Chapter Four
The heat of July turned to August. Zeph’s days with Rafe had a new tempo.
She knew exactly why that was suddenly so.
Still, she rejoiced that, here in Brighton, Rafe saw no one.
He had no guests. Nor did he go out without her.
All he wanted or she requested, especially French pastries, he would order.
While still kind, accommodating, and quick to smile at her, he was a very different man toward her.
Not so mellow. Not so happy. Yet he would offer his hand to help her along the beach or to descend from a carriage.
He would offer his arm as they strolled along the promenade.
He held her chair for her before meals. Her conclusion was that safety or formality were motivation for his actions.
Indeed. He did not hug her when delighted. He did not take her to him in a carriage and cuddle her. Oh, she had known those intimacies were granted her since first he rescued her, then all through the spring and early summer, because she had been frail and cold. Always cold.
Now she grew cold from his reserve. His distance.
She could not run to his arms like a child. Nor embrace him like a woman. But she longed to have him back, to enjoy his affections so freely given…and so sorely missed.
She knew not how to get him back. Time, she told herself, would show her a way.
So she watched him. She watched to see if he stroked his lip with his fingertip. Sadly, he did not.
But she waited.
Meanwhile, the summer sizzled. The sun delighted her, made her grin.
She rejoiced to walk on the rocky beach in her bare feet.
In the tide, as it rushed to the shore, she wiggled her toes and told him he must do the same.
He refused, but finally, one morning, he grumbled, removed his shoes and stockings, and gave in.
She watched him wince at the chill of the sea and giggled at his grimace at her for demanding he do it.
He looked carefree as she had never seen him, his strong calves and big feet bare, covered with sand. He even withstood the chill of the sea without a shiver or complaint. He gazed at her with challenge in the jut of his square jaw. “Satisfied?”
She shrugged. “A little.” She winked at him and chuckled.
“I love to hear you laugh, mon petit chou.”
Had he just called her his sweet one? Where was “his cabbage,” eh? Was it merely a slip of his tongue?
“I feared I never would again.” She stared at him, her darkly handsome chevalier. Could she make him call her even more endearing things? How did a woman seduce a man who did not wish it? Comfort? Wit? Kisses? “You have made it so that I find humor in the world, dear sir.”
He waved away her compliment, and they strolled blithely along the beach.
Their afternoon and evening marched onward, peace their happy prize.
Another week passed. Zeph felt stronger, sturdier on her feet, more confident in shops and cafés. Remarking to their neighbors on either side came easily. Smiling at others in church was a normal expression. Zeph went out to shops more often.
But the modiste Madame Clermont came to her at home.
That was a very good thing, and a regular occurrence now, because all the gowns that Madame Clermont had first sewn for Zeph strained the fabric in the sleeves, the hips, and definitely in the bodice.
She asked for the lady to be summoned to do alterations.
When she told Rafe, he scowled that there were problems with the construction of the clothes the woman had sewn.
Zeph told him the truth. With a flourish of one hand over her bodice, she smiled like a pampered girl and said, “I have gained weight in certain places.”
“Ah,” he said as—lo and behold—he locked his gaze on hers. Zeph watched his body slowly turn to stone. “I see,” he said, but he did not look. Instead, he merely shook out his newspaper and returned to his reading.
Zeph counted his reaction as a trophy she had won. She stored it in her memory for use someday, somehow.
August turned rainy. Rafe and she spent their days together, playing chess or cards or reading.
For warmth, she usually wore a fichu over her bosom and throat.
Suppressing concern that she could not tempt him as easily, she considered it a good trade-off for the chance to play with him in other, less sensual ways.
Then, one day, she found him in his small office, doing his books, cursing over them, until she asked if she could take a look.
“If you can help,” he allowed with frustration on his brow, “I will name you as my estate manager!”
“We need not be so dramatic!” So she went to work. But when she found the errors that he had not, he lifted a glass of brandy in her honor. “Is your man not proficient in numbers?” she asked.
“He was at one time. Age, I think, and the fact that I have not reviewed his mathematics in so many months, have presented the greater possibility of errors.”
