Chapter 18

T om expected to spend all night tossing and turning in Gwen’s infernally small bed.

Instead, he woke refreshed, more refreshed than he usually found himself after a night in his own bed. Which was odd, considering one leg was dangling off the side of the bed and the other was hanging over the footboard. Well, he supposed having a good fuck always helped you sleep, and that had been a bloody good fuck. He also noticed that his ears weren’t ringing. Which was odd, given how quiet it was out here in the country, but he wasn’t about to complain about it.

He slipped from beneath the quilt, careful not to disturb Gwen, who was snoring softly. Pulling on his clothes, he padded out of the room, shutting the door behind him.

He headed for the kitchen. He found a loaf of bread that wasn’t too stale, some eggs, and a slab of bacon. He got the stove going and put together a pretty decent breakfast, if he said so himself.

Gwen wandered out of the bedroom while he was putting it on the table, looking deliciously rumpled and confused in a dark green wrapper. “What’s all this?” she asked, surprised.

“Breakfast,” he said, setting out the teapot. “I wasn’t sure how you take your eggs, but hopefully this’ll do.”

She laughed. “This will do very nicely. As if I would complain. I had no idea you could cook!”

He held out her chair, then sat next to her and began tossing bacon and toast onto his plate. “Most of the fellows I train with take their breakfast at the local tavern. Not me, though.” He spooned six fried eggs onto his plate. “Do you know what they charge down there? It’s?—”

“Highway robbery,” Gwen said in unison with him, then laughed.

Tom laughed, too. “Yes, well, the point is, it isn’t too hard to fry a few eggs.”

“Well, I appreciate it.” When he reached for the pot of marmalade, she laid her hand atop his. “Wait—would you like to try some of my honey?”

“I certainly would.” She fetched the pot from the sideboard. Nodding his thanks, he lifted the lid and inhaled. “That’s it, all right.”

Gwen tilted her head as she sliced an egg. “That’s what?”

“That’s what you smell like, bun.” He drizzled a generous dollop onto his toast.

Her cheeks flushed, but she was smiling. “I do use it to make the soap I use. Say, I’ve noticed you sometimes call me ‘bun.’ Why is that?”

He paused, toast halfway to his mouth, to grin at her. “For the very reason we’ve been discussing. It’s short for honeybun, which is what you smell like.”

Now her cheeks went full scarlet, but she looked tremendously pleased. “Gracious me! I—I never thought I would have a pet name.”

“Well, you do.” He took a big bite of toast and groaned. “Gwen. My God , that’s delicious.”

She smiled as if he’d just given her the best compliment in the world. “Do you really think so?”

“Mmm,” he said around another bite. He chewed a moment, savoring, then swallowed. “It’s not like I’ve never had honey before. But this is something else. How do you get it to taste so good?”

Gwen leaned forward. “My Great-Aunt Agatha always said that the honey takes on the flavor of whatever the bees are eating. This is a blackberry blossom honey I collected this autumn.” She paused, biting her lip. “I also made a honey in which I put out blackberry juice for the bees to drink, but I’m not sure if you’d like it.”

Tom was helping himself to two more slices of toast. “I’m sure I would. It sounds delicious.”

“It is,” Gwen assured him as she rose and went to the sideboard. “But it’s… Well, you’ll see.”

She set a pot on the table and lifted the lid for his inspection. Tom couldn’t help but rear back in surprise. The honey was purple .

But it smelled damn good, and he loved blackberries, so… “I’ll try it,” he said, smearing it on his toast.

Four seconds later, he was exceedingly glad he hadn’t let the honey’s color put him off. “ Gwen ,” he moaned. “That’s fucking delicious.”

She giggled at his profanity. “It really is, isn’t it? That’s probably my favorite flavor, although I have ideas for all kinds of honeys I’d like to make. I’ve heard that orange blossom honey is wonderful, but I’d have to find some nobleman who wouldn’t mind me bringing one of my hives to his orangery. I’d also like to take them to the cherry orchards over in Kent, just to see what kind of honey I would get.”

Tom swallowed another bite. “Maybe you’ll do it this year.”

She shrugged. “Maybe. It would be expensive for me to rent lodgings for long enough for the bees to gather pollen. And that’s if I could even convince the farmers to let me unleash my bees in their orchards.”

“It does sound like a big venture. Do you keep your bees just as a hobby? Or do you want to turn it into a business?”

