Chapter Fifteen
By the time Willa returned to the hotel from the vicarage, she had herself well in hand, and breezed into her rooms as though nothing had happened. She would tell Dax of her stupidity one day when it didn’t matter, or at least when he was recovered enough from one duel to be fighting another. But for now, this was one secret she had to keep to herself.
And in the interim, perhaps she could wean him off his penchant for such challenges.
There was no sign of Clara or Carson in the sitting room, so she passed on to Daxton’s bedchamber, in spite of everything looking forward to seeing him as she always did.
She scratched briefly on the door before entering. She didn’t want to knock and wake him if he was still enjoying a healing sleep. But when she opened the door, his bed was empty. Her heart missed a beat. Then she swung around and looked in all the rooms before pulling the bell. Rushing to the window, she looked down into the street for any sign of him, worried sick that he was doing something foolish—riding or playing cards on the beach and no doubt drinking, which would bring on his fever again.
She would have to find him. She only hoped Carson was with him and that one of them had had the sense to tell Clara where they were going.
Thankfully, it was Clara who answered the bell first.
“There you are, ma’am! His lordship was anxious for you and I couldn’t tell him where you were.”
“Oh dear,” she said in dismay. “I thought he was asleep!”
“He must have wakened up, for he made Carson dress him, and then they went off with Mrs. Holt.”
Willa’s jaw dropped. “Mrs. Holt?” she repeated dumbly. “Mrs. Holt was here?”
“Yes, and they went together to find you. Don’t worry, m’lady,” she added anxiously. “Carson will make sure he comes to no harm.”
No harm? With Helena Holt just waiting to get her claws into him as soon as he was led to believe Willa was not the faithful wife he imagined her to be. Of course, Willa had not committed the ultimate foolishness of entering that house with Sir Jeremy, but any number of people had seen them together. And with Helena dripping her poison, Dax might be somewhat susceptible in his anger. Who could blame him? Willa was nobody, with little idea of his world or the adulterous games that went on in it. Helena knew everything and was more beautiful than anyone she’d ever met, except possibly Kate.
But it’s not Helena who’s good for him. I am…
Except for blithely wandering through the town with an acknowledged rake who was most definitely not related to her. Her foolishness would cause him a relapse, or another duel, or both.
“Thank you, Clara,” she managed. “That will be all.”
After all, there was no point in looking for Dax now. Unless Carson came home and told her what mischief he was up to. And if that happened, the mischief would no doubt be with Helena, and she would have to live with that… Or she could walk away.
I won’t, she decided fiercely. I’ll never give him up to that scheming…hussy. He is my husband and I will win him in the end.
Despite her determination, she couldn’t help shedding a few tears as she sank down on the sofa, for it had been an anxious few days and just as everything seemed to have been coming right, there was this. Whatever this was.
A knock on the door interrupted her self-indulgent tears. Hastily, she wiped her eyes on her sleeve, in the style of childhood, while Clara, who’d only retreated as far as her own chamber, opened the door.
“Afternoon, Clara,” came Lord Tamar’s casual voice. “Is her ladyship receiving?”
“Come in, my lord,” Willa said, hastily, jumping to her feet, and barely waiting for the door to close behind him before she demanded, “Have you seen Dax?”
“Dax should be in his bed,” Tamar replied.
“Yes, he should, but he’s gone out. I was hoping you’d seen him on his way back when you only asked for me.”
“You’re better company,” Tamar said with a grin. He peered at her. “Willa, have you been crying?”
“No,” Willa lied, but the mere mention of weeping seemed to bring it on again before she could flee. She tried to hide her face in her sleeve, but Tamar’s comforting arm wrapped around her shoulders, and she wept into his coat instead.
It was a few moments before she managed to raise her head and apologize. “I’m so sorry. I’m not usually such a water spout, I assure you.”
“Dax would drive any woman to tears,” Tamar said lightly, although there was a hint of genuine grimness behind his eyes. “He’s a thoroughgoing scoundrel and a great fool besides, and so I shall tell him.”
“Oh, don’t do that,” she said with a slightly watery chuckle. “I don’t want him involved in any more duels. Besides, this is nothing to do with Dax.”
“Of course, it is not,” Tamar soothed, without any noticeable belief. “Shall I go and fetch him for you?”
Willa shook her head violently.
Tamar drew out a handkerchief and wiped around her eyes for her. He paused, gazing down at her. “You know, even when they’re full of tears, you have the most beautiful eyes.”
“Is that a fact?” Daxton’s most dangerous voice said from the other side of the room.
Tamar couldn’t have closed the door properly when he entered, and Dax had come in without anyone hearing. He stood now, just inside the door which he closed with a decided click.
