13. Chapter 13
When no one came to Aaron’s aid as he lay stifling beneath the weight of several centuries of literature, he began to curse. When still no one came, he began to beg.
Finally, he heard movement, almost more as a vibration through the rubble than as sound. Someone was coming.
Unfortunately, that someone stopped their book-crossing progress directly over his ribs, and he felt the last of his breath wheeze out of him as the books above him settled more firmly about and on top of his body.
“Ugh.”
It was all he could manage.
He heard some shifting activity above him, and then he began to see daylight through his crossed arms. Small glints of daylight began to seep through the jumble of books.
Finally, the last book above his face was removed, and he found himself gazing gratefully up at the dusty smeared elfin features of the Devil’s Spawn.
She glared at him. “Well, now you’ve done it, haven’t you?”
“Ger … off!”
She scrunched her strange little face at him. “You get off. This is my house and these are my books and you ruined everything!”
“Ger … o … off!” His wheeze was fainter than ever, but he saw Attie’s little face lift away from the gap and then her weight lifted from his chest. He took a better but still-hampered breath, so grateful to feel his ribs expand that he might have cried if he hadn’t heard the voice of Elektra’s eldest brother, Dade.
“What a bloody mess! Attie, what did you do?”
“It wasn’t me! It was that nasty Hastings man! The blighter ruined my book cave!”
Aaron heard Dade sigh. “Attie, you never take responsibility for anything. You are as bad as the twins. And don’t say ‘blighter.’ It isn’t appropriate.”
“I didn’t say it about you,” Attie muttered resentfully. “I said it about Pasty Hastings.”
As much as Aaron would have liked to see the brat get a good dressing-down from her brother, he would rather live to see the sun set, so he sent up a last desperate shout for help. He couldn’t be blamed for the quavering tone of it, to be sure. It was the weight of all the bloody books!
Dade’s look of surprise was almost worth it — at least until the eldest Worthington let a speculative look cross his regular features.
The bastard wasn’t really considering leaving him to die, was he?
“Mr. Hastings? Oh, heavens! Are you all right?” Aaron heard the voice he most wanted to hear at that moment — a thought so ironic that he didn’t allow himself to think it later, that he looked to the mad Elektra for rescue! — which thankfully seemed to remind Dade that it was better to be a Good Samaritan than to leave a man to die by literature. Either that, or he was leery of explaining matters to the magistrate — or, worse, his sister.
Aaron felt in no position to be picky about his savior’s motives!
Dade let out a sigh of resignation. And turned his head to speak to his youngest sibling. “Attie, will you fetch Zander and Rion, please? This is going to take more hands.”
In the end, it took all the Worthingtons, some more helpful than others, like Archie and Iris who stood watching the entire proceedings like eager spectators at a sporting event, side by side with a serenely interested Bliss and a pregnant Miranda. A bucket brigade of sorts was formed, the brothers and Elektra digging their way to him despite the primate antics of spindly little Atalanta.
As Aaron was helped from his word-filled quicksand, he cynically wondered if someone ought to be roasting chestnuts.
“Put him in his room!” That was Elektra.
“We’ll never get him out again” came a protest, which sounded like Cas, the brother who was a twin.
“We’re just as likely to lose him in Orion’s study!”
The room with the attack bird? “Not Orion’s study!” Aaron gasped.
“See?”
He was half carried, half dragged down the hall over the hundreds — thousands? — of spilled volumes, then dumped on a narrow bed. A cloud of dust rose from the covers, but it was a real bed, with a mattress.
At last. He hadn’t lain in a real bed since the day he’d installed himself in the tiny cabin of the ship from the isles.
Aaron felt cool hands on his forehead. He opened his eyes to see concern in Elektra’s green-blue gaze. Several strands of her hair hung down, long enough to trail over his half-open shirt and stream cool fire onto the skin of his bare chest.
Near-death by literature might be worth it if a bloke can be nursed back to health by a goddess.
She smiled, and it was the sweetest curl of her lips that he’d yet seen. “Mr. Hastings, has it occurred to you that you might be considered ever so slightly accident-prone?”
Her voice was soft. Her fingers were soft, and if he was not mistaken, they lingered just a little as they left his hair.
Her fingers tangled in my hair as she kissed me ….
The flash of memory sent heat through his bloodstream. “Miss, you’re the only accident a man needs.”
Her lips took on a wry tilt. “To ruin your life, you mean?” She straightened. Her hands fell away from him. He saw that she sat with one hip on the dusty mattress — entirely improper for a lady with a man.
