Margery wasn’t certain what she’d expected to happen the following morning. Whatever possibilities might have been swirling about in her mind, however, she certainly didn’t expect to receive an urgent missive from Swallowhill before she’d even had her morning chocolate.
She rushed to her grandmother’s room, the letter held tight in her hand, fear and joy and anticipation making her heart gallop like mad in her chest. “Gran,” she said as she burst through the door. “I’ve been called to Swallowhill.”
Gran, already sitting up in bed and accepting a plate of toast from Miss Denby, promptly dropped it. Perfect points of browned and buttered bread fell to the sheets, but she didn’t pay it the least mind. One hand flew to her neck. “Clara?”
Margery rushed forward to hand the letter over with trembling fingers. “Not yet,” she managed. “But soon. Quincy is asking for me to be there for her. Though I rather think he’ll need the distraction more than Clara will need my help. She has Phoebe and the midwife and the physician, after all. And Lenora has been summoned as well.”
“Pish,” Gran said, scowling at Miss Denby as she attempted to clean up the mess of toast and crumbs, all the while fending off Mouse as he tried to reach the treat. “Quincy will have Peter and Oswin on hand. You go help that cousin of yours birth her child.” She grinned, her excitement plain to see. “And give it a kiss from me.”
Margery couldn’t help but grin back. “I will, Gran.” She kissed the older woman on the cheek before spinning about and rushing down the hall. So immersed was she in what had to be done, however, that she didn’t immediately see the very large figure emerging from a room just ahead of her.
“Mrs. Kitteridge.”
There wasn’t much that could have stopped her just then. Daniel’s voice, however, was one of them. She skidded to a halt, her breath leaving her as she took him in. His hair was carefully brushed, his clothes just so. He looked no different from how he had yesterday.
Yet there was something different all the same. She felt it deep in her belly, this new knowledge of him. And he felt it, too, if the quiet way he sucked in his breath when their eyes met was any indication.
“Your Grace,” she whispered. “Good morning.”
“It is,” he whispered back, then swallowed hard. “That is, good morning to you as well.”
“Did you sleep well?” It was inane, really, to ask him that. She knew very well he hadn’t. At least not before he’d left her bed just a few short hours ago. Yet she found she was loath to leave him just then.
A small, lopsided smile played about his lips. “I did not. And yet I’m surprisingly rested.”
Her gaze snagged on that smile, tracing the contours of his lips. Remembering them on her skin last night. “Are you?” she murmured.
“Oh, yes.” His voice was deep and vibrated through her in a delicious way.
Suddenly a commotion behind her. And then Miss Denby was at her side. “Lady Tesh bid me to give you these,” she said, pressing something wrapped in a snowy handkerchief into Margery’s hands. “Scones from her breakfast tray, for the journey. Said you could eat them in the carriage. Your Grace,” she quipped with a bright smile, dipping into a curtsy before hurrying back to her employer’s room.
But Daniel appeared not to acknowledge her departure. “Journey?”
“Goodness, yes. Please forgive me. My cousin Clara has need of me; it’s most urgent.” Her mind blessedly back on track, she made to dart around him. His voice, however, stopped her again.
“Shall I wait up for you if you’re not back by this evening?”
She knew what he was asking: Did she wish him to come to her again? It was to have been a onetime thing, her mind cautioned. She was to have put her desire for him behind her now that her body’s urges had been sated, to get on with the very important business of finding him a wife. As well as to secure the money she required.
Her body, however, had other ideas. He had reawakened something in her that she was reluctant to put back in its neat little box again. She could not very well assist him today, she reasoned. Not with her being called to Swallowhill. And, as she could not resume her efforts until tomorrow at the earliest, there was no reason not to have one more night together. To make certain her need for him was well and truly behind her.
“Yes,” she whispered before, with a smile, she hurried away.
* * *
Daniel had not planned on dozing off. He’d purposely sat up in one of the chairs before the hearth in Margery’s room, had even brought a book to read.
But the lack of sleep the night before finally caught up to him. One minute he was trying to focus on the words in his hands, the next, there was the softest of caresses on his scarred cheek.
He froze, confusion momentarily scattering his wits, and instinctively he grabbed at the trailing fingers. It took him some seconds to make sense of what was happening, but when he finally did the breath left him entirely.
Margery kneeled before him, just as she had last night. Though now she was fully dressed, hair up but several bedraggled curls having escaped her coiffure. There were dark shadows beneath her eyes, proof of a difficult day, though a small smile played about her lips.
He had never seen anything so beautiful in his life.
“I’m sorry to startle you,” she murmured.
In answer he leaned forward and caught her lips in a kiss. She sighed into his mouth, melting against him, then just as quickly pulled away to yawn into her hand.
“You’re exhausted,” he said. “Let’s get you to bed.”
She didn’t fight as he took her elbow, guiding her to standing before lurching to his feet. Once more he was struck with the potent desire to sweep her up in his arms and carry her to the bed. Though this time the feelings were decidedly more tender, a wish to care for her. He fought down his bitterness at not being able to do so—so much stronger tonight than it had been last night—instead propelling her with a hand to the small of her back to the bed.
“Sit,” he ordered her.
She gave a huff of a laugh but did as she was bid, hiding another yawn behind her hand as she sank onto the mattress. “Truly, I’m fine.”
“So fine you can barely stand without swaying,” he muttered. As she gave another small laugh he went to work, removing her shoes, peeling down her stockings. When that was done, he helped her back to her feet and assisted her in removing her clothes. They were serviceable, securing where she could easily reach, worn but cared for. He frowned as he guided her back down to the bed and settled her against the pillows. Again the questions swirled about in his brain: Why did a viscount’s daughter and cousin of not one but two dukes wear such clothes? Why did she so desperately need money that she was willing to help him find a wife to get it?
