“No. Bram, please don’t feel that way. You didn’t know. How could you?”
He sighed. “Just tell me everything now.”
“I’ve told the worst of it, truly. Just one vile, useless treatment after another. In the end, I was so weakened by it all, I truly took ill.”
Frowning intently, he smoothed the hair from her brow. His eyes were the angry green of tempest-swept seas.
“You look so grieved,” she said.
“I am.”
Her heart pinched. Truly? Why would he care about the medical travails of a spinster, years upon years in the past? Surely war had shown him much worse. It had done far worse to him. And yet, something in his serious, battle-ready expression told her he did care. That if it were in any way humanly possible, he would go back in time and impale those surgeons on their own bloody lancets.
She could love him. God help her, she could love him for that alone.
“It’s all right now. I did survive.” She gave him a smile tipped with self-effacing humor, to keep the tale from growing too maudlin. Or perhaps to keep herself from bursting into grateful tears.
“That obstinate streak was to thank, I imagine. No doubt you simply refused to die.”
“Something like that. I don’t remember much of the illness, mercifully. I grew so weak, they sent an express to my father, thinking my time was near. He arrived, took one look at me, bundled me up in his cloak, and had me out of that house within the hour. He was furious.”
“I can believe it. I’m furious now.”
Blinking a moist sheen from her eyes, she cast a glance around the room. “That’s when we moved here, to Summerfield. He bought the place so I could convalesce by the sea. Slowly, I recovered. I didn’t need doctors or surgeons. Just nourishing food and fresh air. Once I was well enough, exercise.”
“So,” he said thoughtfully, running his thumb over her scars, “these are why . . .”
“Yes. They’re why.”
He didn’t ask for further explanation, but she gave it anyway.
“You see, my father did eventually take me to London for my presentation at Court. And just as my cousins had predicted, I didn’t fit in. But while I was standing at the edges of those elegant ballrooms, I realized there were others like me. Girls who, for one reason or another, didn’t square with expectations. Who were in danger of being sent to some dreadful spa to take a ‘cure’ they didn’t need. I began inviting them here for the summer. Just a few friends at first, but the number has grown each year. Mrs. Nichols is glad for the steady custom at the inn.”
“And you turned your own talents to healing.”
“I take after my father, I suppose. He’s an inventor. All those surgeons’ failed experiments made me curious to find better methods.”
Again, he traced his fingertips over the crosshatch of scars. So many of them, from the razor-thin, superficial lines to the thick, gnarled evidence of a formidable fleam—a wooden implement nearly as thick as her wrist. She still shuddered to recall it.
“Damned butchers,” he muttered. “I’ve seen veterinarians tap horses’ arteries with less injury incurred.”
“The marks would have been fainter if I’d struggled less. Do they . . .” She resisted the urge to look away. “Do they disgust you?”
In response, he pressed a kiss to her scarred wrist. Then another. Emotion swelled in her breast.
“Do you think me weaker for them?” she asked.
He cursed in denial. “These have nothing to do with weakness, Susanna. They’re only proof of your strength.”
“Well. I don’t think you weaker for your scars, either.” She stared deep into his eyes, willing him to absorb the meaning of her words. “No one would.”
“It’s not the same,” he argued, shaking his head. “It’s not the same. Your wounds can be hidden. They don’t cause you to limp, or fall, or lag behind those you’re meant to lead.”
Perhaps not. But she was only just beginning to understand, her scars had held her back in different ways. She’d been afraid, for so long, to come this close to a man. To let the gloves come off, and take the chance of being hurt again.
“There are differences, to be sure,” she whispered, drawing him down. “But I do know how it feels to fight a long, slow recovery. To feel confined in your own body, so frustrated with its limitations. And I know what it is to crave closeness, Bram. You don’t have to attack me every time you wish to be touched. To be held.”
She stretched her arms around him. He lay silent atop her, and she knew a moment of fear. She wanted to give him the same comfort he’d given her, but she was afraid of doing everything wrong. With trembling fingers, she stroked a light caress down his spine.
“Yes.” He exhaled against her neck. “Yes, touch me. Just like that.”
She caressed him with both hands now, covering his back with smooth, even strokes.
“Susanna?” he said, after minutes had passed.
“Yes.”
“Feel strange. Can’t lift my head.”
“It’s the drugs. They’re taking you under now.”
“Su-san-naa,” he half whispered, half sang, in a slurred, drunken tone. “Susanna fair with brazen hair.” As she laughed, he pressed his brow to her pounding pulse. “That’s the perfect word for you, ‘brazen.’ Do you know why? Because your hair is like molten bronze. All gold and red and glowing. And you’re bold and fearless, too.”
“I have so many fears.” Her heart was thumping like a hare’s.
“You don’t fear me. That first day, when we met. Those few seconds after the blast . . . you were under me, just like this. Soft. Warm. The perfect place to land. And you trusted me. I could see it in your eyes. You trusted me to guard you.”
“You kissed me.”
“Couldn’t help myself. So pretty.”
“Hush.” She turned her head to kiss him quiet. Her heart couldn’t take any more. The faint, drugging taste of laudanum lingered on his lips. “Just rest.”
“Would have garroted those surgeons,” he muttered. “Your relations, too. Never would have let them hurt you.”
