Perhaps she would not wish to leave the home she’d made here at this quaint little inn, but she would at least have the option. Because as Bess had pointed out, it was always better to have a choice.
Thinking through all his new plans, Nathaniel turned to take his leave of Henrietta and spied Bess hovering in the doorway.
She looked drained and overwrought, her eyes dark in her pale face and her lashes still clumped and spiky with tears.
Instantly, he wanted to go to her and dry her eyes, hold her, give her whatever comfort she would take from him—but as she came hesitantly into the taproom, she would not even look at him. Nathaniel frowned.
“Lucy’s asleep again,” Bess told Henrietta. “I couldn’t get much out of her that was sensible; all she would say is that the highwayman brought her home.”
“Yes! Perhaps he is not so much a villain as he has been painted! I could not believe a man so very bad as the Gentle Rogue is supposed to be would have concerned himself with delivering a wayward young girl to her mother. Although perhaps Five Mile House was not very far out of his way. Oh dear, I hope he does not intend to stay long in the neighborhood, robbing and pillaging.”
“I suppose we must wait until tomorrow to hear the whole story,” Bess said. “For tonight, it’s enough to know that she’s safe and unharmed—no thanks to my negligence and selfishness.”
“Dear Bess, no!” Henrietta stood at once and enveloped Bess in an embrace that looked distinctly motherly, to Nathaniel’s untrained eye. He felt even more warmly toward his stepmother than he had a moment ago.
“Henrietta, I’m sorry,” Bess kept trying to say, but Henrietta was having none of it.
“Pishposh, dear girl, you mustn’t! Lucy is more than a handful for anyone, and the good Lord only knows that she has her own mind. Once she has made it up, the devil himself couldn’t dissuade her. Well, perhaps the devil himself, in the person of a certain highwayman, but that is a story for tomorrow! For now, I can see that you are dead on your feet and I confess I am longing for my own bed, so why don’t we all retire? Nathaniel, dear, I’m sure you would be more comfortable in one of the newly refurbished rooms at Kissington Manor, though it’s a bit of a drive and then you’d have to wake the household?—”
“I am perfectly content at Five Mile House,” Nathaniel interrupted smoothly, still watching Bess. She was all but swaying where she stood, and he had to clench his hands into fists to keep from sweeping her into his arms and carrying her to bed to stand watch over her rest for the next ten to twelve hours. Barring that, he would at least like to know she was only just down the hall from him. “If there is a room for me, I will stay here.”
“Capital. Good night, Bess, we will see you in the morning and I’ll make Lucy tell the whole story again, leaving nothing out, and we can all decide what’s best to be done next, for I’m sure I don’t know. Come, Nathaniel, dear! I’ll show you your room.”
Henrietta bustled him upstairs, leaving Bess to make her way to her own chamber, wherever that might be. He spared a moment to think, wistfully, how nice it would be if Bess came and found him in the night, since he had no idea where her rooms were.
But neither of them had slept more than a few hours in the last day and a half. After all the excitement and upheaval, they needed rest more than anything else.
No matter how good it would have felt to fall into the deepest sleep of his life with her arms around him.
Maybe if he’d fallen asleep that way, a nightmare—of a cold, formless void, empty and echoing and solitary—wouldn’t have awakened him in the hushed darkness just before the dawn, sending him stumbling into his clothes and out of the comfortable, nicely appointed room and down the stairs to find Bess.
Bess was back where she belonged. In her kitchen at Five Mile House, up to her elbows in sticky bread dough. Lucy was upstairs, safe and sound. The world had righted itself.
So why did she feel as though her she was squeezing and pounding her own heart with every vigorous knead of bread dough?
Love doesn’t matter.
Grimly, she pounded down the dough, and with it, the memory of Nathaniel’s deep voice dismissing the importance of love in his life.
It did no good to remind herself that it changed nothing. She’d tried that for an hour this morning, tossing and turning on her cold, narrow bed that used to feel so comfortable and cozy. Until finally, she’d surrendered to the urge to get up and start doing something useful.
It changed nothing, but it had still hurt to hear it.
A lock of hair flopped into Bess’s face and she blew at it, annoyed. Her hands were already tired and sore, out of practice for the work being asked of them. But at the same time, there was the satisfaction of seeing and feeling the dough come together, grow smooth and springy under her fingers.
In a couple more hours, after rising and proving and baking and cooling, this would be bread that would be sliced and buttered and fed to her smiling, happy, safe family and friends.
What more could anyone want than that? Wanting anything more would just be…greedy. Selfish.
Pointless.
The familiar creak of a footstep upon the second-to-last stair made Bess smile, despite everything. Turning a warm smile on whichever of her friends had woken up early and come to her kitchen searching for sustenance, Bess was surprised to see Nathaniel fill the doorway with the breadth of his shoulders.
The smile dropped off her face. She went back to kneading. “Good morning, Your Grace.”
She was sharply aware of his every movement as he prowled closer, his raw presence rolling through the kitchen in a strange dissonance between Bess’s real life and her fantasies.
In a hundred years, she never would have expected to be standing here with him.
