A Christmas Bride (11 page)

“What is it?” she asked, shaken. By her fearful anticipation of his seduction or by her remorse that he was being a gentleman even while she had the most unladylike thoughts of him kissing her?

“Something that I hope will help Theodora read her books.” He knelt beside her. “Hold out your hand. It is larger than hers, but I made this somewhat adjustable, because I did not want to get her hopes up needlessly.” He smiled up at her. “Or yours before I had some idea it might work.”

He latched the metal to her hand with short pieces of leather. The metal device was about as long as her forearm. Standing, he went to a shelf and took down a book. He opened it and set it on her lap. When the book started to close, she put out her hand to hold it in place.

“All right,” he said, an intense expression on his face. “Try it. You cannot use your other hand.”

“How?”

He reached over and guided her arm so that her elbow still held one side of the book open while the wooden knob reached under the next page. “Now draw it back.”

She tried, but the page continued to slip off. Even twisting her arm at a nearly impossible angle did not help. “Mayhap, with some practice, Theodora can manage it.”

“If you cannot, she will not be able to either.” He tilted her arm so he could examine the page-turner. “What it needs is something to grip the pages, almost like another hand.”

“Or fingers.”

“Exactly.” Standing, he took the book and set it back on the shelf.

She ran her finger along the metal shaft. “But I think you have the right idea. With a few changes, this will be wonderful. You are quite clever, Timothy.”

“If I were truly clever, I would have figured out a way to make it work the first time.” He chuckled as she struggled with the straps. “And I would have made it easier to take off and put on. Let me help.” He undid the leather straps. “That is part of my next challenge. I need to figure out a way that she can take it off and put it on without assistance, but I am going to focus on helping her turn the pages first. I can worry about the other things later.”

“She is going to be so excited when you make it work.”

“If I do.”

“
When
. Look how close it comes to working now.”

“Close,” he said with a sigh, “is not good enough.”

“But it was only your first try.”

He held up both hands, his fingers spread wide. “That is actually my tenth try. It seems I finally got the metal part of it right. Now for the gripping part.”

“She will be so thankful when you have this all set that it will not matter how many tries it took.”

“She has you to thank, Serenity. If you had not chided me, I would not have guessed that Theodora was not perfectly happy in her room.”

Serenity took the page-turner and examined the polished wooden knob. “She may be, but that is because she does not know any better.”

“I would ask you if you always try to save the world, but I know that is something you cannot answer.”

“Mayhap I just have picked up that habit since I woke after the accident.”

His brows rose. “You certainly saved me from ruining Grandfather's celebration.”

Serenity put the piece of metal on the window seat beside her. Speaking of the lies that she had helped make partly true unsettled her more with each passing day. Her hopes that her memories would come back to her as quickly as the pain vanished had been for naught. Every day there were tantalizing flashes of things she could not quite recall, but nothing came clear.

Not looking at Timothy, she asked, “Was this your room when you were a child?”

“Yes, before I grew old enough to get rooms on the lower floor. Felix was here often, but when he was not, this was my private lair high up near the attics.”

“You did not need to worry about suffering from ennui here. There are so many wonderful toys.”

He wagged his finger at her as Mrs. Gray had at him. “I know what you are thinking. You are wondering why some of these toys are not downstairs with Theodora.”

“Exactly.”

“Theodora's mother, my cousin Christina, forbade it. She was worried that—”

“It seems to me that if she was so worried about her child that she has consigned her to sit so she will not hurt herself, she would not leave Theodora here while she winters in Italy and would not come to see her daughter only occasionally.”

He sighed. “Don't judge Christina that hard. I own that she is not the best of mothers. Partly it has been because she could not forgive herself for not giving birth to a perfect child. Partly it has been because her husband could not forgive her for that either. And lastly, it is partly because she is more interested in her Italian paramour than anything or anyone else.”

“And he does not know about Christina's child.”

“Now you understand.”

Serenity shook her head. “I don't understand an iota of it. Theodora is an intelligent child.” She touched the metal device again. “While you have been putting this together for the past two days, I have been giving Theodora a look-in each afternoon. She has a wit that makes me laugh, and she has a hunger to see more of the world than what she can through that one window.”

“Christina has forbidden—”

“That is absurd! How can she be making such commands when she is not here to see what her child needs? If I spoke with your grandfather, he might listen.”

“Don't be so certain of that.”

“I shall not be.” She smiled. “That is why I shall have all my arguments ready for him to listen to.”

He laughed and shook his head. “I see you are going to continue to keep things from becoming serene around here.”

“You are the one who gave me that name, not me.”

“And what name would you have given yourself?”

She started to answer, then sighed. “I don't know.”

When Timothy cursed lowly, she knew he had not expected her to hear his oaths. She wanted to assure him that she did not blame him for his playful question. It was not his fault that she could not remember her past enough to guess what she might have been called before he asked her to become his Serenity Adams.

Picking up a rag dog, Serenity said, “This is well loved.”

“I think it was the very first toy I was ever given,” he replied.

“You certainly received many more.”

“Enough to fill this whole nursery. Each New Year's morn, I would leap out of bed and run down the stairs to see if any gifts awaited me.” He smiled as he sat on the floor, tucking his feet beneath him as he must have done when he was the child who owned all these wonderful toys. “The anxiety was eased a bit, because on Christmas Eve, Grandfather would put aside the gift I had made him for his birthday, so he could tease me about how he had to open his before I could open any of mine. Then he would open it Christmas morn and let me pick one gift to open that day, too.”

“Which was your favorite gift?”

“That I gave him or that he gave me?”

“Both.”

