Chapter 17
The wintry sun poured in through the small window and lit Matilda’s hair.
Christian spread the curling ends over her freckled shoulder and watched as the sun turned the tumbled mass from red to glinting copper.
It was cold outside—November in Northumberland—but he did not feel it.
Matilda lay sleep-warm beside him and the flame-bright strands of her hair tangled round his hand.
She had not yet awakened. He touched one freckle on her shoulder and then another. He thought he might count them. He could spend all day here, Matilda naked in his bed, enumerating every freckle on her body with his finger and the tip of his tongue.
If he lost count, he could start again. He would not mind.
They’d woken once in the night. He’d found himself wrapped around her, just as he’d been in the inn, only this time he did not pull away. He’d touched the slope of her belly, then emitted a frankly embarrassing whimper of pleasure when she’d pushed her delicious arse back against his arousal.
She’d felt his erection, of course, and made a sweet little sound that settled somewhere in his chest. “I thought older gentlemen were meant to need longer to recover.”
He’d tilted his head up and closed his teeth over the curve of her ear.
Then he’d lifted her leg, settling her knee over the top of his thigh.
“Mm. It’s true. I’ll need half the night, at least.” He stroked from her knee all the way up to the crease of her pelvis.
He kept his touch light, teasing. “How shall I fill my time?”
She’d arched her back then, and he’d bitten back a groan. He’d touched the soft skin above her mound, then dipped lower in a quick circle. “I’m sure I can think of something.”
He thought he could fill his time just that way for the rest of his natural life.
He was at twenty-nine freckles just on the back of her when she stirred and then turned over suddenly. She seemed instantly alert. Her eyes were clear and bright, a blue-sky blue, a midday-in-June blue.
Now, he thought. Now is when you say it.
He opened his mouth and tried to form the words.
He wanted it to be right. When he asked her to stay, he wanted her to know that it was not because of the sexual intercourse—as shatteringly pleasurable as it had been—or out of some misplaced sense of honor.
He loved her. He loved her, and he trusted her, and he was almost brave enough to trust himself.
“Matilda,” he began. It seemed safe and right—the only thing he was sure of, in the heady morning light. Matilda.
One corner of her mouth tilted up as she looked at him, and he could not keep from touching her there, where her lip curved. The visible evidence of her joy.
Then he heard a quick, light rap on the door of his bedchamber.
And then—to his absolute consternation—the sound of Beatrice’s voice. “Christian? Are you in there? I wanted to speak to you.”
He looked at the door. He looked at Matilda, whose smile had faded beneath his finger. Her eyes were wide and horrified.
He removed his finger from her lips, which flew immediately into motion.
“I can hide,” she whispered, almost soundlessly. “In your wardrobe?”
He scowled at her and sat up. “You’re not hiding, for God’s sake. I’m not ashamed of you.”
She was still staring at him in that wide-eyed, flabbergasted way as he hurtled to his feet and went in search of his dressing gown. Damn it, two dressing gowns. He did not even know if he owned two dressing gowns.
“Just a moment, Bea,” he said.
“Oh,” came his sister’s voice through the door, “all right. Were you still abed?”
As he rummaged in his wardrobe, he looked at the angle of the sun through the small window. Then he looked harder. Was it almost midday?
Good God. He needed to get Matilda some breakfast.
He thrust his arms into his dressing gown and wrapped it around himself.
For Matilda, he managed to produce a thick flannel nightshirt he’d never once worn.
It was plaid wool, and going to trail behind her with a train that would rival a court dress, but he supposed it was better than presenting her to his sister as naked as a babe or in her tissue-thin chemise.
“Coming,” he said to Bea. When Matilda was dressed in his nightshirt—pushing the sleeves up above her elbows and then grimacing as they fell back down again to cover her hands—he grabbed her and hauled her up against his side as he went to the door.
“Are you sure this is wise?” she whispered, shoving again at the sleeves. He felt a brief flare of absurd possessive pleasure: Matilda in his shirt. “Perhaps we ought to wait a few—er—months—”
He was not at all sure it was wise. He would rather have known where they stood—known if Matilda wanted what he did—when he told Bea about their relationship.
But it was too late for that now. He would sooner cut off his own arm than have Matilda hide herself in the wardrobe like a shameful secret. He knew all about feeling ashamed, and he could not stand for his own actions to make her feel that way.
He could explain himself to Bea. Apologize for the abruptness of this revelation. Somehow he would do it.
“Steady on,” he said, as much to himself as to her. He wrapped his arm tighter around Matilda and opened the door.
