The Hawk and Cock was a well-run hostelry—no sooner had the water begun to cool than the maid reappeared with a tray of food, just as Emma had pulled her wrapper around her. “Oooh, you have lovely hair,” the girl breathed. “Would your ladyship allow me to brush it?”
She was young and country-bred—she probably thought all women were ladies. “Just miss,” Emma said, hesitating. “Of course.”
One more favor she was going to accept, but at least this time Brandon had nothing to do with it. Mollie Biscuits use to brush her hair when she’d first joined Old Mother Howard’s establishment, and the simple comfort of it did wonders to stop her endless tears that first year. Mollie had continued the task when they were all living in the Dovecote, and it reminded her of peace and affection, two things that were sorely lacking in her life right now.
The food was wonderful, and she ate every scrap on her plate, sipping at the tang of fresh apples in the cider that accompanied it. While she ate they removed the tub, and when she was done Sally, who it turned out was even younger than Emma had thought and was Bosomworth’s oldest daughter, insisted on taking her muddy dress and shoes along with the dinner tray, determined to clean them for her before she left the next morning.
Emma could no longer resist. She was warm, well fed, and drowsy, and she hadn’t even thought of the bastard below more than once or twice. She would sleep well tonight, and tomorrow she would be done with him.
Chapter 19
Hours later Emma lay staring up at the slanted ceiling of the unfamiliar bedroom, stubbornly awake. She should have expected it—sleep was always elusive in the best of times, and not only had she slept most of the day away in that blasted carriage but her spirits were completely disordered. Whenever she began to relax, the memory of the man below would return, and it would require all her effort to dismiss him again, reminding herself that he meant absolutely nothing to her.
There was no way she could tell the time, but she’d always relied on a kind of inner clock, and she knew it had to be midway between midnight and dawn. She’d heard Brandon retire to his bedroom several hours ago—his footsteps heavy and uneven on the stairs and the old wooden floor of the place.
Uneven. Of course they were. When one looked at Brandon’s strong, lean body one assumed he was whole. No, that was wrong, she reminded herself. Most people had only to see the ruined half of his face to know he’d suffered grievously. Odd, but she never saw it. It was simply part of who Brandon was. She’d never pitied him. Even when he hovered close to death, she’d known he was a fighter, and she’d goaded him into doing just that.
She didn’t want to think about it.
He hadn’t favored his leg at all while he’d been at Starlings, and she knew he had to have been hurting. For some reason the thought of him still enduring that kind of pain, never letting on, caused her heart to clench, and she wanted to go to him, soothe him, talk to him and distract him from the pain as she had so long ago in the hospital during the empty hours of night.
She wasn’t going anywhere but to sleep, she thought with steely determination, and she’d lain in bed, summoning oblivion.
Oblivion never listened, and eventually she was forced to give up. She had no slippers, and Sally had taken her stockings. It would have to be barefoot, something she was used to, and she climbed down from the high bed, determined not to put it off any longer. There was bound to be milk in the kitchen of the old inn, fresh from the evening milking, and the stove would doubtless retain enough heat that she could warm herself a mug of the stuff. She might even find a bit of cinnamon to spice it, though dabbling in a cook’s precious spices might be too presumptuous. She had no idea whether the hot milk would be efficacious or not, she only knew that once she made the effort she could finally sleep instead of tossing and turning and dwelling too much on the past.
The house was silent, and she knew her footsteps didn’t carry as she crept down the narrow attic stairs, past Brandon’s closed door and on to the main stairs. There were only two rooms on that floor, and one of them remained open. Noonan must have chosen to sleep in the stables with the coachman after all, and the Bosomworths would be sleeping in another wing of the building. It was far from troubling—she could be alone with Brandon on a desert island and have no fear for her. . . her inviolability. She paused on the stairs, looking back, and then stuck her tongue out at his door. The childish gesture entertained her until she reached the bottom of the stairs to come face to face with her nemesis lounging by the banked fire, watching her.
“Why were you sticking your tongue out?” he said lazily. “Did poor Noonan offend you in some way?”
She froze where she stood. At least she’d grabbed her shawl before she’d left her room, and now she wrapped its enveloping folds tighter around her body, awash in conflict. She wanted nothing more than to run back upstairs, which was out of the question. Her hair, always the bane of her existence, had dried into a mass of uncontrollable curls, her feet were cold, and she wore nothing but the very thin shift beneath the shawl, leaving her self-conscious and vulnerable. She could turn and stalk away in dignified silence, expressing her displeasure, but already her heart was pounding, twisting inside her. She wouldn’t give him that satisfaction. He was nothing to her, she reminded herself. She was hardly going to change her plans because of him.
So she was silent, heading toward the kitchen door, averting her gaze and pulling her skirts away from him, though they were scarcely close. A detached, clinical part of her catalogued his appearance—she could appreciate beauty wherever she found it, she hoped. Brandon Rohan was most definitely beautiful. He was lounging back in the chair, his long legs propped on a chair in front of him, no stockings or shoes, just long, narrow feet. One wouldn’t have thought feet could be beautiful, but his certainly were. The loose, open-necked shirt revealed far too much of his tanned, muscular chest, an arresting sight when she was accustomed to seeing him so thin and pale, and his breeches seemed too tight for comfort, but she wasn’t going to think about that. His hair was long and loose, and the unblemished side of his face was presented to the fire, not to the world at large. If she tried very hard perhaps she could think of him as some monster, some gargoyle. . .
Even in her dreams that felt horribly petty and disloyal, if not to him then to the countless other visibly wounded patients she’d dealt with. His scars had nothing to do with his perfidious soul—in fact she was perverse enough to imbue them with their own kind of beauty. No, she would simply have to accept the cruel vagaries of fate. Not only was there only one man on the face of this earth who had the power to move her past her an
ger and fear, but he was so far above her in station, above even the proper young girl she’d once been, and if he hadn’t suddenly seemed to despise her, that nothing. . .
“You’re not speaking to me,” he observed before she made it through the door. “I can’t say that I don’t blame you. What I said was inexcusable, no matter what the circumstances.”
She stopped where she was, then pivoted to face him. “If that constitutes an apology, you should endeavor to refrain from throwing in a new insult. Your new wife will not appreciate it.” She said it to goad him—most men would be appalled that she dared to even mention his wife.
That didn’t seem to bother Brandon, to her regret. He was watching her warily. “What are you doing up?”
“If you remember, Lord Brandon,” she said spitefully, “I have trouble sleeping.”
“I do. We first met when you were wandering my brother’s house in the middle of the night.”
“That’s not when we first met,” she said, and he looked suddenly arrested.
“It isn’t?” he said, his eyes sharp and searching.
“Of course not. We met at the church. You drove me back to Starlings.”
For some reason he looked disappointed. “So I did. I’d forgotten. How very odd of me—I usually have a stellar memory.”
She wanted to hoot with laughter at the thought. He’d managed to forget her quite handily. “Do you? I rejoice to hear it.” She started for the kitchen once more.
“What about your memory, Mrs. Cadbury? Do you find yourself forgetting important things?”