She couldn’t help but smile at his sweet promises of violence, offered up like a posy of carnivorous blooms.
“I suppose they did mean to help,” she said. “My relations, I mean. They just didn’t know better. Looking back, I know I presented a challenge. I was so awkward and stubborn. Not a ladylike bone in my body. They used to set me at copying pages from this horrid, insipid book. Mrs. Worthington’s Wisdom for Young Ladies. Oh, Bram. You would laugh at it so.”
He was quiet for a long moment. Then his chest rumbled—not with a laugh, but with a loud, resonant snore.
She laughed at herself, and at the same time hot tears spilled from her eyes. In his sleep, he flexed a protective arm around her. His embrace felt so right.
Perhaps she could trust him to guard her. He was strong and principled, and she had no doubt he would risk his life to keep her safe, in body. But he couldn’t make any promises to guard her heart.
And in her heart, she feared she was already falling. Tumbling headlong toward a world of pain.
Fourteen
“Ouch.”
Susanna released the rose blossom and stared at the tiny drop of welling blood on her finger. Reflexively, she stuck it in her mouth, soothing the hurt.
“Kate,” she called across the garden, “would you finish the roses for me? I’ve forgotten my gloves this morning.”
Incredible. She never forgot her gloves.
She left the roses and moved to the herbal bed, gathering great fistfuls of thorn-free lavender and snipping them free with shears. Soon her basket was heaped to overflowing with fragrant stalks. And still, she kept piling them higher.
Whenever she tried to still them, her hands began to tremble. Maybe because they were still heavy with the feel of his skin, his hair.
At this very moment, Bram remained asleep upstairs on the upper floor of Summerfield. Meanwhile, down here in the garden, Susanna was forced to keep up the Wednesday habit of hosting the Spindle Cove ladies. Gardening first, tea after. Normally, she appreciated both their company and their help. But today, she would have far rather been alone with her thoughts.
Because her thoughts were all of him. They made her blush. They made her feel uncorseted, exposed. They made her sigh—aloud, for heaven’s sake. Ladies clustered all around her, pulling weeds, cutting blooms, sketching bumblebees and blossoms. But when Susanna knelt beside the feverfew and let her gaze go unfocused, her thoughts climbed straight upstairs.
She saw him. Dark, powerful limbs, covered with even darker hair, all tangled among the white, crisp sheets. Her sleeping beast. In her mind’s eye, she approached the bed, eased onto the mattress beside him. Stroked his cropped, velvet hair. Kissed the notch carved between his throat and clavicle. Heat raced along her skin, gathered between her thighs.
And then he woke, capturing her with his strong arms and that compassionate green gaze. His heavy weight atop her was a blessing, not a burden or a threat.
Susanna fair, he said. You were the perfect place to land.
“Miss Finch. Miss Finch!”
She shook herself, coming back into the present. “Yes, Mrs. Lange?” How long had the poor woman been trying to catch her attention?
“Did you want me to divide these lilies today? Or shall we leave them for another week?”
“Oh. Whatever you think best.”
From beneath her straw bonnet, the other woman gave her an impatient look. “It is your garden, Miss Finch. And you always have an opinion.”
“What’s wrong, dear?” Mrs. Highwood asked. “It doesn’t seem like you to be so distracted.”
“I know. It’s not. Forgive me.”
“It’s a lovely day,” Kate said. “I can’t imagine what has you so out of sorts.”
“It’s not a what.” Minerva looked up from her sketchbook. “It’s a who.”
Susanna gave her a warning look. “Minerva, I’m sure you don’t need—”
“Oh, I’m sure I do. And you mustn’t be ashamed to talk about it, Miss Finch. You needn’t suffer in silence, and the ladies ought to know. They may need to protect themselves.” She closed her sketchbook and turned to the assembled ladies. “It’s Lord Rycliff, the vile man. He did not hit his head when he made that dive yesterday. He survived the fall with no harm, and then he attacked Miss Finch in the cove.”
“Minerva.” Susanna put her hand to her temple. “He did not attack me.”
“He did!” She turned to the others. “When I came upon them, they were both drenched to the skin. Poor Miss Finch was shaking like a leaf, and he had his hands . . . Well, let’s just say he had his hands in places they oughtn’t be. She tried to fend him off, but he wasn’t having any of it.”
I like it when you snipe at me. A thrill raced through her at the memory.
“It’s fortunate I came along when I did,” Minerva said. “And that I’d made such a good find of weighty specimens that morning.”
Fortunate? Perhaps it was. Lord only knew what liberties Susanna would have allowed him without Minerva’s interruption. And if those drugs hadn’t carried him off to sleep last night . . .
She’d stayed an hour in his arms, unable to leave. Stroking his strong back and shoulders and listening to his gentle, rumbling snore. When she’d sensed herself drifting off to sleep too, she’d extricated herself from the bed and returned to her own room. Watching over a wounded man as he slept . . . that much was a healer’s duty. Sleeping with him . . . now that was the privilege of a wife.
And she wasn’t his wife, she reminded herself. She had no business sharing a bed—or a cove, or an armory—with the man. No matter how passionate he proved her to be, or how exhilarated his caresses made her feel, or how sweetly he kissed her damaged wrists. If she gave into fleeting pleasure with him, she could lose everything she’d worked so hard to build.