Hartley grasped his hand and shook it firmly. “Welcome home.”
And Reynaud could only nod again and look away, lest he lose his composure entirely.
Reynaud escorted Emeline and her family to the front door, then returned to the sitting room to find Beatrice pouring herself another cup of tea. He paced to the mantel, paused to glance at a small shepherdess—had it been his mother’s?—then went to the windows. All the while, he felt Beatrice’s gaze on him.
She set her cup down on the table beside her and eyed him. “Are you feeling well?”
He scowled out the window. “Why do you think something is wrong?”
She raised her eyebrows. “Forgive me, but you seem restless.”
He inhaled, watching a carriage rumble by below. “I don’t know. I have Emeline back, my family back, but something’s still missing.”
“Perhaps you need time to adjust,” she said quietly. “You’ve been seven years away, lived a very different lifestyle. Perhaps you simply need to settle.”
“What I need is my title,” he growled, turning to her.
She looked at him thoughtfully. “And when you have the title and all that goes with it, you’ll be content?”
“Are you suggesting otherwise?”
She glanced down at her teacup. “I’m suggesting that you might need more than a title and money to be happy.”
o;Yes.” She looked up into his stern face. “Thank you for bringing me.”
He nodded. “He was a good man.”
“Yes, he was,” she murmured.
He handed her into the carriage and then climbed in after her, knocking against the ceiling to signal the coachman. She watched out the window as they pulled away from the cemetery, then looked at him. “You’re still set on a marriage by special license?”
“I’d like to be already married by the time I go before parliament,” he said. “If it bothers you, we can plan a celebratory ball in the new year.”
She nodded. After the passion of his seduction, the practicality of his plans for their marriage was slightly dampening. She remembered Lottie’s words about a gentleman filling a position with his choice of wife. Wasn’t that what she herself was doing? Reynaud needed her as his wife so that he could convince others he was sane. Nathan needed Lottie as his wife to further his career. The only difference was that Lottie had believed her husband loved her.
Beatrice had no such illusions.
She straightened a bit and cleared her throat. “You never told me how you eventually escaped the Indians. Did Sastaretsi give up his hatred of you?”
He flattened his mouth impatiently. “Do you really wish to hear this tale? It’s boring, I assure you.”
His stalling tactics only made her curiosity keener. “Please?”
“Very well.” He looked away and was silent a moment.
“Sastaretsi?” she prompted softly.
“He never did give up his hatred of me.” Reynaud was staring out the window, his long nose and strong chin in profile against the wine-red squabs behind him. “But that first winter was hard, and it was all we could do to simply find enough food to feed everyone. I was an able-bodied hunter, if not a very good one at first, so I think he laid aside his animosity for a little while. We were all weak from hunger anyway.”
“How dreadful.” She looked down at her lap, examining her fine kid gloves. She’d never wanted for food in her life, but she’d seen beggars on the street now and again. She tried to imagine Reynaud with that gaunt face, that glittering, desperate expression in his black eyes. She didn’t like the thought of him suffering so terribly.
“It wasn’t amusing, certainly,” he said. “I remember once finding a she-bear. They crawl into the biggest trees, into holes in the wood, to sleep the winter away. Gaho’s husband showed me how to look for the claw marks on tree trunks that meant a bear lay above. After we’d killed the bear, they skinned a part of it and ate the fat without waiting to light a fire and cook the meat.”
“Dear God.” Beatrice wrinkled her nose in disgust.
He looked at her. “I ate it as well. The flesh steamed in the cold winter air, and it tasted of blood, and I gulped it down anyway. It was life. We’d had no food for three days prior to that.”
She bit her lip and nodded. “I’m sorry.”