Chapter 6
Sebastian followed her up the stairs, feeling strangely wary. Just what sort of surprise did she have in mind?
“I found it in the attic,” she chattered on the way. “It must be centuries old. We dusted it off with rags, and Dick carried it down to this room. It’s the largest.” She led him into a bedchamber branching off the corridor and made a sweeping arm gesture toward one corner. “See? It’s a bed.”
Sebastian blinked at the jumble of timbers. “That’s not a bed. That’s firewood.”
“It’s a disassembled bed. And I think you’d have a difficult time burning it. It’s heavier than bricks.” She lifted one end of a plank. “I don’t even know what kind of wood this is.”
He ran his fingers over the surface and examined the grain. “I’m not certain, either.” He picked up a lathe-turned wooden leg. Or was it a finial? Time had coated the wood in a dark, impenetrable patina that he couldn’t even gouge with his thumbnail.
“I don’t think it’s English. What style of carving do you make that out to be?” She leaned close to him, offering a piece decorated with a chain of stylized wildflowers.
He shrugged. “Swedish, maybe?”
“Well, wherever it came from, it’s going to be slept in tonight. I already told Fanny to stuff a mattress tick with fresh straw. We just have to put the frame together. All the pieces seem to be here.” She took hold of a board and lifted it, eyeing the dimensions. “Do you think this is a slat, perhaps?” She tipped her head to regard it from another angle. “Or a rail?”
With a shrug, she carried it to the center of the room and laid it flat on the floor.
Sebastian poked through the stack of planks and pieces. “Simple mortise and tenon joints. Shouldn’t take long.” He chose two pieces that looked as though they’d been hewn to fit together, and the tenon slipped into the mortise like a hand into a fitted glove. “That’s one joint connected.”
Mary paused in the act of laying a second plank next to the first, lining up their bottom edges for comparison. “Oh, no. We’re not going about it all higgledy-piggledy. We don’t know if those two pieces belong together.”
“Of course they do. They were made to fit.”
“You can’t be sure of that.”
He held up the joint for her, sliding the tenon in and out of its slot a few times. “Is that not proof enough?”
“Perhaps there are two that would fit the same hole.”
“Well, I don’t know how you propose to complete this bed without joining pieces together. Did you find a leaflet in the attic with instructions? In Swedish?”
“Of course I didn’t. That’s why we need a plan. Now, we’re going to arrange all these pieces neatly in rows first, laying them out on the floor so that we can count and compare. We’ll put a little mark on the similar ones. Plank A, plank B, and so on. Then we’ll chalk up a diagram on the floor and—”
“I thought you wanted to sleep in this bed tonight. Not next week.”
“What’s wrong with planning first?”
“You’re making it more complicated than it needs to be.” He lifted the wide, flat headboard and placed it against the wall. “Is this where you want it?”
“A little to the left.” She waved him to the side. “No, back to the right a touch. There.”
He set the piece down, then returned to the stack of timbers and selected the largest. “This goes at the foot of the bed.”
“Are you certain?”
“Yes.” He lifted the board with a grunt, swung it about, and positioned it parallel to the headboard. “Hold that in place.”
She sounded skeptical. “So you’ve done this before. Assembled beds.”
“Loads of them.”
“Loads of them? When and where was that?”
He gave a strangled groan of impatience. “Just trust me, Mary. I have it all under control. This won’t take but a few minutes.”
*
One hour later
Mary pulled to a standing position and massaged the wrenched muscle at the small of her back. “It’s still not right. That one doesn’t go there.”
“Yes, it does.” As she stood observing, Sebastian tried once again to shove the wooden tab of one rail into the slot carved into a leg.
“See? It doesn’t fit.”
“It will fit. There aren’t any other pieces left that it could be.”
“It’s probably one of the pieces we’ve already used. It could be anywhere.” She gestured at the half-finished bed frame. “Or maybe the right piece was never here to begin with. This was why I wanted to make a plan, you know.”
He gave her a look. “Don’t be that way.”
“Don’t be what way? Right?” She huffed a breath, blowing a wisp of hair off her cheek. “There’s nothing else to be done. We’ll have to take it apart and start over.”
He swore with passion. “We are not taking the thing apart. And this piece does fit.” He glared at the wood, as though he could force it into submission through the sheer power of masculine brooding. “I just need a mallet.”
“I think I need a mallet,” she grumbled.
“What?”
“Nothing,” she chirped with bright innocence. “I’ll find you that mallet straightaway.”
*
Two hours after that
Mary sat in the corner of the bedchamber with her knees hugged to her chest.