Startled, Willa tried to jump apart from Tamar, who, however, hung on to her firmly. After all, neither of them had done anything wrong, and Dax should know that.
Fully dressed, with his coat hanging loose over his wounded shoulder, Dax threw his hat onto the side table, his hard, unblinking stare shifting deliberately between her and Tamar. Willa’s stomach dived. She hadn’t seen him look like that since the night he’d played dice with Ralph.
“Unhand my wife,” Dax commanded. “And then, since you’re an old friend, you can explain your conduct.”
“Oh, get off your high horse, Dax,” Tamar said, releasing her. “You know perfectly well I’m not hurting Willa or you.”
Dax came further into the room. There was blood on the hand hanging by his side. He’d been fighting again, though her anxious gaze could pick out no other injuries. His face was a little white, perhaps, but she thought that was probably anger.
Dax said deliberately. “Do I? Then why were your arms around her?”
“I was comforting her,” Tamar retorted. “Which is your business, only where were you, Dax?”
Daxton’s lips thinned and his eyes flashed with fury, but he didn’t answer. Because he couldn’t, she realized dully. He’d been with Helena. Tamar had seen him or knew from some other source. That’s why he’d come here.
“A word,” Dax said stiffly and walked back to the door.
Alarmed, Willa opened her mouth to forbid them to fight in any way, but she found she couldn’t speak to Daxton’s rigid back. In any case, she was well aware neither of them would listen to her.
Tamar gave her a comforting grin as he sauntered toward the door and closed it behind him. Willa immediately bounded after him and flattened her ear to the wood.
“…making a mistake, but if you insist,” Tamar was saying in his usual casual way. Unforgivably casual if they were talking about blowing each other’s brains out for absolutely nothing. “I presume it’s dawn at Blackhaven Cove?”
“Dawn is too early for me,” Daxton drawled, “Make it an hour later.”
“Suit yourself. I’ll bring the weapons.”
“You do that.”
The handle rattled as one of them, presumably Dax, took hold of it and Willa bolted back into the room, keeping her back to the door as it opened behind her.
“You should rest,” she managed.
“Yes, I probably will.”
“Shall I send for Dr. Lampton?”
“On no account. Unless you need him?”
“Of course not.”
Finally registering that he didn’t sound angry any more, she turned slowly to face him. He didn’t look angry either, although the turbulence still lingered in his eyes. Instead, he looked…distant. And that was almost worse.
His lips quirked. “There’s another ball at the Assembly Rooms tomorrow evening. Shall we go?”
“You won’t be up to that, Dax—.”
“We can call in for an hour or two, if you’d like? Good. I’ve left Carson to buy the tickets. I’m going to lie down for a little while.”
She followed him into his bedchamber to help, but it seemed lying down on his bed was all he meant to do. Without a word, she fetched a cloth and bathed his knuckles.
“I was foolish,” she blurted. “He said he wished to show me something and I assumed it was to do with who shot you because that’s what we’d been talking about, but he only ever meant to take me to his rooms. But I never went in there, Dax. You didn’t need to hit him and you certainly don’t need to let him shoot you.”
“Everything will be well,” he said vaguely, as if he was thinking of something else entirely. Even so, his eyes followed her as she rose and walked to the door to let him sleep.
*
Willa woke in darkness the following morning. Normally, she would have closed her eyes and gone back to sleep. But this morning, knowing about Daxton’s duel—or duels, since he’d told Tamar he was engaged at dawn—she sat up and lit the candle. She’d deliberately left her bed curtain open and the bedchamber door slightly ajar so that she’d hear anyone coming or going from the room.
Exactly how she meant to stop the duel—or duels—she had no definite idea, but she was quite prepared to send for the Watch or the magistrate if necessary.
She donned her robe and sat up in bed, waiting.
She’d barely seen Dax since he’d come back to the hotel. He’d slept until evening, and then risen, bolted his dinner in her company, and retired to his bedchamber to write letters. He’d displayed no anger toward her. In fact, he’d barely seemed to notice her, which made her more miserable than anything.
Perhaps his growing affection for her hadn’t been deep enough to survive the irritation and suspicion of yesterday. But surely he couldn’t believe her guilty of liaisons with both Leigh and Tamar! Or with either one of them. It was ridiculous. He must know that. So why was he so distant? Was his mind simply on other matters, such as his upcoming duel? Or duels.
The grey light of dawn began to seep beneath the window curtains and slowly, gradually, began to brighten. People began to move about the building beyond her rooms—hotel staff and the servants of guests. Footsteps sounded along the passage outside, crockery rattled. But nothing stirred in her own rooms. No one knocked on the outer door. Daxton did not emerge.
