never laughs?”

  He shrugged again. “I didn’t say she never laughs, only that I hadn’t noticed. Perhaps she doesn’t find me funny. Perhaps I wasn’t listening to her when I ought to have been.”

  “Perhaps she’s sad.”

  Poppy had the softest way of kicking his arse to Bedfordshire and back, showing him to be the callous dolt he was. But this was the strength of women, especially Poppy, to get into another person’s heart and sense what they were feeling.

  The possibility that Charlotte was sad had never entered his mind. “You put me to shame, Poppy. I never once considered… why do you think she’s unhappy?”

  “Don’t you know? You’ll have to talk to her and put her mind at ease.”

  He arched an eyebrow and cast her a wry, mirthless smile. “We all know how productive that will be. Men don’t listen very well, do they?”

  “We listen for different things. Men tend to be direct. If I were to tell you that I hurt, you would ask, ‘Where does it hurt?’ I’ll fetch a doctor, and that would be the end of the conversation. But women listen for the feelings behind the statement. Why does it hurt? How does it hurt? Who caused your hurt?”

  She glanced at The Book of Love, as though attempting to absorb its wisdom. Nathaniel did not believe her cleverness came from those chapters. Poppy had a natural intelligence and a genuine compassion.

  “Let’s move on, Poppy. But would you mind if I took this book for a few hours? I’d like to read it. I promise not to damage it in any way. I still want to go over the list of senses with you first. This will be a means of reinforcing what you’ve taught me.”

  He ran a hand through his hair, wanting to say more to her but not certain how to proceed. Perhaps saying nothing was best for now. Poppy was showing a side of herself that he’d never known existed. Of course, he hadn’t been looking. Or listening. “We’ve covered sight and hearing. What next?”

  “The sense of smell. What is her scent? Did it attract you to her?”

  He sighed. “I don’t know. I think I was drunk when we first met.”

  “You were?” She shook her head in confusion. “Well, you weren’t always drunk. Just that one time, right? Oh, dear. You have such a blank look on your face.” She pursed her lips in thought. “Seriously, Nathaniel. Why is this so difficult for you?”

  Feelings, damn it.

  “I have a lot on my mind. Why don’t we start with something simpler? You’re right in front of me. Why don’t we try this exercise with you?”

  “Very well. What’s my scent this morning?”

  “Cinnamon.”

  She laughed. “You really do enjoy your cinnamon buns, don’t you? I think you are still hungry.”

  He grinned. “Always. But you also… I think of roses and lavender and country gardens when I’m around you. Pink roses for your cheeks and lips. Blue lavender for your eyes. There’s something clean and refreshing about your scent. An apple orchard when the trees are first blossoming. Or wild strawberries, perhaps. Warm, fragrant. Lazy summer days.”

  “That’s quite good, actually. Well done, Nathaniel. Now think of Charlotte.”

  He groaned. “Hellfire, I don’t know.”

  “Yes, you do. You’re resisting your feelings. Think of the first time you met her. Where were you?”

  “Crowded ballroom. Around April or May. Maybe May. The weather was warm. Maybe it was a particularly warm day in April. All that comes to mind is overly perfumed, sweating bodies.”

  “But not Charlotte’s, or you wouldn’t have gone near her.”

  “I suppose not. Poppy, I don’t remember. But I’ll make sure to take note of her scent when she arrives. Not immediately, of course. She’ll smell of dirt and sweaty horses.”

  Poppy emitted a laughing groan. “You sound like a petulant little boy. Even Pip would roll his eyes at you. Yes, do wait until she washes the scent of travel off her.”

  “So where does that leave us? Touch and taste?” Lord, he was not going to go into detail about the dream he’d had last night. Poppy in his bed. The taste of her hot skin and the after scent of sex, utterly unsuitable for Poppy’s ears, and not something he was proud of.

  Poppy’s cheeks were flaming, as though she knew what he was thinking. But she couldn’t possibly. “Oh, dear,” she said with a light shake of her head. “You look as though you’d rather walk across a bed of nails than talk further on the topic.”

  “Quite so.”

  “Nathaniel, it seems to me that you aren’t particularly attracted to Charlotte. If that is so, then what made you…”

  “Invite her this weekend?”

  She nodded. “Yes, if you wish to put it that way.”

  How else was he to put it? He’d invited Charlotte. She’d accepted. He now regretted it. “It’s complicated.”

  “That’s what men say when they are required to discuss their feelings.”

  “We are not going to discuss my feelings.” He raked a hand through his hair and emitted a low growl. The blasted girl was going to push him too far. Protecting Lavinia was the urgent problem. Finding himself a wife was of secondary importance. He was a wealthy earl. A much sought-after bachelor. He had only to crook his finger and a dozen debutantes would come running.

  He didn’t even have to offer marriage.

  They’d willingly come to his bed.

  “No talk of feelings,” he repeated when Poppy cast him a soft, heart-melting look that made him want to wrap her in his arms and hungrily explore her silken body while he forgot about the demons that still gripped him.

  He had yet to shed the darkness of war, yet to forget the pain and sorrow and loss.

