Leave a Widow Wanting More by Charlie Lane

Chapter 17

Sarah awoke to the sound of her grumbling stomach. After a night of such vigorous activity, she desperately needed sustenance.

The man who’d made her every muscle sore? Gone. Annoying, that.

She swung her legs over the bed. “Ow!” She lifted her foot and a button peeked out from the thick rug. She groaned, finding her gown—buttonless—in a heap on the floor. She donned the only other gown she owned. Old, ill-fitting, ugly, and stashed at the bottom of her trunk, she usually wore it only on laundry day. She’d prefer to look the fashionable temptress when next she encountered her husband. Instead, she’d look like a sack of old scrap fabric. Her annoyance sharpened.

She’d find food, or she’d find Henry, or the world would find her intolerable indeed.

Sarah padded down the hall, stopping when she heard voices. She slid a nearby door open to find a small breakfast room filled with sunlight and laughter. Henry’s brood sat around a table, James among them, already a boisterous member of the family. Her heart soared. This sight after last night’s interlude with Henry … how had she entered such a lovely dream? Now to keep from waking.

The twins poked holes through their toast points and hung them on their ears. Ada pretended to protest, and the others laughed. Sarah knew she should step forward, stop the antics and set a standard for behavior from this point forward.

She stifled a laugh. The toast. The ears. How could she not laugh? But she must control the impulse!

Pansy shot from her seat. “Oh!” The young girl barreled toward her, careening into her skirts. “Can we go now? On the picnic? Ada said we had to wait for you. Where is Papa?” Pansy craned her neck to see into the hallway behind Sarah.

“Papa has more important things to do than go on a picnic, Pansy.” Ada drew her sister back to the table.

The little girl’s face, tight and shuttered, decided for Sarah in an instant. Her first step in fixing this family wasn’t discipline. She needed to find Henry. Yes, the food smelled heavenly, and her stomach knotted at the thought of such sweet succulence mere feet away, but a job needed doing. She caught Pansy’s eye. “Your father is coming along today, Pansy. I’ll fetch him.” Good. Decisive. But now what? “Mmmm … Cranston?” The butler stepped forward and Sarah leaned in, whispering, “Where is Lord Eaden?”

“In the map room, my lady.”

She lived in a house with a room dedicated entirely to maps. “Thank you, Cranston. Do you know if his lordship has broken his fast yet?”

“No, my lady.”

Sarah frowned. “No, you don’t know or no, he hasn’t eaten yet?”

The butler frowned back. “I always know.”

“Ah. Yes. Sorry. I’ll take him a tray then.”

“I’ll have one sent up with you.”

“No, no. I’ll take it myself. Just show me the way, will you?”

The map room was up three flights of stairs and at the end of a hallway. By the time they arrived, Sarah’s arms shook, her stomach growled instead of grumbled, and she regretted her stubborn insistence on carrying the tray. Next time, she’d let Cranston tell her what to do. Clearly, he knew better.

Cranston opened the door, and Sarah gasped. Maps stretched across every wall not occupied by windows. She set the tray down absently on a nearby table and crossed the room to a colored map of England.

“It’s beautiful,” she sighed.

“It is. To see it was to want it.”

Sarah glanced over her shoulder. Henry stood close. She’d quite forgotten she’d come to speak with him. He spoke of the map, but his words echoed what he’d told his daughters about her.

To see her was to want her.

She shivered. She always seemed to do that around him. She expected him to ask, “Are you cold?” but he didn’t. He just stepped closer, pressed his hips to her back, and pulled her tight against him.

His breath stirred hot against her ear. “To what do I owe this pleasure?”

She melted into him, her bones suddenly no stronger than a baby bird’s. Pleasure. Yes. Tonight, would he offer her the same pleasures they’d enjoyed but hours ago?

His lips seared the sensitive skin of her neck, answering her question without words.

Yes, he would. Did they have to wait though? Why not take their pleasure now? His arms wrapped around her belly, and she placed her arms over them, enjoying the firm muscles that bound her gently.

