The trip to Portsmouth took the entire day, much of which Sara spent reading
As the day had progressed, she’d droned on with her book, not knowing how to manage a real topic of conversation. Her mind in the past week had been too divided, too busy—too worried. Now she had three nights with Beckman ahead of her, three days with him as well, and she wasn’t ready.
Judging from his increasingly silent mood, maybe he wasn’t either.
The inn was lovely, and Sara was made keenly aware Beckman—the male half of “Squire and Mrs. Sylvanus”—knew exactly how to manage himself there. He greeted the innkeeper with the perfect blend of cordiality and condescension to guarantee attentive service, and the suite of rooms they were shown to was comfortable, spotless, and possessed of an enormous bed. Tea and scones with jam and butter appeared within minutes of their baggage being brought up.
Sara glanced around the room, noting a fresh bouquet of roses on the sideboard and lace curtains on each window. “This is every bit as nice as Three Springs itself.”
“I would tolerate no lesser accommodation for you.” Beck eyed her across the little sitting room, and Sara understood clearly: The Subject Had Changed. “There’s something I’ve been wanting to do, Sarabande Adagio. Will you allow me some privileges while we’re away from Three Springs?”
Her expression must have given her thoughts away, for Beck smiled.
“Not that,” he said. “Well, yes,
He was sophisticated enough to enjoy anticipation, while Sara experienced worry.
“That’s acceptable.” She swallowed, because five syllables had left her mouth dry. Beck sidled over to her, his walk predatory and just plain… erotic.
“Let me be your lady’s maid, Sarabande.” He leaned in and ran his nose along her jaw. “I want to take your hair down, and I don’t mean simply take the pins out to free your braid. I want to see it completely unbound, your hair in all its glory. The frustration of never having seen you thus, the anticipation of seeing you thus, has kept me up nights.”
The husky, intimate note in his voice made her insides flutter, but she didn’t move, didn’t glide over to their luggage, find her hairbrush, and set it into his waiting hand.
She’d never glided in her life.
“Beckman, I don’t know…” Beck’s fingers brushed along her nape.
“You don’t have to know.” He pressed a kiss to the top of her spine. “You just have to trust that I’ll know, and when the time comes, you’ll know too. Let me.” He got down to business, relieving her hair of pins with deft dispatch. He piled his finds neatly on the vanity then guided Sara by the shoulders to sit on the stool facing the folding mirror. He fished in her traveling bag, while Sara watched in silent alarm as he produced the hairbrush.
“I’ve ordered you a bath,” Beck said, his hands on her shoulders drawing her back against his thighs. “And I’ve a few things to see to while you soak, but the tub will be put in the bedroom, and if you shut the door, dinner can be set up out here. Will that suit?”
“Of course.” Good heavens, what did people talk about in situations like this?
“I want to make this weekend special, Sara.” Beck got her braid free, and it uncoiled down Sara’s back until he caught it in his hands and untied the ribbon at the end. “I realized as we approached the town that where you see the beauty of the place, I see only the many, many times I left my homeland from these shores, or came back to it, exhausted in body and spirit, wondering what the point was of the excursion.”
He paused as he unbraided three thick skeins of hair. “Sometimes, I wondered what the point of my entire excursion on earth was. Portsmouth was so pretty, so bright and busy, while I—”
He gathered her hair up in his hands. In the mirror, Sara watched as he buried his nose in bright, coppery tresses.
“While you?” She wanted to hear the rest of his recitation, wanted it badly enough to lose sight of her worry.
“My brother had found me in an opium den, doing my utmost to shuffle off this mortal coil. For much of the journey home, the drugs were leaving my system. At the time, I thought it fitting I should endure such an ordeal while at sea.”
This was important, also sad. “There is opium in Portsmouth, Beckman. There’s opium in any town with an apothecary, and many people believe a small amount has no untoward consequences.”
He dropped her hair, and in the mirror seemed to stand very tall behind her. “There was sunshine in Portsmouth, blinding sunshine, the gulls wheeling overhead, the hum and bustle of commerce on the dock. There was something of the essential goodness of an English town. I think sometimes I was saved by a delayed case of homesickness.”
“Saved?” She raised the question, because her heart would have said a part of Beckman, as competent, hale, and confident as he was, was still at sea.
Beck’s mouth tipped up in a wry smile. “Your hair should be a wonder of the modern world.” He resumed running his hands through the unbound mass of it. “It’s every bit as soft and silky as I imagined, and how other women must envy you its beauty.”
“It’s just hair.” Nowhere near as important as the words Beckman had given her regarding his past. She wanted to pry, to ask questions, to rant at him that doubting the gift of life was beneath him and a sin and something he must never do again.
Except she had entertained the same doubts herself.
“I used to brush out my little sisters’ hair,” Beck said, smoothing the brush through her locks. “Ethan was their favorite, since he was the oldest, but then he left, and Nick went a little crazy, so I became the consolation big brother. You can’t tease a sister as hard when you’ve braided her hair.”
“You probably can’t taunt a brother as hard when he’s braided your hair, either.”
“Verily.” Beck put the brush aside a few moments later and stroked his fingers through her hair. “I was brilliant and just didn’t know it. I spiked my sisters’ guns with a hairbrush.”
“Is Nick still a little crazy?”
His hands paused in her hair then resumed their slow caresses.
“Yes. I think maybe he is, but there’s hope, since he and Ethan are at least talking, and maybe when he sees Ethan survived his banishment, Nick can get on about his life.”
“Banishment?”
“Banishment.” Beck’s touch became more businesslike as he divided her hair into three thick sections. “My papa found it a useful tool with his sons, and I’ve been regularly banished myself—until Nick fetched me back from Paris.”
“Beckman?”
“Love?”
“Why did Nicholas fetch you back from Paris?”
“Ah.” He began to braid her hair. “I asked him once, because I wondered the same thing. Going to France was very risky, and the earl has two other legitimate sons, so I was clearly expendable. Nick simply did not agree with Papa’s assessment that I’d sort myself out in time. George had just left the schoolroom, and Dolph was still with his tutors. Nick was unwilling to carp at them to see to the succession. Hence, I needed to be retrieved.”
“Your brother fetched you home so you could remarry?” Sara could not keep her distaste for his brother’s motives from her voice. “Why couldn’t your idiot brother do his duty by the title? He’s the heir.”
“Since I went up to school, Nick has been hinting and warning and outright lecturing me he will not be having children. It’s most of the reason why I married. The spare’s purpose in life is to provide that service if the heir can’t. I gave it my best try, or so I tell him and Papa, and I failed. That’s where I leave the discussion, and now Nicholas is marrying, apparently, but the lectures haven’t stopped.”
“I would like to meet this somewhat crazy brother of yours,” Sara said. “I would tell him what I think of his selfishness.”
“Nick isn’t selfish, but his situation makes him seem so sometimes.” Beck sounded as if he were trying to convince himself of this. “When you finish your bath, don’t dress. We’ll serve ourselves, if that’s all right with you.”
