The Taste of Innocence (38 page)

Her fingers clenched; the rustle of paper drew her gaze to the note from Katy. It was puzzling, and worrying, but Katy was an experienced and competent woman; if she’d needed help to night she would have asked.

Tomorrow was Monday; as usual Sarah would ride to the orphanage. She planned to spend the entire day there.

Better than spending her entire day here. Alone.

The clock struck the hour. She looked up at it, then stirred. Rising, she walked to the escritoire. She’d fallen into the habit of leaving the lid down; this was her room, after all. Folding the note, she placed it in the pigeonhole reserved for orphanage business. She glanced once more around the room, then with a sigh, headed upstairs. A long soak in a hot bath could only help.

Her aunt Edith’s diary was gone.

Later that evening Sarah stood before the open escritoire and stared at the empty vertical gap where the diary had been. After a largely silent dinner, as had become their habit she and Charlie had retired to her sitting room. Charlie had settled in the armchair by the hearth and become absorbed in some text on engineering; tired of the incessant mending and seeking comfort, she’d decided reading more of her aunt’s observations might divert or even help her. But nothing what ever reposed in the rack where the diary had been. She scanned the various spaces in the escritoire, but no glimmer of silver plate winked from anywhere within it.

“But…” Frowning, she ran her fingertips down the edge of the empty rack. “I know I left it there.”

She’d put it there the day she’d moved her things into this room, and hadn’t retrieved it since. “Where on earth could it have gone?”

And how? Perhaps the maids had moved it. She set about ransacking the escritoire’s lower drawers; finding nothing there, she glanced around, then moved to the side table nearby. The drawer in that contained candles and tapers, but no diary.

She continued around the room, searching high and low, anywhere the diary might have been put. Increasingly frantic, trying to deny the growing conviction that the diary was no longer there to be found, that it had been stolen. Over the last week she’d frequently left the terrace doors propped wide. But this was an earl’s private estate, and the house was a long way from any boundary.

Disturbed by her efforts, Charlie glanced up. She felt his gaze on her, but didn’t turn to meet it. Although she was sure her agitation was showing, she noticed he hesitated, that he actually debated whether or not to speak before asking, “What is it?”

Facing away from him, she pressed her lips tightly together for a second—to suppress the words soaring temper set on her tongue—then evenly stated, “My aunt Edith’s diary. I left it in the escritoire, but now it’s gone.” Something close to despair colored her tone.

She suddenly wanted to be held, to be hugged and told everything would be all right. She sensed Charlie tense as if to stand and come to her, but then he hesitated; when she glanced his way, she saw him resettling the book on his knee.

“No doubt you’ve misplaced it.” The words were cool, dismissive—distant. He didn’t bother glancing at her but refixed his gaze on his text.

For a moment, Sarah stared at him, stunned by the emotional slap.

Then she drew in a deep breath, clenched her jaw, and turned away. I didn’t! she screamed at him in her mind, but refused to let her fury loose—refused to weaken herself by so doing. Not yet.

Clinging to the more important issue, sensing again that inner conviction that the diary truly was gone, that it had by what ever means vanished, she drew another deep breath and, with awful calm, entirely ignoring Charlie, crossed to the bellpull that hung beside the mantelpiece.

She tugged, then, clasping her hands before her, waited.

Crisp answered her summons, bearing the tray with the silver teapot and delicate china cups. Seeing her standing, he quickly set the tray down on the side table by the chaise. “Yes, ma’am?”

Head high, Sarah met his eyes. “I left my late aunt’s diary in the escritoire, Crisp, but it’s no longer there.”

Crisp glanced at the escritoire, a frown forming. “The silver-plated one, ma’am? Mandy, the maid who dusts in here, did mention it.”

“Indeed, it’s an unusual design, probably unique.” Sarah paused, then, fingers twisting as she struggled to hold down her welling emotions, said, “I was very fond of my late aunt, and therefore value the diary highly—it was a keepsake. Could you please ask the staff if they’ve seen it elsewhere in the house?”

Crisp’s gaze had traveled to the French doors, then to Charlie, eyes on his book, apparently totally disinterested. When Crisp’s eyes returned to her face, his sympathy was clear. “Of course, ma’am. We’ll search for it. And I’ll check with Mandy when she saw the book last. I believe she dusted in here the day before yesterday.”

His decisive response brought some relief; at least she’d soon know if by some chance the diary had been moved. She inclined her head. “Thank you, Crisp. Please let me know what Mandy says, if she remembers if it was there.”

