The Sweet and Spicy Regency Collection (108 page)

“I don’t understand.” She crumpled the documents she was holding.

“It’s simply, really. I’m releasing you from any obligations you might believe you have toward me. We will remain husband and wife in name only. I am giving you the freedom you crave. The freedom you deserve.”

He turned away from her to stare into the fireplace. “Please. Go.”

But she couldn’t. She stood there, her gaze fixed on his broad shoulders, stunned. The documents slipped from her fingers and scattered on the ornate rug. She would be free, forever free. That had been what she’d wanted. So, why did she feel as if he’d just run a knife through her heart?

She stepped toward him.

The muscles in his neck stiffened. “Go.” His voice was sharp, angry. “Go. Now.”

But she couldn’t leave. Not like this. Her gaze strayed to Dionysus’s small, violent painting above the mantle. The colors were dark, yet there was a fragment of a rainbow—a sliver of light—struggling in the midst of a terrible storm that was whipping the sea into a brutal rage.

The painting troubled her.

And suddenly she knew why.

“Before I leave,” she said, “answer me one question. Why did you create Dionysus? Why did you feel the need?”

After a long, tense silence, she gave up and moved toward the door.

“I couldn’t,” he said, just as her hand touched the knob. His face was still toward the fire. “You see it. Don’t deny it. I’ve seen you shiver whenever you look at my work. You recognize it. I couldn’t risk letting people know.”

“What did you think you needed to hide?” she asked gently.

“The emptiness.” He raised a fisted hand to his chest. “I’m flawed, unworthy of my lands, my fortune, my title. My paintings are as flighty and empty as the painter who created them. How could I risk letting my colleagues or my family discover such a defect?”

Her gaze again strayed to the violent storm in the painting. She recognized pain, anger, frustration in the brush strokes, but not emptiness.

And the rainbow.

She’d been wrong about it. How could she have loved Nigel and still have mistaken the painting’s meaning? The storm wasn’t destroying the rainbow. No, without the furious spiraling maelstrom, there could be no beauty. The storm raging within Nigel had created the delicate miracle.

Beneath the pain, beneath the self-loathing his uncle had forced upon him, there was hope. She prayed she could reach it. Oh, how desperately she needed to reach it.

She returned to his side and carefully placed her hand on his shoulder. “How can you believe yourself empty when your love has filled me so completely?”

He jerked away from her, moving so close to the fire that he appeared to be in danger of being consumed by the licking flames. “No, I have done nothing.”

“
Nothing?
You have reminded me how to love. Even when I fought you, spurned you, you didn’t turn your back on me. You stood your ground and waited for me to come to you.” She drew a deep breath, fighting back the tears that were threatening. “Your love has freed me from the hell I’d been cast into.”

The fire crackled as the coals shifted behind the grate.

“I created that hell,” he said.

“No.” She realized that their relationship was in her hands. If she wanted it to continue, she was going to have to speak the words she’d once thought she’d never speak again. Her lips trembled. “You freed me, Nigel. Your coming into my life has made me whole.” She drew a deep breath and trusted him with her heart. “I love you.”

A tense silence weighed down the air in the room.

“What did you say?” he said at long last. He turned toward her.

She grabbed his hands. “I said that I love you, Nigel.” The words came much easier now. “I love you. And there is nothing you can do to get rid of me. I can be quite stubborn, I’ll have you know. Once my mind is set there really is very little that can be done to change it.” She smiled despite her tear-dampened cheeks. “You, my dear husband, are good and stuck with me.”

He wrapped his arms around her and held her tightly against his chest as he crowned her head with a halo of gentle kisses.

“Thank you,” he whispered.

* * * *

Nigel slept late the next day. When he finally woke he felt more refreshed, more relaxed than he could ever remember feeling. Though he was alone in the chamber at this late hour, Elsbeth had once again spent the entire night in his bed, a pleasure he fully intended to repeat for as long as he lived.

After dressing and eating a quick breakfast, he grew restless. He sat alone at the breakfast table while his fingers fidgeted and the bitter scent of paints called to him.