She had nothing else to do now that she was a lady of leisure. No obligations, no responsibilities. Only—

Damn. Only the reason she’d come looking for him in the first place—the picnic. She sighed, loosening the closeness of their embraced. Turning in his arms, she placed her palms flat on his chest. “I’ve come to ask about the picnic. When shall we go?”

He strode back across the room and studied a map.

Sarah followed him, stood beside him. “Egypt.”

He nodded and turned his back on the map. “I’m not returning. When I leave here, I’m going to France.”

The revelation hit her like a blow to the chest. “France? But why?”

“I fear I do more harm than good in Egypt.”

“But you love it. I can tell. And you can teach us so much about it.”

“Ha! And what will the world do with my lesson?” He shook his head. “More violence and oppression.”

“Then why not stay home?”

He shifted from one foot to the other, avoiding her gaze as they studied the map in silence.

Fine. She did not need an answer if he refused to give one. “The picnic—what time shall I tell the children? Pansy, I think, is greatly looking forward to your presence. She’ll be—”

“It’s better if I not go. I’d make everyone uncomfortable.”

Sarah turned to study the map of Henry’s face. Right then, it was hard and unmoving, a desolate landscape. He had a point. The girls didn’t seem to know how to act around their father, except for Nora who seemed comfortable in any situation.

But the others would never learn to be comfortable in their father’s presence if he was always missing, even when at home.

“I’m comfortable around you. And James and the twins worship you.”

He didn’t answer. He didn’t move. He just stared stupidly up at Egypt.

Words shaped on the edge of her tongue. She shouldn’t. She’d never had such a horrible idea. She did it anyway. “You promised them.”

His cool, scholarly façade shattered. The barren landscape of his face blazed, flashed with lightning. “Curse you, Sarah. Married one day and meddling in my affairs.”

She shrugged, hardly shaken by his outburst. The man she knew didn’t yell. She almost laughed at his explosion, out of character as it seemed to be. “I have to get my meddling in now before you leave.”

“I am leaving!”

His voice boomed, thundered across the room, no longer enticing laughter.

She blinked, her brain flicking fast through their deteriorated conversation. What had happened? “But what is there to learn in France?”

Something in her voice must have alerted him to his odd behavior. He schooled his features, ran his hands through his hair, straightened an already perfectly straight waistcoat. “I just don’t want you getting ideas. I’m not staying, and I’m not going to the picnic this afternoon.”

She shrugged. “You’re a scholar. You travel. We barely know one another.” It was difficult to pick her words out and put them in the right order. She strode across the room, desperate to escape.

She paused. Retreat so quickly, then? What would Wellington think? She turned on her heel, intent on marching right up to her husband and telling him what she thought. But his flashing eyes bore holes into her, his gaze and its intensity an unexpected blow. He looked as hungrily at her now as he’d looked at Egypt seconds ago. With complete desire.

She approached him firmly but cautiously. He said he wouldn’t attend the picnic today, but he needed to. The girls had a Henry-shaped hole in their lives that needed fixing. Wasn’t that why he’d brought her here? To fix his girls’ lives?

She would do what she was brought here to do. He would attend the picnic. She’d probably need to knock him unconscious and recruit help from a footman or two to get him there, but she’d get the job done. She always did. When there were no books to distract her. At the moment, there were only maps within arm’s reach, and they posed no danger. But this wild-eyed lion? Oh, he was dangerous indeed. No matter. She steeled her spine and marched into the lion’s den.

When she reached him, he raised an eyebrow, waiting patiently for her to begin.

Sarah cleared her throat. “You and I are too old to play games, Henry Cavendish. From the beginning, you’ve been honest and straightforward with me, and I would like to return the favor. I will do everything you brought me here to do, but I ask for something in return.”

“Isn’t my money, my house, a stable future payment enough?”

She’d not expected him to be so cruel. Tears pricked behind her eyes. She gulped them down and poked him in the chest. “You’re right. I made a mercenary decision. But I didn’t think you held it against me. I thought you respected me.”

At least he had the decency to look ashamed. His cheeks blushed and his eyes dropped to the floor. “I respect you very much,” he mumbled.