He smiled. “All right. Both are easy to answer.”

“Your favorite gift from him first.”

“This.” He pulled a box out of a cubbyhole along the wall and opened it. Spilling its contents onto the floor, he picked up several of the blocks and set them atop one another. “I spent hours building all sorts of structures with these.” As he put another block on the stack, he said, “My favorite gift I gave my grandfather was a clock that I had made myself.”

She pulled a pillow from the pile on the window seat and set it between her and the sharp mullions on the window. Leaning back, she asked, “You made a clock?”

“Yes. I think I was about twelve.” He gave her a sheepish grin. “Of course, I took apart one of the antique clocks to see how a clock worked before I put mine together.”

She laughed. “What did the earl say?”

“He thanked me for my gift and then asked when I would be able to pay him for the repairs to the old clock. I did weeks of chores in the stable to pay for that. It taught me to consider the consequences before I made a decision.” He paused as he was putting another block in place. “Apparently it did not teach me well enough, or I would not have needed to drag you into all this.”

Serenity put the pillow aside and set herself on her feet. Taking care that her dress did not brush the blocks, she crossed the room to where a rocking horse was hidden under a dusty sheet. She drew back the sheet and touched the horse's head. The creak that came from the rockers was the only sound in the room.

“I think you did consider the consequences, Timothy. Otherwise you would never have agreed to the offer Felix made to me. You did not want to hurt your grandfather by showing him that you had been false with him.”

“Or maybe I was just determined to do anything to avoid taking the blame for my out-and-outers.” He dropped the blocks back into the box. Putting it away, he stood. “You have been very careful not to lay the blame for this at my feet, where it so obviously belongs.”

“I need not. You know the truth.”

“I know that I could not renege on the offer Felix had made you to help your brother and sister.”

Her brother and sister! When had she last given them any thought? Like the rest of her life before the accident, they seemed nebulous and unreal.

“Have you heard anything of them?” she whispered.

“Not yet, but I expected it to be at least a fortnight before I would hear from London.” His mouth tightened into the caricature of a smile. “There are so many things and places that need to be checked.”

“Are there that many schools?”

“Apparently so.”

Serenity closed her eyes. “I know I must have patience, but I know as well that if my brother and sister are found, they will be able to tell me of the past that I have lost.”

“And you will have a family of your own again.”

“Yes.”

“That is important to you, is it not?”

She nodded. “That is one thing I know with every ounce of my being, something that could not be forgotten unless my heart stopped beating. Family is deeply important to me, just as it is to you. It seems that, in that way, we are very much alike.”

“In others, we are very different.” He ran a single fingertip along her shoulder to the lace beneath her chin. His finger brought her face up toward his. “A complement and a contrast.”

She edged away. “Timothy, there are no others here to be betwattled by our apparent affection.”

“That is true.” His eyes glittered like dust motes dancing in a sunbeam. “Do you long only for apparent affection? Should I believe the words on your lips or the longing in your eyes when I touch you?”

She gripped his sleeves. “Believe both, for both are the truth.”

Cupping her elbows, he drew her back to him. “But you will deny us the pleasure we could share with a single kiss?”

“A single kiss?” She shook her head. “Should I believe the words on your lips, Timothy, or the longing in your eyes that tell me a single kiss is not what you are thinking of?”

“You are a wise woman, and I am witless.” He released her and brushed his hand against her hair, smoothing it back from her face. When her breath snagged upon the delight she could not control, he said, “It seems I named you for the wrong virtue, Serenity.”

“What would you have named me?”

“Prudence seems a more apt name at the moment.”

“On that, we agree again.” She turned and walked out of the nursery.

When he did not follow her, she wondered if he was the smarter one, for she doubted if she could have resisted the longing in his voice if he touched her again. She was not sure how she would from now on. She must find a way, because soon, she hoped, she would remember her past, and her present with Timothy would be over.

Nine

Timothy heard the laughter as soon as he turned the corner in the long hall that led toward the south wing of the house. The sound was unlike any other laughter in the house, for one voice was childish and the other slid along him like an eager caress.

Serenity
… He had not had two words alone with Serenity since their discussion in the nursery. Each time he saw her, when he had taken a respite from his work finishing up the paperwork on the new factory and reading the reports on the next project or from trying to make that accursed page-turner work for Theodora, she had been with others—usually with Grandfather as they discussed plans for the Twelfth Night celebration, because the earl seemed as smitten with her as a youth suffering from his first calf love. Timothy understood that all too well.

Theodora's laugh soared along the hall, startling him. He did not recall ever hearing her laugh with such enthusiasm. Mayhap Serenity had been right to chide them all about the child. They had begun to treat her with as much solemnity as if they were at her funeral instead of helping her enjoy the years she had been granted. He had been astonished how Grandfather had heeded Serenity's calm suggestions that Theodora should be included when they were
en famille
at dinner. Even Felix's arguments that no other child that young had ever been allowed to join them for dinner had not kept Grandfather from agreeing with Serenity.

Tonight would be the first test of Grandfather's decision, so Timothy had wanted to be certain Serenity knew what she—and Theodora—faced. He would have to guard his words carefully not to upset the child, who must be excited about the unexpected privilege.

The laughter drew him along the hallway. He stood in the doorway, not daring to move. Serenity was sitting on the floor, papers scattered around her. A few strands of her black hair had fallen from the single braid that bound it down her back. They framed her face, accenting its heart shape. Sitting as she was, her gown, a sedate green the same shade as the holly hanging from the window, revealed her ankles and a hint of the slender legs above. His fingers recalled those enticing curves as he had carried her from the carriage and again here up to her rooms upon their arrival.