God, she doesn’t think of me like one of those damned brothers, does she?
He reached out and caught that retreating hand. Nothing seemed to matter to him but to know that she saw him as a man, not a brother, not a servant.
She went quite still, but she did not pull her hand away. “Mr. Hastings —”
“That is not my name.”
She blinked. “Henry, isn’t it?”
God, yes, right. He was Henry Hastings, and she was death to his dreams! Except that he couldn’t drum up the same sense of horror as he had a few days past.
Her hand curled into his. “Henry?” Her touch was light and cool, like the touch of silk. Soothing. He was so damned tired. So many nights on the tossing ship, in haylofts, tied to chairs …
No, don’t miss this — she’s being so sweet —
But I’m horizontal — in a real bed — and there’s no hope —
Elektra sat back. Her hand slipped from his lax grasp. “Henry?”
He was fast asleep, poor man. She gazed down at his relaxed features for a long moment. He was a secretive fellow, despite his seemingly outgoing manner. She hadn’t realized until this moment how his expression always retained a shadow of wary alertness — as if he thought something was about to leap from the shadows at any time. Now, however, he looked — well, one hesitated to use such a word about a rascal like Mr. Hastings, but it was the best she could think of — heroic. A champion. A man upon whom damsels in distress called when shining armor was required.
Elektra knew that her brothers had made themselves scarce, as they usually did when there was a mess to clean up, but she cast a glance toward the door, just in case Attie lurked there.
Attie was ever lurking, poor little mistrustful one.
Then, in the single moment she found herself alone with only her own wishes to see to, she leaned closer and lightly ran her fingertips through the thick, golden-brown hair at his temples. Warm. Silky.
Just as she remembered, every night when she blew out her candle and allowed the memory of that wondrous kiss to fill her thoughts. She had almost convinced herself that the entire impact of that moment had been her imagination, overexcited by her fear and exhilaration at her own daring deed.
But if she’d imagined the whole thing, why did it feel so wonderful to touch him again at last?
A distant male voice, raised in some sort of debate, penetrated the quiet of the room. Elektra sat up, then stood and briskly rubbed her palms together.
There was a mess in the hall. She could shout the roof down before her brothers would take care of it. She decided that a hard task like that would be just the thing.
Just the thing to make her forget the feeling of her fingers deep in his hair … and his hot mouth …
Books. Hundreds of books. Lying all over the hallway.
She turned away and did not look back at the sleeping man in the bed. Not even once.
Well, perhaps once.
There were, in the end, over two and a half thousand books in the hallway.
Truly? Elektra counted the careful stacks of fifteen again. They lined the longest wall of the attic, standing two stacks deep. It was true. They stood neatly squared, spines out, all turned the same way, titles readable. Now, one could, if one wished — and she most heartily did not! — systematically catalog the collection with some semblance of order.
The other oddments — where had that awful sculpture come from? — were shoved unceremoniously into random elderly wardrobes and dressers with recalcitrant drawers, or packed tightly into crumbling trunks.
Elektra sneezed for what had to be the fiftieth time. She dusted her filthy hands. “Enough.”
Strangely, once begun, it hadn’t been as overwhelming a task as she had imagined. And she’d actually had a bit of help!
After the first wary observation, Attie had apparently decided that this was not some plot to tempt her to lower her defenses and had, in fact, lowered them somewhat.
When Elektra had asked her little sister to carry a single stack of books into the attic, Attie cheerfully — well, willingly — moved books for over an hour before she happened to open one and lose herself in it, plunked down cross-legged in the hallway so that Elektra had to walk carefully around her for the rest of the job.
Her sister looked so intent upon her find that Elektra had not the heart to shift her. Instead, she finished the job alone and silently, letting Attie read undisturbed until the job was done, still turning pages, a small figure in the oddly bare hallway.
Now Elektra, truly physically weary, smiled as she descended the attic stairs. What would Attie say when she looked up from her book and registered her surroundings? Would she for a moment wonder if she was in the same house?
I did this. I made this house — I made us — a little bit better. And then, a dangerous notion. I didn’t even have to marry a rich stranger to do it.
Madness. An afternoon of tidying wouldn’t fix what was broken in Worthington House. Only a flawless match would bring it all back.
After all, wasn’t that what she’d been born for?
From the shadowed doorway of his room, Aaron watched Elektra descend into the hallway from a small door set into the paneling, likely an attic.