With a grimace of effort, Sebastian gave the bed-key one final twist to tighten the ropes. “There.”
Mary watched as he dragged the freshly stuffed mattress tick onto the frame.
She would have offered to help. But by this point, she knew better than to touch—or even breathe on—his work in progress. And God forbid she make a helpful suggestion.
He stood back, straightened, and used his sleeve to wipe the sweat streaming off his brow. “Finished.”
She stared at the bed, biting her tongue.
“Well…?” He propped his hands on his hips. “I told you I’d have it put together.”
“Yes, but—”
“But what, Mary? But what?”
“But there are three boards left over.” She stood and pointed. “Where do they go?”
He gave a one-shouldered shrug. “Must be surplus.”
“Surplus? What centuries-old bed comes with surplus pieces?”
“This one.”
She rubbed her temples.
“It doesn’t matter.” He took a pace backward. “It’s sturdy enough to hold an ox. Just watch.”
“Sebastian, wait.”
He took two running steps and launched himself at the bed, twisting in midair so that he landed on his back. All sixteen stone of him, squarely plunked in the center of the mattress.
“See?” He folded his hands under his head and gave her a smug look. “I told you it was st—”
Crash.
One side of the bed frame collapsed beneath his weight, tipping the mattress at an angle and shunting him to the floor.
Mary stood very quietly.
He stared blankly at the ceiling. “Go on. Say it.”
“Say what?”
“I know you’re thinking it. You may as well have out with it.”
“I’m not sure what you mean,” she lied.
“Yes, you are.”
“Let’s go downstairs for some tea.”
“For the love of God, Mary. I know it’s coming. Just say it now.”
“I don’t—”
“Say it.”
“I told you so!” she shouted. “Is that what you want to hear? I told you this would happen. I told you you were doing it wrong. I. Told. You. So.”
He stared up at the ceiling, infuriatingly silent.
Mary, however, was only getting started. “I wanted to make a plan. But noooo. You don’t need a plan. You’ve assembled loads of beds. You know exactly which pieces fit where. Because you, like all men, have a magical nugget of furniture-assembly expertise dangling in your left bollock.” She flung a hand at the unused boards. “Surplus? You’re telling me sixteenth-century Swedish artisans made surplus?”
He finally pulled himself off the floor. “I”—he jabbed a finger in his chest—“told you”—the finger turned on Mary—“that we should go to Ramsgate. Where they have beds already. Assembled beds. Comfortable beds. Beds just sitting there in well-appointed rooms, waiting for someone to use them.”
“I don’t want to go to Ramsgate.”
“Yes, so you told me. You’re very keen to avoid the gossip. God forbid you be seen with me in public.”
Her chin jerked. “What?”
“I mean, you could have been married to Giles Perry, a barrister’s son with a promising political career. Instead, you’re with the disgraced Lord Byrne. The one who dirties his hands in trade, because his father drove the estate straight up to the brink of insolvency and only failed to take it over the edge because he drank himself to death first. Those ladies on holiday would cluck their tongues, wouldn’t they? All of England would be shaking their heads.”
“Sebastian. You can’t think I’m ashamed of having married you.”
“Of course not,” he said mockingly. “You prefer to spend the week squirreled away with me in some ramshackle cottage, scrubbing floors and assembling furniture, when you could be staying in the finest seaside resort.”
“I do prefer it.”
“To be sure.” He rolled his eyes to the ceiling. “Why wouldn’t you? Just look at all the fun we’re having right this very moment.”
She shook her head. “I can’t believe this.”
“Well, I can’t believe you. It’s clear you’re trying to persuade me into remaining here. Vases of flowers on the table, breakfast.” He gave the unfinished bed a disgusted look. “That.”
“Well, pardon me for attempting to make our honeymoon cottage just the tiniest bit romantic.”
“It’s not supposed to be romantic. You were jilted by your groom. I stepped in to marry you out of loyalty to your brother. It’s not as though we clasped hands and ran away into the sunset, Mary.” He swept her with a cold look. “We’re not in love.”
His words struck her in the chest with such force, she couldn’t breathe.
And she hadn’t any logical reason to feel hurt. He was only speaking the truth. She simply hadn’t realized, until this moment, how much she wished the truth were different.
“I…” She blinked rapidly, forcing back a hot tear.
He pushed his hands through his hair and cursed. “Mary, don’t listen to me. We’re both exhausted, and—”
“It’s all right, Sebastian. You don’t need to explain.” Mary backed her way toward the door. She had to escape this room. The walls were closing in on her, squeezing at her heart. “We can leave for Ramsgate whenever you’re ready.”