Chapter Thirty

Thirty

Stella had never undressed a man before. Then again, she’d never had a husband.

How was a lady meant to behave in such circumstances? In Teddy’s bedchamber for the first time—on their wedding night, by heaven. And here they were, on the bed together, while Jennings lumbered about the room, first kindling a fire in the hearth, and then tugging off Teddy’s boots.

Stella ignored the trembling of her fingers as she unknotted Teddy’s cravat and unbuttoned his jacket and waistcoat. She removed the garments from him one by one, tossing them onto the upholstered armchair that stood at the side of the unusually low mahogany bed.

This wasn’t a romantic disrobing. Any idea of that had been dispelled before she’d begun. Teddy was as sullen as an injured bear, glowering at her as much as he glowered at Jennings.

“Leave my shirt,” he said when she moved to lift it up. “It’s my trousers that have to come off.”

A blush threatened. Of course, his trousers must be removed. She felt a fool for not having thought of it straightaway.

Jennings was already at the end of the bed, having just dispensed with Teddy’s boots. “Shall I help, ma’am?”

“Er, yes, thank you.” Stella rose from the bed.

It wasn’t virginal prudishness that made her withdraw. It was pure pragmatism. She hadn’t ever touched Teddy’s legs, let alone seen them. She didn’t know what helped or hurt him. And she wasn’t about to try to learn now at the cost of expediency. Not when he was so obviously in pain.

Teddy unfastened his trousers himself, shoving them down over his hips. Jennings took over then without being asked, stripping the trousers the rest of the way from Teddy’s legs.

Stella was almost afraid to look. It felt like the rankest violation of Teddy’s privacy. A violation to which it appeared he had already bitterly resigned himself. No longer snarling at them, he lay back against the pillows, silent and stoic. His brow was damp with perspiration, and a muscle worked rhythmically in his jaw. He stared straight ahead, his gaze fixed on nothing,

“You don’t want to witness all the indignities I must put up with on account of being in this chair ,” he’d told her when she’d first broached the subject of their sharing a bedchamber.

And this is what he’d been afraid of. Moments like this one when he was vulnerable and exposed.

Stella didn’t like to take advantage. But she was his wife, just as she’d told him. She was also his friend. She made herself look at him, steeling herself for a shock.

Fortunately for her blushes, Teddy wasn’t wholly unclothed. He wore a pair of drawers beneath his trousers. Made of plain flannel, they came to the middle of his thighs, just a fraction longer than the length of his shirt hem. All the rest of him was exposed to her view. Lean, naked limbs, covered in a light dusting of black hair. Unmistakably male.

Heat rose in her cheeks.

Though the muscles in his legs hadn’t completely wasted away, they were noticeably withered. It made her think of how he must have been before. Strong and athletic, striding through the woods in his village in Surrey. But she hadn’t known him then. She only knew him now. And she didn’t find him wanting.

Rather the reverse.

She felt the sudden restless urge to busy herself elsewhere. “Shall I fetch some hot water for a bath?” she asked. “If I’m ever sore after riding, a soak in the tub always helps.”

“It’s liniment he’ll need, ma’am,” Jennings said. “I’ve some in my room.” He tramped out to fetch it.

Stella was left alone with Teddy, her husband of fewer than four-and-twenty hours. A man clad in nothing but his shirtsleeves and drawers. “Liniment?” she inquired in as casual a tone as she could muster. “Is he going to rub you down like a horse?”

“Something like that.” Teddy gave a grimacing smile. “It’s a paralytic liniment. More like a salve.”

She drew closer, the paillettes of her net gown tinkling softly. “Does it help?”

“It calms the worst of it,” he said. “The rest fades within an hour. Usually less, providing the damp doesn’t aggravate it again.”

Jennings promptly returned with a glass jar of salve. He opened it, releasing the faint fragrance of lavender and balsam into the room. “If you’ll permit me?”

She again moved away from the bed, relinquishing her place.

The mattress sagged as Jennings sat down beside Teddy. Scooping out a measure of the salve, he rubbed it between his hands to warm it, and then, placing his hands on Teddy’s right thigh, began harshly kneading the muscles.

Teddy groaned deep in his throat.

Stella winced in sympathy. “Must you be so rough?” she asked the manservant.

