Chapter 19
When the sun woke Matilda in the morning, Christian was still asleep.
Mrs. Perkins had been a wonder—as cool and calm as a field general as she’d ordered the slow warming of Christian’s chilled body, the lukewarm beef tea spooned into his mouth.
She and Beatrice had seen him settled in his bed, and Matilda—when she’d reentered Christian’s chamber after changing out of her sodden wool garments—had caught Mrs. Perkins brushing back his hair.
They had studiously avoided any discussion of this show of affection.
He’d been clean and warm when Matilda had settled herself into an armchair beside his bed.
She could not stop touching him, reassuring herself that he was safe and breathing.
She stroked the nape of his neck, the triangle of bare skin at his throat.
She slid her fingers down the long slope of his arm.
She’d almost hoped to rouse him, though she knew she should let him rest. But he did not wake, only murmured something unintelligible and slept on.
She must have fallen asleep at some point in the night, bent over his bed, her face pressed into the counterpane and her fingers tangled with his. When the sun roused her, she sat up stiffly and rubbed at the imprint of embroidery left on her cheek. She hoped she had not drooled.
She was busily examining the linens for telltale damp spots when Christian coughed, turned over, and clutched her hand.
She let out an undignified squeak and nearly pulled her hand away on startled reflex. Her gaze flew to his face. His eyes were a little heavy-lidded, shadowed beneath. He moistened his lips before he spoke.
“Matilda?” he said hoarsely. “You’re—are you—and Bea—”
She squeezed his fingers. “She’s all right. She’s perfectly well. She was in the house the whole time. I blame th-the cats.” The words caught in her emotion-tight throat.
Bea was safe. Christian was here, in bed, warm and dry and awake.
She reached up with her free hand and dashed away the tears that persisted in fogging her vision and dampening her cheeks.
“And you?” he said. “You’re well? I remember—the beach.”
“I’m fine. I was never in any danger. I found it all quite—quite—invigorating.”
He looked hard at her. The dark lashes fell over his gray eyes, and he leaned back into his pillow as though he might slip back into unconsciousness.
Matilda recognized that sudden weakness for what it was: relief.
She put her hand to his forehead, which was blessedly cool, and then leaned forward to check the rest of him.
He had had a spectacularly bruised chest when his valet had undressed him the night before under Mrs. Perkins’s dour scrutiny, and she suspected his ribs would be horrendously painful for a few days.
She tugged at the counterpane, revealing his plain white nightshirt and the tops of his bare legs.
“What the devil—” He yanked the counterpane out of her hands and pulled it back over himself, struggling into a seated position.
She blinked. “I am trying to check on your injuries, for heaven’s sake.”
He glowered at her. “I have no injuries.”
She straightened. “You have bruises the color of which I’ve never seen before. You might have cracked a rib. You were nearly frozen to death.”
“I feel fine.”
His gruff rasp belied his words. She scowled back at him. “Don’t be a dolt. If you like, I can call for Mrs. Perkins—”
“Yes,” he growled, “call for Mrs. Perkins.”
With a huff, she did. In the time it took for the housekeeper to make her way to the chamber, Matilda had muttered a number of imprecations under her breath about buffleheaded men and great bearded nincompoops who would not know sense if it introduced itself to them on the street.
When Mrs. Perkins finally came in, her black dress crisp and neat despite the early hour—did she sleep upright, so she did not wrinkle?—she nodded gravely at Christian. “Your lordship? How can I—”
“Matilda,” he rasped.
Matilda looked at him in surprise, but he was not addressing her.
“I suspect she has not eaten and is too stubborn to request her own breakfast. Can you arrange for a tray? She likes eggs and toast. And chocolate.”
Something happened inside Matilda then. Some sweet, painful rearrangement of her insides, a confusion of surprise and tenderness and terrible hope.
Mrs. Perkins appeared to be wrestling against the smile that wanted to break out on her face. “Of course, my lord. Lady Beatrice is still asleep, but shall I send her in when she wakes?”
“Yes,” Christian said, “please.”
And then Mrs. Perkins was gone, and it was only the two of them, fingers still intertwined.