Maybe his flurry of letters last night had been to prevent the duels, to reconcile somehow, although she couldn’t imagine him apologizing. Except, perhaps, to Tamar. Or perhaps she’d simply misunderstood. There had been no flurry of seconds—or anyone at all, in fact—visiting him yesterday afternoon or evening.
But then again, perhaps he was simply so ill that he’d slept through everything.
Worried now on quite different grounds, Willa slid out of bed and padded out of her bedchamber and crossed to his. She scratched lightly and opened the door. The curtains were drawn around his bed, so she approached and drew them apart.
Dax lay against the pillows, sound asleep, breathing deeply and evenly. His golden eyelashes fanned across his lean cheeks, a lock of unruly hair fell forward across his face. His angelic beauty caught at her breath all over again. Reaching out, she touched his forehead for signs of fever and found none.
He was right. Everything was fine.
Only, it was not. A lump rose into her throat and she turned and walked out of the bedchamber.
*
Lady Romford and Cousin Harriet joined them for dinner at the hotel that evening. The countess, once more gracious and cordial as Willa remembered her from childhood, had decided to attend the ball also, a favor she clearly imagined Blackhaven should be grateful to receive.
“Lady Shelby,” she offered over dinner, “is giving out that she and Elvira won’t be attending the ball because her son is too ill to escort them. Too embarrassed, more likely!”
“Well, it will be more comfortable without them,” Dax observed.
Willa agreed wholeheartedly, although when she first walked into the ballroom she was almost sorry. For, almost immediately, Kate introduced her to Lady Arabella Lamont, formerly Niven, whom Ralph had once had in his marital sights. Ill-naturedly, Willa wished Ralph was present to meet her, too, for she was very far from the woman he’d led his family to expect–an aging, plain spinster who would have been grateful for any offer of marriage from a man under forty with all his limbs and most of his teeth intact.
In fact, Lady Arabella was a rather lovely and amiable lady, a trifle vague, perhaps, but with an unexpected sense of humor that appealed instantly to Willa. Her husband, the heroic Captain Alban, was much more saturnine and forbidding, although he and Dax seemed to get on famously. In fact, they went off to play cards together.
When she found the opportunity, Willa said quietly to Mr. Grant, “Dax isn’t up to something is he?”
“Such as what?” Grant asked evasively.
“More duels? I know he’s quarreled with Lord Tamar.”
“Tamar?” Grant said, plainly startled. “I don’t think you can quarrel with Tamar. You shouldn’t worry on that score.”
As she sat quietly with Kate, watching the dancers, her attention was drawn to a pretty, vivacious girl flirting with one of the wealthy town worthies as they danced.
“Who is that young lady?” she asked Kate, trying to place her.
“I don’t think I know her. Why?”
“I’ve seen her before…With Ralph,” Willa remembered, finally placing the memory. “Only, she was different, then. Quiet and almost mousy. Perhaps she’s had too much champagne. Miss Tranter.”
Kate blinked. “Tranter? Well, if she’s related to Robert Tranter, I imagine she’s as much of a chameleon as he is. He’s an inveterate fortune hunter.”
“Oh dear, and you think she’s cut from the same cloth?”
“She probably discovered the Shelbys weren’t as wealthy as they pretended. Since she isn’t either,” Kate added flippantly, “it could have been a match made in heaven. Perhaps she’s just preserving her options.”
Shortly after that, Lord Tamar sauntered in and came almost immediately to ask Willa to dance. Willa might have been more circumspect were it not for the fact that Helena Holt entered the ballroom at that moment, escorted by a stranger, and Willa refused to be seen sitting alone waiting for her husband to notice her again.
So, she stood up with Tamar. It was quite difficult to hold a private conversation during a country dance, but she did manage to say to him bluntly, “Did Dax challenge you?”
“Don’t be silly,” Tamar said cheerfully.
“That isn’t an answer,” she pointed out.
“I’d never hurt him or you,” Tamar said.
Toward the end of the dance, she glimpsed Dax emerging from the card room and immediately looked away, smiling at Tamar. When she saw Dax next, he was dancing with Lady Arabella, and then with an unknown young beauty whom he appeared to be teasing and flirting with in his own inimitable way. A spurt of jealousy stung in Willa’s throat. What she’d taken for affection, for the beginnings of love, even, could easily just have been Dax being Dax. She no longer had any faith in her own judgement.
She danced with a stranger whom Kate introduced to her, and then with the poet, Mr. Yoeville, whose blatant admiration was balm to her wounded soul. And since Dax had not come near her in all that time, she danced again with Lord Tamar. This was the waltz and the supper dance.