An overwhelming urge to paint struck him hard in the chest. This wasn’t right. Years and years of training had honed his ability to push all his artistic longings into that pitiful creature Dionysus. Yet over the last few weeks, his barriers had slowly eroded away until he no longer could clearly tell where his personality ended and Dionysus’s began.

He buried his face in his hands and groaned. Elsbeth was married to a madman. She deserved better, but no matter how hard he tried, he feared he would never be able to completely destroy the demon infecting his soul.

“You are a damned dreamer, boy. A weakling.” How many times had he heard his uncle say those exact words to him? How many times had his uncle failed to beat the demon from him?

With a silent curse, he returned to the dank cellar, back to his personal hell.

But when he got there he saw that the door to his workshop stood open.

He ran halfway down the steps to find that the room had been stripped bare. Only a rough wooden table and a scattering of discarded canvases remained.

“Gainsford!” Nigel bellowed.

* * * *

Elsbeth wasn’t sure what to expect. She had left Nigel’s bed before sunrise and had set the servants immediately to work. This was something she needed to do. Her love for Nigel and Dionysus could not remain fractured.

Nigel deserved more. And so did she.

She waited for him in a bright parlor in the back of the house. The sun streamed into its windows for a goodly portion of the day. The view of the flower garden was sure to inspire.

She bit her lip and prayed she’d done the right thing. Nigel, she was discovering, had feelings as tender and fragile as her own. What she’d done, she’d done out of love.

She prayed he’d view it in the same way.

The commotion downstairs grew louder. Poor Nigel, he sounded so very upset. “Gainsford!” he cried out again. Gainsford—who’d warned her that she was making a grave mistake—must have gone into hiding.

“This isn’t a mistake,” she told herself firmly. She settled in a white brocade chair and waited. Not a minute later Nigel came rushing through the door. His face pale, he eyes wild with emotion.

“What is the meaning of this?” he demanded.

“I have done what you should have done years ago, Nigel. I—”

“
What I should have done
?” He pulled his hand through his already mussed hair. “Bloody hell,” he muttered.

With the grace of a queen, she rose and selected a paintbrush from a set neatly spread out on a table. She crossed the room and closed his fingers around its long, wooden handle.

Nigel stared at the brush.

“I have brought you into the light.” All the furniture, save for the one chair, had been removed to make room for his paints and supplies. She’d done everything she could to transform the room into a pleasant studio.

“There is no reason to hide anymore. I love you. And that love has always included Dionysus.” She caressed his cheek.

He didn’t speak, didn’t breathe. His hand tightened around the ferrule of the brush. He couldn’t seem to tear his gaze from it.

“Nigel?” She began to worry now.

He blinked.

“Please, don’t be angry. We can have it all moved back.” Perhaps Gainsford had been right. Perhaps he wasn’t ready.

Nigel wandered to the window and stared down at the flowers in the garden below. “Don’t you dare change a blessed thing, Elsbeth.”

A smile grew on his lips. “This is all rather a shock, you know.” He shook away his stricken look and drew a deep breath. “You were right, of course…to move my workshop up here, I mean. I couldn’t expect you to pose for me for hours on end in that cellar.” That hungry look flashed in his eyes. “It does get rather cold down there, love,”
He grinned
wolfishly and swept her into his arms.

“I love you, Elsbeth.”

Epilogue

Leaves rustled high in the trees as a gentle wind provided little relief to the warm summer air. Nigel and Elsbeth had decided to walk back to the Baneshire Estate from the quaint country church whose weathered stone walls had witnessed centuries of happy marriages between the Baneshire family and the other respected members of the
ton
. Today was no exception. The church had been filled with friends and family spilling out onto the grassy lawn in front.

“Everything was perfect, absolutely perfect,” Elsbeth said with a sigh. A smile brightened her eyes as she slipped her hand into Nigel’s.

Holding hands with Elsbeth felt natural now. It had been three months since their hasty marriage at his home in Dorset, and he was uncommonly happy. And he had Elsbeth to thank for that. Her gentle encouragement of his creative soul had healed him.

