34. Time for a Bath

34

Time for a Bath

The Following Morning…

“I still cannot scarce believe I allowed you to coerce me into this.”

Aphrodite’s fingers trailed over Richard’s strong shoulder as she walked unhurriedly by his side after releasing the hack that conveyed them to the center of town, the Corinthian columns alongside escorting them to where they were bound.

“Me?” She dared to laugh—at them both, nervous delight making the sound a bit sharper than she might have wished. “You are every bit as much to blame as I.”

They neared the pump-room. The pump-room! In Bath. Where the fashionable went to see and be seen.

Though cold, the day ’twas warm enough to have melted the recent snows. The sun shone, as bright as the light his earlier words had blazed upon her breast, after she suggested he brave the day now that his pixie-begotten chair had been returned to him. “Time for you to take the waters,” she had proposed while they broke their fast.

“Come with. Walk with me, Prim,” he’d responded. “In public. Let us ruin each other and find a parson.”

Those exact words: “ Find a parson .”

And no mention of his lap or his twanger this time, either.

Her heart hadn’t stopped galloping since the utterance. Nor had her thoughts stopped spinning. Round and round, like the wheels on his chair…

“’Tis not too late, Rich—Lord Warrick.” Mindful of others nearby, seeking the same destination they approached, she amended. No sense being overheard. What if he came to his right mind? Thought better of the reckless statement he’d made that morning? “I can wait outside. Or enter before you. Or minutes after. Pretend?—”

He lurched to a halt, his hands leaving the controls to grapple for and capture one of hers. A solid squeeze of her fingers. “Aphrodite Primrose. You be brave now. Be foolhardy with me. Be in love as well.”

While her eyes flew wide and her heart threatened to soar to Mars, he released her and turned his chair. “Get the door, would you, Miss Primrose? For the cold now biteth at my nose.”

Be in love as well? That is how you tell the woman you want to marry that you love her?

Warrick leaned forward to grasp one edge of the door as soon as it came within reach. He might be seated, might have endured the hired coach ride from The Tyrant’s to the center of Bath society before stumbling down and into his chair the man readied—the chair that had been tied on the roof of all humiliating things—but he’d be damned if he didn’t hold the door open for her. “Miss Primrose. After you.”

He wanted to rib her over the pinkened hue of her cheeks. Wasn’t sure if it was the early January weather or if she was feeling as dazed as he…

Had she really agreed to wed him? Even if only tacitly?

Nay, you bufflehead, she did not. For you did not ask. Just told.

Well, certainly. No risk of her saying no that way.

You haven’t even gifted the woman a posy, a book, a fan. Only your dubious wit, tweaking over her name, and your doubtable body, contorting all over the bed whilst you squeal into the sheets. You offer her naught but your questionable future ? —

“Richard, mmm, Lord Warrick—” There went her skin again, tomato red, nearly obliterating that smattering of freckles he wanted to kiss.

After he maneuvered his chair over the entrance (for once, he wasn’t the only infirm seated atop wheels), he paused until she joined him, his thoughtful Prim holding the door open for an older couple, had to be nearing ninety, approaching hand in hand, before she returned to his side.

“Richard is fine, Prim,” he said in his regular voice, no moderating or subduing at all. “Richard. Always. And anywhere .” There. Let her not be afraid to claim him. Because that’s what he planned on doing to her—if she let him.

“Mmm.” Her cheeks still blazed, but she couldn’t hide the flush of pleasure entering her dark eyes. “The book.” She pointed to one wall, wasn’t gawping at the size of the place as he did—so somewhere her uncle had brought her before. “Mayhap you should inscribe yourself there?” she suggested. “Announce your presence here in town before you take the waters?”

The pump-room was vast. Much noisier than he’d prepared for; even this early in the day, an orchestra played from a laddered gallery. His gaze swept from one side of the immense place to the other.

Had to be five men high and twice as long. At one end, water bubbled and flowed, collected by a big fountain, steam edging off the dripping cascade where attendants filled glasses and handed them off to waiting patrons.

At the other end, sat the huge clock he’d heard of, a pair of fireplaces burning on either side. And in the middle, along yet another elongated wall (everywhere in the midst, crammed with milling, standing folk or those seated and yammering) was the book she indicated. The one that loomed as if she spoke in capitals: The Book.

Not the Good Book, as in Bible; nay this was one of man’s inventions. Compliments of Beau Nash who had run this town for decades, the book was in place awaiting the names of all those who visited Bath. Because what good did it do to travel to town if one’s presence was not noted by others?

