26. Abuse my Eardrums, Please

26

Abuse my Eardrums, Please

The Merlin’s chair, currently unused and unoccupied, did, however, occupy a prominent place both in the room and in the thoughts, and conversation, of the two whom it loomed before.

“I think, mayhap, we should not have taken it.” Despite the irresolution of the statement, the female’s voice was as strong as her personality.

The man beside her twitched his smallest finger until it touched hers, where they stood, and sighed. “Perhaps you are in the right.”

An exaggerated gasp met his ears and she used her grip on his hand to swing about and face him, no longer fixated upon the wheeled chair, her eyes alit. “What? What manner of trickery is this? Did my ears hear the high-and-mighty, renowned surgeon and healer Silas Arbuckle admit aloud to entertaining second thoughts?”

He smiled, somewhat abashed—not a common occurrence. “I do, indeed, Viola, but only with you.”

He used their intertwined fingers to haul her to him. Wrapped his arms about her and breathed in her fascinating scent, a mixture of the expensive perfume she had imported from Italy and sex—and the recipe of oils he’d blended together to make things comfortable for them both. Then he spun her, held her spine and fine arse against his front as they each beheld the fanglement that presently caused such angst.

“I truly believe he needs to be on his own,” he told her, his arms now wrapped about her in a hug, resting beneath the gentle weight of her breasts, “without assistance from servants or siblings to take those much-needed first steps. The most troublous part is I know not whether he’s fully capable of even taking them. Or if he’s only hesitated until now because he’s fearful of falling in front of the children. Is he not confident enough?”

“Hence, you stole his chair, taking his confidence or lack thereof out of consideration. Forcing him to stumble about or starve.”

A deep groan scratched its way up through Silas’s chest. “Oh, Vi, how you pierce a man unexpectedly.”

Trusting him with her full weight, she leaned into him and reached up to dance her fingers over the back of his neck. “That was not my intent. I can express myself with you, say things I never would have done before, not with…”

“I know.” And he did. Her husband of many years, lout for most of them, had perished only months before he’d met her.

After a formally proper beginning to their acquaintance, it had continued with expected stiff politeness whenever they happened to come into contact, and then, over time, had become more intimate as interactions centered around a mutual friend. It wasn’t long after that they each discovered first like for the other and then—surprisingly, to both of them—lust blossoming between them. ’Twas soon followed by love, and now they held no more secrets, save their relationship from others.

For the time being.

“Not to be overly persnickety, Vi, but we both stole his chair.”

She snickered. For it had not proved an easy task, drag-carrying the heavy device out the bedroom, through the house and over the threshold at nearly 3:00 a.m. one morning, after bribing Mercury for his silence with pets and finely cut, bloodied beef flank. The bottle of port on the dresser, a full third of it missing, had made Silas frown, but at least his “guest” slumbered deeply for the consuming of it.

“’Tis going on three days,” he admitted. “We have yet to see him walk.”

“I know.”

“Pity neither of us can pop round to check on him.”

“Aye. Would give up the whole of our dupery. Mayhap not give him the time he needs…”

A few silent seconds and then inspiration! “I could send the butcher. Have known Lowe for years. He can fadge a weekly delivery, cite the holidays for running behind and check on things. Ensure Warrick comes to the door, at the very least.”

“And if all is not well? Then either we return his chair or end the farce?”

Unwarranted—as of yet—regret stomped through him. He had sincerely hoped to see substantial progress from his patient. You had wished for a miracle. “Aye, that.”

Warrick’s thoughts vacillated between flush and barren. His mind flush with thoughts of his illicit companion, barren of anything else.

There were no London friends dropping by to check on him. No estate correspondence to read and reply to. No servants to order about or to dismiss

No evil steward to curse.

No invoices to ignore.

No sisters to entertain.

No brothers to write—and bemoan their lack of response.

Nothing and no one to interrupt the drills and exercises he continued to do, in the privacy of his room, each morning after waking and each evening before bed.

