Spencer told himself he should feel uneasy having Rose bathe him as if they were longtime lovers instead of strangers. But her hands rubbing his scalp were strangely soothing, washing away months of sea life.
He focused his gaze on her determined face as she finished drying his hair and began patting his arms with a towel. He guessed she’d not been married long, though there was a weariness about her that seemed to indicate she lived a hard life.
She slid the towel down his torso, and he willed his body not to react or the towel at his hips would become recognizably snug again.
“Allow me to help you dress,” she said.
Her deep, mellow voice suddenly seemed…intimate. If this were any other time or place, he would be welcoming her help and turning it to his advantage. It had been well over a year since he’d shared any intimacy with a woman.
They compromised. She slid clean breeches onto his lower legs, then turned her back while he struggled to pull them up.
“I was wondering if you’d like me to send word to your family that you’re alive,” she said suddenly.
That doused his lustful thoughts.
“No. You can turn around now.”
She stood uncertainly in the center of the room. “But won’t your parents wonder if you’re hurt?”
“My mother will only worry more if she hears of my injuries,” he said softly, still studying her. And then he said something unplanned, foolish. “My father died last year.”
“My condolences to you,” she murmured.
Why had he felt the need to say something so personal to this woman he barely knew?
“Maybe it was for the best,” Spencer said, looking up into her wide, gray eyes. “I don’t want him to know—I don’t want him to see—” What—his shame? The humiliation he’d soon suffer in London? “I would be a disappointment to him,” he finished lamely.
“I’m sure that is not true.”
He seldom allowed himself to think of all the ways he’d disappointed his parents. As a child he could do nothing to help his mother, a Spanish noblewoman. Whenever his father took him and Alex to London, his mother usually stayed home alone. He still could see their heads together as they spoke in low voices in the great hall of their Cumberland estate, the loving way they held hands, the wistfulness on her face as she kissed her family good-bye. She was not as welcome everywhere as her husband was—Spencer and his brother had paid the same price.
His father didn’t see it—didn’t want to see it. But Spencer and Alex knew what it was to walk into a room and have gazes slide away from them, to hear whispers, to know that every smile was false. He was used to feeling like a foreigner in England, ashamed of his heritage, hurt and angry when he and his brother were ignored. But it hadn’t taken long for either of them to realize that people were forced to notice them if they caused a scandal.
Rose helped him finish dressing, then said a quiet good-night, and carried a candleholder as she climbed a rope ladder up into the loft. The candle threw crazy shadows across the beams and roof as she undressed. When she blew it out, he listened for her breathing, then cursed himself for a fool.
He tried to distract himself by examining her home, looking for clues to the mystery of Rose. Drying herbs and baskets hung from the beams supporting the thatched roof. Though the timber-framed cottage had only one room, it boasted a fireplace and chimney, and glass in the windows.
She seemed to live alone, but how did she support herself? The only people he’d ever met who were this generous to strangers were his parents, but they had money to support their good deeds.
Remembering his parents unfortunately made him think of his wedding day. He had warned his parents that proper young ladies would have nothing to do with him. But he hadn’t been prepared for the tears in his mother’s eyes, and how badly he’d felt to disappoint her once again.
With a groan, he imagined her reaction when Rodney Shaw claimed her son was a traitor. The pouch had been all that stood between him and a hanging, but it was gone now. Shaw would beat him to London and whisper whatever lies he wanted to the queen, blaming Spencer for his own crimes. Perhaps Shaw would even create convincing proof—or bring along a “witness.”
He had to get to London. He propped himself up on his hands and swung his broken leg to the floor, but pain and weakness could not be overcome by will alone. He had barely been able to walk with Rose’s help. He dropped back on the pallet and punched the wall.
At dawn Roselyn was in the tiny bake house behind her cottage, with eight loaves of bread in the large courtyard oven. Though she had sold most of her baked goods in Shanklin before the Spanish threat had driven away the villagers, she had steady customers at Wakesfield Manor—another reason to bless the Heywoods.