But now was not the time, he told himself firmly as he carefully removed pins from her hair and gently spread it out over her pillow. Throughout his ministrations she lay quiet, not fighting him as he fussed. He thought for a moment she had fallen asleep. But as he turned away preparing to leave her to her rest, her soft voice called out to him.
“Don’t go, Daniel.”
There was nothing on earth that could have prevented him from returning to her. She gazed sleepily up at him, her eyes shining in the faint firelight. She held out a hand. “Lie with me.”
Heat shot through him as he remembered the previous night. He hastily doused it. “You need to sleep, Margery.”
“I will,” she promised, her hand still suspended in the air. “I just want you to hold me.”
He couldn’t have refused if he’d tried. Which he did not remotely wish to do. Sitting on the edge of her bed, he removed his boots, then slid in next to her. She curled against his side, as if she had always belonged there.
“Mmm, you feel wonderful,” she whispered, her cheek rubbing against his chest.
He tightened his arm about her, dropping a kiss into her mussed curls. “Everything went well?”
“Yes.” He could fairly hear the smile in her voice. “My dear cousin has a healthy baby boy. He’s so very beautiful, Daniel. I’m so happy for Clara and Quincy.”
“I’m glad,” he said. “Now, sleep. Your work is done; you need rest.”
She heaved a sigh. “My mind is too full to sleep. Won’t you talk to me?”
Stubborn minx. He smiled into the crown of her hair. “What would you have me talk about?”
“Anything. Everything. Tell me about what you were like as a child.”
He laughed in surprise. “I was not very interesting as a child, I’m afraid.”
“A lie, I’m certain,” she teased sleepily, her hand playing lazily over his stomach.
“Oh no. It’s the truth. Nathaniel, on the other hand, was the exact opposite.”
“You loved your brother very much, didn’t you?”
He cleared the sudden, inexplicable thickness from his throat. “I did,” he answered.
She nodded, her hair rubbing against his chin, as if he had verified something she had guessed all along. Then, “Tell me about him.”
He blinked, his hand tightening on her arm. “You wish to hear about Nathaniel?”
“I do,” she murmured.
Though the words were slurred with exhaustion, he could hear the sincerity in them. It had been so long since he’d talked about Nathaniel with anyone besides his mother. Even then, she didn’t speak of him with any regularity, her pain over his passing still achingly deep, an endless chasm that he feared would never be scaled.
When he spoke again he was hesitant, carefully prodding those memories he’d purposely repressed, testing the flavor of the words on his tongue. “My brother was…vibrant. He was all light and color. There was a natural exuberance to him, a passion for life. And people flocked to him because of it.”
“You admired him.”
“Yes.” He smiled, something he had not thought to do again when speaking of Nathaniel. His chest lightened as he continued. “How could I not? He was everything I ever thought a person should be: kind and compassionate, talented and cheerful and giving. But more than that, I knew he loved me. He never left me in any doubt of it. It was in everything he did.”
“He sounds incredible.”
“He was. Now, go to sleep.”
She shifted more fully against him, her arm stealing about his waist, her leg draping over his own. “I’ve no wish to sleep yet,” she grumbled. “Tell me a story of the two of you as children.”
He chuckled, rubbing his hand along her arm. “Has anyone ever told you that you can be stubborn?”
He felt her cheeks lift in a grin. “Oh, certainly.”
He laughed again, wracking his mind for a memory that might pacify her. Finally he lit upon something.
“I was not the most eager pupil. I could not focus enough to retain anything my tutors tried to teach me. I wanted to be out and about, playing at being a soldier, riding hell-bent for leather over the countryside. My tutors were forever at their wits’ end with trying to keep me contained.
“My father was constantly on me to be more like Nathaniel, who was an ideal pupil. He excelled at everything, was quick and smart, never missed a lesson. You would think I would have resented my brother. On the contrary, it only made me love him more, even while I was painfully aware that I could never live up to his example.
“Nathaniel was kinder to me than I was to myself. He knew that what I needed was more time out of doors, not less. And so, unbeknownst to me, he used his never-ending charm to convince my father to allow him to take over my lessons for one day. If I came away from it having learned something previously beyond me, my father must promise to implement this new method of learning there on out.
“And so, the following day, Nathaniel woke me at dawn, declaring it a holiday for us both. He then proceeded to take me about the grounds of our estate for a day of fresh air and exercise. I didn’t think to question the game he made up of playing catch while reciting sums, or of the fun we had spinning our father’s globe and pretending we were visiting whatever country our finger happened to land on, or of writing letters in the dirt with sticks, pretending we were leaving notes for explorers to find.
“At the end of the day, my father took me before him and quizzed me. And I was able to recite things I hadn’t been able to before. And my father changed my lesson plans the very next day.”
He laughed softly. Damnation, he hadn’t thought of that in years. He could still remember his father’s astonishment and the bold wink Nathaniel had given him when Daniel had finally understood what he had been about all that wonderful day. It warmed him, that memory, reminding him of happier times before he had gone off to war, and found his childhood ideals crushed. Before Nathaniel had lost his life in a horrible accident.
But Margery was quiet. She must have fallen asleep. It made him inexplicably sad, for some reason. He realized then he wanted her to know these things about him, about his brother. In sharing his memories, it was as if he had not lost Nathaniel; not completely, anyway.
Heaving a sigh, he settled more fully into the mattress, knowing he must leave soon though he ached to stay. Suddenly her voice drifted to him, quiet and gentle in the still night air.
“Thank you for telling me about your brother.”
He smiled into her hair as he felt her drift off to sleep in his arms. “Thank you for listening.” And thank you for healing my heart a bit.