Marrying The Rebellious Miss

Chapter Five

There was a pounding on the door, at last. Beatrice snapped into action, snatching up the poker from the hearth. She took up her position beside the door as another pound came, this time followed with a voice. ‘Bea, open up, it’s me.’ Relief made her clumsy. She dropped the poker, fumbled with the bar, dropping it, too, in her haste and excitement.

At first, relief at seeing him safe overwhelmed the details. Then, she saw them: the sleeve of his shirt ripped shoulder to wrist, the bruise along his jaw, the cuts on his cheek. ‘You’re hurt!’ The words were entirely inadequate. Of course he was hurt. He’d just fought how many men on her behalf? She tugged him inside and struggled with the bar, lifting it into place. There was suddenly so much to do.

‘Come, sit down. I’ll heat some of the washing water.’ She would have paid dearly for a kettle just now, to be back in her little cottage kitchen where she’d have all she needed to hand. She settled for wedging the ewer among the coals and the towels he’d used to dry off with earlier.

‘Are you hurt anywhere else?’ She worked his shirt off, desperate to see the damage beneath the slashed sleeve, hoping there was none. ‘Are you cut?’ She examined the arm, looking for signs of injury, but finding none.

‘No, I was too fast for him.’ Preston grinned and she could hear the cocky pride in his voice.

‘Don’t tell me you were downstairs enjoying all this while I was up here worried sick,’ Bea scolded. ‘I was imagining all sorts of horrid things befalling you.’

Preston chuckled, wincing from the effort. ‘Oh, ouch!’

Bea gave him a stern look. ‘Ribs?’ She hoped not. That could be serious. She’d far rather treat a knife scratch. She ran her hands down his torso, feeling for any sign of a cracked or broken rib. The men down there had been big enough to deliver damage. He flinched where she pressed. ‘I think they’re just bruised. I can wrap them for you.’ She was already running through possible makeshift bandages. She had a petticoat in her luggage she could sacrifice.

Preston shook his head. ‘I’ll be fine. I won’t have you ripping up clothes on my account.’

‘It’s the least I can do.’ Beatrice wrapped a towel about her hand and reached for the warmed ewer. She poured water into the basin and soaked a cloth. ‘I saved some of the cold water for your face. That bruise will hurt, it needs cold, but your ribs will appreciate the heat.’ She knelt and pressed the folded cloth to his ribs, realising too late what work and concern had obscured. She had stripped Preston Worth to the skin, had put her hands all over him and was now kneeling before him in what could be taken as a rather intimate position under other circumstances. Her body didn’t seem to know the difference, although it should have.

It wasn’t the first time she’d seen his bare chest. She’d seen him shirtless countless times before, during the long summers of their youth. But this chest was nothing like the chest he’d sported as a slender adolescent. This was the chest of a man blooded in battle. Her finger traced the scar left by the wound this autumn. ‘Roan?’ She shuddered at the thought of how close the blade had come to doing permanent damage.

‘Yes, but the stitches are all Liam’s.’ Preston laughed.

Bea grimaced, not sharing the humour. She ran her hands down his torso, feeling for further injury, the smooth expanse of muscle beneath her fingers as it tapered into narrowing planes and a lean waist—a waist she happened to be eye level with. She made the mistake of rocking back on her heels, which forced her to sit a little lower, putting her eye level with something far more intimate than his waistline; a man becoming aroused. Beatrice cleared her throat. ‘Here, hold the compress in place.’ She rose, suddenly needing to keep busy. She should not be staring at Preston’s crotch. Preston shifted carefully in the chair, he, too, feeling the embarrassment of an awkward moment.

Bea rummaged through her luggage, talking too fast. ‘I have some herbs that can help with swelling.’

Preston cocked a curious eyebrow. ‘Do you, now?’

She flushed uncontrollably. Swelling was an unfortunate choice of words just now. ‘Swelling, as in bruising,’ Beatrice clarified, finding the packet she wanted.

‘Of course.’ Preston’s response was far too benign to actually be harmless. ‘What other kind of swelling could you have possibly meant?’

Beatrice chose to ignore the comment. ‘This is calamine and elm powder.’ She dumped a bit of the dried herbs into some warm water and stirred until it was pasty. ‘I’m making you a poultice. I think we’ll wrap your ribs after all. You’ll be more comfortable.’