It was past time to deliver bread to the manor, as John’s visit had reminded her, so she couldn’t avoid them any longer. She returned to her cottage, set bread and cider beside the slumbering Thornton, picked up her baskets, and left.
The manor house, more windows than walls, glittered like a jewel amid the rolling green fields and trimmed hedges. She followed the gravel path to the rear of the manor.
When she entered the kitchen, the Heywood family had already gathered around the trestle table used by the servants. Without her parents in residence, only Francis and his family lived at the manor.
Francis’s long, bushy mustache tickled when he kissed her cheek, and he took the basket of bread from her hand. His wife, Margaret, plump and white-haired as a mother should be, patted the bench beside her, and Roselyn sat down. She thought of her own mother, her hair dyed yellow, her mouth always too painted to give her children kisses.
As Margaret hugged her, Roselyn suddenly felt an overwhelming desire to tell the older woman everything, to relieve herself of this burden of Thornton. But if he was a spy, how could she put the Heywoods at risk?
So she bestowed a bright, forced smile on Charlotte, who often spent hours in the village with Roselyn helping her to sell her pastries and bread. Thomas, Charlotte’s elder by a few years, also smiled back as his face turned red.
“Where is John?” Roselyn asked.
Francis and Margaret exchanged smiles, as if she had just asked when she could marry him.
“John had carpentry work in Shanklin today,” Margaret said.
Roselyn concentrated on her porridge. “Tell him I said good day.”
“We will!” Charlotte bubbled with so much amusement that Roselyn gave her a narrow-eyed look of warning.
The girl only grinned back, and Roselyn couldn’t stop her own reluctant smile. Was her own sister like Charlotte? The girls were close in age, but Roselyn hadn’t seen her sister in two years.
Francis sat down opposite her and pulled a piece of bread from the loaf. “We missed you at supper Sunday, Lady Roselyn. You should not keep to yourself so much. A year has passed now; you must go on with your life. I had thought you were doing better when I didn’t see you at the graveyard Sunday afternoon.”
For the first time she had missed her weekly visit. The sorrow struck her hard, and tears came to her eyes.
Charlotte touched her hand. “John wanted you to know that he put flowers on the grave for you.”
Roselyn could have groaned. John even acted the part of her husband.
And now she was lying to them all, risking her place among them.
The Wakesfield chapel graveyard was empty when Roselyn arrived, and she wound her way through the well-worn paths between the head-stones. At her husband’s grave, there was only a simple stone, carved with his name—and their baby’s.
She dropped to her knees and put her palm on the grass and earth that covered their bodies. Of Philip, she thought little—he had made her miserable in repayment for her parents disowning her.
But Mary, their daughter, had been only two months old when the plague took her, too. Though Roselyn had protested, the Heywoods had buried father and daughter together, as if Philip had ever held the baby while he was alive.
She laid the wildflowers she’d brought across the grave, beside the dying flowers John had left. The misery she had suffered as Philip’s wife had been worth the joy of carrying her daughter inside her body and in her arms, though it had been for only months instead of a lifetime. She realized that her grief was no longer so overwhelming, but had become a part of her.
If she had married Spencer Thornton, she’d never have known the warmth and peace of holding Mary. A rational part of her knew that she would have had other children—but in her heart, another child couldn’t replace Mary.
Spencer had never lain abed for so many days. His frustration and weakness infuriated him—and sent him one step closer to despair. He knew he could not leave within the next week, but surely a fortnight would be enough time…
Then he looked down at his broken leg, which flared to painful life along with his ribs even when he sneezed. How could he mount a horse? How would he defend himself?
The door opened and he tensed. Though it was only Rose, carrying an empty basket, he would be dead if Shaw had come for him.
She seemed almost…relieved.
“Did you think I would flee?” he asked.
“I had hoped you would not be so foolish again.” She leaned over him to check the splint on his leg.
