He sighed, pushed his chair back from the table, and stood. “This conversation is pointless. I’ll leave you to yourself until you’ve once again regained your senses. Good night, madam.”
And he left. She sat there in the dining room, gasping and trembling and thoroughly humiliated.
It was the last straw.
“HE’S VERY HURT, Jeremy,” Beatrice said as she paced from Jeremy’s heavily draped window to his bed. “You have no idea. He told me just a fraction of what he’d experienced in the Colonies, and it was all I could do not to scream aloud. How could he survive such horrors? And yet he’s incredibly strong, incredibly determined. It’s as if he’s driven out of his soul whatever softness he may’ve once felt. He’s been fire-hardened.”
“He sounds very interesting,” Jeremy said.
Beatrice looked at him. “I’ve never met a gentleman like him in all my life.”
“What does Lord Hope look like now that he’s transformed himself?”
“He’s tall with very wide shoulders and wears a sort of aloof glare most of the time. He’s quite intimidating and rather savage-looking, actually.”
“But you said he’d cut his hair and donned a wig and other civilized accoutrements. He sounds quite normal to me,” Jeremy said from the bed. That was the best part about Jeremy—he always took an interest in one’s thoughts and troubles, no matter how trivial.
“He may wear the same sort of clothes as other gentlemen, but they fit him differently somehow.” Beatrice picked up a tall green bottle from Jeremy’s cache of medicines and peered at the dark liquid inside before returning it to its brethren. “And he’s still wearing that earring I told you about. The tattoos he can’t remove, but why do you think he hasn’t taken off the earring?”
“I haven’t the faintest,” Jeremy replied with evident delight. “I do wish I were able to meet him, though.”
Beatrice turned and glanced at him. Jeremy was sitting up in bed today. She’d plumped the pillows for him and helped him sit higher. His cheeks were still flushed, his eyes too bright, but she fancied he was a little better than the last time she’d seen him.
At least she hoped so.
“Perhaps I can bring him around someday,” she said.
He glanced away. “Don’t, Bea.”
She blinked. “Why ever not?”
His eyes met hers, and for a moment all amusement left his face. His extraordinary blue eyes were stern, almost cold, and she wondered in a flash of insight if this was what he’d looked like on the battlefield when he’d led his men.
Then his expression softened a little. “You know why.”
She grimaced because she did know why. “You’re too sensitive to your injury. Many men come home without an arm or a leg or even an eye, and one continues to see them at balls and events. No one singles them out except to say how brave they were.”
“That’s not what Frances said.” Jeremy’s eyes were old and sad.
She bit her lip. “Frances was a complete and utter ninny, and frankly I think you were saved years of insipid conversation over your morning tea when she called off your engagement.”
He laughed, thankfully, but it turned to a cough, and she had to hurry over and pour him a cup of water.
“In any case,” he gasped when he could draw breath again, “I’ll not be going out in public again. You know that.”
“But why?” She knelt by his bed on a little cushioned stool so that her face was closer to his on the pillow. “I know you fear the stares of others, Jeremy dear, but you must get out of this room. You live as if you’re already deep beneath the ground in a coffin. You’re not. You live and breathe and laugh, and I want you to be happy.”
He caught her hand in his, and it was like being gripped by flames. “It takes two footmen just to lift me into that chair so I can sit by the fire. The last time they tried to carry me down the stairs, one of the footmen tripped and nearly dropped me.” He closed his bright blue eyes, wincing as if in pain. “I know you think me a coward, but I can’t face that again.”
She closed her eyes as well, because she felt as if she were losing him, her oldest and dearest friend. For the last five years, ever since his return from the war on the Continent, she’d known that he was slowly slipping away from her. Every time she saw him, he was a little more distant, a little more beyond her reach. Soon she wouldn’t be able to touch him at all.
“Let us be married.” Beatrice tightened her hands around his, pushing aside her own desires in her desperate fear for him. “Jeremy dear, why don’t we? Then we could buy a little house and live together, you and I. We wouldn’t need that many servants—just a cook and some maids and footmen, and no haughty butler to bother with. Wouldn’t that be lovely?”
“Oh, it would indeed, darling Bea.” Jeremy’s eyes were very gentle now. “But I’m afraid it wouldn’t work. You’d want children one day, and I’ve set my heart on marrying a black-haired lass, perhaps with green eyes.”
“You’d break my heart for a green-eyed lady you don’t even know?” Beatrice half laughed, choking back tears. “I never knew I ranked so low in your estimation, sir.”
“You rank above the angels themselves, my darling Bea.” Jeremy laughed back. “But we all must have dreams. And my dream is that one day you’ll be surrounded by a family of your own.”