She wouldn’t be, though. Getting the poultice on him would require close contact while she tied strips of cloth. She probably should have thought that one through a little better. Preston sniffed the air as she wound the strips about him. ‘Calamine smells like mint,’ she said before he could ask.

He lifted an arm to help her with the binding. ‘And the lavender?’ He breathed in again. ‘I think that must be you. Lavender smells...peaceful.’

‘Not like me at all, then.’ Beatrice laughed. Peaceful wasn’t a word she’d use to describe herself. She was outspoken, restless, sometimes spontaneous, and as a result sometimes quick to impatience.

‘You are more peaceful now than I remember you, though,’ Preston said as she tied off the last of the strips and stepped back to check her handiwork. ‘I think motherhood becomes you.’

Most likely, he meant the remark empirically, but the hour was late, the day trying and the evening more so. Such events tinged their small room with an undeniable intimacy as they looked at one another, perhaps seeing a little more of who they’d become: the mother, the gentleman warrior. Beatrice picked up her supplies, stifling a yawn.

‘Get ready for bed, Bea. You’re exhausted. I’ll take the chair tonight,’ Preston offered, saving her the awkwardness of bringing up the subject of sleeping arrangements.

‘We should share the bed.’ Beatrice disappeared behind the dressing screen with her nightgown, suddenly self-conscious. ‘With those ribs, you need to lie down.’ Why was it she could nurse a baby in front of him, but was nervous about stepping out in her nightgown? The nightgown was quite a modest garment, loose and flowing, the cotton thick enough not to be revealing in the firelight, at least she hoped it wouldn’t be.

He was going to protest. She could tell by the shifting of his body on the other side of the screen. He was thinking over the best way to argue. She couldn’t have that. She was going to have to take charge and insist. Beatrice stepped from behind the screen and walked over to the bed, pulling back the covers with the same efficiency she’d relied on all night. ‘Preston, don’t be ridiculous about this. You’re hurt and we’ve been friends for ages. We can surely survive a night together.’

She didn’t worry they’d actually do anything. There would be no forgoing of common sense. That wasn’t what she was concerned about. She was concerned her mind would never be the same—that she wouldn’t be able to look at him the same way. All neutrality would be lost and she needed that neutrality to survive this week. What would happen without it?

Preston nodded, perhaps recognising his ribs needed the bed more than his gentleman’s pride needed to be assuaged. ‘I’ll keep my trousers on, but I’m going to need help with my boots.’

‘Of course.’ She felt foolish all of the sudden. She’d forgotten about his boots. She knelt and helped him tug them off. Then she crawled into bed, trying to ignore the sounds of a man going through his bedtime rituals behind the screen. She had not realised intimacy came in so many varieties until this trip.

Preston lay down on the other side of the bed and turned down the light. The gesture swamped her with the sensation that this was what it must be like to sleep beside a husband every night, to feel the bed take his weight, to hear his body shift as he got comfortable. She didn’t know.

‘Bea, are you sure?’ Preston asked from his side. ‘I don’t want you to think...’

She completed his thoughts. ‘Think what? That you’d take advantage of me because I’m not a virgin? That you don’t have to behave honourably because I’ve shared a bed with a man before? I don’t think that, Preston. The man who fought for me downstairs is not a man I’d associate with those behaviours.’ She paused and then plunged ahead softly. ‘My lover never took me to bed, at least not in the literal sense.’

It seemed important that Preston knew that.

‘We were never even naked together.’

She hadn’t told May that in their long months at the cottage. She’d seldom spoken of her lover, but here in the dark with Preston the words were easy, perhaps because telling him these things didn’t require a name and Preston wouldn’t push for one.

‘It was all furtive lovemaking in haylofts and barns,’ she said. The kind of lovemaking done with skirts up and trousers down against a wall, clothing a mere yank or twitch away from being righted—just in case. It was just one more way Alton had failed her. She’d given him everything and he treated the gift, treated her, as something of negligible value, to be disposed of when he was finished.

Preston’s hand found hers among the bedclothes. ‘Did he force you, May?’

‘Will you be disappointed if I say no?’ Bea said quietly. Her parents had wanted it to be force. Rape was somehow a viable explanation for what had happened, whereas having consensual sex out of wedlock was not.