He felt secure in her love and was beginning to trust that she felt secure in his as well.

They passed over a small wooden bridge. Water gurgled in the creek below them. The Baneshire house, a modest brick manor, loomed just over the rise. Soon, they would have to join the hordes of guests. Soon, duties to family would keep them apart.

“I would like to paint a portrait of you,” he said. “Here…now.”

She tipped her head back to smile up at him from beneath the straw bonnet shading her face. “Would I be wearing anything in this portrait?” Her sapphire eyes darkened. He was beginning to learn that look. Desire.

He leaned forward and traced the outline of her lips with the pad of his finger. “Just that smile, I believe.”

She took his finger into her mouth and bit the tip gently, making his pants suddenly feel tight and uncomfortable. He searched the landscape for a secluded spot where they could escape for an hour or so. If they were careful, they could both return to the manor house unrumpled.

“There is a small hunting box not too far away,” she said. Over the past couple of months she’d blossomed into a wonderfully wicked and sensual woman. She tugged on his hand. “We won’t be missed.”

He gladly followed her lead.

“There you are,” Olivia called out from the path in front of them. “I suspected you would try and disappear. Lauretta and Severin would be vastly disappointed if you were absent for the first toast. Especially considering that you, Edgeware, just stood up with Severin while he married my sister.”

While he scowled at Olivia, Elsbeth, his gentle wife, laughed at his discomfort. “Later,” she whispered as they dutifully followed Olivia to the house.

“Have you told him?” Olivia asked.

“No, now shush,” Elsbeth answered far too quickly and then hurried on ahead.

“Told me what?” He stopped in the middle of the path.

“You should tell him. Mama says he has a right to know.” Olivia and Elsbeth continued walking on ahead as if he didn’t exist.

Elsbeth linked her arm with Olivia’s. “I am not ready. I’m terrified, if truth be known. Molly only told me yesterday. She said I should have known myself.”

The day after Sir Donald had been killed, he’d sent for Molly who had still been confined to the servant’s quarters in Dorset. He’d spoken with the feisty maid at length in the privacy of his study. Molly, a bit wary at first, had agreed to try not to shoot at him again. She’d seemed sincere enough at the time. But perhaps he’d been wrong to let her return to her former position.

What trickery was the woman up to now? Elsbeth was terrified to tell him something? He ran ahead and caught her arm. “You can tell me anything. I won’t be angry with you. You must know that by now.”

Olivia laughed. “I doubt she’s terrified of your reaction, Edgeware.”

Elsbeth fluttered her hands in the air.

“Oh, stop being such a ninny and tell him.”

His mind filled with horrible possibilities. They had only just found each other. He couldn’t lose her now. “
Please, Elsbeth
.”

“Very well.” She took her time removing her bonnet. “Molly believes I am—I am—” She turned a plaintive look toward Olivia. “It just seems impossible.”

“You are, what?” He pressed.

She’s dying
. He should have known their happiness couldn’t last.

“Molly believes I am with child,” she said with a rush.

“
With child
?” The world began to spin.

“I haven’t had my courses for at least two months. I am usually very regular, you see. And I have been ill. Just in the mornings, mind you. It is impossible, though. I’m barren.” Her nervous fingers twisted the ribbon on her bonnet, crumpling it beyond repair.

“
With child
?” He felt as if he were being smothered.

“It’s not impossible, Elly. Mama already explained all that.”

“
With child
?” A great buzzing filled his ears.

“Why does he keep asking that?” Elsbeth asked.

“He’s in shock.” Olivia gave Elsbeth a shove in his direction. “I think he’s going to faint.”

Elsbeth wrapped her arms around his waist and hugged him tightly. “Please don’t, Nigel. I need you to be strong. I, for one, am simply terrified.”

“You can count on me, Elsbeth,” He closed his eyes and breathed in her sweet fragrance. A beautiful toddler with the face of an angel danced merrily through his thoughts. “A baby…
your
baby.”

He wrapped his arms around her, amazed at how astonishing the world could be.

# # # #

Thank you for reading

THE SWEET AND SPICY REGENCY COLLECTION

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