Jonathan and Amy (6 page)

“You'll miss her.” Amy picked up the candle, resenting that his claim on the child was as far superior to her own as his physical strength was to hers.

“Perhaps we'll both miss her.”

Rotten man.

But as Amy illuminated his progress down the corridor to Georgina's room, she admitted part of her pique was a function of the kiss they'd shared three days earlier. He hadn't brought it up in conversation, but he'd repeated the offense in its misdemeanor varieties.

He'd kissed her hand when he escorted her up to her room at the end of the day.

He'd kissed her cheek when he'd collected her from the library prior to dinner.

He'd claimed a kiss as his prize when the adults had indulged Georgina in a game of forfeits, causing the child to groan and the marchioness to posit that any lady would want to lose her round to Mr. Dolan if that was the boon he sought.

And Jonathan had laughed and cast such a look at Amy, she'd been put to the blush in company.

Dratted, man. Dratted handsome man, looking weary and slightly disheveled and perilously dear.

“If you'll put her on the bed.”

His lips quirked up, as if he wasn't fooled by Amy's businesslike air. He settled the child gently on the mattress, then drew the blankets up and straightened. “She'll sleep soundly now, but what about you? Will the storm keep you awake?”

Amy passed him the candle and tucked the covers more closely around Georgina. She smoothed a hand over the child's brow, then realized what she was doing.

“I'm sorry.”

He cupped his hand around the candle to shield it from the draft, but this also reduced the available light. “What could you be sorry for?”

“I don't mean to imply… Georgina is not my daughter.”

While Amy forbid herself to fuss at the sleeping child any further, Jonathan held the candle up a few inches, closer to Amy's face. “Your mood is not sanguine, my dear. Are you angry with me? Marie could be irritable too, at certain predictable intervals.”

“At certain—!”

“Come along, my dear.” He took her hand in his and led her from the room, closing the door quietly behind them. “I suppose a gentleman wouldn't allude to such a notion? Marie was hardly reserved about her bodily rhythms.”

“A gentleman would most assuredly avoid such topics.” Though
damn
him, he'd suggested a plausible excuse for why Amy had felt a sense of melancholia over the past several days.

“Then husbands aren't gentlemen, because without fail, if my wife were screeching at me one moment and weeping in my arms the next, there was only one explanation. I took to marking my calendar so I'd know when to bring home flowers.”

Amy stopped but didn't retrieve her hand from his grasp. “You brought her flowers?”

“I brought you flowers.”

He tugged on her hand, and she started walking again. “When?”

“When you had that head cold, in the winter.”

“The card said they were from Georgina.” But Amy had had her suspicions, of course she had. And one of the red roses gracing that bouquet—roses in January!—was pressed between the pages of her Bible. “Where are we going?” The question answered itself as they came to a halt. “This is a bad idea, Mr. Dolan.”

And yet, she followed him into his bedroom and said nothing when he closed the door behind them, set the candle down, and turned to face her, his hands on his hips.

“I'll tell you what is a bad idea, Amy Ingraham. A bad idea is when you watch me like I'm about to pounce on you, to the point that Deene has remarked the situation.”

The last thing, the very last thing Amy had expected was a lecture—and a deserved lecture. “I do apologize, but if you'd keep your lips to yourself, perhaps I wouldn't maintain such a close eye on you.”

He glowered, and without moving, seemed to grow taller and broader. “If my advances are wholly unwelcome, you have only to so inform me.”

To get away from the indignation in his gaze, and the hint of vulnerability lurking beneath it, Amy ducked aside and began to pace. “Your attentions are not wholly unwelcome, but you leave it to me to exercise sound judgment, and I am not as reliable in this regard as you might think.”

“You have very sound judgment, my dear Amy. I wouldn't entrust you with my only child if you lacked judgment.”

Now he sounded amused, the wretch, and he'd called her Amy.

Also
my
dear
. Again.

