The Plain Bride by Chasity Bowlin
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
It took longer than expected to reach Bath. By the time they finally arrived, they’d been on the road together for more than a week. Mayville was at a point where he wasn’t even certain he could accurately call Gray a friend anymore, so sick he was of his company.
When they reached the house at the Royal Crescent, Gray didn’t even stop. He simply kept on riding toward his own home nearby, with a cocky salute.
“Damn him,” Mayville muttered as he dismounted. When his feet hit the paving stones, he simply stood there for a moment, willing the blood to rush back to his extremities. He loved riding and always had. But more than a week in the saddle had left him regretting the decision not to travel at least partly by coach. Abominable weather had slowed them, countless storms making the roads muddy and treacherous.
A moment later, the door opened, and the butler stepped out. He was instantly recognizable, of course, as he’d previously been the first footman at the house in London. Apparently absconding with a runaway wife was an efficient route to promotion through the ranks.
“My lord,” he said in greeting, as a footman rushed past him to take the reins.
“James?”
“Jones, sir. Jones.”
“Right. Jones. How long have you worked for me?”
“Seven years, my lord,” he replied.
“I see,” Mayville said. “Well, seven years is a long enough time for me to disclose something personal to you. I can’t walk up those steps. Not now. Give me about ten minutes to get my legs under me before you announce anything, would you?”
The butler blinked. “Oh. I take it you’ve had a very long and arduous journey, sir.”
“Indeed. Indeed. I’m just going to mill about here in the street for a bit.”
“Certainly, my lord. A chamber has been readied for you, and I shall immediately have a hot bath drawn. No doubt you will want to be less muddy and less…horse scented when you see her ladyship. She is very sensitive to smells at this point in time.”
Mayville blinked. Had one of his own servants just told him that he smelled? Shaking his head, he simply walked across the street to the parkland opposite it. He moved gingerly, his muscles protesting the days of being cramped in the same position. Though, if he were honest, he would admit it wasn’t simply the journey.
His four-month-long bout of self-pity had seen him rarely leaving his house. He hadn’t attended the fights, ridden his horse, or even seen daylight on most days. He’d holed up in his house with brandy and his own miserable thoughts while nursing his fury at her. At least now he partially understood her reasoning, though it still rankled that she’d had so little trust in him.
When at last he didn’t feel like his knees would buckle and that he might actually make it up the steps under his own steam, he turned and headed back towards the house. A movement on one of the upper floors caught his eye, and he looked up. She stood at the window, her face a pale shadow behind the glass. But once she’d been caught, she dropped the curtain and stepped back, hidden once more.
Mayville sighed heavily. He’d missed her face. Missed the sound of her voice. He’d missed touching her, kissing her, talking to her. He’d just missed her, dammit. And he couldn’t live the way he had for the past four months. After Gray had pulled him out of his drunken stupor a week earlier, he’d had more consecutive days of not being falling-down drunk than he’d had in the entire time since he’d left London. It wasn’t a state he could return to. That was no way for a man to live. And it was certainly no way for a father to behave. Whatever agreements they’d made in the past were forgotten. New agreements would be forged, and they wouldn’t involve the foolishness of separate lives. Without her, he had no life.
Althea had been watching him,wondering what he was doing strolling through the park. When he’d looked up, his gaze landing unerringly on her, she’d felt raw and exposed. Though she’d stepped back immediately, it was as if she could still feel the weight of his gaze upon her.
Her stomach flipped, and for once it wasn’t nausea; it was nerves. She was all but trembling at the prospect of facing him. Easing down onto the settee that rested beneath that window, she let out a deep, shaking breath that she hadn’t even been aware she was holding. She wished Sabine were present, but she was resting in her own home, and given how much the woman had done for her in the past week, it was well-deserved rest.
Sabine had found a midwife who’d provided a miraculous tonic for her that relieved all but the worst of her nausea. The mornings were still truly wretched, but at least by afternoon she could climb out of bed and manage to eat toast and drink tea—and keep it down.
Reaching for the sewing basket on the floor beside her, she retrieved it and set to work. Busy hands always soothed a worried mind. It was the best way to await his arrival.
She couldn’t say how long it took before a soft knock sounded on her door. It wasn’t Sinclair. It was her maid.
“His lordship is in the drawing room, my lady. He asked that I relay an invitation to join him.”
“Tell him I’ll be there directly, please,” she answered.
Sarah nodded and then slipped out.
Rising from the settee, she smoothed her gown. At least the high-waisted style hid her growing belly. It wouldn’t be entirely obvious the moment she walked through the door. Though she did not doubt that he was already aware of her condition. Gray would have told him and likely scolded him on her behalf. But no one had scolded her, and she’d behaved horribly. Sabine had been firm but kind and understanding. Much more so than I deserved, she thought with intense regret. How much misery had she caused by simply not being able to believe him—to believe in him?
With another deep breath and a pat of her hair, she left her room, sewing box in hand, and made for the stairs. When she reached the bottom, she turned and walked into the drawing room, with no notion of what to expect.
