by Jane Charles
“Chamber? As in one?” Didn’t husbands and wives have separate sleeping chambers? Separate beds?
“We shared a bed always, Elaina, not just for intimacy.”
Her face heated at the very idea. She couldn’t recall ever sleeping with anyone, and she certainly didn’t recall being intimate. Then she realized, Tristan didn’t need her permission. “You could take what is yours. I’m to understand a wife has little…”
Again, he placed a finger against her lips. “Yes, by law, I have the right to do as I wish with you and neither your brothers, nor anyone else, could offer a complaint. However, you are my wife. I love and cherishe you above all others and would never dishonor you by taking you to my bed without your desire to have me do so, or against your will.”
The deep conviction of his tone settled upon her in a cloak of peace. Odd, that she’d not felt this before. At least, not since she’d awoken on the beach in Alderney. She had peace and if nothing else, felt safer with Tristan than anyone else.
He stepped back. “You brought me here to share a secret.”
Yes, she had.
In an instant her giddiness returned, and embarrassment swept away. “Let me make certain that my chamber door is locked and you lock this one.”
“Do you really think someone will barge in on us?”
“Unlikely, since they’ve assumed you’ve returned to your marital duties,” she giggled. Somehow, knowing that he wouldn’t insist on his rights made her all the more comfortable. “But I’d rather be cautious because Xavier would undoubtedly not approve.”
“Such intrigue,” Tristan laughed as he crossed to lock the door as Elaina ran into her chamber.
“Now, what is this all about?” he asked when she returned.
“I have your promise?” she asked again.
“Yes,” he nearly cried in frustration. “Besides, I rather enjoy sharing a secret that only the two of us know, mainly because it might drive Xavier to Bedlam.”
Elaina couldn’t help but grin and with that, she moved her desk and then the rug before opening the small door.
Tristan came over to look down into it. “A priest’s hole?”
“I assume.”
“That is your secret?”
“No,” she laughed. “It’s what’s inside.” With that she reached in and retrieved the journals. “I started reading them this afternoon. I’d forgotten that they were even hidden here until after I returned from the folly.” Then she opened the desk and pulled out the one she was currently reading.
Elaina held her breath, waiting to see how Tristan would react. If he got angry or took them away or insisted on telling Xavier, then he wasn’t the gentleman that she was coming to believe him to be.
After he seemed to weigh them in his hands, his shoulders began to shake, then he started to laugh. “Xavier’s most definitely not going to approve.”
That still didn’t mean that he’d continue to hold her secret.
“Have they helped your memory?”
Elaina blew out a sigh. “No. It’s like reading about someone else.”
His smile slipped. “I’m sorry for that.”
“But at least I’m learning about myself.”
“And, you never know, it could prove to be an insight.”
“So, you aren’t going to tell on me.”
“I’m not going to tell, but I do have a request,” he finally said.
“Yes?”
“How recent are any of these journals.”
Elaina frowned. She had no idea.
“May I?”
These were her personal thoughts. Did she really wish for Tristan to read them?
“Only the last one, for now. I simply wish to see the date.”
Elaina bit her lip, then handed it over. “I’ve already put them in date order so that I could read them sequentially.”
He nodded and opened the page, and she prayed there was nothing embarrassing within. Instead, he flipped pages, noting and murmuring dates. “There are no others?”
“That is the last one, why?”
He smiled. “I hope you share them with me, but I understand if you don’t.”
Elaina frowned. “Why?”
“I’m not telling you. You’ll have to read it for yourself.”
“What is in there?”
“Nope. To do so would be like telling you how a good book ends when you are only halfway through reading the novel.”
“Why did you wish to see the date?” Elaina couldn’t understand.
“Simply curious if they involved our meeting, marriage or anything we might have shared after we married.”
“Do they?” she asked anxiously.
Instead, he just grinned. “End of the book, remember.”
Elaina blew out a frustrated breath. “You won’t tell Xavier, will you?”
“I already promised that I wouldn’t,” Tristan chuckled. “As your delicate sensibilities have certainly not been shaken, I see no harm.”
“Oh thank you, Tristan.” Elaina nearly threw her arms about his neck as relief swept through her but pulled back quickly. “I’m sorry.”
He picked up her hand. “Don’t be. It’s another natural reaction, one that you’ve done hundreds of times before. Your mind just hasn’t caught up to what you instinctively know.”
Elaina settled onto the settee. “Perhaps you are correct. Thank you for understanding, and for your patience,” she said with sincerity. “I’m not certain many husbands would be as kind.”
“A husband who deeply loved his wife would.”
He loved her, and hadn’t stopped in the time she was gone, even though he’d married another. Not that Elaina begrudged him for doing so. She had nearly married Clive. But now they were together again they must somehow make it work or see where this new relationship took them. And, given how today had progressed, Elaina truly had hope for her future with Tristan. Even if she never fell in love or remembered, she trusted and cherished this new friendship.
