Chapter Nine
ALEXANDER HAD NEVER BEEN ONE FOR COMPLAINING. FROM AN early age, he’d learned that no one around him cared much if he was uncomfortable. As a grown man with a great deal of control over his circumstances, he found the act both unnecessary and unbecoming.
But this carriage ride was testing the bounds of his patience.
He could not be in this damned vehicle with her a moment longer.
Not in that dress—or any other she owned, he suspected.
Not with those breasts. Not with the scent of oranges and hothouse flowers emanating off her.
Her laughing at him hadn’t diminished his arousal a whit. In fact, it had done the opposite.
He virtually bolted out of the carriage upon arrival at another small inn. Tomorrow, he planned to spend the entire day on horseback.
Harriet followed him, shivering in the cold night air.
He might have offered her his coat, but he didn’t think getting close to her in his current state would be wise.
Thankfully, the inn itself was quite warm.
Lively as well. The sound of bad singing and even worse piano playing filled the downstairs.
Alexander cut an easy swath across the hall to the innkeeper.
Despite his general distaste for the aristocracy, it did have its uses when one wanted to cross a room.
“Two rooms, please. We’ll take our suppers there, and a bath as well, please,” Alexander informed the man, laying a few too many coins on the counter in hopes of expediency. A bath sounded like heaven.
“Sorry, milord,” answered the innkeeper, sounding not very sorry at all. “Don’t have two rooms. We’re full, really, but I can kick Eddie out to the barn and give you his. He don’t mind.” There was no hint as to who Eddie was, and Alexander didn’t care to ask.
“Excellent. We’ll take it.”
“Oh, we don’t want to be a bother. We’re happy to—” came Harriet’s voice behind him. Alexander whipped around.
“We are not sleeping in a barn. There aren’t any more inns for miles, so unless you want to spend the night in a shared room with a fifth of the crowd you see here, Eddie’s room it is.”
Harriet snapped her mouth shut and glared at him. The innkeeper didn’t seem to have heard any of their conversation and was already around the bar leading them up the stairs.
Alexander swept out his hand in a gesture for her to follow the man while he brought up the rear.
One bloody room. With her one bloody dress.
And one bloody bed. An entire day in a carriage with her had been agony.
A night in bed with her? Hell, she probably knew a perfect word for what lay beyond torture.
“It’s Tuesday, is it not?” he asked her as they climbed the steps, her arse precisely at eye level. If there were a god, he enjoyed suffering. Harriet glanced over her shoulder with a quizzical expression.
“It is,” she replied, clearly expecting him to elaborate. Silence was much safer.
Tuesday. Tuesdays were for boxing at Jackson’s, drinking at White’s, then—should he still feel unsettled—sinking his cock into an opera singer until he forgot all else.
Tuesday meant he hadn’t spent in three days.
Bollocks. Bollocks indeed. His poor bollocks in particular, trapped in one room with Harriet.
He swept into the room and began undressing himself, doing his best to ignore Harriet.
A bath had been a terrible, terrible idea.
One of his worst, and he’d once wagered his townhome that he could catch a knife by the blade while drunk.
He hadn’t lost the townhome, and he wasn’t going to lose control tonight.
A knock on the door signaled a pair of girls, one with supper, the other with hot water. Harriet let out a moan of delight at the sight of food and he quickly began buttoning his waistcoat again.
“You may bathe first,” he muttered gruffly.
“Oh, thank you, my lord,” she said, almost timidly. She didn’t sound any keener on his staying in the room while she bathed than he was. Although that was a lie, wasn’t it? He was quite keen indeed to be present, which was precisely the issue. “Would you mind helping me with my dress?”
“Yes.”
“Yes, you mind?” Harriet looked at him rather oddly, which was warranted.
“No. Yes. Never mind. Turn around.” He knew he sounded terse, but he was merely attempting to survive the interaction.
Weren’t there maids to do this sort of thing?
Why had the blasted girl with the blasted food tray left?
The buttons down Harriet’s back taunted him, more seeming to appear before his fingers every time he unbuttoned another.
“There,” he said, an interminable amount of time later.
She could need no more assistance than that.
Surely. He hastily retied his cravat and stuffed his arms back into his tailcoat.
Someone in the room needed to be dressed.