“Matilda,” he said grimly, “I am aware that I may have said some … disturbing things last night.”
“Oh,” she said. There was a plummeting, weightless feeling in her belly. Perhaps she had been wrong. Perhaps he wished he had not spoken so. Perhaps he wished she did not remember what he’d said on the beach. “Oh, no, I—I will not hold you to them, of course. You were delirious—”
“I meant every word.”
“Oh,” she said again.
“I love you.” He was light and shadow before her, the pale gray eyes, the dark rim of black lashes around them.
“I am in love with you.” His fingers tightened harder on hers for a moment before they relaxed.
“I have been afraid of happiness. It has been enough to be content, because it was too great a risk to want more than that. But you—you make me want to be brave. You make me want to try. You are the most brilliant, courageous person I have ever known, Matilda Halifax. Everything was flat and gray before I knew you, and you burst into my life like—like an explosion—no, like a sunrise. I—” He paused to glower at her again. “I am making a hash of this.”
She squeezed his fingers and laughed through the emotion clogging her throat. “You’re doing fine. Keep going.”
“I would cut off my right arm to make you laugh like that every day,” he said.
“Or else sacrifice my pride and dignity, which seems rather more likely. I welcome any and all animals that you invite into my home. Hell, start a damn menagerie if you like. Only—” He swallowed.
“Only stay here. With me. Please. Forever.”
Matilda let go of his hand and stood up. He looked up at her, his lips going white and strained, and then she could not see his face any longer, because she was peeling off her dressing gown and then pulling her nightshirt over her head.
She had a moment to take in his stupefied face before she flung herself into the bed beside him and under the covers. “Good Lord,” she managed to say, and then wrapped herself around his large, warm body. “It’s freezing.”
“Matilda,” he choked out, “what on Earth—”
She laid an arm delicately across his chest, mindful of his bruises, and tucked her head into the crook of his arm.
“I made you a promise last night on that godforsaken beach. I would not tell you that I loved you until we were naked in bed together.” Her bare legs slipped in between his. “Close enough.”
“What—”
“I love you,” she said. She looked up and met his eyes. “I want to be with you. Here, or in London, or wherever else our lives take us. I want to be side by side.”
He kissed her then. He was stiff—he, who had claimed not to be injured!
—and she was cautious. And then in a moment or two they were not stiff or cautious at all.
His hand tangled in her hair, and he pulled her head back, and she welcomed it all, his love and fierceness and bright raw demand, and she kissed him back the same way.
Finally he pulled away, his breath shuddering out of his chest.
She grinned stupidly up at him. “I’ve been wondering. Did you mean that thing you said to Margo about the riding crop?”
He looked dazedly at her, his lips parted. “I—you—”
“I ask,” she said, “because I had one in mind as a Christmas present.”
His voice, when he spoke, was a trifle strangled. “You are going to kill me.”
“Perhaps a wedding present then. Which of those occasions do you suppose will be first?” She gazed up at him through her eyelashes and tried not to laugh at the dumbfounded expression on his face.
“You—Mattie—” He choked off the words and started again. “I did not have a chance to properly ask you. You—I thought perhaps—I know my previous attempt in that area does not recommend me.”
He had not unwrapped his hand from her hair, and she—degenerate that she was—quite relished the sensation as his hand tightened.
“But I would like to marry,” he said. “If you wanted that. I want forever, any way I can get it. I want to hold you every morning just like this and love you like I did the last time I had you in this bed. I would be so—so pleased and proud to spend the rest of my life trying to get this right.”
“Yes,” she said. “Yes. I would like that very much.”
He stared at her. He did not appear to have made out her words.
“Christian?”
“Hmm?”
“I’d like to kiss you again, but you’re holding my hair rather firmly—”
He dropped her hair. He wrapped his arms around her and pulled her against his chest. She winced as he did, thinking about his ribs and his bruises.
And then he kissed her, so hard and deep that she forgot about bruises. She forgot about everything except kissing and the slide of skin on skin and Christian. She forgot the whole world outside their room, outside his body and hers and the sure steady warmth in her chest that was love.
She remembered that.