She turned towards a basin on the nightstand, dunking a roll of cotton into the water.
“What are you doing?” William asked warily.
Gwen wrung out the towel with a snap. “Washing you.” The next thing he knew, his face was enveloped in a damp, soapy cloth.
William came up sputtering. “What the—”
“Be quiet or you’ll get soap in your mouth.” The cloth descended again, with particular attention to his ears.
“You don’t have to do this,” he said, trying to inch away as she dunked the cloth back in the water. “In fact, I’d rather you didn’t.”
She ruthlessly peeled back the covers, baring him straight down to his breeches. William was very grateful that he was still wearing breeches, such as they were. It was a pity he had never invested in pantaloons. Those would have covered far more. As it was, he tried to sneak his hairy lower shanks under the blanket, only to find himself being swatted on the leg by Gwen’s towel.
“Would you rather I let you stink?” As she began efficiently sponging his torso, he heard her mutter, “This was a great deal easier when you were unconscious.”
She had done this before? If he had been capable of blushing, William would have. The idea of lying here, helpless, next to naked . . . He felt like an adolescent again, caught in an embarrassing position.
Scrunching his neck, he looked down at the top of her dark head. From this angle, it looked as if she were—
William cleared his throat. Hard. He’d lost enough blood without it going to inconvenient places.
Gwen took advantage of his momentary confusion to poke him in his good shoulder. “Raise your arm.”
He raised his arm. He had, at this point, no personal dignity left. This woman had seen him at his worst, in every possible way, physical and spiritual.
She had even seen Kat.
As if she were reading his thoughts, she said, “Your daughter stopped by. Not the missing one,” she added, before he could get his hopes up. “The other one.”
“Kat?” Perfect. All he needed was for his daughter to also see him lying low. He would have liked her to retain some of her illusions. When she was little, he had been her hero, her knight errant, carrying her on his shoulders, soothing her childish hurts and bruises.
When had it all got so much harder?
“Kat,” Gwen confirmed, dabbing carefully around his bandages. “I like her.”
“So you’ve said.” He grabbed at the sheet as she started pulling it down below his waist. “Um, I think I’m clean enough.”
Gwen shrugged. “Suit yourself,” she said, retrieving her washcloth. With deliberate bravado, she added, “No need to be ashamed. Nothing there I haven’t seen anyway.”
This time, he definitely was blushing.
“What did Kat say?” he asked in a strangled voice.
“She told me to tell you not to worry, that she and her grandmother will be staying with friends for the rest of the month.”
A wave of sadness swamped him. He had never felt so weak, so useless. “She’s lying.”
“She’s lying,” Gwen agreed, wringing out the cloth in the basin. “But it was a noble lie. She has character, that girl.”
“She’s not a girl anymore,” said William. She had been a girl when he put her on the boat in Calcutta, a girl of seventeen. She was twenty-seven, and deserved better than he’d given her.
“Whatever she is,” said Gwen, “she’s strong. You should be proud of her.”
He would have been more proud if he’d kept her closer, safer. And then there was Lizzy, missing.
“When do we leave?” he asked.
Gwen eyed him assessingly. “Your fever only broke this morning.”
“When do we leave?” he repeated.
“Has anyone ever told you you’re as stubborn as a mule?”
In fact, they hadn’t. He usually got his way with charm rather than brute force. But he didn’t have the energy to be charming. And he didn’t think she’d fall for it, anyway.
“It takes one to know one,” he said instead.
Gwen grinned at him. “As long as we understand each other,” she said. “You’re not going anywhere tonight—no, don’t argue with me! We’ll never make the stage and I’m not letting you near the reins of a curricle like that. You’d overturn us both, and then where would your daughters be?”
He had to acknowledge the logic of that, but he didn’t like it. “I don’t like it,” he grumbled.
“And I don’t like tripe,” she said. “We all have to deal with things we don’t like in this world.”
