Annette Blair - Scandalous Brides

“Devil take it.” Hawk rose, taking Beatrix with him, and in silence he deposited her in his chair and exited the breakfast room.

Halfway across the hall, he saw Alex coming down the stairs and waited for her at the bottom. “Alexandra, we need to talk.”

TEN

‘NO, BRYCESON, I told you, I am not ready to talk.”

“This is not about what happened earlier,” Hawk said. “This is something I insist we settle, something I can at least explain.” He took his stubborn wife’s arm and urged her into the library.

“What is it? What is wrong?”

Hawk possessed himself of her hand. Surprisingly callused, it was small and pale, as opposed to her spirit, which shone bright and strong. “I am concerned by something Beatrix said.”

“If you let everything Bea says bother you, you will be disquieted for the rest of your days.”

“You cried when I wrote to Sabrina, before I supposedly died, because I did not write to you? Is that true?”

Alexandra turned to gaze out the window, except that she did not see the rolling lawn gone to seed, or the home wood overtaken by bracken, but her own life, as she had viewed it the day that letter came, stretching barren and pointless before her, without Bryceson in it.

“I was emotional, devastated, because I thought I—I thought you had died.” She shivered.

Hawk placed his cane on a nearby chair and slipped his hands down her arms to chafe and warm them. “You should have worn a shawl,” he said. “This place is as drafty as a dovecote.”

Alex closed her eyes, immersing herself in his nearness, and in his touch.

“I wrote to you first,” he said, from close behind, absently stroking her arms. “Or I began to, but I… I feared that I would expire at any moment, and I knew that Sabrina’s very life depended upon the arrangements I had made for her. So I put your letter aside, unfinished, to write hers, before it was too late.”

Hawk gazed into the past, at that smoke-hazed, bloody day, the pain and the horror of the Waterloo battlefield, of dead friends and dying comrades. Of lying atop the heap . He saw the blood in his eyes, tasted it in his mouth, and smelled it clogging his nostrils.

He remembered well the stench of death, especially his own.

In many ways, he had died that day, or a part of him had, anyway… until he beheld Alex from the back of that church, and had begun to come back to life, whether he wanted to or not, minute by minute, piece by lost and broken piece.

“Because I was incapable of writing myself,” he said, “an old woman at the Waterloo Inn wrote my final words for me. When I finished dictating Sabrina’s letter, I had no strength left, nor did I wish to share with a stranger what I could not seem to find the correct words to express to you. The last I remember, I was being excruciatingly loaded onto a dray for a trip to the country. Your letter was never finished, Alex, and I regret that more than I can say.”

“Where is it?” she asked, not turning from the window, almost as if she did not believe him.

“I never saw it again,” he admitted. “I lay delirious for weeks, in and out of my mind, despondent for months. Once I returned to London, I looked for your letter among the few meager belongings left to me, but it had disappeared.”

“I am sorry,” she said. “I would have liked to receive it, even half written. I wish someone had sent it. I would have been comforted to know that you thought of me at all, especially after the way we parted.” Her sorrow broke in a sob for their dreadful parting, for his unfinished letter, and for his hurtful words of that morning.

Hawk put his arms around her from behind, placing a hand flat against her abdomen, feeling a need to mark her intimately as his, and pulled her close.

Her head rested against his coat-front, his cheek against her hair. He must give her this much, at least, he thought. She deserved some truth. “If not for thinking of you, Lexy, I do not believe I would have survived.”

She turned in his arms then, her wide eyes bright. “That is perhaps the nicest thing you have ever said to me.”

“In that case, I should be horsewhipped.” The temptation to kiss her was strong, stronger than Hawk could resist.

“Your grace.”

They pulled apart.

“Your pardon,” Myerson said, red-faced, when he saw what he had interrupted. He held forth a silver salver with a visitor’s card upon it.

“Thank you.” Hawk took the card, read it, cursed inwardly, firmed his lips, and handed it to his wife. “Myerson, is the, ah, gentleman in question still waiting?”

“Viscount Chesterfield is in the drawing room, your grace, but he is not asking to see you. He wishes to see her grace. He was very specific about that.”

“I am certain he was. Thank you. You may go. Alexandra,” Hawk said, after the retainer had shut the door. “I shall leave you to greet your lover in private.”

“No,” Alex said.

Hawk stopped and turned, releasing his breath, clutching at hope. “Am I to understand that you do not wish to see Chesterfield?”

“No. Yes. I wish—I must speak with him.” She bit her lip.

Hawk shuttered his eyes and closed his expression; he knew he was doing it, but he could not seem to stop.

“I owe Judson a great deal,” Alex said, her explanation more accurate than she would wish.

“Then see him, you shall.” Hawk bowed. “Good morning to you, Madam.”

Chesterfield appeared astonished when Alex entered the drawing room, though he did not take a step toward her, for which she was grateful. “I did not think he would let you see me,” he said.

Alex remained by the door. “I am so very sorry about our wedding.”

Judson firmed his lips, much as Bryce had just done. “What happened was not your fault.”

“I deserve your anger and more,” Alex said. “Five thousand pounds you gave me in exchange for my promise to wed you, but I failed to fulfill my part of our bargain, and I cannot repay you. Not yet, at any rate.”

“Why do you not let Hawksworth worry about repayment?”

“I do not want him to know about the money, Judson, please. He would be angry that I took it. Let me repay you, myself, in time?”

“For once in his charmed life, let Hawksworth face his responsibilities. Everything has always come so bloody easy to the rogue. Looks, money, a title, women, all handed to him on a gilded platter.”

“You are not being fair. Hawksworth fought for his country and suffered mightily for its cause. His looks are altered irreparably; his title and wealth have gone to another.”

“But as for women, he ended with the best.” Chesterfield bit off a curse. “You understand do you not, Alexandra, that he set off to play at war and left you to carry his burdens? That is why he was shocked out of countenance and damned near broken. He discovered that war was not a devilishly entertaining sport or particularly glorious, either.”

Chesterfield’s words resembled her own often-uncharitable thoughts after Hawksworth first left. “No, there you are wrong. Do not be angry with him.”

“I have lost my bride and my future, yet you do not want me to be angry with the man who took them from me.”

“You do not love me, Judson. You wanted a mature wife, and I wanted a secure future for my family. No matter what has passed between us, it is finished now. Let us at least be honest with each other.”

Chesterfield nodded. “So be it.” He turned to the window. “You are in alt, I take it, that your true love has returned from the dead?”

True as the words were, Alex did not appreciate the way Chesterfield sullied the sentiment with his caustic tone. “Hawksworth is well liked by everyone,” she said. “Why do you dislike him so?”