“Beech.” She wanted to warn him to stop, to cease with such useless remorse.
But he went on. “Imagine me, if you will, receiving the news that I was now the duke—that I was now the one who needed to marry.”
Anticipation, astonishment, and even a little fear began to beat hard in her chest.
“Imagine that the moment I was told I must marry, I set out directly from London for Warwickshire. Then imagine that I waited only until I received an invitation to Sir Harold Pease’s ball to accept. Imagine then that I attended, and let people stare at me as I searched the rooms for some sign of the young lady to whom I most wanted to speak, and when I could not find her, imagine I retreated to the library in defeat.” He finally turned his gaze back to hers. “And then imagine that you, the object of my unrequited and unsuspecting obsession, simply appeared to me, like the vision from a merciful, generous God.”
She could not draw breath—all the air stopped up in her throat, hot and thick and aching.
“Imagine all that, and then imagine that you, of all the people in the world, were the first person to be clear-sighted and honest and caring enough to ask me about my arm.” He took her hand very carefully in his. “Imagine my relief at such honesty. And then imagine that you kissed like an angel and made me laugh and forget myself enough to be happy.”
He kissed her hand. “And then tell me what I should do next.”
Tears of regret for all the years lost, mingled with tears of gratitude for all the years that just might be yet to come, scalded her eyes and streaked down her face. “You should kiss me, dear Beech, and marry me.”
CHAPTER 13
RELIEF AND GRATITUDE buoyed him up. “In the morning, my darling Penelope.” Marcus kissed her forehead. “Get under the covers and stay warm. I need to see to…things.” Like giving Martins instruction on caging a marriage license out of the Bishop of Warwick at first light.
Able Martins was a font of information, as well as discretion. “A regular license, Your Grace, is what is required. It shall be done at the earliest possible moment, Your Grace.”
“I thank you.” Marcus had no choice but to return as quietly as possible to the chamber where his darling Penelope had fallen soundly asleep. He didn’t want to sleep, of course. He wanted to crawl in beside her and make love into the wee small hours of the morning. To take solace in her body. To keep the unquiet dreams at bay, if only for a night.
But they would still come—the dark memories he could not forget. The necessary violence and blood of battle. The pain and instant understanding the moment he had been hit. The endless torment that followed.
And so, he did not join her in the bed. He did not sleep.
Instead, he sat in a chair before the hearth dozing on and off, as was his way, for the rest of the night, until the gray light of dawn roused him out of his self-imposed purgatory. The crystalline sunlight slanting through the window told him the storm had broken, and the sound of footsteps trailing off toward the stable told him Martins was already on his way.
Fresh hope was overtaken by zealous enthusiasm—it was his wedding day! It only remained for Marcus to make himself presentable for his bride.
On the stand in the dressing chamber, he found soap and water and a razor, and prepared, in the absence of Sealy Best, his skilled and steady-handed Bajan steward, to do for himself.
Half an hour’s labor left Marcus swearing and bleeding as if he’d been peppered with grapeshot.
“Beech?”
Penelope’s voice was too close for him to fully cover himself—he hastily flung a linen towel around his loins.
But she was already through the door. “Good Lord, Beech! What have you done?” She was looking not at his oozing face, but at the remains of his queue, sheared and lying discarded on the floor.
“Brought myself into the nineteenth century. Or at least tried to.” It had seemed such an easy task when he had conceived of it half an hour ago—to do away with his scruffy, piratical appearance for his wedding day.
“Why?”
“You said you thought I could do with a good barbering if I hoped to please.” The phrase had stuck in his mind like a pebble in his boot, urging him to take pains with his appearance on this day of all days.
“Not to please me—I rather liked you in the eighteenth century,” Penelope replied before she placed an offhand kiss on his bare left shoulder. “Where’s your man, Martins?”
“Gone for a bishop.”
“Dear Beech.” She tsked and ran her fingers through his uneven hair. “Here— If you’ll allow me?”
Marcus hesitated. He felt hideously exposed—she could see the stump of his arm, the ugly puckering of skin and scar that crossed the base.
But she wasn’t looking at his arm. She was looking at his face. “We’re to be married today, are we not, Beech?” she asked in answer to his silent disquiet. “If you can’t trust me now, when are you planning to do so?”
Marcus ignored the heat under his skin, swallowed the shameful fear in his throat, and handed her the shears.
“Thank you. I will strive to be worthy of your trust. If you would sit”—she directed him to a chair, as efficiently business-like as his steward ever was—“so you don’t loom over me. And here. You can keep watch”—she rearranged things on the shaving stand, angling the mirror to reflect into another large pier glass so that showed his profile—“so you can assure yourself that I’m doing you proud.”
She couldn’t do otherwise with her brilliantly straightforward demeanor.
Marcus relaxed enough to do as she advised and looked in the mirror.
And the image before him hit like a blow to the chest—there, in the prismatic trick of the reflection, was his arm.
He knew—he knew it was gone, and yet, there before him, he was whole again.
While Penelope took a turn around him, deciding upon her approach, making snips here and there, Marcus tried to keep his breathing calm and even. In and out. Drawing air evenly into his lungs.
But he could not look away.
Something—the omnipresent phantom itch that often clawed away his sanity—compelled him to scratch. To flex and rub his good right arm against his side and the edge of the chair as inconspicuously as possible while he watched the reflection in the mirror.
And miracle of miracles, it eased the prickling ache in his lost arm.
His heart filled his ears with a low pounding excitement.
Marcus took a deeper breath and did it again, rubbing his right elbow more purposefully, pressing harder against the wooden slat of the chair. And he felt it in his left arm—the phantom arm he watched in the mirror.
He did it again, and again until it must not have been inconspicuous at all, because the sound of the scissors had ceased, and Penelope was standing still behind him. Watching.
Shame warred with astonishment—with the miracle of discovery. “I—”
“Would it help if—?” And then she dropped the scissors and was rubbing his shoulders, pushing her thumbs into muscles made knotty by pain and tension and the sheer effort to hold himself up like a duke. Her clever hands rounded his shoulders and began massaging lower, down the full length of his good arm. Kneading deep with her knuckles and the heels of her palms, threading her fingers with his, rotating his wrist and letting him stretch out his fingers as he watched in the mirror.
The exquisite relief—the sheer totality of feeling—was so profound it was nearly cataclysmic. His breath was sawing in and out of his chest as if he had raced up a masthead, or fought in a battle, or made insanely pleasurable love to his wife.