“Probably not,” he agreed, but he ate it, anyway.
She waited patiently while he finished, then she waited patiently while he sat on the edge of the cot, trying to summon his strength.
She was a patient woman, his wife. She’d have to be, sitting three days at his boring bedside. Not much to do with an unconscious husband.
He thought about her journey across the Atlantic. To get word of her brother and then decide to go help him, all the time knowing it would take months . . .
That too bore the hallmark of a patient individual.
He wondered if she sometimes wanted to scream in frustration.
She was going to have to be patient for a bit longer, he thought grimly. His legs were like jelly. He could barely walk. Hell, even just standing was a chore, and as for making their marriage legal in every way . . .
That was going to have to wait.
More was the pity.
Although it did occur to him that they could still get out of this union if they so chose. Annulment on account of nonconsummation was a tricky legal maneuver, but then again, so was a proxy marriage. If he did not want to be married, he was fairly certain he did not have to be.
“Edward?”
Her voice tickled at the edge of his mind, but he was too lost in his thoughts to respond. Did he wish to be married to her? If not, he damned well couldn’t accompany her to the Devil’s Head. He might not possess the strength to take her properly to bed, but if they shared a room, even for one night, she would be thoroughly compromised.
“Edward?”
He turned, slowly, forcing himself to focus. She was looking at him with concern, but even that could not cloud the startling clarity of her eyes.
She laid a hand over his. “Are you certain you are well enough to leave today? Should I find the doctor?”
He searched her face. “Do you want to be married to me?”
“What?” Something close to alarm raced over her features. “I don’t understand.”
“You don’t have to be married to me,” he said carefully. “We have not consummated the marriage.”
Her lips parted, and oddly enough, he could see that she was not breathing. “I thought you didn’t remember,” she whispered.
“I don’t have to remember. It’s simple logic. I was in Connecticut when you arrived. We had never been in a room together before you came to the hospital.”
She swallowed, and his eyes fell to her throat, to the delicate arc of it, to the pulse quivering under her skin.
God, he wanted to kiss her.
“What do you want, Cecilia?”
Say you want me.
The thought burst through his brain. He did not want her to leave him. He could barely stand on his own. It would be weeks before he’d regain even half his strength. He needed her.
And he wanted her.
But most of all, he wanted her to want him.
Cecilia did not speak for several seconds. Her hand left his, and she hugged her arms to her body. She seemed to be looking at a soldier on the other side of the church as she asked, “Are you offering to release me?”
“If that is what you want.”
Slowly, her eyes met his. “What do you want?”
“That is not the question.”
“I rather think it is.”
“I am a gentleman,” he said stiffly. “I will bow to your wishes in this matter.”
“I . . .” She caught her lower lip between her teeth. “I . . . don’t want you to feel trapped.”
“I don’t feel trapped.”
“You don’t?” She sounded honestly surprised.
He shrugged. “I have to marry eventually.”
If she found this unromantic, it did not show on her face.
“I obviously agreed to the marriage,” he said. He loved Thomas Harcourt like a brother, but Edward could not imagine what might have made him consent to a marriage he did not want. If he was married to Cecilia, he had damned well wanted to be.
He looked closely at her.
Her gaze slipped to the floor.
Was she assessing her options? Trying to decide if she truly wished to be the wife of a man whose brain was not whole? He might remain this way for the rest of his life. For all they knew the damage went deeper than his memory. What if he awakened one day and could no longer speak? Or move properly? She might find herself being forced to care for him as she would a child.
It could happen. There was no way to know.
“What do you want, Cecilia?” he asked, aware that a note of impatience had entered his voice.
“I . . .” She swallowed, and when she spoke again, her voice was a little more certain. “I think we should go to the Devil’s Head. This is not a conversation I wish to have here.”
“Nothing is going to change in the next half hour.”
“Nevertheless, you could do with a meal not made of flour and sugar. And a bath. And a shave.” She stood, but not so fast that he missed the pink flush of her cheeks. “I shall offer you privacy for the latter two.”
“Very generous of you.”
She did not comment upon his dry tone. Instead she reached for his coat, which lay draped like a slash of scarlet across the foot of his bed. She held it out. “We have a meeting this afternoon. With Major Wilkins.”
“Why?”
“He brings news of Thomas. Or at least I hope he does. I saw him at the inn last night. He said he would make inquiries.”
“He has not already done so?”
She looked slightly uncomfortable as she said, “I took your advice and informed him of our marriage.”
Ah. Now it became clear. She needed him too. Edward forced a smile around his gritted teeth. It was not the first time a lady had found his name the most attractive thing about him. At least this lady had unselfish motives.
She held out his coat. With some effort, he stood and allowed her to help him don it.
“You’ll be warm,” she warned him.
“It is, as you say, June.”
“Not like June in Derbyshire,” she muttered.
He permitted himself a smile at that. The summer air in the colonies had an unpleasant solid quality to it. Rather like fog, if one heated it to the temperature of one’s body.
He looked toward the door, took a breath. “I . . . I will need help.”
“We all need help,” she said quietly. She took his arm, and then slowly, without a word, they made their way out to the street, where a carriage awaited to take them the short distance to the Devil’s Head.
Chapter 5
You showed him my miniature? How terribly embarrassing. Thomas, whatever were you thinking? Of course he must call me pretty. He could hardly do otherwise. You are my brother. He can’t very well comment on my freakishly large nose.
—from Cecilia Harcourt to her brother Thomas
One hour later, Cecilia was seated in the front room of the Devil’s Head, methodically finishing her lunch while Edward perused a recent copy of the Royal Gazette. She had also started her meal with a newspaper in her hand, but she had been so startled by the paragraph advertising the sale of “One Negro Man, a good Cook and not a Seasick,” that she’d put it down and instead set her eyes on her plate of pork and potatoes.
Edward, on the other hand, read the newssheet from front to back, and then, after asking the innkeeper to locate an issue from the previous week, repeated the process with that. He hadn’t bothered to explain, but it was clear to Cecilia that he was trying to fill the gaps in his memory. She wasn’t sure that it would help; she rather doubted he was going to find clues about his time in Connecticut in a public newspaper. But it certainly wouldn’t hurt, and anyway, he seemed like the sort of man who would want to keep abreast of the news of the day. He was like Thomas that way. Her brother never excused himself from the breakfast table without finishing the entire London Times. It was several days old by the time it reached them in Matlock Bath, but that never seemed to bother him. Better to be delayed in the news than ignorant altogether, he’d often said, and besides, there was nothing they could do about it.
Change what you can, he’d once told her, and accept what you can’t. She wondered what Thomas would think of her recent behavior. She had a feeling he would have placed his injury and subsequent disappearance firmly in the “accept what you can’t” category.