“There, you see! You call me Amy, and I want to smile. Not a condescending smile, as if I had some perspective on such a presumption, but a real, genuine smile,
at
you
—simply for using my name.”

“Say my name.”

He made no sense. “Jonathan.”

And while she was studying him, trying to fathom what he was about, he smiled—
at
her
. His smile harkened to the way he looked at Georgina, full of tenderness and approval, but it was a swain's smile, not a papa's smile at all.

“Yes,” Amy said, taking a seat. “I want to look at you in precisely that manner. This is, this is
folly
.” And that she remained right there beside him, in his bedroom, late at night, worse than folly.

“You are flustered.” He lowered himself beside her. “I am sorry for it. Tell me what I can do to calm you.”

He took her hand, and despite all sense to the contrary, it helped steady Amy's nerves—until she saw where they were sitting. “This is a bed.”

“My bed. It's comfortable too, which suggests Deene is emerging from the perpetual adolescence common to his peers. Tell me what's really bothering you. You know if it's in my power to do so, I'll address it.”

He kissed her forehead, and that obliterated Amy's scanty reserves of composure. The scent of him, the proximity of his throat to her mouth, the realization that he was without neckwear…
This
would
never
do.

“You think I am proper enough to resist what you offer, because you assume I don't precisely
know
what you offer. I wish… That is, you must consider…” She was gripping his hand and knew she should untangle her fingers from his. “I have
experience
,” she went on, “such that I am more susceptible to temptation than you suppose. I know where kisses can lead. I know what use beds can be put to.”

Jonathan withdrew his fingers from her grasp at that confession—now, when she wanted to drag his hand against her heart and hold it there.

“You have experience?” His voice was painfully neutral, as cool as the rain beginning to patter down outside the window. “What variety of experience?”

“The kind no true lady ought to have.”

***

“Your shot.” Bonny yawned and cracked his jaw. “And make it count. I'm for bed once I've beaten you again.”

“I'm distracted. I rode over to Dolan's country retreat—the place is the size of a palace—but no Amy. Seems they're enjoying the company of the Marquess of Deene, whose hospitality even includes Dolan's brat.” Nigel considered the billiards table as thunder rumbled off to the south. “And that storm doesn't help my concentration.”

“You're dithering, or possibly whining.”

“Both.” The table held not one decent shot, and any more brandy would mean a bad head in the morning, which—given his plans—Nigel could not afford. “Where did you get off to today?”

Bonny's smile was wicked. He leaned on his cue stick as if it were a shepherd's crook. “I paid a call.”

“Upon whom? There's precious little decent company hereabouts, not like Kent.”

“Seems I forgot my gloves when we last visited your cousins.”

Nigel squatted to sight a potential shot at eye level. “
Forgot
your gloves? You paid a call on the Misses Ingraham over a pair of gloves? Subjected yourself to more stale tea cakes and weak tea over an item of apparel?”

“No.” Bonny twirled his cue stick like a baton. “My gloves are all accounted for. I used the pretext of a missing pair to enjoy some very impressive raspberry cordial and a few sandwiches on the porch in the company of Miss Drusilla. Miss Hecate was off to the lending library.”

“Raspberry cordial cannot
be
impressive.” Nigel rose, feeling a crick in his back, also a peculiar relief that Bonny hadn't aimed his charms at Hecate. She was too substantial a woman for a man as good-hearted as Bonny. She'd chew him up and spit him out in the space of a single waltz.

“Raspberry cordial can be quite impressive,” Bonny said, “unlike your billiards game. If you were to forfeit, I might be persuaded to keep your disgrace to myself.”

Bonny was good-hearted. He was not an idiot. “You'd keep it to yourself—if what?”

“If you dower your cousins.”

Abruptly, they weren't bantering. They'd progressed to that delicate ground where friendships could flounder and challenges might be issued.

Nigel took his shot, which sent balls bouncing all over the table, but sank not a one. “Bonny, if I could dower them, I would. Mama wouldn't have it.”