She looked a mess, from the dusty smudges on her face to the smeared skirts of her wrinkled gown. Yet, it was the soft glow of affection in her absentminded smile as she looked down the hall toward Attie, and the way her weary hand trailed on the railing … as light a touch as her tentative fingertips in his hair on that long-ago night alone in the ruin.
Had it only been a few days?
She was always impressive and vibrant, even when she driving him mad with her single-mindedness. Now, with her expression soft and kindly and her proud erect posture sagging a bit with weariness, she looked like an angel after a hard day’s work granting miracles.
Only when she passed him and descended the stairs, leaving his sight, did he take in the changes she’d wrought.
And stopped short in surprise.
The hallway was entirely clear of books and clutter. For the first time he could see the gracious width of it and the elegant linenfold carved into the now gleaming wainscoting. Not only that, but the sconces gleamed and the shabby jewel-toned runner fairly glowed in the light of the newly brightened lamps.
In the center of the hall, halfway down, sat a small, hunched figure. Bony knees jutted awkwardly through her crumpled skirts, and her unusually braided hair hung askew. Little oddity Attie was the only thing out of place in the long, generously proportioned hallway.
Aaron walked closer, laughing inside as he observed that her skinny little bottom covered the only patch of unswept carpet in the long stretch.
Attie finally blinked at the toes of his boots penetrating her field of vision and then lifted her chin to squint up at him. “I cleaned the hall for you. Say thank you.”
Aaron thought that Attie made a very fine doorstop. Still, it was obvious that her efforts on his behalf had been unusual enough for her.
“Thanks then, Miss Atalanta. I appreciates it, I do.”
She shrugged and looked back down at her book.
“Did you know that the African elephant and the Indian elephant have completely different ears?”
Aaron smiled. “Yes. I did know that.”
“Have you ever met an elephant?”
“I have.”
“They seem such odd creatures. Those long noses … what do you suppose they do with them while they sleep? I think they must roll over on them. I rolled over on my braid once and couldn’t move for an hour. I was stuck like a turtle on his back. Zander had to push me out of bed. I had to yell simply forever. Now I tie my braids to the headboard. It’s ever so much safer.”
Aaron smiled down at the littlest Worthington. “Elephants are not the oddest creatures I’ve met in my travels.”
He raised his gaze to look down the spacious hallway again. Something warm glowed deep in his belly. He wasn’t an idiot. Obviously, Elektra had done it for his benefit, and he didn’t think she was looking for praise. She had done it so that he needn’t fear for his life stumbling over books in the dark. She done it for Attie, to show her that there was another way to live — one that did not necessarily include clutter and obstacles and madness.
He had been so wrong. She was not shallow, or selfishly ambitious. It was her family she climbed for, that she scratched and clawed and fought for.
That she’d kidnapped and kissed a stranger for.
What would it be like, he wondered, as a man who had been run from his home by his own family, to have that sort of loyalty and perseverance directed his way?
Dinner at Worthington House. Aaron thought that everyone should experience it at least once. It would save so much time in lengthy description.
The food was not fine, first of all. It was well cooked, and it was filling, and there was some attempt to enliven the plainness with fresh herbs from the garden — which he’d seen, and which he wouldn’t brave without a machete and a local guide! — but there was no hiding the pedestrian nature of the meal.
Most of the Worthingtons partook heartily. The food disappeared from the platters quickly, and no one but Aaron seemed to notice that two of the elegant but badly chipped and crackled plates were scarcely sullied by contact with food.
One belonged to the silent Lysander. Oh, he put on a decent show. Aaron saw him chewing and swallowing a few times, but for the rest of the dinner he merely moved items from one side of his plate to the other, cutting them smaller and smaller with each go. Clearly, he’d had a great deal of practice at this particular subterfuge.
The other plate belonged to Elektra. This surprised Aaron, for he’d seen her tuck into the meat and potatoes at the inn on the road home. Neither Elektra nor Bliss had let a shred of that meal go to waste.
Now, however, Elektra took no meat at all, and only a little of the vegetables and gravy and a single small chunk of bread.
Vanity was his first thought. Then he caught himself in that uncharitable assessment as he saw her push another bit of roast onto Attie’s plate, urging her little sister to put down her book and finish her meal.
She is too thin to pass her food to another.
There was something going on here, something that had nothing to do with vanity or fitting into a ballgown.
Whatever it was, it was not his concern. He would soon be on his way. The secrets in this house might drown a fellow if he hung about too long.