The Next Best Bride (17 page)

"After the child." He grinned and kissed her palm. "Until then, you are mine to bed at will." He smoothed a stray strand of hair from her face. "Such a thought almost makes me wish that I do lose the bet."

Chapter Thirteen

His wife was a beautiful woman, Rand realized, as he gazed into her expressive face. Anger only served to make that fact more obvious. "Rand." She took his face between her hands and spoke as fiercely as she could. "You cannot wager on such things again."

Beautiful, and determined to reform him, despite their bargain. "Helena, I can bet on anything — whether it will rain on Monday, or the corn will be sweet at dinner." He smiled to soften his words, and she released her hold on his face. "It is my gift."

"Your gift? To wager on—" Her lips parted to reflect her incredulity. "Be serious, Rand. A child is a profound responsibility—"

He took both her hands in his own and gazed full into her eyes. "Helena, I have spent my life avoiding the necessity to be serious or to shoulder responsibility. The whole idea seems impossibly bleak to me. Why do you suppose I will change now?"

Flustered by his direct strike, she stammered, "Because you have married, and you intend to begin a family." As if she realized the weakness in her argument in light of their bargain, she added, "All men must shoulder certain responsibilities when they take those steps."

He kissed her fingers, as he said, "But not all men have my brilliant forethought to marry a woman under the express agreement that she will have complete freedom, as will I. We are not going to be a family, Helena. We are going to have a child, and then go our separate ways." She tried to tug her hands away, but he pressed a kiss to each palm before releasing her. "I did not dream your acceptance of my terms, did I?"

"No." She glared at him. Sadly, she was not at all impressed with his forethought. No doubt she wished she had told her sister and the duke the truth — that she had accepted him only because she was afraid she carried her lover's child.

He stood up and kissed the top of her head. "Which means, dear wife, if I care to bet that you will bear me a son within ten months of our marriage, I will. If I choose to wager that my child will have the beautiful blue eyes of his mother, I will do so."

She did not soften at his compliment to her eyes, although the same beautiful gaze looked into her mirror sadly. "Do I not count?"

He closed his eyes against the urge to soften. To explain the game he played. "Why, would you like to put a wager down as well?"

Her answer was sharp. "I mean, does my humiliation at having a public bet made upon the swiftness of my impregnation make a difference to my husband?"

"Helena, what other people think about foolish things should not matter to you." The bet was in London. He wished she had not had to know about it. "It has nothing to do with you."

"No?" She turned to face him as if she needed to see his expression. "Well, then I suppose I should be grateful that you have decided to leave me here while you frequent London. Otherwise, I should have to bear the stares and whispers of everyone who has heard of the scandalous wager."

"Society turns on such scandal," he said soothingly. "Wagers are made hundreds of times a day in London alone."

Her eyes narrowed and her lips thinned to a fine line until she said explosively, "Not on me!"

"You will be safe in London, should you wish to go there." He did not want to discourage her from leaving Parsleigh if she chose to go. Fear of gossip might keep her here, though. "No one will remark on the wager."

"No? If you are mistaken, I might find myself with those interested parties on either side wishing to measure my waist to see the rapidity with which it increases — or does not."

"I would fight any number of duels to protect the privacy of your waistline, my lady." Rand waved his hand as if to dismiss her argument altogether. But there was something in her distress that made him long for another way to get what he wanted. "I warned you not to try to reform me, Helena."

She prepared herself for another protest and he stood up. He held out his hand to her. "You will get nowhere with this fussing. Come and have your lesson. I am eager to begin."

She did not move, though her shoulders slumped forward in defeat as she glared up at him. Her eyes burned with the light of thwarted reform and he did not feel safe from her assessing gaze.

He did not think she was done with the subject, but he relaxed slightly when she said only, "Tell me what I am to learn tonight, my lord."

"Tonight I wish to show you the pleasure in having your husband brush your hair until it gleams."