Chapter 18
The fact that she trusted him enough to share her secret convinced Tristan that somewhere inside, Elaina knew him and recognized what they’d once shared.
He could also understand why she didn’t want anyone to know about the journals. Xavier would take them and hide them away for fear that it might harm Elaina, which it certainly hadn’t done. Further, they ended with the eve of their wedding, which she wasn’t yet aware, but Tristan hoped that as she read of their courtship, she’d come to understand them better.
“What have you learned so far?” He asked as he settled onto a chair. He’d only been in her set of rooms once, the night after they wed. In the chamber next door, in her bed, is where Tristan had made Elaina his. A night he’d never forget, but one she had. He’d barely glimpsed inside this sitting room as he’d been more interested in her bed, and not where she read and wrote correspondence, and apparently journals. What he wouldn’t give to sleep with her again. Not just intimacies, but just to sleep and hold her in his arms, her head upon his chest. How long before she’d allow that privilege?
“You were correct. I was very close to my grandmother.” She handed him a cup of tea.
“But you don’t have the memory?”
She shook her head. “It was like reading about someone else.”
“Did you write only about your grandmother, or your grandfather also, and other friends you might have had.” He was particularly interested in one person.
“I wrote of everyone that I knew, I assume. Or at least those who were close to me.”
He nodded. “Monique was your closest friend.”
A smile graced her lips. “Did we remain friends?”
“Yes. The two of you exchanged correspondence often and visited when you went back to be with your grandmother.” He took a sip of his tea in preparation of making his own confession. “The only time I’d ever read your personal correspondence, however, was when her letters arrived, after you were gone. I had hoped
for a link to you, to know how the two of you spent your time, when you weren’t by your grandmother’s side. It was another piece of you.”
“I don’t mind,” she assured him. “What did the letter say?”
“That she was glad that the two of you had a chance to visit. That she was sorry for the loss of your grandmother and that she hoped that so much time didn’t pass before the two of you saw one another again.” The letter had also said that Monique hoped that Elaina and he could mend their relationship. That Elaina needed to understand his concern, and remember that the reasons Tristan had ordered Elaina not to travel were made from love and not to be a dictator, and that she knew that Elaina loved him just as much and not to let arguments or bitter emotions get in the way of happiness.
Tristan still had the letter, and he’d let Elaina read it, after she remembered. Until then, he wasn’t going to mention the argument or that she’d left the moment he was away from their home.
“I wrote her back and told her what had happened with the ship. I didn’t want her to think that you had just stopped writing to her for no reason. She sent a letter of condolences and that she was heartbroken over her loss of a friend.”
“All this time Monique has thought me dead.”
“We all did, Elaina,” he reminded her. “Not that I didn’t hold onto hope, but after three years, most assumed the worst.”
“You must write her straight away and tell her the truth.”
“I will do so when we return home. I don’t know her direction. That information is back at the estate.”
Her eyes lit. “I may have it.”
Elaina dug further into the priest’s hole and drew out stacks of letters, ribbons tied around them. She sifted through them before she came to a set. “These are from her.”
“Do we know that she still lives in the same place?”
Elaina let out a sigh. “I don’t know. Of course, she lived with her parents when I was writing her. I can’t remember if she married, but as we are the same age, I’m assuming she has.”
Tristan glanced at the letters. “She married a few months after we did. Her surname has changed.”
Which means she lives somewhere else.
“Do not worry. We will write her as soon as we return to the estate. I promise.”
There were still other stacks of letters and though he knew it would bring nothing but jealousy, he had to ask. “Who else have you kept letters from?”
“I think I’ve kept every piece of correspondence that I’ve ever received,” she laughed. “Though I haven’t read any of them yet. I wanted to read the journals first.”
That didn’t answer his questions. “Besides Monique and your grandparents, did you write of anyone else?”
Her face took on a pink hue and she nervously lifted the cup from the saucer, took a sip, then set it down.
“What are you afraid to tell me?”
“There was someone I cared for,” she reluctantly admitted.
“Pierre?”
Elaina’s eyes flew open. She never dreamed that Tristan would know about her other love. How had he found out? Had she told him?
No, she wouldn’t do that, would she? No miss talks about a previous love with a current one, do they?
“I know that he was your first love. I know that you loved him and you two were separated when…”
“We were?”
He pulled back. “How far have you read, at least about the great love of your life, Pierre?”
Her face heated to a burn. “I told you that he was the great love of my life?”
Tristan nodded, jealousy still ate at him, but Elaina was his and what she’d shared with Pierre had been a young, innocent love, unlikely to have come to marriage if circumstances had been different.
Elaina resisted the urge to fan herself. “He’d just kissed me behind the stables.”
Tristan grinned and settled back, balancing his tea of cup. “Do keep reading. When you are finished, we’ll discuss Pierre further.”
“I’m not going to read while we are visiting,” she objected.
“Oh, but I insist. Otherwise, we cannot converse on this very subject without you knowing the whole of the story.”