With a barely muffled grunt, he nodded and aimed his chair. “Were it up to me,” he told her softly, intending no one overheard and, gah, the place was crowded. Like a London crush the first week of the Season, only there were more children and more aged.

More of them in Merlin’s chairs than he had expected, as well. One old roué saw Aphrodite and leered, giving Warrick a lascivious wink, one he refused to dignify. “Were it up to me, I would ignore the custom, for I have no desire to spend time with anyone but you. However…”

He paused about eight feet ahead of the book that currently had three young ladies tittering around it. He angled toward the wall, not wanting to be recognized nor interrupted until he got the rest out.

She came round and knelt in front of him, the wall behind her. “What is it? Your back?”

“Is sore,” he admitted, taking up her gloved fingers from where she’d started to rest them upon his knee but pulled back out of propriety before they could connect, “but not screaming at me. Worry not, Prim. Aphrodite.” He blew out a breath, clutched at her fingers and met her honeyed gaze. “I gave you no time to consider. Failed to ask . If I commit my name to that book, I’m having you write?—”

Because he couldn’t reach it from sitting and didn’t want to risk standing and being jostled, chance missing his chair on the way down. Wasn’t willing to suffer another hard landing. Wasn’t sure his back could take anymore right now. “Having you pen ‘Warrick and betrothed, Miss Aphrodite Primrose’,” he finished fiercely. “There will be no turning back, no retraction lest you wish to be labeled a jilt.”

“Oh, the horrors.” She smiled but her eyes glistened.

“Prim. Damn it, do not cry. Not here.” Not ever, if he could help it.

“I am not. I’m sure.” Giving proof to her clanker, she swept her fingertips beneath her watering eyes, then gave him a smile that quavered. “Neither am I sure you are thinking with all your wits. You’ll be ostracized. A poor governess for your c-countess?”

He gripped both her wrists. “Stop it, Prim. Right now. Your eyes are flowing over more than that fountain of hot water I’m supposed to be drinking from. Heard it’s ghastly. Ah, good. You smile. I want to sweep you into my arms—and lap, if I’m to be honest—and retreat back to The Tyrant’s. Wish now we’d never left. Want?—”

“Miss Prim rose ? Why, that is you!” The astonished gasp was loud enough to jerk them apart—and her to her feet. Whereupon she paled to a sheet.

Warrick whipped his head around, followed with his chair and body and immediately recoiled on her behalf.

Verdell. One of the men she’d mentioned so long ago, upon their first meeting, as not befitting the titles they held. Tate, Paulson and Verdell.

“Verdell,” he acknowledged with a tight nod, his body now straining in the chair.

“Warrick.” Verdell’s attention jerked from Aphrodite to him and back. After delivering a disdainful glance and a mutter of conceited governesses , he addressed Warrick. “Any by-blows you became recently aware of? Is that why you associate with an unreliable, light-fingered governess?” Warrick’s spine stiffened to steel. The man would dare call her a thief? No wonder she hadn’t trusted peers. “Or is she now plying those light fingers in a different manner?”

The man’s insolent gaze dropped to Warrick’s feet, then rose, settling near his groin. Nothing twitched but the fire of anger growing in his chest. He positioned himself directly in front of her and glared at Verdell. So much for mentally giving the man neutral status when she’d first lodged her complaint toward the grub.

Warrick flipped one hand to his shoulder, palm upward, imminently gratified when her trembling fingers met his. His, he hoped, soothing grasp. “No by-blows, recent or otherwise,” he drawled. “You?”

Not expecting the challenge, Verdell grimaced. “None I’ll admit to.” His eyes narrowed at their clasped hands. “What are you doing with her ? I know from experience she’s a cold bitch. Won’t thaw your pego if that’s what you?—”

One moment, Warrick sat in his chair, posture perfectly erect, her comforting presence behind him, trembling touch within his. The next?

The next second, he’d launched himself at Verdell’s legs, nabbed the scourge to the ground. With a roar and one powered thrust of his arm, Warrick’s fist connected with jowls. Flabby jowls and the sickening lips above them rippled. Verdell’s eyelids fluttered, and whoosh-thunk . The man wilted. Folded right into the floor.

Then silence. Silence as his ears rang. As his blood rushed like a river through his head. The music screeched to a halt as a collective gasp circled the cavernous room. A gasp that grew in volume. Accompanied by mounting whispers. Growing gossip.