Tripe? How did tripe get into it? “They’re hardly on the same order.”
“Distracted you, though, didn’t I?” Sobering, she said, “Think it through. The girls have been missing for nearly three weeks now. One night will hardly make a difference.”
William folded his arms across his chest, ignoring the pinch in his side. “You’re not making me feel any better.”
“I wasn’t trying to,” she said. “But I would prefer to keep you alive. I’ve invested too much effort to see you collapsing somewhere between Bristol and Bath.”
She said it matter-of-factly, but there was something in her voice that hadn’t been there before. For the first time, he noticed that there were purple circles under her eyes to match the color of her dress. Her face seemed thinner than before, thinner and more drawn. She had pulled her hair back ruthlessly from her face, but the severe hairstyle only emphasized the hollows below her cheeks, the fragility of her long neck.
William reached out and caught her hand before she could turn away. “Have you had any sleep these past four nights?”
She twitched her hand away. “Some,” she said. “Enough.” But she didn’t quite meet his eyes.
William’s memories of the last few days might be fragmented, but what he did remember was Gwen leaning over him, tending him, feeding him, her hands as gentle as her tone was rough. “I’d rather you not kill yourself in tending me.”
She put her nose in the air. “I’m not such a weakling as that.”
“No,” he said, the first smile in days beginning to curl across his lips. “You’re not. Has anyone ever told you you’re a dab hand with a sword?”
She made an airy gesture with one hand. She wore several rings, heavy things in twisted gold and enamel, but not a wedding ring among them. “I had a reasonably competent fencing master.”
“Is it the thing in England for ladies to have fencing masters?”
She shrugged, avoiding his eyes. “I get easily bored. And, as you see, my little toy can be rather useful. The roads aren’t as lawless as they were twenty years past, but one still encounters the odd highwayman with delusions of competence.”
“Delusions of competence,” William repeated. There was no denying that the woman had a way with words.
She mistook his slow headshake as something else. “You mustn’t overtire yourself.” Frowning, she leaned over him, testing his temperature. “The fever seems to be gone, but you’d best rest still. If you make it through the night without it rising, we can take the stage back to Bath tomorrow.”
She stood over his bed like an avenging angel, ready to chivy him to sleep with a flaming sword.
“Only if you get some rest too,” said William stubbornly.
“I shall,” she said, and weak or not, William still knew enough to know when someone was lying. She sat herself down in the chair by the bed with a flounce of her crumpled skirts. “Presently.”
If he believed that, he’d also believe she had a commission to sell him in a regiment of her own making.
William looked around the room. It ought to have been evident to him before, but his mind hadn’t been all that it could be. “There’s only the one bed.”
“Yes,” she said. She absently rubbed her shoulder with one hand. “I am aware of that.”
“You’ve not been sleeping in that chair?” Even as he said it, he remembered waking to find
her next to him, curled up in sleep.
Gwen’s cheeks darkened. “I took a little rest now and again on the bed—on top of the covers,” she added hastily. “You were too far gone to notice. Besides, it would have looked odd if anyone had come in and I wasn’t in the bed with you. We’re meant to be married, remember? No, of course you don’t. You were tottering with blood loss. I had to tell the innkeeper that we were married. Don’t worry, it’s not binding.”
There was something rather endearing about her obvious discomfort. “I’m not worried.”
If anything, that seemed to annoy her. “Well, you should be. If it were Scotland, we would be married by now whether we liked it or not. All it takes is a pronouncement in front of strangers for a marriage to be legally binding.”
“I’ll remember that,” William said, “the next time I find myself in Scotland. In the meantime, there’s a broad bed, and room for you in it.”
He patted the covers next to him.
He watched as she surreptitiously flexed her shoulders, eyeing the lumpy mattress like a tiger sighting an unattended goat. With an effort, she straightened her back. “No matter,” she said. “I’ll just read for a bit.”
William hoisted himself onto one elbow. “You said you’d slept here before.”