Now that Aphrodite Primrose occupied the space—and his thoughts—nor did he have meals to prepare for himself and the dog.

In short, Warrick didn’t know what to do with himself.

He knew what he wanted to do. Several things, in fact. All having to do with her body—and his.

He still yearned to dance with her. Yearned to have her in his lap. To kiss along her nape, up the side of her neck and over her jaw until his lips met hers again.

He longed to map the swells and curves her yielding dresses revealed to his eyes—and with so much more clarity than he’d been granted to surmise with her previously coarse clothing.

How long are you going to pretend that living in this cottage with an unmarried, yet marriageable-age female is not going to ruin either yourself or her?

As to that, he was almost ready to ruin them both, and to the devil with the consequences.

You would wed a pauper, no matter how refined, condemning your sisters to no possibility of making an advantageous match when they are of an age? With no way to bestow upon them the dowry in your heart you know they deserve?

Ough.

While she bustled about the kitchen, seeing their dinner dishes and food remains were cleared, cleaned or sorted, he’d shuffled to the doorway, whistled for the dog and now sat, twine wrapped about his fist, dog romping in the night while Warrick tried not to shiver. “Apologies for the open door.”

“Think nothing of it.” Her words sailed forth.

“I’m letting the cold in.”

“Nay, you’re letting Merc out .”

He smiled. She was so easy to be with.

If you think not of how you both shouldn’t be here, alone, together.

“How was your journey? To Bath from Ed’s?” Why had he not thought to ask sooner?

“Unremarkable.” Her voice was muffled and he glanced over his shoulder to see her reaching to put away the pot she’d used to boil the last of the carrots and potatoes.

“The weather?”

“Fine. If cold.”

Eh. Like right now.

The twine slackened and he began winding it so the unseeing dog wouldn’t become tangled. “No difficulties due to the holidays?”

She came closer. Awareness barreled through him. So easily could he snake out his arm and curl it about her hips. Haul her to him. No pesky chair arms in his way, the simple chair upon which he sat having none.

“No difficulties whatsoever. I did not leave until the twenty-eighth.”

“Ah. Are you not cold?”

“Not excessively, no.” They both should be chilled, given the weather. Did the mere thought of him warm her as she did him?

Nay, hardy stock,’tis all.

So stilted. So much unsaid.

After she excused herself to go upstairs, as she often did when she thought he’d like to move from one room to another, Warrick reeled Mercury in and made his halting way to the smaller sitting room, which was closer than the drawing room that housed the harpsichord.

Did she crave him even one fraction as much as he did her? Was that why, when she returned, wearing her scarf and bringing his as well (and from tidying herself, he suspected, given the fresh glow of her skin and damp hair about her face), things had been uncharacteristically awkward between them?

As she had every evening the past few, upon joining him, she lit sufficient candles and lamps, enough to see clearly. A far piece different from the darkness that had surrounded him his first week there. But tonight, unlike some of the others, she did not bring a book with her and offer to read. She did not broach a safe topic and chatter about.

Nay, she sat across the small room and appeared at sixes and sevens. He caught her fidgeting more than once. Seizing quick glances toward him, only to suddenly find the empty wall behind him, the ceiling above, or her fingernails of immense interest?

“Thank you again for dinner. Mercury and I both value your efforts.”

But instead of seeming to please her, the compliment only made her squirm more.

While he cast about for another comment, undecided whether to calm her unusual fluster—or try to deepen it—she gave yet another uncharacteristic twitch. Met his gaze, held it with a soft smile, then found fascination with something that didn’t exist upon his shoulder.

You could leave. She will care for the dog. Why do you stay?

I came here for a reason. And have not yet satisfied it.

You wish to dance across a ballroom once more? Never likely, Rich. Best to return home, now that her presence affords the option sooner than expected.

But…

His siblings were cared for. And, hell’s blazes, he had never slept so deeply in his life as he had the past handful of days. Once he’d managed to trick out the lead Arbuckle left him with, and give the dog the roaming space he needed? That, combined with his own determination to see the exercises completed ensured that he was tired enough each eve.