“Have to apply adequate pressure,” Jennings grunted. “That’s what the French doctor said as was to be done. Said I was to use all my strength.”

Stella frowned. Jennings was a great big ox of a man, with hands the size of dinner plates. As for that French doctor, she didn’t think much of any physician who prescribed cruelty as a cure. “I sometimes massage Locket’s muscles,” she said. “When she’s stiff after a ride on a cold morning. There are ways of pressing deeply without brutality.”

“A woman’s touch,” Jennings said, his tone edged with unmistakable disparagement. “Not much use for Mr. Hayes.”

“Not just any woman,” Stella informed him coolly. She returned to the bed, refusing to accept that she was useless to her husband. She met Teddy’s eyes. “May I try?”

His shirt collar was open. A dull flush of red crept up his neck. For a moment it seemed he would refuse her request. And then, with a huff of resignation: “You can hardly do worse.”

Stella’s pulse quickened. She helped herself to a scoop of the salve. She waited for Jennings to move and then took his place. She rubbed the salve between her hands, softening it with her warmth. It appeared to be composed of beeswax and tallow, with a slight sting to it that might have been turpentine.

“Tell me if I hurt you,” she said to Teddy.

“It’s not hurting me that’s the trouble,” he said. “It’s helping me.”

“Oh, ye of little faith,” she said, quoting Anne. “Don’t give up on me just yet.” With that, she pressed her hands gently into his thigh. His flesh was firm and warm. Her heart fluttered wildly. She did her best to ignore it. This was serious business.

His muscles were tightly contracted, solid as stone under her questing fingers. She applied additional pressure, pushing deep and pulling with her hands as she moved, her strokes fluid rather than jarring. She understood from working on Locket that the goal wasn’t to bruise a muscle or to inflame it even worse. It was to soothe it. To convince the knots that it was safe to release.

Teddy inhaled a shaking breath.

“How’s that?” she asked. “Any better? Any worse?”

“Better,” he grunted.

“Should I move higher?”

Color crept into his face, burning across his cheekbones. He nodded tersely.

She moved her hands further up his thigh, working the spasmed muscle with single-minded attention. She went no higher than the top of his drawers. She wouldn’t have dared. But she grew bolder as she continued her massage, helping herself to more salve, and switching to his other leg without asking permission.

Jennings stood back, arms crossed over his chest.

“Leave us,” Teddy said.

“But, sir—”

“Close the door on your way out,” Teddy added with a harsh rasp. Stella’s hand was still on his thigh. “I’ll call if I need you.”

The manservant grudgingly withdrew, uttering one last grumble of complaint before shutting the door behind him. His boots pounded down the hall, echoing toward the back of the house as he went outside to retrieve Teddy’s canvas and art supplies from the stable.

“You’d think he’d want the evening off,” Stella remarked, continuing her massage.

“He fears you’ll displace him entirely,” Teddy said.

“That’s hardly possible.” Stella could never summon the strength to lift Teddy from his chair. As for the rest of Jennings’s duties…

“How often is he obliged to do this?” she asked, running her slick hands over Teddy’s leg.

“Not often. Only when the weather changes, and I’ve been too long exposed to the damp.”

Her conscience twinged. “We shouldn’t have gone to the river. Not if this was to be the result.”

“A small price to pay for seeing you as you looked standing on the bank.”

She smiled slightly at his attempt at levity. But glancing up at him, she saw that he didn’t appear to be teasing her. He was looking back at her solemnly, his eyes unsettlingly heavy lidded, and his voice gone gruff at the edges.

“You’re still in your starlight netting,” he observed.

“There’s been no time to change.”

“Do it now,” he said. “The worst is over. And even if it isn’t…you can come back to me after.”

Her heart thumped heavily. She sat back from him, hands still sticky with salve. “I shan’t have any need to go in the first place. All of my things are here now.”

An odd expression crossed his face. Had he already forgotten?

“What did you think the new wardrobe was doing here?” she asked, gesturing to the heavy piece of furniture across the room.

He scrubbed the side of his face, briefly at a loss. “These last weeks, I haven’t noticed much outside of my painting, to be honest. Your portrait has occupied the whole of my thoughts.”

Standing from the bed, Stella crossed to the basin. She washed the salve from her hands. “Just the portrait? Not me?”