  She stared at him.

  “Damn it, Poppy.” He was not going to discuss the war with her, but her gaze pierced his soul, and he knew she’d listen to his innermost fears, his anger and frustrations. She’d listen and be gentle. He could open his heart to this girl, expose its raw and painful wounds, and she would treat them with exquisite tenderness and compassion.

  But the two of them were in his study to speak of love, not to dissect the horrors he’d experienced in wartime.

  She glanced out the window. “I do wish it would stop raining. You look like the walls are about to close in around you. In truth, you look like you want to topple the walls down around my head.”

  “Like Sampson toppling the walls of the temple and crushing all within it?” He rose and came around the desk to stand beside her. “No, any irritation or anger I feel is aimed at me.”

  Poppy’s lips were pursed and her brow furrowed in thought. He studied her and said nothing, now eager to know what she was thinking.

  “Why are you so angry with yourself, Nathaniel?”

  “Isn’t it obvious?” He shrugged. “I like to be in control. But events seem to have taken control of me.”

  “Of course. And you don’t like the feeling of helplessness.”

  “Feelings again,” he muttered. “I handle my problems. I don’t like when they have me by the throat.”

  “My parents taught me that problems are a series of events when taken apart are harmless, but when put together in a particular way cause chaos. First, stop blaming yourself for what has
happened. And don’t blame anyone else either.”

  He snorted. “No blame?”

  “That’s right. If you take away the blame, what do you have left?”

  “Hell, I don’t know. You seem to be the one with all the answers.”

  She rolled her eyes and laughed softly. “I certainly do not have any answers. I’ve experienced nothing. I’m the sheltered, ignorant one.”

  He drew closer, unable to help himself. “You’re not ignorant.”

  “I most certainly am about men and their desires.” She cleared her throat and gave a little ‘eep’ when he took another step closer. “Think of your problems as steps on a staircase or rungs on a ladder. The first step might be something unimportant and seemingly unrelated. A broken gristmill wheel, for example. And then you find out it can’t be repaired for a month. So, you stop by your club—assume you are in London—for a drink because you are angry and frustrated.”

  He moved away from her and walked to the hearth, staring into the empty grate. It was summer, and no fire would be lit unless the weather turned exceptionally cold. “Poppy, stop. These feelings you’re trying to evoke from me have nothing to do with love.”

  She came to stand by his side. “What are they about?”

  “The opposite of love.”

  “War?”

  He arched an eyebrow in surprise. “The opposite of love is hate. What made you say war?” Which is what he had been thinking, and she’d gotten it right. But how had she known? “Never mind. Let’s put an end to this conversation before it turns ugly.”

  “Nathaniel, you’re shaking.” She began to stroke his arm as though to comfort him. Did the girl realize she had put his heart in an iron clamp and was painfully twisting it? He didn’t want to answer her. “I’m not afraid of ugly conversations.”

  Oh, but she would be if he spoke of the dreadful day his regiment returned to London and the sight of all those coffins laid out in a row on the docks.

  “Nathaniel, let’s keep no secrets. We’ve known each other all of our lives. If we can’t trust each other, then who can we trust?”

  Everything about Poppy was soft and soothing.

  He closed his eyes a moment to allow her warmth and sweetness to soak deeply under his skin. “It isn’t a question of trust, Poppy. You know I trust you. Even after you stole my clothes and left me naked in the pond.”

  “I can assure you, I’ve reformed.” She cast him an impish smirk, no doubt realizing this conversation had been headed in a dark direction and both of them were now eager to lighten it. “Do you wish to speak of those happier times?”

  Despite himself, he laughed. “You are manipulating me.”

  “I most certainly am not. It isn’t in my nature, as you well know. So, what shall it be? You don’t wish to speak of difficult times, do you?”

  “No.” He’d formed bonds with the men in his regiment that were stronger than any he’d ever make again. Thad and Beast understood because they’d also gone off to fight. The three of them had always been friends, but the war had brought them even closer. He’d wept for joy the night he realized they’d all survived.

  But memories of war still brought him pain.

  And memories of their last summer at Sherbourne before they all went off to war still brought him exquisite peace and contentment. “You girls were about ten-years-old at the time,” he said, his voice sounding raw and raspy even to his ears. “You and Penelope and Olivia. We’d just spent a summer here, you with your friends and me with mine.”

  “Thad and Beast. I remember it well. It was an idyllic summer, wasn’t it?”

  He laughed. “Until the day you caught us swimming naked in the pond and stole our clothes. You knew we couldn’t chase after you.”

  Poppy’s smirk turned into a broad, unrepentant grin. “I’d never done anything so wicked in all my life. Penelope was the one with the streak of mischief. She goaded me and Olivia. She grabbed Thad’s clothes. I went along and ran off with yours, but Olivia didn’t have the heart to take Beast’s. I couldn’t believe it. She neatly folded his clothes and left them by the pond for him to find.”

  “You could have done the same with mine.”

  She shook her head. “Yes, but I was taken up in the moment and rather enjoying my wicked self. I knew I’d have to deal with the consequences later, but in that moment, I felt giddy and powerful… and deliciously naughty.”