Given the days that started at dawn and kept him busy until past dusk, the lack of ability to do anything about the estate or the mounting debts had granted his mind freedom it had lacked since the night before Albuera: over 900 days since he hadn’t been tasked with the strain of battle or the angst over responsibilities.

Fact was, horribly wrong or not, part of him wanted to be ruined. With her. Be forced by circumstances to wed her.

Would that not take the choice from him? Mitigate the guilt over not saving the estate, the title…

He wanted her. And the longer he spent in her company away from others, and society’s expectations, the longer he wondered if it might…just…be possible.

But you still cannot father a child. Have no hope of intimacy. Would you condemn her to that? Condemn her to your still—and likely forever— seated self?

What of the erection he’d woken with that first morning after she arrived?

Will-o’-the-wisp.

Because it had not happened since. And he’d tried. Embarrassingly, frustratingly, in the scant days since, he’d tried more than once to bring himself back to rousing stiffness. Only to be disappointed, if not devastated by the lack of any noticeable response.

His throat growled. He jerked his attention to the slumbering dog at his feet. Pretended the noise hadn’t come from him at all. Bent to stir the snuffling dog to wakefulness with the order to, “Shush now, you cur. Mind your manners, lady present and all that.”

The dog swung his blind eyes upward, as though to glare at the preposterous accusation.

“He smells better,” said by way of diversion. “His fur is softer as well. You bathed him.”

“I did.”

“And now I think of you bathing me.” Miraculously, he kept his eyes on his fingers, as they brushed through the clean fur, didn’t challenge her with a look—as well as his words.

“And you speak thus to shock me into leaving?”

Damn. So he wasn’t the only one contemplating the inappropriateness of their proximity?

“’Tis who I am.” Abandoning the shield of the dog, he straightened and mocked her with a salute of his fingers. “Here is to being me.”

“Nay.” Her voice was soft, eyes sad. With a jerk of his snout and a decided sniff—accurately blaming Warrick for the decline in her mood—the mongrel abandoned his place by Warrick and trotted over to his mistress.

“Might have once been who you were ,” she continued, slipping off one slipper to run the bottom of her foot over the dog’s coat once he reached her side, “but no longer. So shock and startle away.”

She glanced down where her fingers pinched and pleated the loose folds of her pretty gown, this one a lightly embroidered soft white with pretty blue trim about the edges. Then her lids swept upward and she snared him. “It matters not. For I know ’tis not the real you, not any longer. And aye, I choose to stay. Knowingly.”

And there it was again. Heavy silence between them. With much going unsaid.

“Lord Frostwood!” she exclaimed, as though she, too, was desperate to speak of something other than the heat that simmered silently between them. “He woos Lady Isabella Spier.”

“Frost?” He could not believe it. “Thawed that fence-rail up his arse sufficient to make his bow and court a lady?”

“’Tis what we all witnessed,” she assured, the polite mask slipping as she smiled. “Instantly enamored, or so I heard. Even saw for myself.”

“Tell me of her? Is she a flighty young flit out to snare herself an earl and naught else?” he asked, though he knew—a little. The woman Aphrodite spoke of was the daughter of Lord Spier, owner of the Spierton property that abutted Warrick’s. A horrid crank of a fellow if one awoke on his bad side. But he knew naught else of the reclusive daughter.

“Nothing of the sort! Lady Isabella— Pardon, Lady Spier is a true delight. Much the age of Lord Redford’s Lady Anne. Her closest friend, in fact—did you know? Blind, also.” The toes of her stockinged foot stroked over the now-exposed belly of the dog who had lost all sense of decorum— much like yourself? “I told her of Mercury, here.”

“You spoke with her?” The governess and the lady… Seemed he was not the only one compelled by Miss Primrose to leap across boundaries.