Bonny skewered Nigel with a look that announced contempt for the fiction that Nigel's mother had vetoed dowries.

But Bonny
was
good-hearted, so no challenge—no overt challenge—was issued. “Perhaps when you win the hand of the fair Amy, you might bring the topic up with your wife, for she will want to see her sisters provided for. A dowager viscountess would not have a say in such a discussion, would she?”

Bonny leaned over the table, aimed, and took his shot. As a crack of thunder sounded directly overhead, three balls dropped, just like that. One, two, three.

***

“Were you willing?”

Jonathan put the question quietly, but the lady's answer made such a difference. Mother of God, if she'd been forced… And here he was, cadging kisses from her at every opportunity.

“Oh, I was far from forced. I was eager.”

Amy was disgruntled, and she could be only
Amy
when he beheld her in her night-robe and slippers, her hair a golden rope over one shoulder.

“Eager is a good thing.” Jonathan slipped his arm around her waist. “A woman ought to be eager, especially her first time.”

She shook her hand free of his and toyed with a button on the sleeve of her robe. “What about her second or her third?”

A story lurked here, and late at night with a breeze whipping up and only one candle lit was the time to wrest the story from her. Jonathan nudged Amy's head to his shoulder—where it did not stay, until she returned it there herself. “Tell me, dear heart. I told you about my calendar.”

“You should not have.”

A glimmer of amusement laced her words, so he didn't push. He stroked her back and savored the feel of her right next to him,
on
his
bed
.

“There was a boy. His name was Robert.”

A boy, not a man. “Go on.”

“He was the squire's son, a suitable fellow, and he had a wonderful smile.” She fell silent for a moment while Jonathan focused on her use of the past tense. “But he was seventeen and restless, needing to see the world if not conquer it. His indulgent papa bought him a commission, and off he went for a soldier on the Peninsula.”

“But first he charmed you with his smile, as boys in their regimentals are wont to do.”

“You make it sound prosaic. He and I had an understanding—we truly did—except he would not let it be an engagement, given that he was going off to war.” She sounded weary, as if she'd told herself this aspect of the tale many times.

“You want to believe he was honorable.” Jonathan turned her, so she was in his embrace more than merely sitting beside him.

“When he died, his commanding officer sent to me the lock of hair Robert had carried everywhere. The letter was very nice, going on about how thoughts of me must have comforted the fallen hero, but that lock of hair was several shades darker than mine has ever been.”

“He might have been carrying it for a comrade, a comrade fallen in battle.”

Jonathan brought his arms around her, and she burrowed into him with a gusty sigh. “You are so kind. I was furious.”

He propped his chin on her crown, closed his eyes, and inhaled a bouquet of lemon verbena. “Because?”

“All that eagerness? I wanted…I don't know…the philharmonic in swelling crescendos, poetry beneath the full moon, something besides him pushing my skirts up to grunt and sneeze over me for a few moments in a haymow.”

Jonathan did not laugh, not at her pique, not at the sneezing. The man Robert was dead—the
boy
was dead—and even in her innocence, Amy hadn't been the least bit impressed.

“My wife was not eager to fulfill her marital responsibilities, not at first.” Whatever the moment called for, Jonathan suspected it wasn't that.

Amy drew back, her expression puzzled. “You loved her. I know you did.”

He gently maneuvered her head back to his shoulder. “I did—very much—but we married for the wrong reasons. Her family needed money, which I had; I wanted respectability for my children, which she could guarantee. A merciful God granted us friendship after a few years, but childbearing was dangerous for her, and her passions were not…they were not of the body.”

Not for
his
body, in any case. She'd been loving, affectionate, and dutiful, also anxious to have more children, but never
eager
.

“I'm sorry.”

Two ordinary words, but in them, Jonathan heard an understanding and consolation he'd never sought from another.

“It was difficult, when she died. One feels grief, but also guilt, and that anger you referred to. And then one feels simply sadness.”