“Ah, well, I apologize for being the reason you have not attended to your accounts, but I do accept your offer.” She drank her own draught, thrilled to mean more to him, even if it was a professional matter, not a private nor an intimate one.
“Which means that if I am now your accountant, you will have to pay me a wage.”
He grimaced. Yet his starkly handsome face was filled with humor. “Is that so, Miss Butler? What is your asking price?”
She drank and toyed with her glass in midair. A kiss? “Ten pounds a week.”
“Robbery!”
“If I could still remember how to multiply, I would say I am worth twice that amount!”
“That will come back. You should be proud of your skills. Few can do estate books.”
She rolled her eyes at him. Few have the desire. But I have.
“Your skills will return to you. Give yourself time!” he urged her with a press of her arm to his solid chest. She caught her breath at the stalwart feel of him.
“You must applaud yourself for the success you have had.” His laughter died into a mellow look of hot regard.
“As for your worth right now? I’d say you are priceless. ”
She giggled. That, or she would have thrown her arms around him and put her lips to his. He would have withdrawn from her, and she could not have borne it. “Now you have it right, sir.”
The following week, when the August clouds cleared away, Zeph noticed Rafe seemed relieved.
But he was distant. She put it to the fact that he was not in such proximity to her, hour after hour.
They shared each other’s company at meals and the occasional chess match.
But he took himself away more frequently to visit friends or write instructions to his employees in the City or his manager on the London docks.
She mourned that she could not banter with him or win a game of cards and tease him for his loss.
As he read his newspapers, he could be cranky if she interrupted him.
She took up reading them, too. If she could no longer conduct extensive conversations with him, she’d put the newspapers to good use.
She could look for mention of the young woman to whom she had given her priceless treasure stolen from Vaillancourt.
Still, the urge to stroll over to Rafe and take his correspondence or his newspapers from him, then sit in his lap, had been a constant taunt to her self-control.
She told herself to bear it. He would come around. He was a man who had stirrings that showed he cared for her more than the friendship that separated them like walls of iron.
The end of August was suddenly hot again.
They stayed to themselves, walking the beach at sunrise and sunset, strolling at the edges of the town.
Rafe was less communicative, as if he had given himself a stern talking-to about how he viewed her.
Hailing the neighbors to either side of Rafe’s townhouse with a smile and a nod, or going to dinner in the large hotel on the beach, they enjoyed each other’s company in quiet peace, as if they were a long-married couple.
One afternoon, she stared up at the sunny blue sky and closed her eyes in this dream of a day.
“You know what we must buy for you?” Rafe’s voice was soft as velvet.
She opened her eyes and grinned at him, but the sensuous velvet was gone from his demeanor. His caution was tempting her and eroding her willpower at the same time. “Rafe, I have so many clothes now, and we go nowhere for me to prance around in them.”
“You need a parasol, mon petit chou. Your skin demands it.”
It does, eh? Good to note you think so. “Thank you. And where do we acquire such an item?”
“Madame Clermont can make one for us or refer us on to one who can.”
“Good.” Zeph was ready for more exposure, but for this fine day, she wanted the security only of Rafe Durham’s fine company.
They strolled the main thoroughfare north, called the Steine, and she caught sight of the spires of the Prince Regent’s Pavilion.
“Why does it look like the palace of an Ottoman?”
Rafe clicked his tongue. “The prince wants the illusion of mystery and power.”
She huffed. “He is not the only one. Bonaparte wants the illusion that he is a master of all he surveys.”
“But it eludes him,” he said. “He tries to gain power with the German states to his east but faces problems.”
“Even in the north, in Holland, where he put his brother Louis, he faces dissent. Louis is a poor ruler. Even his wife Hortense complains of him.”
Rafe paused on the rocky beach. “How well do you know Hortense?”
Josephine Beauharnais’s daughter had been a good friend of hers at Madame Campan’s little school.
One day, Zeph hoped to visit and laugh with Hortense again.
The poor woman needed relief from a very bad marriage.
“She does not love him. Dare I say it? She hates him. There is nothing worse in this world than two people who hate each other, tied to a bed and a social obligation.”
Rafe arched his brows in curiosity. “You sound as if you know of such disasters personally.”