“Timing is important.”
She trusted him to understand the details of that timing at least as well as she did. He was canny that way, and had she not known differently, she would have thought him married for far longer than the few months he alluded to.
“Will you tell me of your marriage, Beck?”
“What do you want to know?” His voice was even, but in his posture, Sara detected the slightest bracing.
“Who was she? How did she die, and do you still miss her?”
He was silent for a moment, as if arranging answers from least to most painful. “Her name was Devona Brockwood, and her grandfather was the Marquess of Whitfield, her papa in line for the title. When her papa died, she fell under the guardianship of her uncle, and he had several daughters close to Devona’s age. It was decided she would be married off posthaste, because she’d already had a Season.”
“Posthaste?” Sara didn’t like the sound of that.
“I was considered an adequate match. Her stock had fallen with her father’s death—her father had not seen to her settlements prior to his demise—and my sense was she was grateful for my attentions. Had her father lived, I’ve no doubt a duke’s son or the son of a marquess, at least, would have been required.”
And Sara had to ask. “Was she pretty?”
“Very.”
Damn him for his honesty, though she thanked him for it too. “But?”
Beck’s smile was sad. “But I was not yet one and twenty. All I knew was that by the rules of any society, once I married her, I could swive her regularly, sport about Town with her on my arm, and be the envy of my friends from university. She was eager enough for the match, and I was anxious to provide my father and brother an heir. We married on less than three months’ acquaintance.”
“Many marriages start out with less,” Sara said gently, because Beck’s disgust was evident in his voice.
“They do, but her death was a blessing in a way—to her, if no one else. She loved another, and there was no means by which we could have been happy.”
Ah, God. The oldest recipe for misery on the planet, and the one seeing the greatest circulation. “And you did not know this when you married her?”
“Of course not. I knew I was to become an instant adult, by virtue of having captured my bride. I’d come into an inheritance at twenty, finished university, and was hell-bent on proving to my father I was more worthy of his respect than Nicholas. A bride with a baby in her arms was to be my capstone achievement—provided, of course, the baby was a boy.”
“You were young.”
“I was an arrogant idiot,” Beck countered, “which is precisely why I never discuss my marriage, much less think of it if I can help it.”
Even though, years later, it still fueled his flight into the opium dens of Paris?
“I’m sorry your marriage wasn’t happy.” Sara curled her arm through his and rested her cheek against his bicep. “We’re so easily hurt when we’re young. We dress and talk and carry on like adults, but inside, we’re not very adult at all.”
Beck settled his arm across her shoulders. “And yet by the time you were twenty, you had a small child, had toured much of Europe, and were the support of your family.”
“I was impersonating an adult. There was no one else on hand for the role. Take me to bed, Beckman. We’re both weary, and this talk is not cheering.”
She hurt for him but knew not how to say so without offending his male pride. Or perhaps she wanted the confidences to cease flowing between them, lest she impart a few more of her own.
Devona had been so pretty, like a perfect caricature of English beauty. Blond, willowy, soft-spoken, and gracious. She’d been every young gentleman’s dream of the ideal wife. But never, in several months of marriage, had she said those words, “Take me to bed, Beckman.”
Such a realization might have engendered rage in years past, or guilt—barges and buckets of guilt—or resentment. Tonight, Beck felt only gratitude for Sara’s company, and sadness for a young couple whose union had been doomed by immaturity.
Beck undressed his lover with simple courtesy, and after he’d brushed out Sara’s hair, he rebraided it, but only after he’d indulged his pleasure in its unbound state. When they shed their nightclothes and climbed onto the bed, Sara tucked herself against Beck’s larger frame and hiked a leg across his thighs.
“Did you enjoy today?” she asked, flipping her braid over her shoulder. She settled against him as his arms went around her, then found a comfy spot for her head against his shoulder.
She fits me, Beck thought, resting his cheek against her hair. She not only fit him, she was easily affectionate with him, at least behind closed doors. Maybe this was a maternal quality, this simple affection, or maybe it was a Sara quality. In either case, it was one of the things he enjoyed about her most, the way she gave and accepted affection.
“I enjoyed being with you today,” Beck said. “But no, haring all over town, haggling, it reminded me too much of my past, and that in truth, Three Springs should not be my concern.”
“But your father is your concern, and this is how you can feel close to him as he slips away.”
“Plain speaking, but accurate. Nita writes that he sleeps a great deal.”
“So he’s not in pain.” She shifted up on the pillows and tugged on Beck’s broad shoulders. “Cuddle up, Haddonfield, as we’re great friends and all.”
A little tentatively, he did as she bid, resting his cheek on the slope of her breast. She linked her arms around him and hugged him to her.
“Tell me about your papa,” she said, threading her fingers through the hair at his nape.
Slowly at first, Beck did. He started out with expected propaganda, reporting all of the earl’s most impressive accomplishments, the bills he’d seen enacted in Parliament, the sound advice he’d given the king or the regent. From there, Beck drifted closer to more personal recollections, until, an hour later, he was wondering aloud why his father had waited until death was knocking at his door to hold Nick accountable for securing the succession and marrying.
“You will sort this out with your brothers.” Sara kissed him again. “You like them too much not to, and they like you as well.”
“And you know this how?” Even her breasts bore her luscious fragrance.
“You said when Nick retrieved you from Paris he saved your life, Beckman. He will be the head of the family, and he will need your support. You’re the one who has actually seen the family holdings overseas. You’re the one who has met this factor and that competitor. You’re the one with the better sense of your younger sisters and the men who could make them suitable mates. While Nick has been off tending to whatever, and Ethan has been banished, you’ve been minding the family concerns.”
She turned facts on their heads, sounding very brisk and practical while she did. “That’s one way to look at it.”
“Ask Nick sometime how he looks at it,” Sara said. “For now, I need to move you. My arm has gone to sleep.”
“My apologies.”
Sara pushed at his shoulder. “Roll over. I’m going to rub your back.”
“You are?” It occurred to Beck she might be sore, so he acquiesced. He could ask her, of course, but his mood was a little off for lovemaking, and the shops would be closed tomorrow. They’d have all day to indulge his selfish impulses—and hers.
“Go to sleep, Beckman.” Sara’s hand began to knead his shoulder. “It will all be here in the morning, as will I.”
Usually, the idea that his troubles would greet him upon rising was not cheering. The way Sara said it put things in a different light.
Beck woke up the next morning spooned around Sara, a pleasurable novelty made all the sweeter by the