“They’re essentially the same thing.”

Stella wasn’t so sure. She went to the wardrobe and opened it. Her embroidered silk dressing gown was inside, along with her night clothes, underthings, and several of her day dresses. The remainder of her belongings were folded safely in two steamer trunks and a large leather portmanteau that had been sent over from the Maliks’ house. Stella had yet to unpack them.

She withdrew her dressing gown, silently debating whether she would take the trouble to put on a nightgown or simply sleep in her chemise.

The latter, she decided. It would be less fuss.

She cast Teddy another glance over her shoulder. He was massaging his own legs now, kneading the muscles, first in his right thigh and then in his left one.

He caught her eyes. “Having second thoughts?”

“About what?”

“Undressing.”

Her blush deepened. “No. I’m just— I’m wondering if I should—”

“It seems only fair that you should take some of your clothes off,” he said. “For no other reason than to put us on equal footing.”

She uttered an unsteady laugh. “Oh well, in that case…”

Sitting down in the chair by the bed, she swiftly removed her muddy half boots. Her stockings were damp. They would have to come off, too. She hesitated briefly before hoisting up her skirts to untie her garters.

It may have been only her imagination, but she thought she heard him suck in a sharp breath.

Some of the feminine power she’d felt standing on the banks of the Thames returned in a blood-fizzing rush.

She very deliberately untied her white satin garter and—extending her leg out in front of her—slowly rolled off her stocking.

The air in the room thickened with tension. She felt it as surely as she heard her pulse throbbing in her ears.

She removed her left garter and stocking in the same manner. Barefoot and bare legged, she stood and turned to face him.

Teddy was no longer focused on massaging his legs. He was watching her, his big body gone still, and his eyes darkened with a dangerous light.

Another flicker of hesitation went through her. Ladies didn’t undress in front of gentlemen. Not even their husbands. Not as far as she knew.

But goddesses did.

And that was how Teddy saw her. She could see it in his face. He was enthralled. Enraptured. Hardly breathing for wanting her.

It gave her the courage to continue.

Her spangled shift was secured with only a simple clasp at her neck, and several other hook closures at her back and hips. She made quick work of them.

“Do you mean to send me to an early grave?” Teddy asked in a husky growl.

She smiled to herself. “No more than you meant to send me to one when you took off your trousers.”

“I wasn’t trying to bewitch you. I was in pain, lest you forget.”

Holding his gaze, she shrugged her shift from her shoulders. It shimmied down over her bosom and hips, paillettes clinking softly as it fell to the floor. She wore nothing beneath it save a knee-length linen chemise. No petticoats or crinoline. Not even a corset.

“And how are you feeling now?” she asked.

“I’m aching like the devil,” he said gruffly. “Come here.”

She turned down the lamp. Crossing to the bed, she climbed in beside him. Her hair was loose about her shoulders, just as it was when she posed for him. But this time, the thick tresses fell on him, too, draping them both in a silvery veil as he enfolded her in a powerful embrace. She’d barely settled herself in his arms before he kissed her.

Her blood heated in a mighty surge. Her heart was beating so quickly. She could scarcely catch her breath. It didn’t prevent her from kissing him back. She moved over him, her bosom pressed to his chest, and her hands first at his neck, then in his hair, then tugging impatiently at his shirt.

He helped her, pulling his shirt the rest of the way over his head and tossing it to the floor. His bare arms and chest were lean and hard with muscles. She ran her hands over him in raw appreciation, so bold that she shocked herself.

“Are you certain you’re—” she began.

“Let me know if I’m—” he said at the same time.

Their words tumbled over each other, lips meeting again, as they both laughed breathlessly.

“Doubtless this isn’t the way you imagined spending your wedding night,” he said.

“ Our wedding night,” she corrected him. “And we’ve already proven that we do as we please. I don’t see why we must resort to being conventional now.”

“This evening promises to be nothing if not unconventional.” He captured her mouth again.

She kissed him back with half-parted lips. He drew her closer, perilously closer, his hands curving at her waist and pressing at her hips, bringing her firmly against him. Any thought she’d had of their consummation being postponed evaporated into the ether.

“But, Teddy—” she broke off on a gasp, her earlier concerns emerging despite herself. “Are you really out of pain now? You’re not just…being chivalrous?”