‘No.’ Preston sighed in the dark. ‘I’m glad you weren’t forced. I wouldn’t want you hurt or coerced. But I am sorry it wasn’t a better experience.’

Should it have been? Better? The question was on the tip of her tongue, but she held it back, the question too leading to ask even in the dark. Still, the thought stayed with her as she drifted towards sleep. Admittedly, sex had not lived up to her preconceived ideas and she did have some, not only from the flowery allusions found in books, but from more scientific experiment. She could give herself some modicum of pleasure and that discovery had led her to believe sex would render an even larger pleasure when shared.

It hadn’t. Instead, sex had been messy, sticky and quick. Thank goodness for the last bit because barn walls often had splinters, hay was prickly, and one’s legs had a tendency to cramp up if they were wrapped around someone else’s waist too long. But there had been none of the troubadours’ pleasures or the scientists’ hypotheses she’d come to expect.

Had she missed something? Or was it that the pleasure was for the man alone? Her lover had seemed quite pleased afterwards. Science was primarily written by men, after all. Perhaps they had simply not considered the woman. Perhaps lonely pleasure was all she should expect. But, what if she was wrong? What if Preston knew something she didn’t? He’d certainly have more experience to draw from.

She twisted on to her side, contemplating Preston in the dark. The lucky man was already asleep. Preston was fast becoming a repository of secret talents. First, the dazzling display of boxing skills and knife work tonight and now this, the hint of sensual, forbidden knowledge. What sort of knowledge lay just six inches away? What did Preston know that she didn’t? That particular speculation was scientific curiosity. It was a tempting concept, but not nearly as wicked as the next: what would it be like to test the hypothesis of pleasure with him? Would it be worth breaking her rules? Bea rolled on to her back and sighed. It was a hypothetical debate she held only with herself. Such an occasion would never present itself. Preston was a man of honour. Even if he did entertain such notions, he would never act on them. Still, it was a titillating thought to fall asleep on.

* * *

The baby woke him in the deadest part of night, somewhere around three and not for the first time. Beatrice had fed him a little over an hour ago. Surely the baby wasn’t hungry again? Beside him, Preston felt Beatrice stir. She mumbled something incoherent in her half-sleep. That decided it. ‘Hush, go back to sleep, I’ve got him,’ Preston whispered, although his body protested at the movement and the idea of getting up. How did she do it night after night? They both didn’t need to be awake. He would look after the baby until it became obvious he couldn’t.

Preston swung stiffly out of bed, careful of his one side where his ribs hurt. He bent awkwardly to pick the baby up, found his way to the chair and settled in, Matthew cradled against his good side. ‘Can’t sleep, little man?’ he asked softly. ‘Me neither.’ He’d dozed off and on, sleep eluding him in part because of the waking child, but also because his bruises made certain positions uncomfortable. He turned up the lamp enough to see Matthew’s face in the dark, surprised to find the baby smiling up at him as if it were morning and not night. Suddenly, being sleepless was worth it to have these precious, quiet, smiling minutes alone. Perhaps that was how Bea did it, night after night of interrupted sleep, because these magic moments waited.

Preston smiled, too. ‘Well, since we’re up, we might as well have a story.’

He took a deep breath and began, choosing one of his favourite from childhood, an old French tale called Drake’s-tail, about a little duck who believed one could never have too many friends. He told the tale from memory, his mind half-concentrating on the words while his thoughts wandered down dangerous paths to tread when late-night magic was at its peak.

The journey was coming to a close. Just a couple of days more remained. He was going to miss this; holding Matthew in the carriage, playing with him on the picnic blanket when they stopped, carrying him upstairs and kissing him goodnight in the evenings, watching him sleep.

He finished the tale. ‘The people chose the little duck with the loudest quack to be their king and everyone lived happily ever after.’ He looked down into Matthew’s slack little face—the baby was asleep. His grandmother’s estate was an hour’s ride away, hardly an insurmountable distance, but it was apart—too far to be part of little rituals like this.

Even now, his throat felt a bit thick at the thought of not being there three mornings from now when Matthew would wake, happy and eager for the day, that adorable little smile on his face, that gurgling laugh on his cupid lips. How had that level of attachment happened so quickly? Somehow, this little fellow had grabbed hold of his heartstrings and wouldn’t let go.

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