“Aye. She came weeks ahead of the others. To learn the house and how to traverse through it. Harri took to her right away. Now battles Lord Frostwood for her attention.”

“I’ll be…” Frost and a blind recluse? One who conversed sufficiently with Prim to learn of Mercury?

Suddenly, the impossible almost seemed…somehow…with a miracle or three…mayhap not so unimaginable after all.

You would abandon your responsibilities, your hope of saving the estate? Of providing for your sisters and choose instead to subsist on what…? Leaves? Because without an heiress, that’s what you will be dining on and heating rooms with.

“Sing for me,” he commanded before frustration made him growl again. “Your favored song.”

Distract me from dreams I ought not be having. Not seated here. In the cold . When I should have started fires, warmed us both. When I should be in a position to take care of you.

“I do not believe I shall.” Aphrodite managed a confident tone—startling, given how disordered her insides. “I do not appreciate being ordered about as your servant. Or your dog.”

Mercury’s tail whomped against her now-slippered and still foot upon hearing “dog”.

“My servant? My dog?” Richard's dark voice was too inviting by half. “If you were mine, I would not order you about. But I would bid you to be at my side.”

“I am not very biddable.” Especially to one who was not her employer. Especially not to one who tempted so…

“Think you I do not know that by now? Do not revel in it?”

She gave his perplexing self a serene smile, one that belied the furious pattering of her heart. Sitting so close to him, even with half the room in between, breathing in his scent, seeing the bristle that shaded his cheeks and jaw, and recalling with vivid clarity exactly how he looked unclothed, did not make her feel the least bit tranquil. No matter how being near him brought wicked, wanton urges to the fore. Urges she was in no place to acknowledge.

So she would pretend. Pretend his trifling words did not thrill. Would hold tight to the least vexation, magnify it a thousandfold. Pray her ire toward him grew.

What ire? All you feel for him of late is a tendre.

“Sing for me, would you, Prim? I turned away carolers who sought to entertain me on Christmas Day. But I would be entertained now.”

“Ordering me about is the least likely way to obtain my cooperation.”

She held his gaze, watched his eyes narrow, his jaw flex. He gave an abrupt nod. “Then would you, my dear Aphrodite, my love, my peacock in hiding, would you please see your way to entertaining my dreadfully beset-with-ennui ears with the lilt of your voice?”

“How you ask so very sweetly.” His love? She quashed the pang that it wasn’t so. “And yet so insincerely.” So she would reply just as. “How I so regret…” This current demand notwithstanding, he never treated her as a servant; she would not call him my lord again, certainly not Richard —far too temptatious!—(save in her thoughts). “How I regret, dear sir, dear difficult man, not doing as you plead, but I will not because I can not. Because the ‘lilt’ of my voice is more of a screech; one—please believe my words and heed them well—you do not want to hear have you any desire whatsoever for a restful evening.”

“Mayhap a restful evening is the last thing I want.” And there he went again, speaking with that boldness that never failed to alight her insides and flitter about her middle. “The very last thing…”

His voice had turned sultry. Wretchedly intriguing. Not anything she needed to hear right now, already battling her own desires as she was.

So she mimicked Lord Frostwood—how well she remembered the friend of Warrick’s and her employer’s son-in-law—and gave a deep, guttural grunt. There. That ought to dissuade him.

In that, she was sorely misguided. For he only laughed. “Then, if not your voice, play me something. Please. Anything to enliven this quiet evening that makes one wonder what loved ones are partaking of, listening to, longing for, doing…pondering…”

The hint of ruefulness threaded through his words made her realize how dreadfully he must miss his siblings.

His mother. Of a sudden, she recalled this was his first Christmas without his parent. Though Aphrodite had expressed sorrow during their correspondence, and thought to touch upon it again, she refrained. He sought a lighter tone to their evening?