She looked down, her expression turning sheepish. “I’d like to turn it into a business. The family of Maurice Simpkins—the man who was briefly my husband—was able to claim half of my inheritance from Aunt Agatha as our eight-hour marriage was sufficient for it to become part of his estate. I have enough to get by, but it would make me feel more secure if I had a source of income.” She shrugged. “It would have to be modest in scale. It’s just me, after all. And, as you’ll see, there’s a lot of work to be done. Aunt Agatha wasn’t able to keep everything up in her later years as well as she usually did.”

“Understandably so.” Tom wiped his mouth. Part of him wanted to eat more toast with Gwen’s blackberry fruit honey. But he’d eaten a half-dozen eggs, four pieces of toast, and five slices of bacon, which was a lot, even for him. He stood, gathering plates. “Well, I’d love to see your bees. Let me just see to the washing up.”

“Oh!” Gwen cried, rising as well. “You don’t have to do that.”

“It’s no trouble,” he said, filling the wash basin. “It’s not like I’ve never scrubbed a dish before.”

Gwen pulled on an apron. “Well, I’m helping.”

Tom wound up putting on an apron, too, one with a frilly white ruffle, and they had a laugh about that. But strangely, instead of making him feel jolly, the sight of Gwen’s smiling face tilted up at him caused an ache to break out in the center of his chest. Because this was nice. Spending the day together yesterday had been nice, having a tup before bed had been nice, and having a laugh together when things hadn’t gone according to plan had been bloody wonderful. And then waking up and sharing breakfast with Gwen had been as easy as breathing.

All of this was too nice, considering he was never going to do it again.

He shook himself. He needed to focus on what he was doing before he broke all of Gwen’s crockery.

With him washing and Gwen drying, they got the washing up done in no time flat.

“All right,” he said, hanging his apron on a hook and forcing a smile so she wouldn’t see how fucking melancholy he’d suddenly become. “Show me these bees of yours.”

Gwen led him out the back door.

And that was when it happened.

It struck Tom like a runaway carriage—the reason he’d managed to get such a good night’s sleep.

It was the bees .

Bees… buzzed. Tom knew that. Hell, everyone knew that.

But it hadn’t occurred to him that a bunch of bees would provide a pleasant background hum. It was noisy without being noisy .

That was why his ears hadn’t been bothering him that morning. Gwen’s bees were the perfect thing to drown out the ringing.

He could have buried his head in his hands and cried. God , he’d already wanted to stay here with Gwen. To hold her every night, to see her smile up at him every morning, to hear her tell him a bunch of bollocks about how he was kind and gallant and good .

He knew it would never happen. He wasn’t for the likes of her. She was a lady. She was clever and kind and entirely too good for him in every way. He was nothing but a big dumb brute who was miles beneath her.

But damn it all—fate seemed to be taunting him. Because these fucking bees ! Could this place be any more perfect for him? It was literally the only spot in the country he’d ever found where his ears wouldn’t be driving him out of his mind.

“Tom? Is everything all right?”

He blinked. Gwen was looking up at him, concern creasing her pretty brow.

“It’s fine,” he said, and his voice cracked, actually cracked, like he was some lovelorn seventeen-year-old. Which honestly wasn’t a bad approximation of how he felt. He hadn’t felt this way about anyone since… since Gracie.

The comparison felt right but also wrong. Right because, in spite of how it had ended, his feelings for Gracie had been pure. He would have loved her, and honored her, and cleaved to her, for better or for worse. But, of course, she had gone and shit all over his feelings.

With the passing years, he could see that Gracie had been like a paste jewel, pretty and sparkling on the surface, but ultimately worthless.

Gwen, on the other hand? Gwen might not be as flashy, might not catch your eye at first glance. But she was solid gold to the core. He’d bet every shilling he’d saved over the years that Gwen would never hurt someone the way Gracie had hurt him. That just wasn’t who she was. And if there was one thing his boxing career had taught him, it was that you needed someone who would stick by you in sickness and in health, because sickness was going to come for you at some point.

That was when the real pisser struck him like a thunderbolt—he felt the same way about Gwen as he’d felt about Gracie. He knew he did. Which meant…

Ah, fuck . He’d gone and fallen in love with her! A woman who was entirely too good for a broken-down lout like him.

Well done, Talbot. Bloody brilliant . He was going to wind up with another gaping wound where his heart used to be.

Except this time, he’d have no one to blame for it but himself.

“Tom. Tom!”

He blinked. Gwen was shaking his arm. She smiled up at him crookedly. “Where did you go?”

“Sorry.” He scrubbed a hand over his face. He did his best to grin. “Show me these bees of yours, will you?”