The Education of Mrs. Brimley (9 page)

Once Nicholas cleared the stairs, Thomas hurried in front to open the door and pull back the bed coverings. Nicholas laid Mrs. Brimley on the bed, then sat down beside her to catch his breath. The pain in his leg screamed bloody murder, but this was not the time for the solace of a numbing brandy. Hearing Thomas’s footsteps pound back down the stairs, Nicholas leaned over his prone companion.

“Mrs. Brimley, wake up.” He removed the silly hat and lightly tapped her cheek, watching for a flutter of her lashes.

She lay unconscious like a sleeping child. Not quite like a child, he amended, casting an eye down her definitely feminine curves. Hesitant to risk bruising her skin with a more substantial tap, he ran a knuckle instead along a delicate cheekbone, and leaned closer, lowering his voice to a gentle entreaty. “Mrs. Brimley?”

Still no response.

“Confound it, woman.” He pulled back before calling over his shoulder. “Thomas, where’s that water?”

He attacked the large buttons on her bodice jacket, pushing the jet buttons through tight buttonholes. Once the jacket was unfastened, he still faced the task of pulling it off her limp body. He did so as delicately as he could, then tossed the jacket to a nearby chair and proceeded with the next item. Rocking her from side to side to track down elusive hooks, buttons, and ties, he managed to wield his way through the jacket, two skirts, a dress, and a horsehair bustle. He paused long enough to wipe the sweat from his brow.

“A man could use a bloodhound to find the woman in this mess. Children do less unwrapping at Christmas.” He proceeded to apply his aching fingertips to the unfastening of tiny buttons lining a high-neck gray blouse. His endeavor was rewarded with a glimpse of pale white skin.

“Thank God. You are in here after all, Mrs. Brimley. I had begun to suspect otherwise.”

Beneath his industrious fingers, her chest rose and fell with easy breaths. A little color seeped back into her cheeks. He worked faster, revealing a few layers of fetching lace, and then a pale pink corset, the color of dewy English roses in the early light of dawn. A smile lifted the corners of his lips. “My, my, Mrs. Brimley. What have we here?”

He hurried to finish unfastening the drab black buttons, then splayed the fabric wide. Before his hands could touch her creamy white skin, a knock at the door summoned. He was about to tell Thomas to enter but reconsidered. Mrs. Brimley wouldn’t approve of being viewed in such a manner, of that he was certain.

“Just a minute, Thomas.” He pulled a single sheet across her barely attired form. “That will keep the chill off.” He left the room, closing the door softly behind him.

 
IN A SEMICONSCIOUS STATE, EMMA HEARD A RATTLING and could well visualize the carriages and cabs outside the window, all the sounds of the bustling streets of London . . . London! She lurched to her elbows in the bed, her eyes widening to a fuzzy out-of-focus yellow room filled with bright winter sunlight, not the drab green walls of her uncle’s residence in London.

She gulped air, waiting for her pulse to slow and her head to clear. Wind gusts rattled the windowpanes, pulling her attention to the cheerless winter sky and bare tree skeletons outside. Her uncle’s windows looked out on the bricks and stones of other buildings, not sky and countryside. She wasn’t back in London, thank heavens. She sighed relief.

But if not London, she thought glancing quickly about the room, she wasn’t at Pettibone either. Unless, of course, her bed had magically tripled in size and grown mahogany posters at each corner.

Confused, she twisted toward the side of the bed, searching for her spectacles on a bedside table. The sheet slipped to her lap, exposing her shocking state of undress. Her breath caught. Merciful heavens!

She fell back to the mattress, frantically pulling the sheet to her nose. She remembered stifling heat and suffocating layers of wool . . . and Chambers! She groaned. How was she to escape this predicament?

The door creaked open. Emma quickly squeezed her eyes shut, feigning sleep. Although, in truth, it proved difficult to master the slow breath of slumber when her heart raced like a hackney driver in pursuit of a tip.

Uneven footsteps clamored across a wooden floor until muffled by a carpet. Water splashed in a basin not far from her ear. The faint scent of bacon rashers and coddled eggs nearly made her eyes water.
Go away
, she prayed. If left alone she would locate her clothes and spectacles and leave this disastrous turn of events.

