Chapter Twenty-One
“Are you well enough to go out?” Edmund whispered solicitously, stroking Rose’s hair back from her brow.
His wife cuddled up to him and took a possessive grip on his middle, draping herself against him. “I see why the ancient couples hid away for a month, my love. They didn’t want anyone to interfere with this precious time.”
“I don’t have to go to Owens.”
“You must, and I’ll go with you. I’m well enough to go out for a short visit. But then I would rather we return to our rooms.”
Edmund tried not to sound like a giddy schoolboy, shoving down a giggle of pure delight. Rose loved him. Wanted him. Did not call him clumsy or weak or even rusty from lack of use and long celibacy. There were no complaints between them—only enthusiasm.
“Edmund. You are staring at me again,” Rose blushed and pulled the bedclothes higher.
“You told me you were unskilled.”
“I am! I was!” Rose looked horrified, and he hastened to soothe her.
“Then you are naturally gifted in everything you do—and I cannot wait until you do everything again,” he teased, running a finger over her chin, lifting it until her smiling lips received his kiss.
“SHOULD I NOT COME INas well? If there are buckles and straps on the brace, perhaps I should learn to do them so that I may assist my husband,” Rose’s voice was a hoarse whisper in the quiet of the doctor’s surgery. She supposed that all their other patients had gone by now.
Edmund and the rather menacing Mr. Thomas looked at her in shock. Dr. Owens beamed and held out his hand with a chuckle. “A pity more women of your class are not so brave, madam. They are too squeamish to see the brace—or more accurately, they cannot bear to see their husbands in pain. It makes them seem weak. Some women have no head for it.”
Rose darted a look at Edmund. His face was taut and his smile gone. If it weren’t for the agitated rise and fall of his chest, he could have been made of alabaster.
“Walters is down with the cab, with the altered trousers if we should require them,” Edmund’s voice was a rusty rasp. “Mr. Thomas, will you please go and request that he come in? He will assist me. Not my wife.”
Rose bit back a protest. It would make Edmund look like a weak husband indeed if his wife defied him. She meekly hung her head but reached for his hand. “Of course. What my husband says is best, gentlemen. Only, please do know that in my eyes, nothing could ever make my husband weak. Did not Nelson lose an arm, as well as the sight in his eye? Was not Milton blind? What about Joshua Reynolds, the first president of the Royal Academy? He was deaf.” She swallowed down the tears rising in her throat. “Dr. Owens, surely you must know that physical infirmities test the mettle of a man, not diminish it. I pray you tell those other wives that their husbands are heroic, fighting a battle their own body wages against them.” Rose turned to go, her heart hurting, afraid she would give way. After the intimacies they had shared last night, she thought she had shown Edmund how deeply she trusted him.
Apparently, he did not feel the same.
“I will fetch Mr. Walters and wait in the cab,” she murmured.
A hand snatched out and entwined long, slender fingers between hers. Edmund pulled her back to stand beside him.
“Sometimes I am very foolish, gentlemen. I forget that my wife is like no other. You must use her as an example, Dr. Owens, of how a wife may best support her husband.”
“I shall indeed.” Dr. Owens opened the surgery door, revealing a contraption of three leather straps and buckles and two slender metal rods. “Let’s begin your first fitting, and you must return on Monday.”
“I’m ready,” Edmund said, striding ahead. Instead of leaning on his cane, he leaned upon Rose, and she had never felt prouder to be at his side.
EDMUND GROANED IN RELIEFthat evening, undoing the three bands of torture that were wrapped snugly around his leg. He had suffered with the new brace pushing his ankle straight and pinching his knee and calf for five hours. The doctor advised him to begin wearing it only for a few hours at a time, and he had complied, managing to bear the discomfort and pain long enough to take Rose shopping for a new frock and to call in for a tea given by a botanist colleague of Mr. Lycombe’s.
Now, night had fallen, and so had his reserves of strength. He sat moodily in the chair by the fire, sipping on a brandy and shivering as waves of pain swept over him. It made him sick to his stomach. The urge to vomit was burning the back of his throat—or perhaps that was the brandy.
“May I help, Edmund?”
“There’s nothing you can do,” he said shortly. He trusted Rose, but he could see that her life with him was about to change. For the next few weeks, he would be terse and weak, eager to sit down and hide, shunning all company, looking for an escape in his ledgers and lets.
“I could rub your leg, especially around the joints. Dr. Owens has given me a pamphlet on rubbing and friction to increase the range of motion and aid in circulation of the blood after surgery.” Rose tugged at her dress, and once it was off over her head, she plopped herself down at his feet.
The sight of his wife in petticoats and corset temporarily made him forget his pain. “You mustn’t touch me,” he said sharply when Rose reached for his leg.
“You could take those off first,” she said softly, lightly fingering the hem of his trousers. “We both could. We could get ready for bed, Edmund.”
He swallowed hard. The joy they had just discovered would be ripped away so quickly. “I can’t tonight. It’s too painful.”
Rose smiled up at him. “I don’t mind waiting. It was so very worth the wait the first time.”
His dear, beautiful temptation. He yielded to her again. “Very well. We’ll get ready for bed.”
“And you’ll let me rub your ankle, at least? If I promise to be very gentle and careful?”
“Yes, yes. I can refuse you nothing.”
“I am a very wicked woman, but I will admit I’m glad of it.” She rose to her knees and put her elbows on the arms of his chair, a saucy look on her face. “Nothing hurts your lips, Edmund?”
“They work fine.” He smiled, bending to kiss her.
HER SMOOTH, PERFECThands rubbed the reddened indents on his leg, dancing gently over scars and divots in his skin. As she did, she talked relentlessly about the lecture on carnivorous plants that would be given next week at the Royal Horticultural Society.
At last, she yawned, sinking down on the bed beside him. In the glow of the firelight, Edmund watched her slender, shapely leg curl atop his, almost protectively.
She sees no weakness in me. No ugliness.
Words tumbled free. “Do you love me, Rose?”
Her answer was swift and decisive, if a bit startled. “Why, yes. With all my heart. I love you deeply, Edmund. I feel as if I could keep talking about how much I have grown to love you for hours and days, but I won’t.” She bit her lip. “Why?”
“Because I love you, Rose. With all of my heart. I have for months and been unsure of how to say it, unsure if I should. Last night, I called you my love and thought perhaps you would tell me your feelings so that I could confess mine... But you did not.”
“Mama says a husband must tell his wife first,” she whispered.
Edmund groaned. “Your dear mother will be the very death of me. Whatever advice she has given you about marriage, I beg of you to reconsider it. I was waiting for you to speak first, for fear that if you did not return my love, it would create tension between us.”
“Oh. Oh! We are fools, Edmund.” Rose laughed against his chest.
“Aren’t we?” he hugged her close. “I love you, Rose.”
“I love you!”
Edmund buried his face in her hair, happy tears suddenly springing to his eyes. “Rose?”
“Yes, my love?”
“I know that I would surely be stiff and clumsy tonight.” He stopped there, waiting for Rose to step up and support him, as she unfailingly had since their first meeting.
“Is that so? Well, I know that I will love every moment of it.” Rose giggled, pale, perfect leg wrapping firmly around his scarred one.