It was a simple enough pleasure, and, as he had hoped, it calmed her temper enough that she did not refuse to join him in his room. In his bed. She did not, however, warm up to him enough that he could bring her to climax.

And afterward, as he drifted into a satisfied sleep, she climbed out of his bed and went to her own. It was the first time he had fallen asleep alone since they married. He found he missed her more than he liked.

* * * * *

He managed to find excuses to put off an investigation of the dower house for nearly a week. He showed her the gardens, the stables, a fishing stream, rode out with her to the nearby village. He pointed out a dozen scenes worth capture by her talented eye. And always she watched him, as if she wondered why he could show her the world outside the house and not the few rooms within.

But, at last, he could put it off no longer. As they took a light breakfast in the parlor, she said, "I have asked Mrs. Robson to take me through every room in the house, since you find the chore too unpleasant to manage."

"The house is small enough." He sighed. "Have you not seen it all by now?"

She stared at him, implacably. He knew her well enough to know she would not be put off any longer.

He thought of what Mrs. Robson could tell her, and sat back, glancing around the parlor, remembering. "My parents moved here after their marriage."

"Just as we have done," she remarked encouragingly.

He shuddered, hoping they were not doomed to the same fate as his father and mother. "They quickly added me to the family."

"Within ten months?" She smiled.

"Eight, actually." He thought of his parents for the first time as a young, eager and passionate couple. It was truly disconcerting. "That is my mother." He pointed to the portrait above the mantel behind him. "And that is my father." He pointed to the portrait that hung over the matching fireplace at the other end of the room.

He didn't care for the discerning gaze trained on him. "What a tragedy that they died so young."

"Yes." A tragedy he did not want to revisit. But it was impossible to avoid it here. He had shared these quarters with his parents in his earliest years.

While Helena studied the portrait of his mother as if she might pull the secrets of his past from the image, he thought of the evenings Nanny Bea would bring him down fresh from his bath for a visit with his parents — when they were not traveling. He had tried to be the very best boy he could, so that his mother’s eyes would shine with love and his father would pat his head proudly.

His mother would hug him, give him a peppermint and he would go away happily to bed, the scent of verbena and lemon still with him. That had all ended when his parents had been killed and he and Nanny Bea had gone to the big house to live with his grandfather.

Rand rose, restless. He would give her a short tour and a heavily edited story of his childhood. Every room had memories he could not escape. Even the entry hall, with the chipped marble tile. He had done that himself in a childish fit of curiosity.

"However did you make such a gouge?" Helena murmured.

He could not help the grin that spread across his face. "With my mother's favorite diamond ring. In order to test my father's assertion that diamonds are precious because they are the hardest substance in the world."

"Whatever did she do to you?"

"She kissed me and said I was not to indulge my curiosity with her valuables again." Restless at the memory, he moved up the stairs, Helena trailing behind. "And then she showed me how the diamond would carve my initials in the mirror above her dressing table."

"Do you suppose your initials are still there?"

"I don't know."

Nothing would do but that they check. The delicate engraving, hidden by a bottle of scent, brought back a flood of memories he struggled to suppress as his finger pressed against the flourish that finished the R.

"R P M." Helena bent, to peer closely at faint but distinct initials. "Randolph Philip Mallon." She traced the letters. "She must have loved you very much."

She said it as if to love him was a good thing. He could not bear to disabuse her of the notion. Tracing the delicate bones exposed by the arch of her neck, he said, "Enough of this room. Come into the master's bedroom and I will give you an intimate tour, beginning with the bed itself."

She shook her head and escaped out into the hallway. "We should save that room for last, my lord. I have a feeling that any time spent there will leave you wishing for a nap."

Recognizing that he would be better off indulging her, he followed with a laugh and briefly recited the purpose of each room as they climbed up all the way into the attics where he had ruled as a boy.