She nodded her acknowledgment of his apology, but her neck felt tight, frozen with fury. “I am well aware you’re leaving, and I never asked you to do otherwise. But I will ask this of you. When you’re home, you are not in Egypt.” She spread her arms wide, gesturing to the maps surrounding them. “Or wherever else it is you’d rather be. Let me lay this out in a manner you will understand.” She held up a finger. “Point one. You will eat breakfast with your children.”

Henry shook his head, taking a step away from her.

Retreat? Henry? She’d expected a fight. But his sudden pliancy did not mean she’d grant him mercy. Sarah held up another finger to join the first. “Point two. You will take your children places—”

“Sarah, no.”

A third finger joined the first two. “You will teach the twins to ride and read maps and—”

“Sarah, I can’t.”

Not so very pliant, then. How to continue? She’d not planned beyond this. He was usually so loquacious he was sure to dive into a monologue immediately. But he didn’t. Perhaps he needed more convincing arguments. “You are a logical man, best persuaded by solid arguments. Let me provide them. First, you are home not even a few months out of every year. It’s precious little time to prioritize your family over your work, but if you want daughters who don’t hate you, you’ll consider it. Second, Ada and Nora are old enough to marry. They’ll not be here when you come home after that.” Persuasive points, offered coherently. If her mind wasn’t overflowing with worry, she’d feel a bit of pride. Alas.

Henry’s face blanched. She’d hit a mark. Good.

She continued. “Third, Pansy will be here for some time to come, but she needs to know her father better than the general public does, and with the popularity of your books and her current shyness toward you, I’m not sure that’s the case. Should she, too, learn of you only once she can read Egyptian Burial Rites?”

“It’s Burial Customs Along the Nile. And I’d rather her not read that book.”

Curious. She almost asked him why but shook the question from her head to focus. “Hardly the point, Henry.” Done counting arguments digit by digit, Sarah placed her hands on her hips.

He studied her intently, then he turned to look at the map behind him. It was clear Egypt pulled him like a lodestone.

“I’m not asking you to stay, Henry. I’m asking you to be here with us when you’re not there. Not for me. You barely know me. For your children.”

His mouth disappeared into a grim line.

If she touched him, would he snap, teeth glinting, tearing?

She risked it. His broad shoulder knotted with tension beneath her hand.

“Henry, why don’t you like being home?”

When he spoke, his voice sounded like it came from behind a door he’d locked somewhere deep inside. “I love being home. I traveled sparingly before Emmeline’s death.”

“Because of the war?”

“No. I traveled during the war, but not often. I had no desire to leave them.”

She didn’t have to ask who he meant. He meant his daughters, his wife.

“You loved her very much.”

“Yes.”

What a Herculean task! Construct a logical argument against the specter of a beloved wife? Impossible. But she had to try. “So, you leave, and you return once, maybe twice a year. But mostly you stay away because you lost so much you loved within these walls. But when you are home, pretend—at the very least pretend, for your children’s sake—that you still love Cavendish Manor more than any place in the world.”

She squeezed his shoulder, then let her hand drop. He neither moved nor turned toward her, still and silent as a sphinx. She’d lost. She turned and marched toward the door, holding her head high. If she had to retreat, it would at least be dignified.

His voice echoed across the room. “You’re right. Tell the others I’ll be down shortly.”

Sarah turned on her toe, a bouncing pirouette. He still stared at Egypt, his back giving away no secrets. Why had he agreed to her demands, especially when he determined not to spend time with the very people he loved most? She opened her mouth to ask, then shut it again. It didn’t matter. She’d won! He had agreed to spend time with his children, giving them exactly what they wanted and needed most. She schooled her features, wiping away any trace of the victory sweeping through her.

She should leave, commence a victory march as dignified as her retreat had been. But, oh! She needed to do something, to celebrate. On impulse, she shot around his rigid form, went up on tiptoe and kissed his cheek.

With wide eyes, he lifted the pads of his fingers to the patch of skin where her lips had lighted briefly. Whatever else he retreated from, it wasn’t her. He craved her as she did him. Perhaps she could use their mutual desire to her advantage.