  “It was one of those silly, utterly carefree days. It was a day of laughter and innocence. Shortly afterward, Beast, Thad, and I went off to war. Those were years of hardship, chaos, and madness. There was so much death and destruction.”

  She still had her hand on his arm. “I’m so sorry.”

  He liked the touch of her hand. There was magic in the girl, not the book. He wasn’t going to tell her so. He didn’t want to talk about the sense of touch. In truth, he didn’t want to talk about the war, either. But Poppy made it easier to get these difficult thoughts out.

  In less than a day, the girl had managed to have him talking about problems he’d buried deep inside of him and sworn never to let escape. He’d handled the rage and frustration of war, the senseless killing. What he hadn’t been able to overcome was the unfairness of it all.

  Would he be able to talk things through like this with Charlotte? Would Charlotte’s touch feel anywhere near as wonderful as the gentle touch of Poppy?

  Poppy still had her lips pursed in thought.

  Those pouty, beautiful lips that he must have been dead as a donkey not to notice before yesterday.

  Her silence got him talking again. It was that or give in to the desire to kiss her.

  He wasn’t going to kiss Poppy.

  No, indeed. He refused to consider it. “The battles were difficult, to be sure. But what I found hardest was being called back home when my father passed away. I assumed his title, Earl of Welles, and was handed all this bounty.” He waved his hand to encompass the house and its grounds as well as the entire village of Wellesford. “But my regiment was still on the Continent fighting Napoleon. I wanted to be with them. I belonged there, not here.”

  His voice hitched as he spoke the last. “We all thought the war was over when Napoleon was first exiled. But he escaped and built up his army again. My regiment was still in France. They were decimated in a brutal battle shortly before Waterloo.”

  Poppy inhaled lightly.

  “All those years of hard fighting and hardly a man lost. Then suddenly, just three months before the end of the war…” Tears clouded his eyes. He would have been ashamed to show his weakness in front of anyone else. But Poppy was different. She had stripped his feelings raw and did not make him feel the lesser for it.

  She put her arms around him. “What a terrible blow. I’m so sorry, Nathaniel. Your grief must be beyond imagination.”

  “You spoke of rungs on a ladder. Idyllic summer. That’s one. Going off to war. That’s two. Coming home. That’s three. Learning the fate of my regiment. That’s four. What’s next? Scandal and ruin?” He sighed raggedly. “How many more rungs are there? Does it matter? The night of the battle that destroyed my regiment, I was attending a London ball, having a merry time being chased by beautiful women who offered me their bodies at every turn. They cared not a fig about me. They wanted my wealth and title. I should have…”

  “Gone back and died along with your men? Oh, Nathaniel, you know that is not true. You’ll do far more good in the world by living. You’re in a position to help the survivors. Perhaps you can do something for the families of those who did not survive.”

  He nodded. “I’ve told myself that. I’ve taken steps, but the problem is so big, anything I do seems small and inconsequential.”

  “It isn’t. Even if one life is made better. One family helped. But I know the sort of man you are. You’ve probably helped dozens by now.”

  “When I heard the news, I was frustrated and angry, ashamed of myself for not being there when they needed me. The bodies were shipped home
in early May. I went to the docks to lend assistance, looking forward to greeting the survivors as they walked down the gangplank. I was not prepared for the number of coffins stacked under the heat of the morning sun. There were so many, Poppy. I couldn’t bear it.”

  He turned away and took a moment to regain what little composure he had left. “So how can we speak of love and the spells in that silly book? How can I think of you or Charlotte or any young woman when my heart is still filled with rage at the unfairness of it all?”

  He grunted in disgust. “Do you want to know the cruelest jest of all?”

  Poppy’s hand still rested on his arm as though it was frozen and she was afraid to move it.

  “My heart is so badly damaged, Poppy. Yet, I still want this book of spells to work. So we’re going to read through every one of those stupid chapters. And even though I’m unlikely ever to find love, I know you will. I’ll make it my mission to find you the one man who will make you so damn happy, you’ll have stars in your eyes and buttercups sprouting from your lips whenever you speak of him.”

  He returned her stare, losing himself in the enchanting blue of her eyes. “There you have it. Now you know more about me than anyone else alive.”

  Now that he’d poured his heart out to her, he wanted to kiss her.

  Lord. Had he gone utterly insane?

  Kiss Poppy?

  He’d already done worse in his dreams.

  She said nothing for the longest while. “Nathaniel…” Her voice was soft and sweet and aching. She reached up and kissed him on the cheek. It was nothing like the kiss he wished to give her, not hot or raw or possessive. Yet, the soft press of her lips stirred something deep within him. A hope. Yes. That’s what Poppy was, hope and brightness. “Thank you for sharing this with me. I’ll never betray your confidence.”

  “I know.”

  She nodded and walked out, quietly shutting the door behind her.

  She’d left The Book of Love with him.

  He intended to read it cover to cover. Perhaps it would hold the answer to the question now burning in his mind.

  Why did he yearn to kiss Poppy?

  No, that wasn’t quite right.