Chapter Fifteen
“You don’t know. What, in bloody hell, am I supposed to do with that, Georgina? I’m half out of my mind wanting you and you’re…I don’t understand any of this.”
Half lying atop Teddy in the middle of the day on her sofa in her bright and sunny room, Georgina had never been so conflicted.
She loved knowing Teddy wanted her, and hated knowing their relationship was a lie.
She loved being held by Teddy, and hated herself for allowing the embrace at his inevitable expense.
And as convenient as it might be to allow it, she could not abide him thinking he’d done something to earn her rejection, when the truth was he was the most marvelous man in the world and any woman would be lucky to have him for a husband.
So she dug a deeper hole to keep him safe—from her. It cut to the bone.
“Teddy, I do want you. But I can’t be with you because you don’t remember me as your wife.”
He jammed a hand through his hair and sent the thick chestnut waves into wild disarray. “But we are married, and I do know,” he said through his teeth. “I’ve seen the document with my own eyes.”
She shook her head. “No. Don’t you see?”
He scowled at her. “No. I don’t. Bloody hell, Georgina. All this time, this is what’s kept you at arm’s length?”
Tears filled her eyes.
“No.” He jolted upright, dislodging her and holding up one hand, palm out. “No, please, not that.”
Having tumbled onto the cushions thanks to his hasty retreat, she scampered to sit up, feeling foolish and awkward. She scrubbed her fingers over her eyelids and ordered herself not to cry. “You don’t remember and I don’t know if you still feel the same.”
The sound of a masculine throat clearing from the vicinity of the open doorway hit her like a bucket of cold water. Good Lord, they’d been minutes from being caught frolicking on the sofa by Mr. Danvers. What had she been thinking?
She’d been thinking she wanted Teddy’s attention. She’d been thinking she wanted his kiss. She’d been thinking she wanted him, period.
She glanced over to see the large man standing in the threshold, a tea tray in his hands, pointedly not looking toward the two of them.
“Good afternoon. Lord Arlington’s tea, as requested.”
Georgina opened to mouth to thank him, but Teddy forestalled her. “Ah, Mr. Danvers,” he said dryly. “You are ever so mindful of seeing to your duties.”
Mr. Danvers turned his dark stare on Teddy. “I aim to please. Where shall I leave it?”
Teddy regarded Georgina, before replying. “My chamber, if you don’t mind. My audience with my wife is at an end.”
Frustrated, annoyed, perplexed, and still bloody aroused, Teddy waited for Danvers to depart before he swiped up his sketch book, which had landed on the floor sometime during his and Georgina’s interlude, sent his wife-who-didn’t-feel-like-a-wife a vexed glare, and stalked from the chamber without another word.
The woman was impossible. Stubborn as a mule.
She was also intoxicatingly sweet, incredibly feminine, and utterly irresistible. Except he had to resist her thanks to her edict stating that because he had amnesia he must forgo the pleasure of her embrace.
It was almost enough to make him take his bloody medicine to forget for a few hours.
She was punishing him for an ailment he could not control. She was taking the best thing life had to offer him and withholding it, and damn it, it wasn’t right. So he refused to go downstairs the remainder of the day, even opting to take his dinner in his chamber.
It was only in the dead of night, lying awake, staring at the ceiling that his temper gave way enough for him to see her point.
They had not lived as man and wife, and contrary to her statement that he had not performed some heinous act, the fact remained, according to her, that they had become estranged during the war.
For some reason, that struck a chord of truth in him.
She’d also said she expected him to complete his tour a year ago, yet he had opted to remain in the fight.
And lest he forget, her brother had not condoned their relationship. There would be a good reason for that. There had to be.
Lastly, they’d eloped, mere hours before he departed England.
So, yes, it did stand to reason she did not feel married. Because he had not done a very good job at being a good husband.
He flung off the bedcovers and walked, naked, to the open balcony doors to gaze out at the sea. Its cresting white caps glowed silver in the light of the moon, reminding him of Georgina’s molten silver eyes, so often fixed on him.
What would a good husband do to earn his wife’s favor?
Certainly he wouldn’t sulk as Teddy had chosen to do, today.
He’d woo her. But how? How to make a wife feel cherished and safe and fully married?
When Danvers arrived, bright and early with his morning tea and shaving implements, Teddy greeted him with a warm welcome. “Danvers, just the man I wanted to see.”
Danvers hesitated in the threshold a moment, as if contemplating leaving the rolling cart and fleeing. “Why do I get the feeling you have something in mind beyond your daily shave and medicinal tea?”
“I haven’t the vaguest notion. Do come in.”
With a leery eye, he complied.
Teddy took his usual seat in preparation for his shave. “Danvers, my wife tells me she hired you on thanks to her very good friend’s husband’s recommendation.”
A rare, brief smile flickered over the man’s broad mouth. “Colonel Lord Culver. Yes.”
“She claims you taught many of the troops to read and write, is that correct?”
Teddy helped himself to a cup of perfectly prepared English tea and waited while Danvers took his time unfolding the white cloth containing the straight edge blade, sharpening strap, and brush.
“Aye. What of it?” he finally replied.
