“Half past one.” She reached his bed and settled her rump upon it, arranging her tournure so it fanned out behind her in an elegant wave of silk. “How are you feeling? You look rather green.”
Fitting that he should match her dress and her eyes.
And she had repeated the same time. His train had already left the station by now. But he was not on it. Instead, he had been slumbering away in his bed. Which begged the question…
“Bennet knew what time I wished to wake this morning in preparation for our journey to the station.” He narrowed his eyes at her, but this, too, created more physical agony. At this point, the roots of his hair hurt. “Why did he not wake me? Why did he not pack my trunks and satchels in preparation for leaving?”
Helena reached out then, her cool fingers kissing his feverish brow. “I told him to let you sleep. You were resting so peacefully.”
She had told Bennet to refrain from waking him for his journey? And his valet had listened to her?
“Damnation, Helena. I have missed my train!” He winced after issuing the exclamation, for it was louder than he had intended and set off a salvo of pain in his head.
“You were in no condition for travel this morning.” She stroked his sweat-damp hair back from his forehead in a tender motion.
Her wry observation was not wrong, he had no doubt. For he was still not in any condition for travel. However, that was beside the point.
He gritted his teeth. “Stop petting me as if I am a lost mongrel you are attempting to comfort. You went against my plans, curse you.”
Her lips pursed, and she withdrew her touch, settling her hands in her lap instead. “I was acting in your best interest, my lord, as is my place as your wife. Someone had to do so. Mr. Bennet was going to wake you at dawn. The hour was unconscionably early.”
“The hour was early so that I would not miss my bloody train,” he growled, doing his utmost not to mourn the loss of her caresses. “Which I have now done, thanks to your interference.”
It was not the first time the vexing minx before him had interfered in his life, causing a diversion from his predetermined path. He had a distinct feeling it would not be the last.
“Actually, if you will but think upon it, I do believe you missed your train because of your own foolish actions yesterday,” his wife dared to correct him.
Her tone was gentle, the sort she might employ upon a child.
Her scent chose that moment to curl around him.
Why did she have to smell so damned good? Why did she have to be so beautiful? So tempting? Why had he poured all that damned Moselle down his throat? Had there been gin as well? He rather thought there had, more fool he.
“On the contrary, my lady,” he countered tightly. “I missed my train because you instructed my valet not to wake me as previously planned. You gainsaid me. Just as I did not marry my betrothed because you informed your brother that I had gotten you with child. Will your manipulation know no end?”
He was being a churl, and he knew it. But the bile was rising in his throat, his head was aching, his mouth felt as if it had been stuffed with a sour pair of stockings, and his plan to escape the wife he could not keep himself from wanting had been dashed. He was not in an excellent mood.
“You missed your train because you spent the evening drowning yourself in spirits instead of joining me for dinner. I delayed it for hours, waiting for you until I finally gave in, only to find you in the library, snoring and soused on a chaise longue.” Her eyes had darkened, the swirls of stormy gray hidden within their vibrant depths coming to life. Twin spots of color stained her cheeks. “And after your poor treatment of me on our wedding day, I still helped you up the stairs and into bed. You are welcome, my lord.”
Her tone was biting.
When she phrased it thus, he was being a cad. But she had forgotten an important part of their unfortunate circumstances.
“I left you yesterday because I could not reconcile myself to the fact that I was tricked into a marriage with you,” he countered, snarling.
She flinched, her expressive face showing just how deeply his awful words had cut her. And although it had been his intention, his own cruelty gave him no pleasure.
A subtle rapping at the door interrupted the tenseness of the moment.
Helena rose from his bed. “Enter,” she called.
Bennet had arrived with a tray in tow. Huntingdon had not had cause to over-imbibe so egregiously since the days of his youth; he was not a man given to excess. However, on the rare occasions when he had, Bennet had always proven a boon. Nothing like a bath and a shave, along with some restoring tonic, to have a man feeling human again.
Helena glanced in his direction, her expression unreadable. “I will leave you in Bennet’s capable hands, my lord. You can find me later in the library, should it please you.”
It did not please him to find her anywhere. Not the library, not in his life. Most especially not in his chamber.
Actually, that was a dreadful lie. He wanted hereverywhere. However, there was lust and there was common sense, and he knew which one he ought to heed most.
