Chapter 13 #4
“I can’t marry you as I am.” He closed his eyes. “I have no source of income, no way to make money, and—once the hospital bill comes due—no savings. It’s going to take a considerable amount of time to find something I’m qualified to do and dig myself out of this chasm.”
“Look at me,” she demanded—no longer teasing.
As he opened his eyes, she grasped his face with both hands, jaw set.
“I want you as you are. Do you hear me, Peter Blackwell? We will be fine. Your brewing amounts to earning rent. My wages will keep us fed—we’ll have enough left over for us after helping Lydia.
We’ll pay off the hospital bills eventually.
We will. Good God, you know very well I’m not marrying you for your income potential!
I want to see you every day, to talk to you in private whenever I please, to go into your, our, bedroom at night—”
She broke off, breathing unsteadily. His skin tingled. His heart thudded in his ears. She had him the moment she began to argue her case, but he wasn’t about to let her stop now.
“Yes?” he whispered, shifting closer. “Go into our bedroom and …?”
“Undress you.” She let out a shuddering breath as he slipped an arm around her waist. “And watch you undress me.”
He shifted one of her hands so he could kiss her palm. “Go on.”
“I want to—to see you and touch you—oh,” she said, as he put his lips against the sensitive skin on her wrist and worked up her inner arm. Her eyes fluttered closed. “I want you—I want you—”
He kissed her. They were as tightly pressed together as their clothes allowed, his right hand wrapped in her hair, his left on the sweet curve of her bottom, when he came to his senses and pulled back.
“Rosemarie,” he said, casting an eye down their intertwined, supine bodies, “would be horrified.”
Beatrix’s throaty laugh almost broke what was left of his self-control. He scrambled to his feet, because vertical was safer than horizontal, and helped her up.
“Have I convinced you?” Her question sounded casual, but her hand clutching his belied it. He nodded.
“I ought to stick to my principles,” he said, “but it’s so tempting to be selfish when the person you’d be taking advantage of is urging you on.”
She made a face at him. “You promised me an enlightened marriage. How exactly is it taking advantage of me if we’re both contributing?”
“The hospital bill—”
She kissed him. He suspected that was for want of a better argument, but it worked, because he had no desire to press it further.
“Just tell me this,” he said. “How on earth did you realize my intentions about the wedding before I said a word about them?”
She smiled, and there was such beauty in the crinkle of her eyes, the crooked quirk of her lips, the arch of her eyebrow. “Oh, I know you, Peter Blackwell. Inside and out.”
“Plagiarist,” he said in her ear, drawing out the word, making her laugh.
She held him tightly for a moment before stepping back. “We’ll have to leave pretty soon.”
“Yes.”
“We’d better do something so we don’t look like we were rolling around on the floor,” she said, reaching out to tuck behind his ear a strand of hair that had escaped his queue.
They both had a layer of grimy dust down their backs and the sides they’d leaned on. He told Beatrix the spellword she needed to fix the problem and held back a grimace as her magic washed over him. Why did his loss feel so much keener whenever she cast, as if one had anything to do with the other?
“Oh,” she said, eyes widening. “Peter—bend down, let me see the top of your head.”
He did, knowing immediately what she was looking for. Once, he had searched her hair for any sign of silver. Now she was checking to see if the roots of his hair were brown.
“I think I’d better cast that color spell,” she murmured.
It shouldn’t have mattered—he knew this was coming, and it told him nothing he didn’t already know. But his stomach sank all the same.
Forty-five minutes later, clothes neat and hair color obscured, they boarded a Washington-bound train. The furtive looks and hushed murmurs began almost immediately. Blackwell. Harper. Scandal.
He glanced at Beatrix. She looked completely unsurprised, which said volumes about what she dealt with every day.
“I’m sorry,” he murmured. “I never considered what the train was like for you. I’ll drive you to work from now on.”
“It’s—it’s not too awful,” she whispered, then shook her head. “All right. It is. I will gladly let you rescue me from it.”
They rode the rest of the way to D.C. in silence.
He didn’t want this warped fame that had overtaken them.
He didn’t want to mislead the authorities about Garrett or live in fear that police actually would find the man.
All he’d wanted when he came to town was to fix a mistake, one he now had no ability to do anything about, and he’d gone so far down the rabbit hole that he wondered if he would ever be permitted to surface again.
A mournful sigh escaped him as the train pulled into Union Station. Beatrix shifted closer and slipped her hand into his.
They were in this hole together. That shouldn’t have made it more bearable, but selfishly, it did.