Oh, she was intrigued. She hated that Tristan knew something that she did not. Something that had nothing to do with their marriage. Except, Pierre couldn’t have been that great of a love or she wouldn’t be married to Tristan. Unless, she’d been forced to be parted from him when she returned to England. Except, why couldn’t he have come with her?
“Read, Elaina,” Tristan interrupted her thoughts. “By the way you’re frowning and biting your lip, I know that your mind is conjuring up all kinds of reasons as to why you are with me and not him. As I’m not going to tell you, you’d best read it for yourself.”
She blew out a breath. “You truly are a frustrating gentleman.”
He grinned. “It’s one of the things you love about me.”
That, she highly doubted, but settled back to read what she’d written about Pierre, the supposed great love of her life.
She read of their secret meetings—secret because her grandparents hadn’t approved and had insisted she marry an English gentleman. Their nearly year-long romance and the heartbreak when her grandparents told her that it was time for her to return to England to prepare for her first Season. Pierre was also to join a French regiment, to fight against the English.
Pierre vowed that in time, when he was free, that he’d come to England to find her and she vowed to deny all other gentlemen until Pierre could be hers.
Elaina nearly groaned at the sappiness of it all, but she’d been in love. As much in love as any sixteen or seventeen-year-old could be, especially when it was a forbidden love.
She’d not been happy when she returned to England, and as much as Lucian was forcing her to have a Season, she’d informed him that her heart already belonged to another and that they’d promised that one day they’d likely marry. Much to Lucian’s frustration, Elaina had rebuked every single gentleman who wished to court her. Why should she entertain them when her heart already belonged to another?
The writings from the first Season were of her missing Pierre, the friends that she’d made, the gentlemen who had called on her, and her unreasonable, irritating older brother—Lucian, who refused to understand.
Unfortunately, a year later just as she began to prepare for her second, unnecessary Season, her grandmother had written that Pierre had died in battle.
The loss had been devastating. So much so that Elaina wished to forego the Season entirely, but Lucian would have none of it and dismissed her emotions as being no more than young love that would have never amounted to anything. Except, Elaina fully believed that she and Pierre had enjoyed the rarest form of a grand love. The kind that poets wrote of, even though she didn’t enjoy poetry, but nobody understood or believed her. She never was given the chance to prove to Lucian that he had been wrong.
As she closed the journal, she looked up to Tristan. He was now cradling a glass of brandy instead of the tea. “Where did you get that?”
“I retrieved it from my chamber while you were engrossed in your reading.” He sat forward and lifted the bottle. “I brought a glass for you as well.”
“Thank you.” She hadn’t even been aware that he had left and then returned. Further, he’d shrugged out of his jacket and waistcoat, and his cravat was missing, as if it were the most natural thing in the world to be so disrobed in front of her. Perhaps it was, given they had at one time lived as man and wife.
Elaina accepted the snifter of brandy and looked up at her husband. “I truly told you about Pierre.”
“Yes, and how he had ruined you for all other gentlemen.”
Her eyes widened. “Ruined? I wrote of no such thing, certainly I…”
Tristan chuckled. “Your heart. I should have been more specific.”
“Yes, my heart, I can understand.” Strange, she felt no more connection to P
ierre than she did Tristan. If one loved so deeply, wouldn’t she know?
“We had few secrets, Elaina, but in truth, you informed me that…” He stopped talking and grinned before he chuckled. “The first time that I asked permission to kiss you, you informed me that you’d been kissed before and that it had been quite magnificent and that you’d try not to compare the two so that mine wouldn’t come up lacking.”
Elaina put her face in her hands as mortification overcame her. “Did I really say such a thing to you?”
He laughed. “Yes. It was at the beginning of your third Season.”
“I would have been only twenty then. We did not marry until I was twenty-two, if we’ve only been married six years.”
“You are correct.”
“Did we court for that long?”
“Oh, no. We did not court that year.”
She blinked at him. “But I allowed you to kiss me.”
He chuckled again. “I had begun to show an interest in courting you, but you did not hold the same interest, but had developed a liking for me. I remembered the year before you had nearly put yourself in half mourning and only wore lavender. We just thought it was your preferred pastel and I didn’t learn the reason why until later—that it was because you’d lost Pierre. Your brother, Lucian, is the one who told me when I approached him. He gave his blessing, wished me luck, but warned that you carried a torch for a dead French soldier, and that you’d yet to recover from your infatuation.”
“I hadn’t read so far. I’d just gotten to the part that he’d died, and the heartbreak, and Lucian forcing a second Season when it wasn’t right to participate when one was in such deep mourning.”
He blinked at her. “You really are reading this as a novel, and can’t wait to see what happens next?”
Elaina shrugged. “They are no different than characters in a novel. I don’t feel a connection. Not as I should for them being so important to me.”
“I’m sorry for that,” he said with sincerity. “I truly hope that you remember everything.”
“I do as well.” It was one thing to read about others, but she wanted to know them again, to know herself, and not just read about them as if they were strangers.