“Me? Chivalrous? Hardly. It’s plain speaking I value, not artifice. As evidenced by the fact that I scared you off the first several times we met.”

“You didn’t scare me. I scared myself. I was too curious about you.”

“Curious. Hmm. I’d rather it had been besotted, but—”

“Teddy, really.”

“Really, sweetheart,” he said. “The pain has eased. You have a magic touch. Jennings usually has to work on me for half an hour. With you, I felt relief within minutes. That’s how the muscle spasms go—here one moment, seeming like the agony will never end, and gone twenty minutes later, a distant memory. It happened in Hampshire, too, when the weather changed.”

“I didn’t think you could feel anything in your legs anymore.”

He held her close. His cheek brushed the top of her head as she cuddled against him. “It’s not exactly a feeling. Not the way it was before my illness.”

“What, then?”

“The muscles still move. They jump. Cramp. In the beginning I thought it meant my legs were waking up. But it doesn’t mean anything except pain.”

“I’m sorry.” She smoothed her hand over his chest. “Have you—”

“Yes,” he answered the question before she summoned the nerve to ask it. “We tried all manner of treatments when we moved to France. There were doctors in Paris touting electricity machines, surgical procedures, and tonics, salves, and tinctures. Needless to say, none of them had the desired effect.”

Stella drew back to meet his eyes, indignant on his behalf. “Did your family make you endure such things?”

“No. They thought most of it claptrap. It was me. I was searching.” His expression turned rueful. “When you’re desperate, you’ll believe anything, and there are countless swindlers whose business it is to promise you the world. I gave up soon after. I realized that nothing could be done. So…if you have any illusions that I’ll be walking off with you into some glorious happily-ever-after…” A bleak vulnerability entered his gaze. “This is how it ends for me,” he said. “Just me, in that chair, until the day I die.”

Stella’s throat closed with emotion. “Foolish beyond permission, as usual,” she said. “It’s not the end. And it’s not just you, either. It’s you and me. Forever.”

Teddy bowed his head to hers. His throat worked on a swallow.

“Forever,” she said again, touching his jaw. She forced him to look her in the eyes. “You can’t be rid of me, Teddy Hayes. Not for any ridiculous reason like that. I’ll still be here with you, even when you finish your masterpiece. I’ll never leave you, not unless you tell me that you no longer want me—”

“I love you,” he said gruffly.

Stella’s heart stopped, uncertain if she’d heard him correctly. He’d spoken so deep. So low. She wondered briefly if it was possible to dream words into existence. She’d imagined him saying them so many times.

“I love you,” he repeated. “I know you vowed to fall in love with me first, but it isn’t necessary. You needn’t make the effort. I love you just the same—I have since the day I asked you to marry me. And if all you can offer in return is friendship, I shall learn to be content.”

Stella’s eyes blurred with tears. “How can you speak of such things? Of mere contentment—of friendship!—when you’ve had the whole of my heart for months? I don’t need to make an effort to fall in love with you. I already love you. I love you so much that I—”

Teddy seized her before she could finish. The rest was muffled by his lips. He kissed her. Held her. Expressed how desperately he loved her in words—

And without them, too.

?A long while later, Stella lay, sated in Teddy’s arms. They were both breathing heavily, still murmuring sweet nothings in the darkness and touching each other in lazy passes.

The sun had long set, the house all closed up and quiet. She was absent her chemise. He couldn’t recall when he’d stripped it off of her.

He supposed, in hindsight, he’d behaved rather like a love-addled madman. But Stella hadn’t seemed to mind his impatient enthusiasm. She’d been rather impatient herself. Bold and fearless, only the fleeting shyness she’d exhibited at the ultimate moment betraying her innocence and insecurity. He’d recognized it in her because he’d felt it, too.

“There were no Parisienne muses,” he’d told her then, looking deep into her eyes. “Not like this. There’s never been anyone but you.”

It had, as it turned out, been the exact right thing to say.

Teddy’s lips grazed her temple as she snuggled against him, loving her so much it still made his heart ache to touch her.

And she loved him in return. She’d said so.

No, what she’d said is that she’d loved him for months. Months . He still couldn’t quite believe it.

But today had been a day of firsts. Their wedding, their painting session on the banks of the Thames, and now this. He’d revealed his deepest vulnerabilities to her, and she’d accepted him. Loved him.