“Yes,” she said, frowning at him. “But you were asleep. And delusional.”
“I intend to be asleep very shortly,” he said. “And it’s safe to say that I’m still delusional.”
“Not like before,” said Gwen with authority, but she rose, stiffly, from the chair, stretching.
William was reminded of a cat, having scorned a dish of meat, waiting until the humans’ backs were turned before inching towards it.
“That reminds me,” she said brusquely. “Who is Lakshmi?”
Puzzled but game, William said, “She’s the Hindu goddess of fortune.” As Gwen seated herself on the other side of the bed, leaning over to unlace her leather boots, he added, “She’s a bit like the Roman Venus, in that she’s meant to be the embodiment of beauty, but with other aspects beside. Not quite so dim as poor old Venus.”
Lakshmi, goddess of beauty and fortune . . .
He could hear the faint echo of his own voice, fever hoarse. Confused images, brightly colored birds, a fountain, and always, always, that fall of dark hair, brushing his bare arms, caressing his face, as he feasted on her lips, his hands around a lithe waist that slipped away, just out of his grasp.
William shook himself back to the present. “Why do you ask?”
Gwen had tucked her bare feet up under her skirt. She curled up on the far side of the bed, on top of the covers, her shawl spread over her.
“Nothing,” she said quickly, and if his eyes didn’t ache quite so much, William might have thought she had turned slightly pink. “Just something you said in your sleep.”
Their faces were on a level now, pillow to pillow. William eyed her with interest. “Did I say anything else interesting in my sleep?”
“Just those sea shanties,” Gwen shot back. She twitched her shawl, trying to get it to cover more of her. It was a flimsy thing, a lady’s shawl, intended for ornament rather than real use.
“You’re shivering,” said William, sitting bolt upright. The covers fell away from his chest. He yanked at the blanket on top of which she was lying. “Come under the covers.”
Gwen rolled away. “I am quite all right, thank you,” said her muffled voice from the other side of the bed. She still had the blanket trapped beneath her.
William tapped her on the shoulder. “There’s no one here to know. I won’t have you take a fever now, not after all the effort you’ve put in to save my sorry hide.” She stayed curled up just where she was. Cajolingly, he added, “You can put a sword between us, if that would make you feel better.”
That got her attention. She rolled her neck to look over at him. She ought to have been vulnerable in her prone position, but she managed to pack her voice with a full measure of disdain. “I prefer to keep my sword where I can reach it, thank you very much.”
She patted the handle of her parasol, which was propped beside the bed.
“And don’t think that I don’t appreciate that,” said William, “but I’ll not have you freezing, and that’s my final word.”
“Your final word— Stop that!”
William gave the covers a sharp yank, enough to unbalance her, trying to pull them out from under her so that he could put them over her. Gwen rolled over to stop him, and somehow, he wasn’t quite sure how, after a bit of scuffling and tussling, and a “mind your bandages, you fool!” she was lying beneath him, her hair tousled from its pins, both of them breathing hard.
They stared at each other for a moment, both slightly dazed.
At least she wasn’t blue anymore. There was flush on her cheeks and her lips were red and slightly parted.
“All right!” she said, squirming away from him. “All right! You win!” She pushed at his chest—making sure to avoid his bandage—with both hands. “Move, you great lug. I can’t get under the covers with you on top of me.”
For some reason, William couldn’t stop grinning, despite the dull ache in his side. He obligingly rolled over, swinging his legs over the side of the bed, hitching up his breeches to preserve his decency. It was the first time he’d been out of bed in days, and his legs felt wobbly, but he’d be damned if he’d let her see it.
With a courtly gesture, he held up the sheets so that she could climb under.
“Can I have that in writing?” he said. “About the winning?”
“We tell no one of this,” Gwen said fiercely, staring him down for all she was worth. “Do you understand? No one.”
“Agreed,” he said, and slid back in on his side of the bed.