He shifted—also relegated to the floor—as he comprehended the attention he’d drawn, despite his desire for none of it.

Then, as though his mind had held everything suspended while he catalogued each aghast face and the censure directed his way, bang! Like a pistol shot, it all hit at once. Whump.

Individual voices cracked across his ears.

“Did you see that?”

“Who is?—”

“Earl of Warrick, I believe.”

“Inappropriate, I say!”

“What is the world coming to?”

“Richard!” Aphrodite shoved his abandoned chair aside with a thump and raced to where he lay.

The hacking cough of Verdell accompanied her arrival. Another man came to his aid, near dragging the oaf from the melee. Warrick only had eyes for her.

But then a new and louder voice joined the others…

“Damn me!” A familiar voice. Masculine and strident. “Lord War rick ?”

Beside him, Aphrodite paled anew.

“Aphrodite!”

“Arbuckle?”

“Uncle?”

Mary Viola Snowden Redford, widowed not quite three years past, had found happiness—finally—surpassing her wildest imaginings these last few months. But the woman known to most as Lady Redford, the elder had suffered several deep and abiding hurts in her decades-long life.

The first, when a new bride of seventeen realized not long after the vows she took so seriously that her rather dashing spouse—the fifth Viscount Redford—preferred dashing off to the beds of many others rather than staying in hers.

The second, when she realized he’d seasoned their oldest son to behave just like him, with a single-minded pursuit of physical pleasure that discarded any care for the feelings of others.

The third hurt, not quite three years ago, when her middle son perished in a foolhardy duel over another man’s wife.

The fourth and fifth, and by far the most troublous, the ones that had cut the deepest were seeing her youngest son, Ward, injured to within an inch of his life and the recent death of her dear friend Elizabeth Martinson Feldon.

Mrs. Feldon—though still recognized as Lady Warrick at the time of her passing—had become the closest friend of Viola’s life. No surprise, really, after their bond forged to steel when both their boys had been devastatingly injured at Albuera.

Aye, these were the life-altering wounds that now shaped the strong and resourceful woman she’d become.

Not that she hadn’t already been strong—that seventeen-year-old had quickly determined the only way to salvage any sense of worth was to behave with every ounce of propriety and consideration she could call upon, to treat others kindly while still guarding the remnants of her broken heart. But in the last years? Witnessing the wasting away of her friend, well over a dozen years Vi’s junior, made Viola determined to eke out happiness wherever she might find it.

When her Ward had arrived in London two and a half years ago, fighting infection, the bones in one hand crumpled beyond recognition—and his other hand gone , his lower arm sliced clear off? Well, now. Seeing her thoughtful Ward near destroyed, her sole remaining son—now the viscount—fighting for his life?

Standing with Elizabeth as the other woman quaked with worry over her unmoving, unresponsive son, Rich? Watching as Elizabeth hid her own declining health while giving every ounce of fight she could to her son, willing his recovery. Praying he did not lose hope nor give up on life, whether he walked again or not…

Being there with them, through each and every step—or complaint, curse word and reluctant rotation of a wheel—of the way, Viola had remained strong for them all, because that is what a properly reared Englishwoman did.

She persevered. In silence, if need be.

She grieved. In private—never in public.

She endured, found solace in Sunday services, in the staccato whistle of a warbler, the bud of a flower about to bloom, the rhythmic patter of a light rain.

And then…when Fortune and God smiled down upon her? She found an unexpected attraction to the surgeon she’d accompanied her friend to visit. An attraction that, over time—and as her son Ward slowly reclaimed his health and independence, even while her friend’s health declined—deepened first into love, an emotional closeness beyond anything Viola had previously experienced. And finally into a physical expression of that love.

And with a younger man! Who would have thought?

That at four and sixty Viola would be clandestinely courted by a man in possession of only seven and fifty years? My, her body heated at the very thought.

But in truth, it was likely the sweltering surroundings in the pump-room.

’Twas absurdly hot, the waters heating the very atmosphere. The orchestra in the gallery and the dancing they prompted encouraging the flame. The crowd, those who were not seated and sipping, busy promenading in a near march, from one side of the immense room across to the other.

And now, an unexpected (and secretly satisfying) fight.

Satisfying because she knew Lord Verdell to be both piggish and priggish when it came to getting his way, pious in public but—according to others she trusted—overly grabsome when it came to groping females, of any station. Seeing the squib downed with a single clout proved an unexpected boon to this already exhilarating morning.

But mostly, if she were honest, the temperature rose because tempers flared.