He smoothed her hair from her brow. “Would you like to see something?”

Her cheek was resting on his chest. He felt her smile. “Haven’t you already astonished me enough this evening?”

His mouth hitched in a lazy grin. “Something else, I mean,” he said. “You’ll have to put on your dressing gown.”

She groaned in complaint, her soft, shapely body boneless on his.

He nudged her gently. “I promise, it will be worth it.”

“Very well.” She slowly moved to rise.

His body went cold as she lifted away from him, depriving him of her warmth. He watched her walk to the lamp and light it. His blood ignited again. He had to suppress the urge to drag her back into his arms.

“Would you pass me my trousers?” he asked instead.

She slipped on her dressing gown, tying the silk sash around her waist, before fetching his discarded clothing for him.

He didn’t require any help to dress. He could even get out of bed on his own, once Stella brought his wheeled chair up beside it and applied the brake. Hoisting himself up to a sitting position, he used his arms to swing himself into the seat. He adjusted his legs with his hands, setting his bare feet on the footrest.

Stella held the lantern aloft as she opened the door. “I hope we’re going to the kitchen. I’m ravenous.”

“My studio first,” he said, wheeling through the doorway. “Kitchen second.”

She padded along next to him through the darkness, their path illuminated in the small halo of light cast from the lantern.

Drop cloths still covered the floor of his studio. He rolled over them in his pneumatic chair, the rubber wheels overcoming the difficulty far easier than his wooden wheels had done.

“Shall I light the other lamps?” she asked.

“Please.” He wheeled to his canvas. Jennings had returned it to the large easel, leaving it covered in the same cloth Teddy draped it in whenever he wasn’t working.

Stella lit the lamps one by one. The studio was illuminated by degrees, first softly, then brighter and brighter until no corner of the room was hidden from view.

When she’d finished, Stella came to stand behind him. Her silver hair fell in waves all around her.

Teddy took hold of the corner of the drape that covered his painting.

“No, you mustn’t,” she objected, suddenly comprehending his intention. “You’re not ready.”

“I’m ready,” he assured her.

“But it’s not finished. You said that no one could see it until—”

“You’re not no one. You’re my wife.” With that, he pulled the drape from his canvas, revealing his portrait to her for the first time.

Stella gasped. Her hand drifted up to cover her mouth. “Oh, Teddy. It’s…It’s…” She moved closer to examine it.

He’d depicted her in loose brushstrokes, a creature in motion, the glitter of her spangled dress and the shimmer of her hair emerging as one with the twilight. The sea behind her reflected the waning sun in a sensual tumult. So, too, did the paillettes of her dress, each of them aglow with a luminosity that drew itself from both water and sky. She appeared to have just alighted from the heavens—the moment of transition from star to woman captured a breath before the transformation had become complete.

Stella reached to touch the canvas, only to draw back her hand at the last moment. “It’s extraordinary,” she murmured. “The way you’ve brought the changing light into every facet.”

“You approve, then?”

She continued to stare at the painting, visibly awestruck. “Everyone must do so. It’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.”

“It should be,” he said. “It’s a portrait of you.”

Her gaze found his. Her eyes were glistening with emotion. She held out her hand to him and he took it. Their fingers threaded together in an intimate clasp. “I little knew what you intended when you first asked to paint me.”

“I little knew, either.” He drew her down onto his lap. She was a soft, womanly bundle in his arms, her curves unconstrained by corset or crinoline. “It’s yours,” he told her.

Her eyes widened. “But you can’t give it to me. You’re going to submit it to the Royal Academy. To sell it one day and—”

“Sell it? A portrait of my Stella? Never. Not for any amount—”

She threw her arms around his neck before he could finish, her mouth claiming his in a passionate kiss.

“You can still submit it to the Academy,” she said, several scorching moments later. “Not because of me, but because of your talent. This piece is going to make the whole of the London art world stand up and take notice.”

“Do you know,” Teddy said, drawing her lips back to his, “in this moment, the art world is the last thing on my mind. The only good opinion I care about is yours.”

“You have it.” Stella kissed him again. “And my heart.”

Teddy’s own heart thudded heavily in answer—his love for her shining as brightly as she did. “And you have mine,” he vowed huskily. “Always.”