Gwen scrunched herself in the smallest possible space at the edge of the bed, pointedly turned her back on him, and yanked the covers up over her shoulders, her hand resting on the handle of her sword parasol.
She’d left the candles burning on the nightstand. One by one, William lifted them and blew them out, plunging the room into darkness.
He waited before the last candle was out before saying, “Gwen?”
She wriggled deeper into her side of the bed, pointedly ignoring him. “I’m not talking to you,” she muttered.
Despite all the worries crowding around him—or perhaps because of them—William smiled.
“Sleep well,” he said. “And may all your dreams be sweet.”
“Hmph,” said Gwen. But he noticed that she didn’t push the covers away.
Chapter 11
Plumeria resolved never to tell Sir Magnifico of the liberties he had taken, ever so unwittingly, in the secluded environs of the olive oak grove. What happened in the oak grove stayed in the oak grove. Thus she resolved, but as they made their unsteady way towards the dark tower, she could not help but notice a strange change in the formerly voluble knight. Was it the Gypsy’s curse at work? Or some greater, even more mysterious power?
—From The Convent of Orsino by A Lady
Gwen was warm, truly warm, for the first time in days.
She hadn’t realized just how exhausted she had been, sleeping in fits and starts, waking to minister to William, waking because she couldn’t stop shivering, until she had grudgingly accepted a place in the bed, under the covers. The clergy could go on all they liked about angels with harps, but as far as she was concerned, heaven was a large bed and a warm blanket.
Then the blanket moved. One might even say it wriggled.
She was, she realized, snuggled up against William Reid, his front pressed against her back, the position of his body mirroring the shape of hers. There was a knee tucked up behind hers and a heavy arm draped over her waist. She could feel a chin bumping up against her shoulder blade and a nose tucked up against the nape of her neck.
Gwen’s first, sleepy thought was that this would be very useful for her book, for the scene where Plumeria and Sir Magnifico fell into an
enchanted sleep in the olive grove. Or perhaps an oak grove. Somehow, olives just didn’t spell out romance and enchantment. Yes, Magnifico’s arm around Plumeria’s waist, just so. Only, she wasn’t sure that Magnifico’s arm should be quite so, well, bare.
Her brain went back to that “bare” and stuck there. Bare. Arm. Bare.
Good Lord, she was in bed with a naked man. Not that that was a surprise—she’d known that when she went to bed, seduced by the siren song of warm bedcovers—but he was ill, and on the other side of the bed. His attire or lack thereof had hardly seemed to count. Obviously, that was before some point in the night they had got stuck together like— Her brain lurched at simile and came up short. He was just so . . . unclothed.
She was being embraced by a naked man. Well, a man in breeches. A largely naked man. Not as if the percentage of his nudity made any difference, as if only being half-nude was somehow more respectable than being two-thirds nude. No, the key factor was the embrace. They were tucked up together like peas in a pod, if peas had a habit of tucking their partners around the waist and pulling them back against them.
Deep breaths. There was nothing to panic about. It was purely an accident of sleep. She would just remove herself from his embrace and he would never know she had been there. She’d wager that he embraced any woman in his bed the same way. For all she knew, he might think she was a pillow. Yes, a pillow.
Doing her best to impersonate a pillow, if pillows had the power of independent motion, Gwen began inching out from under William’s arm.
William stirred in his sleep. He mumbled something completely unintelligible. His arm tightened around her waist, clamping her firmly back in place. Then he threw a leg over her for good measure. Her skirts must have got hitched up while she was sleeping. She could feel his bare calf against her leg in the most shockingly intimate way.
Murmuring something in his sleep, William burrowed against her neck, his nose rubbing against the sensitive skin at her nape.
Was he . . . nuzzling her? Yes, that was quite definitely a nuzzle. The motion sent little tingles along the back of her neck, straight down her spine. She felt a most unaccountable desire to purr.