No matter how she might yearn to dislodge any hint of loneliness, she must remain staunch in her refusal, for both their sakes. “You actually asked that with a modicum of sincerity, so you are to be commended. And, if I could, if the harpsichord, ancient though it is, would manage to stay in tune longer than a minute”—or if she could, even at all—“I would be more than pleased to entertain us both. But alas, Uncle’s harpsichord is likely older than King George’s carved ivories. And, alas again, I do not possess the talent to make it—or my voice—sing.”

“You speak truth?”

“Unvarnished.”

His gaze dared. “Go tap out a few notes?”

So he did not believe her?Challenged her to “play” the harpsichord in the other room?

This was one instance that she could easily prove the accuracy of both statements: lack of singing ability and lack of playing talent. She rose, flashing him a grin over her shoulder. “Do not blame me if your ears hurt the rest of the evening.”

How he loved her spirit, sparring with her; how he hated her playing.

Warrick hadn’t known a female existed who claimed England as home and yet, when put fingers to keys, managed to make such noise, such horrid noise. It wasn’t that, aye, the notes were out of tune more often than not. It wasn’t how hard she plunked down her fingers and struck the venerable keys that should have been cherished not whipped with such callosity.

Mercury woke from his doze, whined and made his way to Warrick’s side, flopped down and buried his ears between outstretched paws.

Warrick laughed. “Stop, I say,” he called out, aiming his voice to carry to the other room. “You are paining the dog!”

Though he was tempted to follow suit, slap palms over his own ears to mitigate the misery.

But in truth, it wasn’t his ears that bothered him. Nay, it was his head.

For these screeches, the shrieks and squalls she somehow managed to pull from that beautiful old instrument languishing alone in the drawing room were what one might expect from a mythological beast come from the shades, now inhabiting their realm, one roaring with hunger. And having indigestion and flatulency in addition.

When the pounding in his head grew more intense, he knew she had won.

“Stop! Halt, I beg of you,” he yelled again, only to the melodic sound of her giggles as she kept going, killing that poor machine with chops and slams and whollops of her fingers. He raised his voice. “I beg of you. Please, stop.I believe you! You are wretched, utterly so, I grant that!”

The song of her laughter only increased.

But the distraction, the abuse of his ears was so very welcome, given the stiffness of how their evening exchange had begun. Her mirth danced through the lovely cottage, caressed his ears and fluttered his belly.

It was then that Warrick realized he would suffer any number of pains to bring such laughter and delight to her spirit, and by association, his.

Uncomfortable with that notion, he yelled again, “Stop, woman, else no sane parent will ever engage your services again to train their daughters to be ladies!”

By now, she was laughing harder. Brought her full hands (or so it sounded) down in an ear-splitting, head-curdling crescendo of plunk-plunk-plunk , before she finally ceased punishing the instrument. Heavy seconds echoed with the torturous sounds before silence descended. Additional moments passed before she returned to the room.

His beleaguered head still heard the strident sounds following on her heels as she came in, calm as ever—as though she hadn’t just murdered music and that poor, innocent harpsichord—and took her seat, smoothing non-existent flecks from her skirt.

“How I wish I could have seen you play. Pardon, I mean, massacre that ill-treated instrument.”

Her renewed laughter brightened the air between them.

“If you do not think your uncle would mind, I will take a look at it tomorrow, see what I can do to improve upon the notes.”

She looked as surprised as he felt the moment the words were out. Both the request itself and that, for the first time, he referred to The Tyrant as something as benign as “her uncle.” Then her expression warmed, making his chest do another odd thump, perhaps impressed—dare he hope?—that he would make such an offer. An effort.

But then chagrin invaded her mien. “Even were the notes true, I could not produce anything worthwhile.”

He sputtered. “As if I would ever doubt your word again. Henceforth, trust that I believe you with all my abused eardrums and aching head.” He brought his palm up to the side of his temple and attempted to look as pitiful and beleaguered as he could, only now realizing the last few minutes had easily been some of the most entertaining, fun and relaxed moments he’d experienced with another since his spine took the brunt of some enemy canister shot and he’d been left for dead in Spain.

Mayhap, since ever.