A damp cloth stroked her forehead.

She flinched, a mere reflection of the vast distance her heart ventured in its leap to her throat.

“You can open your eyes, Mrs. Brimley. I know you’re awake.” Chambers’s tone spoke neither concern nor displeasure.

Embarrassed by her situation and irritated by his apparent dispassion regarding same, she shook her head from side to side.

“Come now. It does no good to pretend. We need to talk.”

She sighed and opened her eyes, easing the sheet to uncover her mouth, but pulling it taut beneath her chin.

“That’s better. I thought the cool water would help.” Chambers bent over her, his eyes searching with a surprising degree of urgency, while his voice modulated to a soothing tone much as if he were addressing his dog. She almost expected him to scratch her head, but instead he tenderly swabbed her cheeks.

“What happened? Where am I?” she asked, already dreading the answer to the second question.

“In my bed.” His eyebrow cocked. “At least in one of them. The house has several.”

The skin on her arms prickled. Although the differences between London life and Yorkshire had been significant, surely lying about in a man’s bed, scantily attired, was not acceptable in either city.

“This cannot be proper.” She pushed back into the mattress, trying to create a little more distance between them.

“Perhaps not, but in this case it was necessary.” Chambers reached for a glass on the side table. “Here, drink this.”

He held the glass and let the liquid slip between her lips. She swallowed.

Liquid fire surged down her throat, exploding in a ball of flame in her empty stomach. Her torso whipped upright into a sitting position, the top of her exposed corset barely missing Chambers’s nose. Gasping, she recovered the fallen sheet and settled back, waving her hand in front of her face.

“What was that?” she rasped.

“Just a little brandy.” The corners of his eyes crinkled betraying his amusement. His obvious enjoyment made her particularly wary.

“Try a little more.” He held the glass in position. “It goes down easier the second time.”

She waved his offer away, opting instead for a deep draught of cooling breath. Her lungs filled with precious air laced with his exotic essence. She coughed, but the taste of him remained.

“Why are you doing this?” she asked, grasping control of her breath.

“You fainted,” he explained. “The brandy will put a little color back in your cheeks.”

“I suspect my cheeks are bright enough.” Indeed, her face bathed in heat generated by sheer humiliation. He offered the drink again, but she shook her head.

“No? Then I’ll just place it on the table.” He settled the glass, then dabbed at her cheekbones with the moist cloth. “You might change your mind when you consider your situation.”

Her situation! Practically naked, neatly installed in a bed he probably used for scandalous endeavors, the last thing she needed was to examine her situation. She shriveled beneath the cover of the sheet.

“Oh, Thomas recovered these from the carpet.” He reached in the pocket of his morning jacket and extracted her spectacles. Peering through the lenses, he hesitated a moment before polishing them with a cloth from his pocket.

Irritation stabbed at her, although the reason escaped her at the moment. She released her death grip on the sheet momentarily to reclaim her glasses.

“I was not in this room when I fainted,” she stated pointedly. Her lenses quickly brought his impossibly handsome face into focus, unnerving her further. The enormity of her situation sharpened along with her eyesight.

“Nor was I undressed.” She glared at him. “I distinctly recall being dressed.”

That insufferable eyebrow cocked. “Dressed enough for several people if I recall. You fainted from the heat of all those garments.” His smile widened. “Although tempted to leave you prone at my feet, I carried you here for your comfort.”

For her discomfort more likely, she thought as another wave of embarrassment radiated from her cheeks.

He shifted his balance, resting one hand on the bedside table.

She glanced pointedly at his leg. “
You
carried me?”

His smile dissipated; he responded with a curt nod.

“But how . . .” She glanced to see a scowl settle on his face and decided now was not the time to inquire about his injuries. “Who undressed me?”

“I did,” he answered, his lips pulled to a straight line.

She groaned, turning her face away from his scrutiny. Was there to be no end to this torture? God must be punishing her for her foolish attempt to win his devil’s bargain.