“Aren’t you hungry?” she inquired over her shoulder, glancing at the meal that had been left for them.
Ravenous.
“No, thank you,” he intoned before quitting the room. He’d find food below. And perhaps a tankard of ale to drown himself in while she soaked in the damned tub.
Harriet wasn’t sure precisely what had transpired that afternoon to make Alexander so taciturn, and she was doubly unsure how much she was meant to worry over it.
Ever since the spectacle incident, he’d been quite withdrawn.
Perhaps she shouldn’t have laughed at him.
Men did seem to have quite fragile egos about such things.
Or perhaps the man was predisposed to such fits of reticence.
Maybe it was not a particular event so much as the entire situation. Being forced to marry a plump bluestocking might do this to a celebrated rake, she supposed. The very idea of the two of them together twisted her mouth into a wry smile.
The Thompson boys had an old, fat donkey they called Barrel and the donkey’s dearest friend was their father’s stallion, Claudius.
(Privately, Harriet thought it ridiculous to name your prized horse after an emperor who apparently had trouble walking, but Mr. Thompson wasn’t exactly the scholarly type.) Harriet imagined she and Alexander made a similar pair.
She shook her head and continued eating her much-needed but mediocre meat pie as the two maids returned to finish filling the bath.
They left and she was, for the first time in days, alone.
This was the farthest she’d ever traveled, the longest she’d gone without seeing one of her sisters, and the most danger she’d ever been in.
All to marry a man who didn’t want her.
Despite her best efforts, she wanted him plenty—in ways she didn’t fully understand or have words for. She’d have to ask Philippa when she got home.
The thought of her sister brought an uncomfortable truth to mind: Alexander wanted someone like Philippa. Philippa specifically, in fact.
Alas. There were things one could control and things one could not.
Harriet could not become Philippa any more than Barrel the donkey could become Pegasus.
Perhaps Alexander did want a woman like Philippa.
He could have as many of them as he wished when they returned to London.
He could be having one now. Alexander was not hers, nor would he be; he’d made that clear. Their lives were to be separate.
There was nothing to attend, no one to manage—she might as well enjoy herself. She leaned her head back and closed her eyes, sighing at the warmth of the tub. Normally, she’d hurry through a bath so her sisters could get hot water, but Alexander seemed in no rush to return to her company.
Harriet woke with a splash sometime later when the door opened. She startled and covered herself, which was unrequired as the bath was behind a screen.
“Sorry!” she blurted, entirely disoriented. “I mean—I’m not … You didn’t. Oh gosh, sorry …”
He let out a soft, low half laugh from the other side of the screen. Harriet did her best to keep her gaze trained straight ahead of her, not wanting to find out how much might be seen through the flimsy separation. Thank heavens for the wall of the tub.
“I don’t know why I’m apologizing. I just—you startled me.
I’m afraid I fell asleep. Probably not very safe.
I won’t be long, I promise. I just need to finish …
uh, well, washing up,” Harriet called out nervously.
She went about the task rather more loudly than was altogether necessary.
Somehow making noise helped to cut through the awkwardness of being nude while he was in the room.
“Won’t be but a moment. I hope the water isn’t too cold for you.
It still feels somewhat warm. I really didn’t mean to take so long!
I do apologize for that. Oh dear, I’m nattering on again, aren’t I? ”
“You are,” he replied plainly, although not unkindly.
Harriet heard a chair scraping across the floor, and the metal clink of utensils, which sounded like him sitting down at the small table to his undoubtedly frigid meat pie.
Her face burned from being naked so near to such a man.
From what she could hear, he seemed terribly unaffected by the situation, however.
And he was still being frustratingly laconic.
“I am sorry, too, about your dinner. I hope it hasn’t gone too cold; if it’s any comfort, it wasn’t very good warm.
” Why was her voice getting more and more high-pitched?
“Sorry, too, about the prattling. My sisters are always telling me not to get started. With talking, that is. I just have a hard time stopping. It’s worse when I’m nervous. ”
He let out a low chuckle again, which made Harriet’s heart leap a bit for unknown reasons.
“I make you nervous?” he asked after a moment. His speech had slowed, and he seemed plainspoken—artless, even—which was far more seductive than his ordinary attempts to charm.
Conceding this felt like a loss, but still she answered: “When you aren’t making me furious, yes.”