Teddy sent the butler a placid smile. He was not going to allow the irascible man to get his goat this time. “How about this, rather than me, pulling out thread by thread, of your undoubtedly colorful past, you simply tell me. Who are you, or rather, who were you, previous to the war?”
Danvers frowned. “It’s a long tale.” He settled a white towel on the headrest of Teddy’s chair.
“I have time.” Closing his eyes, he reclined in preparation for his shave, then hissed in a breath when Danvers lay a scalding towel over his face. He could swear the man meant it to hurt.
“Very well, milord. I hale from Scotland.”
Teddy had worked that much out thanks to the man’s accent, one which seemed to have faded. That told him Danvers had been in England for some time.
“My father, whom I admired greatly was a Presbyterian minister. I decided to follow in his footsteps.” The blade slid over the strap.
Back and forth. Back and forth. Then the butler peeled the towel from Teddy’s face and began slathering on the prewarmed shaving cream.
“After receiving my education at the University of Edinburgh, I went to seminary and was ordained in the Church of Scotland in my late 20’s.
For all my admiration of my father, we had our differences.
Where he was traditional, I had gained some—as he phrased it—unorthodox ideals during my time at university, which bled into my sermons, I fear.
Facing censure for voicing dangerous opinions, I was forced to resign. ”
He began meticulously running the blade over Ted’s cheek, with short, neat strokes.
“When my father passed, I moved to Ireland for a time, and served in a small Anglican chapel, but conflicts with the established Anglican authority left me unable to secure a permanent post.”
Somehow, Teddy had no trouble seeing the hard-nosed butler as one who bucked authority. But he kept the thought to himself. The man was holding a blade to his throat, after all.
“The long and short of it is this: By the time I settled in England, I was barred from Church of England pulpits, and viewed as a suspicious dissenter in Scotland. I was overeducated yet underskilled for a life of labor. Thus, I decided to join the fight against Napoleon—and ended up in Colonel Culver’s regiment. ”
“The so-called Iron Lion,” Ted stated as Danvers rinsed the blade.
He appeared pleased. “Oh, you know of him?”
“Georgina shared the moniker.”
He nodded and resumed shaving. “At some point, the colonel made note of my education and set me to act as a secretary of sorts. I read orders aloud, wrote correspondence, and later, with his approval, spent some of the downtime between battles teaching letters to illiterate troops.”
“You didn’t seek a chaplain’s commission?”
He shook his head, and Teddy saw the regret he tried to hide lurking in the depths of his dark eyes.
“On campaign in the Peninsula, when no chaplain was attached, I was sometimes called upon to read Scripture, conduct prayers, and even say a few words over the dead.
But I never sought to do so in an official capacity.
“When Colonel Culver returned to England at the downsizing of troops, I followed his lead. I won’t say I had an easy time of it.” Having finished the shave, he took another damp towel and mopped Teddy’s face.
Not wishing his skin scrubbed off, Teddy lifted a hand and took over the job as Danvers completed his tale.
“I was never so surprised when the colonel found me on a street corner, where I was, in essence, begging for my dinner. He walked right up to me and said, ‘Danvers, you are coming with me.’ I did.”
“And now here you are.”
“Here I am.”
His face had developed a ruddy cast, which Ted opted not to point out. He took his time, storing away the tools.
“Thank you—for telling me. I have a favor to ask. Actually, two.”
“To ask, or to order?” His gruff tone was back in place.
“I’m asking, Danvers.”
He seemed to hesitate, as if he did not know how to take Ted’s tone of respect. “I’m listening.”
Ted looked Danvers in the eye. “You said something the other day that seemed to me an indication you knew me. But when I asked, you claimed we’d not met.”
“Because we hadn’t. I knew you by reputation.”
“May I inquire what you heard?”
The butler folded his arms over his chest and rested a hip on the arm of the adjacent armchair. “You may or may not be aware that talk spreads between regiments—about the officers in command of their lives.”
He considered that. “I am aware.”
“Certain officers were known for being cowardly, being generous with the lives of the men in their charge while protecting their own hides. Others, like my commanding officer, Colonel Lord Culver, were known for their bravery. He didn’t come by his moniker for nothing.”
Ted nodded his understanding.
“You were like that. Sharp, courageous, unwilling to put your men in a situation you would not face alongside them. But…with you, there was talk of something more.”
Somehow he’d known there had to be a catch. He wasn’t a good man like Culver, like this Iron Lion. He’d heard the echoes of his father’s words too often now to be in any doubt. Irregular. Dissolute. Disappointment. No sort of leader.
“Such as?”
“Word was, at some point, you began asking for the most dangerous assignments. Especially ones calling for a solo actor. You’d go in, and against all odds, you’d somehow always walk away with your neck intact.
They said you had more luck than smarts and some wondered if you’d perhaps come unhinged—not that it caused your men to doubt you.
No, indeed, they would walk into Hell for you because you did so for them, again and again. ”
Ted did not know what to say. This was not what he’d anticipated hearing.
“Makes a man wonder,” Danvers murmured.
“What’s that?”
“Why would a married man, with a wife waiting for him back home, risk life and limb, time and again?”
Leave it to Danvers to hit a bull’s eye in one shot. “I couldn’t say. But that brings me to my second ask.”