He was standing before the fireplace, a cheery fire blazing inside it. His back was to her, and she could see that he desperately needed a haircut. The sandy-blond locks were far longer than she’d ever seen them before, well past his shirt collar and resting on his shoulders. Immediately, her fingers twitched, itching to touch him, to feel those silken strands gliding though them. Then he turned to face her, and she realized just how awful he looked—his face gaunt, eyes hollow, and complexion paler than she’d ever known him to be.
She gasped. “You look positively wretched!”
His lips quirked in that sarcastic half smile she knew so intimately. “I’ve no doubt of it. And while the sight of you is a balm to me, you do not look well, Thea. You do not look well. Not at all.”
She laughed softly. “I am not well. Not at all. Though I am better than I was a week past. And you? Are you better?”
“I am better now. I am better with you,” he said softly.
Her heart stuttered in her chest. “You don’t need to say those things. Not to me. I understand this is not what you wanted. Not what you planned. Lady Bruxton—”
“Can hang,” he interjected. “She can bloody well hang. She’s a vicious, lying cat, and I should never have underestimated her. I will say this one time only, Thea: I do not want Charlotte. Independent of whatever happens between us, I will never be with Charlotte. Anything she might have said to the contrary was either fiction or fantasy on her part.”
She tried to speak, but for the longest time it seemed she was just opening and closing her mouth, with no sound emerging. Finally, she managed, “You mean that. You really do!”
“I do. And I’m sorry I ever gave you cause to doubt it.”
“But you didn’t,” she protested. “All of those doubts, Sinclair…they were my own. They did not come from you. For years, all I heard from my father, on a daily basis, was how ugly and stupid I was, that I was plain and unattractive and lazy and that no man would ever want me for a wife. Though I knew him to be a liar, though I knew him to be vicious and cruel for the sake of it, when you hear something often enough, you believe it. And I did. I believed him, and I kept waiting for you to grow bored and disinterested, because how could you not? You were everything, and I was nothing.”
“Do not ever say that, that you were nothing. You were bright and funny. You were kind and giving. You were also occasionally contrary, argumentative, and maddening. And I love you, Thea, for all those reasons and more. For everything that you are, I love you. I should have swallowed my damned pride and said it so often you’d have laughed in the face of Charlotte’s machinations because you would never have a moment to doubt my feelings for you.”
The enormity of what he’d just said swamped her. It was like going under water. She couldn’t catch her breath. And then the tears came, great, gulping sobs that wracked her until she could do nothing but tremble and weep.
“Thea… Althea,” he said. “What is wrong? If you do not feel that way—”
“I’ve loved you for years,” she admitted tearfully. “Even when I didn’t even know you. I’d see you in the village, and you would take my breath away. You never looked twice in my direction, and I never dared to dream that it would ever be anything more than just an unrequited infatuation. And when I met you, you were not at all the perfect gentleman I had imagined. You were not charming or even especially genteel in your manner toward me, and I thought all my days pining for you had been a bitter waste. But I could not have been more wrong. You are not perfect, but I do not need you to be perfect, Sinclair. I only need you to be you, and I need to be yours. That is all I will ever need. And I will never be foolish enough to let my stubborn pride or the doubts from my past get in the way of that again.”
“I want to restore Rosedale Manor,” he said. “I want to make it a home for us…unless you’ve no wish to live there. I know Boston Spa has not been a kind place to you.”
“It’s my home. It’s your home. And I’d love to see it restored. The house should not suffer for what others did.”
“Treason,” he admitted. “My father and my grandfather were well paid… The original manor was Tudor—old and dark. It did not fit my grandfather’s aesthetic. He wished to make it bright and palatial. He wanted something so grand that he would be the envy of others. So, he and my father sold secrets to our enemies: the colonials, the French…whoever would pay their price. But Rosedale stood long before their sins, and it should stand after, stripped of what they did to it.”
“And to you. Their shame isn’t yours, Sinclair. It never was.”
He looked away, clearly not quite ready to part with his guilt over that. “There are things I cannot make amends for, but it doesn’t change the fact that an indeterminate part of my fortune comes from their misdeeds. I support charities for widows and orphans of the wars. I’ve funded housing and hospitals for wounded soldiers. But I cannot make it right.”
“It doesn’t have to be right. Only better,” she offered. “And I’ll help you. We’ll make it better together.”
“I love you, Thea. And I’ll never make you unhappy again.”
“I love you,” she answered in return. “And I’ll never let you. I’ll be contrary, maddening and difficult, to remind you of all the reasons you love me.”
He stepped forward, and before she could even fathom what he meant to do, he swept her up into his arms, kissing her soundly.
Oh, she had missed that. The feel of him against her, the taste of his lips, the rasp of his shadowy whiskers on her skin. Could anything be more perfect? And then he was moving them to the larger settee, bearing her back against the cushions as that kiss turned to something else. It was no longer simply about rejoicing in their reconciliation. The familiar heat bloomed between them, and the need that she had thought would never again be fulfilled roared to life inside her.
“We should go upstairs,” she suggested. “This is scandalous in the drawing room.”
“I’ve spent the last week on horseback, Thea. If I have to climb those stairs again, we won’t be able to do this,” he admitted. “Scandal be damned.”
She laughed. “Then, by all means, yes. Scandal be damned.”
