Chapter 22
They both dozed. Willa woke and read for a little while until she had to get up to walk off the nervous energy in her body. She finished the book and went to the taproom to give it back to Mrs. Davies.
“My lady,” Mrs. Davies asked with a bright smile, “how is your husband?”
Willa still couldn't believe it had been Wesley under the helmet all that time, and all that time they'd been acting as husband and wife, blurring the lines between fiction and reality.
“He is well,” Willa replied, “and still resting. I was going to order dinner for us. Once he wakes in a little while?”
“Of course. He’s quite handsome. I would have missed that face too,” she whispered, glancing over her shoulder at her husband. “You're very lucky.”
“Thank you,” Willa said, blushing and feeling like a fraud. She returned to the room and stood by the window, arms folded, leaning against the wall and staring at the bustle of the inn yard as the afternoon waned into early evening. Occasionally she glanced at Wesley, watching him sleep and trying to put the scattered puzzle pieces of her feelings into a picture she recognized and understood.
There was a tap on the door, and Willa answered, surprised to see Mrs. Davies and her husband lugging in the big tub.
“Begging your pardon, my lady. I thought his lordship could use a good washing now that the helmet is off. I noticed how—well, you know.” Mrs. Davies waved her hands around her head.
Willa smiled. “I'm not sure I can remove the bandage.”
“Just unwrap it like a package,” Mrs. Davies said with a giggle. “Part of healing is feeling clean again. He'll feel more like himself.”
Willa looked back at Wesley. His hair did have a particular odor. “All right, yes. You seem to have a knack for knowing just what your clients need.”
“That she does,” Mr. Davies said.
Once the tub was set up, Willa decided she'd take her bath first while Wesley slept. She set up the screen. Her nerves were a tangled mess at the idea of undressing down to nothing in front of Wesley, even though he'd already seen her—she couldn't even finish the thought.
She sank into the warm water and scooped bubbles over her face as if she could wipe away her embarrassment.
Wesley was Knightly and Knightly was Wesley. And neither of them knew how that came to be. Perhaps it was as simple as Wesley was the rider who happened to come upon her coach and saw her kidnapped by the highwaymen. He knew what she had planned, but she hadn't given them the particulars, and itwasthe most likely route to travel back to London unless one was stopping to visit an acquaintance along the way. But part of her wondered how had she not known that underneath the helmet was someone she knew. He was quite possibly her closest friend. Beyond her sisters. And she’d had no idea. She'd noticed resemblances in their personality, things that she favored about both men, but she never would've put the two of them together.
Wesley's face and Knightly’s body. She couldn't think of them like that.
There was no Knightly.
It had been Wesley all this time, Wesley she’d been kissing, Wesley she'd been ogling with her gaze every time he undressed. It was Wesley who made her pulse race, and her body warm and soft in the most intimate places. They’d felt pleasure together, given each other pleasure.
There was no going back.
Not for her.
She couldn't undo the journey her heart had taken in these past few days.
Which meant… She was in love with Wesley.
While she'd been encouraged by the return of his affections before, now that she knew who he was, she couldn't ignore the obvious problem. Neither of them had been in love with the other before this journey. What would happen when his memory returned? When he remembered that she was just a friend? A friend he would likely have to marry now.
She remembered how frustrated he'd been not knowing who he was.
She didn't care that he wasn't a high-ranking member of the peerage. He was still the best man she knew, the greatest friend anyone could ask for.
He was not as reserved as she was, which tended to bring out her more playful side. And when they were together, all of these things sounded like good reasons they should marry. Willa ought to be happy that the situation had tied itself up so nicely, but it erased none of the doubt. She believed in her own feelings because she'd felt them, like stepping stones she'd crossed or a bridge from one side of herself to another, from not having any marital prospects to only seeing herself with one man for the rest of her life.
What would she do if he changed his mind? If his memory came back to him, and his feelings for her evaporated?
“Willa?”
She froze. She heard the clicking of the bed and then the floorboards as he came around the side of the screen. She covered her breasts.