He inhaled the natural perfume that was all hers. When she raised his shirt to look at his bandages, he imagined pulling the plain cap from her head and watching her hair fall down around them. He must be bored, to find a country girl so fascinating, but there was something about her honesty, her serenity, that intrigued him.
She rubbed salve into his wound, her touch firm but gentle. He found even the chapped skin of her hands fascinating.
After Rose finished bandaging his chest she pulled his shirt down again, and he suddenly noticed that she had a lush, full mouth.
Disgusted with himself, Spencer concentrated on sliding the knife she’d used beneath the pallet as she stood up.
“Rose,” he said, propping himself up on his elbow. “I am going to walk today.”
“But your leg—”
“I won’t put weight on it—but neither will I regain my strength just lying here.”
Roselyn was fighting a losing battle with herself. How was she to discover the truth and be free of her past?
His dark eyes hid secrets behind their friendliness. She found herself strangely fascinated by the differences between him and other men. Even when she played her role of healer, she saw not his wounds but his body, so large and different from Philip’s.
Her palms were suddenly damp, and she had a hard time meeting his gaze.
Thornton tried to lift himself onto his good leg, but even across the room she could see his arms tremble. Roselyn found herself at his side, putting her arms beneath his shoulders, bracing herself against his weight. He finally rose up on one leg—and would have gone down again if she had not slid beneath his arm and held him steady.
She absorbed the lean, muscular length of him along her entire body. His hip pressed against hers, and she could feel the faintest touch of his breath against her cheek. She couldn’t look at him, knowing she must be blushing. Why did her body betray her like this, when all she wanted to do was remember how cruelly he’d once treated her?
Thornton was tall and imposing in her tiny cottage, but even more intimidating was the penetrating way he studied her. She couldn’t look away as his gaze roamed her face, alighting on her mouth for just a moment too long.
She was trapped by his awareness of her as a woman. Why had he never bothered to treat her this way when they’d been betrothed? Those long-ago memories stiffened her resolve and she coolly asked, “Shall we begin?”
Together they managed something more than a hop, but not quite a stagger. When they reached the end of her one-room cottage, they turned and started back toward the pallet. She knew he must be in pain, but he never showed it.
“I’d like to go outside,” he said.
“I’m not sure that’s wise.” She thought of John appearing in her bake house, of Charlotte’s habit of stopping by.
But when she tried to steer him away from the door, he wouldn’t be moved. His strength only reminded her of how quickly he could turn against her if he knew her identity.
“Allow me to sit in the sun for just a little while,” he said, reaching for the door latch.
For a man who wanted to stay hidden, he was proving stubborn in his recklessness. Roselyn had no choice but to give in, knowing that only kindness would win the revelation of his secrets. “Then we must walk as quickly as possible to the courtyard behind the cottage. It looks out over empty cottages, and you won’t be seen.”
Their journey seemed to last forever, and she had to constantly resist the urge to look over her shoulder. When they reached the courtyard, she helped Thornton to a bench near a tree heavy with green apples. He sat down with a sigh and stretched his leg before him.
“I’ll be weeding the garden,” she said. “Call if you need me.”
“Rose?”
She looked back, and in the sunlight he seemed a reminder of the night, dark, full of shadows and shades of truth. He leaned back on the bench, and in his relaxed pose was power restrained. She felt something strange uncurl into life deep in her belly. She didn’t understand what she was feeling; she only knew she wished she could run to safety, to the time before he’d come.
He cocked his head as he studied her in return. “I don’t think you ever told me the name of this estate.”
She wanted to lie and live with the consequences later. But she couldn’t keep secret the name of a place like this, so well known on the island.
“Wakesfield Manor,” she said, lifting her chin.
His eyes narrowed, and as he opened his mouth to speak, she braced herself.
She suddenly heard a voice shouting greetings from the front of the cottage, and felt the shock clear to her fingernails—it was Francis Heywood.