Feeling that his indulgence should be rewarded, Rand captured her in the dark and dust of the attic and, amidst the discarded furnishings of decades past, drew her to him. "Now, I think it is time for us to return to a close and thorough inspection of the bedroom where the lord and master rests."

"As you wish," she said meekly.

Feeling jubilant that the reward for his patience was at last at hand, he led her swiftly down the stairs. But then, just as he thought he had eluded the worst of his fears, Helena asked, "Is there a nursery, or a place for children, if and when we have them?"

He said curtly, "Yes."

He would have continued to his room, his bed, his well deserved reward. But she resisted the pull of his hand, stubbornly and silently questioning his swift change of mood. He kissed her, hoping that she would forget her question.

She sighed. "The nursery first, my lord." So he took her down the small, easily overlooked hallway that he had hoped she would assume was a little used closet and into the three rooms in which he had spent his first five years.

He steeled himself for a view worsened by neglect and the passage of time. The blow was greater, he found, when he saw that time had not touched the room. Everything remained unchanged — no, worse — everything in the nursery, from the oak cradle to the Birchwood horse and carriage had been refurbished, polished, and left like new.

The nursery was exactly as it had been the day he left this house. Rand struggled to maintain his calm as Helena moved freely about the rooms, exclaiming in delight over each new discovery. He would not have her know his distress. She would only ask why, and he could never tell her. Never.

She returned to him after what seemed like hours but could only have been minutes. She smiled up at him, oblivious to the blind panic that surged inside him. "Our children will be happy here."

"No doubt." He took her hand and moved toward the door. Toward escape. He hoped to get a child quickly. He could not spend much more time here.

Helena paused before they reached the doorway, ignoring Rand's impatient pull. "Why were you so reluctant to show me these rooms? I confess I thought I would find a nursery so dank and dark I would need to arrange other quarters. But these rooms are perfect."

His smile tightened. "I'd rather think about what is required to make a child than what must be done to raise it."

"It?" She frowned at him. She was not insensitive to Rand’s distress, but she could not understand the reason behind it. After all, having a child was the very reason they were married. A nursery was not a torture chamber.

"Him, then." He smiled more naturally, and dropped a kiss on the top of her head. "Our son. The child that we must still make, may I remind you, before you have need of these rooms."

"True enough," she conceded. She took one more look at the rooms her children, if she were fortunate, might one day romp in. "Though it is a comfort to know the rooms are ready for our child, whether son or daughter. The only change I can see making is to remove those heavy drapes. Natural light is best for a growing child."

If there was a child, she cautioned herself. Wagers and open speculation made her wary to assume that Rand's plans would go as sunnily as forecast. She smiled at him, and squeezed his hand as she rocked the oak cradle gently.

Even if he were the kind of man to prefer his children bathed and brought down only for a kiss at night, an empty nursery should not make him weak in the knees. She wanted to share her own delight in planning for a coming child. Wanted to know that the child was more than a means to an end for him.

How awful for a child to be nothing more to his father than a pawn. "Perhaps I should finish my sketch of the dower house. We could hang it on one of these walls for our children."

To her surprise, he showed the first sign of true delight she had seen in him since she had asked him to show her the house and the nursery. His grin was pure wickedness when he said, "Excellent idea. I will have Dibby run up to the main house and beg provisions for a picnic from the cook."

"Sometimes you surprise me," was all she could manage to say. The transformation in his demeanor was truly startling. She had a strong suspicion he had more than a picnic lunch in mind.

They spent a pleasant time on the knoll above the house. The cook had packed a feast for them: cheese and bread, cold chicken, olives, little iced cakes and a flask of wine — but no glasses.

"No matter," he said when he noticed the lack. "We can share." He took a drink from the flask, and tilted it up over her mouth so that she could drink as well. She licked a stray drop from her lips and his gaze heated as it followed the sweep of her tongue. She felt a pleasant lurch in her stomach as she waited for him to kiss her, but he did not.