Bea had a streak of charcoal across her cheek and a stick of the stuff shoved into the knot of hair at the top of her head. Her dress and fingertips were flecked with blue paint.
As she took them in—Christian in his dressing gown, Matilda in his nightshirt—her lips parted. No words came out.
“Good morning, little bee,” he said. “What did you want to talk about?”
She blinked once, very slowly, like the sun dipping below the horizon.
“Bea,” Matilda murmured, “perhaps you’d like to speak to Christian alone. Let me go … dress…” Her voice trailed off as she realized what she’d said—at the attention she’d called to the fact that she’d been here with him all night. Her face paled.
“I thought—” Bea looked from Matilda to Christian and back again. “I thought—”
Her hazel eyes had gone wide and then wider as she stared, and then suddenly they were filled with tears. Christian’s heart gave a wrench. He had not foreseen—
Bea’s gaze was fixed on Matilda now. “I thought you were here for me,” she choked out. “I thought you stayed because—because of me—I am such an idiot—”
Matilda pulled herself out of Christian’s grasp and leapt forward. “No,” she said, and she tried to catch Bea’s elbow in her hands. “No, of course you are not. I was here for you—I am here for you—”
Bea flung herself backward. “Don’t touch me!”
Matilda’s hands dropped. Christian felt his heart fall the same way—a helpless plummet in his chest.
“Leave me alone,” said Bea fiercely. “Leave me alone to think—”
And then she turned on her heel and ran away, the paint-spattered hem of her dress fluttering blue and white in the dappled light of the hall.
When Bea had not returned to the house by late afternoon, Christian was worried.
By early evening, he was out of his mind with fear.
Matilda had counseled patience, and he’d listened. “She said she needed time to think,” Matilda had said, and bit her lip. “You should respect her wishes in that. Give her time, Christian. She’ll come back soon, and then you can speak to her.”
It had seemed like wisdom when the sun was still bright overhead. Bea liked to paint on the beach, he knew. Perhaps she had tucked herself into her cove with a thick woolen blanket. Perhaps she’d gone for a long ride upon her sorrel gelding.
He’d had hours—plenty of hours—to castigate himself for all the many ways that he’d failed.
Again. Again. He had tried to grasp what he wanted and instead he’d put the people that he loved at risk.
He was selfish—he was so goddamned selfish.
He did not know if he should have declared himself to Matilda weeks ago or if he never should have spoken to her.
But that thought broke his stupid heart.
He’d used his hours to compose an apology to Bea in his head. To practice the words he would say to her. And to Matilda.
But then a light rain had begun to fall, and then rain had turned to tiny pellets of ice. The sun had started to tip down, and Christian lost all pretense of reason. He could no longer persuade himself that Beatrice was enjoying a brisk afternoon by the seaside.
He could no longer pretend to himself that waiting here, safe and warm by the fire, was the right thing to do. Bea could be hurt. She could be frightened. She could be somewhere out there, alone and injured, because of him, his failures again, hurting the people he cared the most about.
“I should go,” he said. He stood up on legs he could not quite feel.
Matilda stood with him. They’d been closeted in Bea’s studio—hoping she might return there first—and Bea’s paintings were everywhere, looking violent and vibrant even in the shadowed corners of the room.
She pressed her hand to his, a quick squeeze of his fingers. “I think you’re right. We should go in pairs, probably. Mrs. Perkins will know better than I how many grooms can help us search—”
Terror clawed at his ribs. “No. No.”
She paused, arrested in her quick strides toward the door. “I’m sorry?”
“You cannot go. You—you—”
It was tangled in his mind: Matilda, her bright hair a flare against the snow. Grace’s chilled body. Bea—little Bea, cold somewhere and alone—
He tasted blood in his mouth.
“I will take the grooms,” he said. “All the grooms. We’ll go in pairs. But you must stay.”
Her chin went up. “I’m worried too. I cannot simply sit here—”
He cupped her face in his hands and brushed his thumbs across her cheekbones. “Please,” he said hoarsely. “Please stay.” He tried to think of words to convince her. He tried to think of something that made sense. “I need you to be here if she returns.”
She stared up at him, skepticism plain in her blue gaze. But finally, she nodded.
He felt a powerful surge of relief, and then a twin stab of fear for his sister. He bent down and kissed Matilda’s hair, her cheek, her mouth. “Thank you.”
He looked back once, before he hurried from the room. Matilda stood, her lower lip caught between her teeth, her hands open and helpless at her sides.