The Courtship (Sherbrooke Brides 5)

“It is possible,” she said slowly, lightly touching her fingertip to the leather scroll, “that someone found this cask much later, perhaps even after the lamp was here in England with King Edward. Perhaps this someone knew where King Edward had buried the lamp in a general sort of way, and buried the cask nearby. Then if both were found, the scroll would explain about the lamp and all would be known. There was nothing else in that small cave. I looked very carefully. But perhaps close by, not too far away from the cave—”

“Helen.”

She raised her head and stared at him. He looked tough in the dim, spindly candlelight, tough and hard and dangerous. She had the sudden urge to fling herself on him and take him down to the floor. It was a floor she would never look at again in quite the same way. She smiled then. He had made love to her with his boots on.

“Don’t smile at me. Listen, I am not scared. But I will tell you this. It must stop. This has never happened to me before, this complete loss of what I am and what I’m doing. Not once did I think to withdraw from you, not one single time, either yesterday or now. If this continues you will become pregnant.” Just saying the word made his eyes nearly cross, and, strangely enough, not with abject terror. No, in that instant, he saw her belly rounded with his child, and she was laughing and telling him something that made him kiss her and laugh as well. And his hand lay over her belly, over his child. Then it was gone.

He didn’t know what was wrong with him. It was the bloody lamp. Whatever it was or wasn’t, it was making him quite mad.

She looked away, toward the windows behind her desk, where the pale yellow draperies were tightly drawn. Her shoulders were slumped, her head bent. She said, “That need not worry you ever.”

He didn’t know what she was talking about. He saw her again, her eyes sparkling, their babe in her belly, and his hands, they were all over her now.

“What don’t you wish to worry me?”

“Your staying inside me is not a problem.”

“Spilling my seed inside of you isn’t a problem?” No, he thought, it was not a problem at all. He said, “Are you mad, woman? Of course it could be a problem. I have no bastards because I have always been very careful. With you, it’s been different, somehow.”

“I am barren.”

No, he thought, that wasn’t right. There she was, so clear in his mind, her belly pressing against him when she kissed him. The babe was due soon. “How the devil would you know that?”

“I was married, once, a very long time ago, when I had just turned eighteen. My father believed I was too young, but I was desperately in love and thus he gave me my way. My husband, a man of nearly your advanced years, wanted an heir very badly.” She shrugged. “He was killed when the war started again, just after the Treaty of Amiens collapsed.”

“That was a long time ago.”

“Yes. We were only married for two years before he died. I came back to my father’s house and took my own name again.”

“I didn’t know.”

“Why should you? It isn’t common knowledge.”

“I remember I asked you if you had been married. You didn’t really answer me, now that I think about it.”

“I would not have told you now, except you are very scared that you have made me pregnant. Well, you haven’t. I am barren.”

She turned without another word and walked out of the study.

Lord Beecham slowly bent down to gather up the papers on the floor. He barely glanced at the translation he had managed so far. He laid the pages atop Helen’s desk, snuffed out the candle, and left the room.

It was nearly three o’clock in the morning. When he fell asleep, he saw Helen again, so very clearly, and she was naked and he was kissing her mouth, her breasts, as his hands stroked her big belly, then he was kissing her belly, feeling his babe kick against his cheek when he pressed his face against her.

He jerked awake and sat up in bed. He was not a superstitious man. He did not believe in visions or in portents. Then he thought, If Helen birthed a girl, she would be an Amazon, a beautiful sharp-tongued Amazon. And a boy? He would be a big man, confident, a leader of men.

He smiled fatuously into the darkness.

I am losing what few wits remain to me, he thought as he pillowed his head against his arms. Helen was his partner. The rest of it was lunacy. All right, so she was both his partner and his lover, and even she must accept that now. They would do their best to find this lamp, whatever the thing was.

But there was this madness with her. When he had been a randy boy there had been the fire in his gut, as lust was spoken of in young males. But he wasn’t a boy now. He was a full-grown man, a man of control and experience.

Only he had no control with Helen. It wasn’t what he was used to. Usually, sating himself with a woman sent him into sweet dreams almost immediately, but not this time, not with Helen. He had been beyond sated, nearly unconscious, yet, at the same time, he had a very strong feeling that if Helen were to stroll into his bedchamber right this minute, he would want her as much as he had the first, the second, the third time he’d taken her on the floor of her study two hours before.

When he fell asleep again, he didn’t dream of Helen. He dreamed of a man who held a gun in a very white hand. He could not tell where that gun was pointing, but he knew he was afraid. Then the man turned and Spenser saw that a black mask covered his face. He laughed, aimed the gun at Spenser, and pulled the trigger.

Spenser came awake abruptly and bolted straight up in bed, his heart nearly bursting out of his chest. There was Nettle, standing not two feet from him and he was screaming at the top of his lungs.

“Nettle, shut up. Good God, man, what’s the matter?”