Page 69 of Better Off Wed

“As might you, if you could accept that you are a viscount,” she reminded him. Then she softened and offered him another gentle smile. “Of course, ‘Captain Addison’ is also very well and good.”

Jeremy tipped his head against the chair’s back and studied the ceiling, his mind buzzing with his mother’s revelations. A decade of telling himself that he must never think of love and marriage and children, because the blood of a blackguard ran through his veins and deserved neither present nor future honors. Everything he’d thought he knew about who and what he was, upended by a few moments’ conversation.

Now he would have to decide what to do with the information. Determine afresh just who he meant to become.

His mother rose, dropped a kiss on his cheek, and turned toward the stairs. “I’ll leave you to yourself for a bit. You have been very good to worry about your mama all these years, but you must occasionally think of yourself, and what you want. I would not wish to be the only Mrs. Addison in your life. Unless,” she glanced over her shoulder, and mischief twinkled in her eyes, “you would prefer a Lady Sterling?”

Chapter 20

When Mrs. Addison appeared at luncheon with red-rimmed eyes, and Jeremy did not appear at all, Laura could guess that the conversation had been a difficult one. How difficult was impossible to determine, as Mrs. Addison retired to her bedroom after eating—“a touch of the headache, nothing to worry about”—and Jeremy remained hidden.

“He often does this,” Julia explained, glancing up from her needlework to nod toward the closed door across the entryway from the sitting room. “He has half of Papa’s library in there, and Mary will have taken him a tray.”

“I wasn’t worried,” Laura defended herself, returning her attention to the book in her lap—only to discover that she had been holding it upside down.

Briar Cottage felt like a bubble, in which she was alternately cushioned and trapped. The desire to know what was happening outside its doors, even outside the sitting room, kept both her mind and her gaze wandering all afternoon.

Eventually, Mrs. Addison came downstairs to write a letter. Jeremy emerged shortly thereafter, looking slightly rumpled—Laura was almost certain he had been sleeping, and her fingers twitched with longing to smooth his hair—but on the whole, acting himself. A sense of normalcy pervaded the household, despite the threat outside.

Only Laura dropped her book when the wind rattled the leaves on the tree outside the window, or jumped out of her skin when Mary, the servant, announced that dinner was ready. Jeremy spoke low to her as he escorted her to the table. “Thornton isn’t going to barge in on us. You’re safe here. I promise.”

The evening passed in much the same fashion as the afternoon, everyone occupied by polite conversation or some cozy domestic task, the lamps lit and curtains drawn as dusk slid into darkness. Eventually Mrs. Addison announced that she was ready for bed, and a moment later, Julia leaped to her feet to follow her. Laura could not quite decide whether her hurried movements were the result of a prompting look from her mother, or whether she had imagined the exchange. Laura laid aside her unread book and moved as if to rise.

“What might I do to tempt you to stay?” Jeremy’s voice was low, seductive.

Laura sank back into her chair, though the same restless tension that had agitated her limbs all day made it impossible to relax. “I hardly need to be tempted. If you wish it, I will certainly stay.”

He was slumped in the chair by the fire, which had been crackling merrily an hour before but was now smoldering. His booted legs were stretched out before him, crossed at the ankles, the very picture of ease.

But when he finally looked up from his study of the patterned wool carpet, the intensity of his gaze nearly robbed her of breath. “You are in an obliging temper. I wonder whether I oughtn’t to have wished for something more than your company?”

“Such as?” Her voice was barely a whisper above the clatter of her pulse.

Instead of answering, he hoisted himself from the chair, strode to a corner shelf filled with knickknacks, and came away with a pretty inlaid box. “Will you play?” He opened the box’s hinged lid to display a set of chess pieces. Ordinary pieces, this time, fashioned of ivory, the detailed carvings softened by years of use.

“I still know nothing of the game,” she warned him as he cleared a space on the little table beside her chair and began to remove the pieces from the box. “Even with Stamma’s assistance, I was lost.”

“I will teach you, this time.” Once it was empty, he opened the box wide, and the fancywork on its exterior was revealed to be the board itself. She watched his long fingers make quick work of arranging the pieces on their proper squares. Finally, he drew one of the other chairs closer to the table and perched on the edge of its seat, so that their knees almost brushed.

She had expected the game would be a pretext for conversation, but for a quarter of an hour, he said nothing but what was relevant to the movement of pieces, when to capture and when to surrender. He had set the black pieces before her, to acquaint her with defensive strategies, he said, though at the moment it was he who seemed to be behind a shield.

While shaking his head, he nudged her queen-side knight from its square with one of his bishops, and then picked up her displaced piece, pausing to study it beneath the lamplight rather than simply adding it to the growing pile of black pieces at the far side of the board. The horse’s flaring nostrils and blank eyes leaped into relief, then passed into shadow.

“I have been operating under a misapprehension,” he said.

“About the game?”

“About myself.” He curled his fingers around the piece so that it disappeared into his palm. “I planned an elaborate defense against an opponent who never even existed.” The hand clutching the knight dropped to his leg. “And now that I am free to make a different set of moves, I—I find myself a little lost. I thought I knew who I was, but…it seems I was wrong.”

Instinctively, she reached for him, curling both hands around his fist where it rested against his thigh. “I wasn’t. I knew from our first meeting that you are a gentle, caring, clever man. I’ve always been…independent-minded, my aunt calls it.” The corners of his mouth rose at that description, though his gaze was still focused on the chessboard. “I chided myself for trusting you, a perfect stranger. But I wasn’t wrong to do it. I wasn’t wrong about you.”

She spoke with confidence. Of course, she did wonder what his mother must have told him earlier that day. Whatever it was, it certainly seemed to have changed his outlook on the future. But she did not need to hear it herself to know that he was unchanged in fundamentals. She knew exactly the sort of man he was, the sort of man he had always been, the sort of man she had never dreamed she would find.

“Thank you.” He brought his other hand over to surround hers. “Though I suppose it won’t matter overmuch. I’m still poor as a church mouse. And you’re still…independent-minded? Was that the term?” His smile deepened even as it grew more self-deprecating.

She snagged her lip between her teeth. “I realize that sort of independence is a luxury few women can afford.”

“Afford,” he echoed. A scoffing sound huffed from his chest. “I don’t suppose you’re going to tell me you’re dreadfully rich?”