If Willa had harbored any real hope of Dax and Tamar making up their quarrel over a convivial supper, she was doomed to disappointment. For one thing, Dax went into supper with the unknown beauty and sat at a completely different table where there was, inevitably, much hilarity. Willa and Tamar sat with the Grants and the Lamonts, which would have been very pleasant if only Dax had been there, too. And if Mrs. Holt had not looked across at her and laughed quite so loudly.
The evening, in fact, was becoming a bit of a nightmare when, as she returned to the ballroom, fingers closed around her wrist and pulled her into a curtained alcove.
Willa didn’t fight it. In fact, her first reaction was one of joy and relief, for only Dax would have dared treat her so.
Or so she thought until she found herself gazing up at Sir Jeremy Leigh, a smile of mischievous welcome frozen on her lips.
Leigh’s breath caught. “God you’re beautiful.”
“How dare you?” she whispered. “Have you not done enough harm?”
She reached at once for the curtain, but again he caught her wrist. “Yes, I have, and that’s why I need to apologize to you.”
She stared at him. “Write me a letter,” she said coldly, tugging her hand free just as the curtain was wrenched aside.
Dax stood in the opening, his eyes blazing. “Out,” he uttered, and Leigh, after a moment’s hesitation, perhaps wondering what Dax would do to her, obeyed.
Dax didn’t take his gaze off her throughout, merely stepped inside and closed the curtain once more. His furious eyes scorched her, but she refused to apologize again for something she hadn’t done and had no control over. If he asked, she’d tell him.
Please ask.
He didn’t. Deliberately, he advanced upon her and raised his right hand. She lifted her chin in outraged defiance, but it seemed he had no intention of striking her. Instead, his hand closed around the back of her head, careless of her elaborately dressed hair, and pulled her hard against him.
Before she could speak, his mouth covered hers and ravished. Stunned, she could only weather the storm, her fingers clutching at his back for support. But this was Dax, and inevitably, she not only melted but kissed him back with everything she felt and wanted in her heart. And she never wanted it to end.
But it did. He lifted his head, still without speaking and turned, drawing her hand over his arm. “We’re going home,” he said with an odd edge of grimness she’d never heard in him before.
“Your mother—” she began, glancing toward where she’d last seen Lady Romford with some matrons of her acquaintance.
“I’ve said our goodnights,” he replied shortly. Shielding her from the majority of the ballroom with his own large body, he strode from the room so quickly that she had to trot to keep up with him.
He waited impatiently while she changed her shoes and donned her cloak and then whisked her out of the Assembly Rooms and along the street to the hotel. It had begun to rain, which at least gave her an excuse to draw up the hood of her evening cloak while she all but ran to the hotel.
Still, he didn’t speak, leaving her time to compose what she would say when they were finally alone, only words seemed to fly away, eluding her utterly as she wondered how angry he was going to be, how open to her innocent explanations. He’d never been a bully, but she was his wife now and entirely in his power. Of course, there was nothing she wanted to change in that, but it wasn’t always comfortable to be Daxton’s wife.
Her heart raced as he barged into the sitting room, dismissing Clara and Carson with one silent jerk of his head. Clara seemed inclined to merely go into her own little bedchamber to await Willa’s summons, but Carson, with more experience of his master, seized her arm and pulled her out into the passage with him. This was even less comforting.
Impatiently, Dax threw his hat on the sofa while she took off her cloak, but before she’d even laid it down, he seized her hand once more and all but dragged her into her bedchamber.
“Dax—”
“Hush. No talking tonight,” he said huskily. “It isn’t words we need.”
That was when she realized his intentions, even before he unlaced her gown with one tug, and with two consigned it and her undergown to the floor. Alarm, anticipation, sheer excitement, all clashed within her as her underwear joined the pile on the floor and he carried her in one arm to bed.
He made love to her, just as he was, still half dressed. Nothing like the first time, this was swift and hard and glorious, and she could do nothing but surrender utterly to his every demand until, utterly overwhelmed, she fell apart under the onslaught, writhing in uncontrollable bliss.
Only then did he let her help him out of his shirt and breeches. After that, allowing neither of them much in the way of recovery time, he began it all again, this time with slow, languorous tenderness that made her want to weep. She had the leisure to concentrate on his body more than her own, to give as well as receive all the sensual pleasures of the journey before the slow, glorious climax broke over them both.
He fell asleep in her arms, a faint smile playing on his lips. And although he couldn’t see it, she answered it with her own, because she knew now that everything was going to be well after all. Amazingly, he neither doubted nor was enraged with her. Somewhere in that hectic night without words, he had been asking for reassurance. And she had given as well as received it.
She didn’t want to sleep. She wanted to savor these moments in wakefulness. But she’d been up since before the previous dawn. Inevitably, before this one, her eyes closed and she fell into a deep, untroubled sleep.