The surgeon beside her near strangling on his outraged, “Niece! What are you doing here—with him ?”

“What in blazes are you doing here? In town!” The fallen man, his upper body so recently proving beyond doubt how strong he was, glared fire-tipped daggers toward her companion—until Rich’s gaze faltered to her, grappled with comprehension. “L-Lady Redford?”

She could not miss how Miss Primrose remained beside him, knees to the floor, hands upon his shoulders, fingers whitened, equal measures of dismay and addlement writ upon her face.

Rich struggled to swallow. “You…” He spoke to Viola. “ You are…with Arbuckle?”

The poor man blinked as though she slept with Satan.

Egad. Perish the thought.

At her side, Silas bristled. “What have you done to my niece? You rotten piece of?—”

“Silas.” Viola snagged his sleeve and drew him to her side. “They know each other. Have for years.” She might be exaggerating, but only a wee bit.

For of course she knew of that scandalous kiss beneath the mistletoe betwixt a randy returning soldier and—formerly—reserved governess; had been with her son and his Anne when Anne’s mother, Lady Ballenger, screeched, shrilled and shrieked the event to one and all. “Do you forget your niece is governess to Ward’s sister-in-law, young Lady Harri?”

That reminder didn’t stop his grumblings.

He was already on edge, she knew, the two of them only having just decided—and committed to that decision with their joint presence here—to make their relationship public.

“But here ?” Silas spat toward Rich. “By God, is that why you attacked Lord Verdell? Because the man knows you are making a trollop of my niece?”

“Uncle!”

“Silas!”

“Arbuckle.” Glowering, Rich sat up straighter, his legs out to the side in a haphazard fashion, arms keeping him balanced. He shifted, put more weight on one so he could cover the feminine hand on his shoulder with the other and spoke with decisive intent. “Do not speak of my future wife that way.”

Silas hissed. Sputtered. Nearly turned purple.

Miss Primrose looked as though she’d swallowed a lemon dipped in brine and laced with spines. But she didn’t contradict Rich, only held tight to his hand. Leaned toward his ear and whispered, “Let me get your chair?”

He gave her a nod, his glare not leaving Silas.

“No need,” Viola trilled, indicating Miss Primrose should remain where she was, determined to repair what she could—she wasn’t Lady Redford for naught. She snapped her fingers toward one of the many hoverers, their eyes—some gloating, some with avarice, others only considered—gleaming over every word of gossip they gathered. “Lord Munson.” She addressed one of the kinder expressions in the crowd. “Will you see to the chair?”

“Immediately.” With a respectful nod, he retreated from their spectacle to do her bidding. He had been an easy choice, though she didn’t know him exceptionally well. The duke was easily the highest-ranking peer in the tight circle that now surrounded them. A decent man, from what she knew. And now that she had singled him out, he would realize she expected him to squash whatever rumors or murmurings he could.

Gratifying, it was, how years of redeeming the remnants of her former spouse’s reputation had given her the ability to measure others and gauge their worthiness. Was that not how she had managed to secure her dear Ward such a valuable and commendable wife in Lady Anne?

“We need to pause until we are outside,” she told the trio close to her after Silas and Miss Primrose—along with his own significant effort—saw Rich seated in his chair, “before we make more of a ruffle than we already have.”

Rich and Silas’s niece… Wonder of wonders.

The Vi of twenty years ago would have been aghast; would have done everything possible to—gasp!—mitigate the horror of being discussed . Fortunately, time had mellowed her severe stance on much. Now? The news near titillated.

Her deceased, dear friend Lady Warrick would have been thrilled. Completely uncaring at the lack of official pedigree Rich sought to woo. Had Elizabeth not found happiness both with her earl, as well as her humble, country baronet?

It boggled! Elizabeth’s son and Silas’s niece!

Well, niece of a sort, Viola corrected her mental meanderings as she followed the three of them out the door and they made for a shaded spot between columns, away from others. Niece of a sort…given the surprisal waiting for her.

A wave of perverse satisfaction rolled over Viola. She could use this to her advantage—and to theirs, she knew; to Rich’s and his future wife’s. If only she could secure Silas’s assent.

Fret not, Viola, you have ways to convince him…

She did, she thought with a tiny flutter that tingled her insides. Had she not learned that to her amazement the last handful of months, their union allowing a discovery, and exploration, of herself that proved joyous to them both?

Aye…should Silas prove resistant to supporting the union of Rich and his niece? Viola would relish convincing him of how very suitable their match would prove to be.