“You would have preferred someone else?” Chambers asked. “Thomas? Or perhaps old Henry?” She heard his haughty undertones and well imagined that cocked eyebrow. “I’m afraid there are no women in residence who could assist. I sent for Cook from Pettibone but expediency demanded—”

“Expediency?” she sobbed, turning to face him. “That is your justification?” Tears welled in her eyes. Cook would surely tell her new employer. Her whole fabrication would unravel and her past would be revealed. She’d be returned to London, where her uncle would delight in subjecting her to his perverse and inhumane “corrections,” much as he had her mother. All because she thought she could trick Chambers into answering some questions.

“Where are my clothes?” The words barely squeezed around the lump in her throat.

Seemingly unmoved by her outburst, he stepped aside, revealing that what in her unfocused state she had assumed was a chifforobe was actually a chair piled high with crinolines, overskirts, and bodices, in essence the remainder of her entire wardrobe.

“I know Londoners have some strange customs,” he said with barely concealed ridicule, “but here in Yorkshire, we tend to let the fire provide the warmth and save portions of our wardrobe for another day.”

A swath burned from her rib cage to her hairline. She understood his taunt. He recognized full well the extent of her foolish trickery.

After tossing the damp cloth into the bowl, he nodded in her direction.

“I should mention, that for the sake of your little masquerade, pink is not the color of a widow’s corset.”

She gasped. Of course he had witnessed what no one was meant to see. It was her one concession to her youth and innocence, her one true expression in a world of forced deceit. That he should be privy to her secret and give voice to her indiscretion added further mortification.

“I was tempted to remove that as well,” he said, a smile playing about his lips. “But the color suits you. I wonder if I had removed those petticoats, would I have found practical flannel or the thin gauzy drawers of a temptress?”

He looked at her cover-bound legs as if in moments he would decide the answer for himself.

Emma sucked in her breath, both humiliated and shocked by his insinuation. “How dare you!”

Her fists tightened on the sheet covering her to her chin. She wanted to flee, much as she had at their last encounter. Of course then she was only missing her boots; this time she was missing much more.

Hoping to chase him away instead, she grabbed the nearest item at hand, a pillow, and threw it at him, but he ducked, allowing the pillow to knock askew another “charming” landscape on the wall.

“Have you no shame? No remorse for what you’ve done!” Tears raced in tracks down her cheeks. “I’m ruined. I arrived in this desolate place with only my honor and integrity intact, and now you’ve taken those, leaving me with nothing.”

Chambers’s face twisted from flippant humor to a dark scowl. Within seconds he grabbed her wrists and forced them overhead, pinning both wrists to the mattress.

Shock momentarily paralyzed her, but once she recognized her restraint, she twisted and struggled to no avail.

“Let me go!” Her attempts to kick her way free skewed her glasses down her nose and brought the sheet to her waist. “Let me go! You, you, blackguard!”

He leaned low, the black silk of his neck cloth teased the base of her throat, while his face formed a dark thundercloud of malice.

“I have done nothing to defile your character,
Mrs.
Brimley,” he seethed. “You have no claim. You may call me all the names you wish, but if you believe this little charade will coerce a marriage proposal, I assure you I have dealt with such threats before.”

“Marriage?” She stopped struggling, wondering if she had heard correctly. Had he just proposed marriage? She glanced at his face, trying to read his expression.

His features remained as hard and frozen as the ice topping the puddles on the road. An unanticipated lump of disappointment smothered the tiny spark that had briefly flared deep inside.

“I have no expectation of marriage, sir,” she said, trying to catch her breath. “I abandoned that course long ago.” She swallowed hard. In truth, the prospects of marriage had abandoned her, not the other way around, but he didn’t need to know that.

“My present concern is for my reputation. My widow’s pretense allows certain liberties, but this . . .” She looked pointedly from side to side at her arms still clamped in his grip.

“Oh?” She noted the exact moment awareness penetrated. His narrowed eyes widened and a moment later his ironclad hold lessened, though not enough that she could retract her arms. From her unique position beneath him, Emma watched disbelief chase the storm from his eyes. She waited, a bit breathless from her earlier struggle. His gaze slipped from her eyes to her lips as though he couldn’t believe her words.