“Indeed, ma’am.” With another swift glance at Charlie, eyes on his book, unmoved and unmoving, Crisp bowed and departed.

Sarah’s gaze fell on the teapot. After a moment, without looking at Charlie, she moved to the side table and poured herself a cup. Charlie didn’t drink tea at this hour if he could help it; lifting her cup and saucer from the tray, she carefully sat, sipped, then gave her attention to the basket full of linens.

On impulse, she turned the basket out and searched through the blankets, sheets, and towels, but there was no silver-plated book buried among the folds.

Later that night, Sarah blew out the candle by her side of their bed; burrowing down into the soft mattress, she pulled the covers up over her shoulder—and tried to relax. Tried to compose her mind for sleep, but with so much hurt and anger roiling inside her, she knew it would be hours before she achieved any degree of calm.

Charlie. What was she going to do about him? She hadn’t missed his instinctive response to her distress, any more than she’d missed his deliberate suppression of same. Yes, he loved her, but he was refusing—refusing!—to let his love show.

She might have been able to brush his behavior aside, to ignore it as just another example of what she knew his dogged direction to be, as nothing more than she might have expected given that he’d yet to surrender and cease his senseless denial of his love, except that it was Edith’s diary she’d lost.

She felt the loss keenly, like a wound in her heart. Edith had been far more than just an aunt; she’d been someone very special, someone who’d understood, who had taught her so much, who had shared her wisdom and her counsel. It was Edith who had educated her mind and opened her eyes to life—and so to love.

Her distracted mind tripped over that point. If it hadn’t been for Edith and her insights, would she have married Charlie? Or would she years before have followed her older sisters’ and mother’s path and settled for a simple, undemanding union?

Her lips twisted at the irony.

Outside, the wind howled, a ravenous creature bent, it seemed, on rattling the sashes. Denied, it turned its fury on the massive trees, cruelly raking, cracking branches one against the other.

Sarah shivered, snuggled deeper under the covers and closed her eyes. And tried not to think of the ache in her chest. Just like the weather, life had turned unexpectedly cruel.

She told herself it wouldn’t last, that it would blow over and she’d see sunshine again. But with her heart already bruised, and now aching more deeply from the unexpected blow of the diary’s loss, when she heard the door open and Charlie’s footsteps cross the room, she lay still, feigning sleep.

Ten minutes later the bed bowed at her back and he joined her beneath the covers. She kept her limbs relaxed, kept her breathing slow and even—and battled to wrestle down the anger that rose, unbidden, to swamp her.

If he reached for her, if he touched her…she might very well hit him.

Instead, propped on one arm, he watched her; she could feel the weight of his gaze even through the covers. The silence stretched, punctuated by the slow heavy tick of the clock on the mantel.

Then he shifted, and turned away. He slumped on his back; she thought she heard him sigh. Then his breathing slowed, became more even; she felt sure he’d fallen asleep.

With a mental sniff, she vowed to do the same.

Charlie lay on his back and stared up at the dark canopy, and wondered what on earth to do. He knew she wasn’t asleep, but with matters between them like this—with cold stony silence enveloping the bed—he felt powerless to change things. Unable to act, uncertain what to do.

Helpless.

He wanted to comfort her. But he no longer knew how.

Or, perhaps, was no longer certain he had the right.

Yet every instinct he possessed—the very instincts he’d had to battle to suppress, to keep within reasonable nonrevealing bounds in her sitting room when he’d realized she was upset, the same instincts that had squirmed when Sinclair had mentioned the offer for the orphanage, a matter he’d hoped, somehow, to broach that evening and soothe any hurt his lapse had caused, but again he hadn’t been able to fathom how—clamored to comfort her, raged and fought against his restrictions. Against the tight rein he insisted on keeping over them outside this room, and now inside it, too.

He wanted to ease that rein, at least here, in the safe dark of their bed, but was no longer sure he should.

He’d never felt so torn in his life, so cut up and clawed inside, as if one part of him, a fundamental, primitive, but essential part of him had declared all-out war with his rational mind, with those more cautious, careful traits that were the province of self-preservation, the patterns of behavior defined and imposed not by instinct but by intellect.

And he could see no resolution. No way, no path, no course of action that would bring that conflict to any acceptable end.

Not for her.

Or him.

He knew she didn’t like, approve of, or in any way agree with his decision, his way of coping with the reality of their marriage. But he could see no other option. If he found one, he would take it.

Because he no longer liked, or approved of—and he certainly wasn’t enjoying—what was happening between them, the morass of pain and hurt in which his way had mired them.

15

Sarah’s consciousness rose through the veils of sleep, tugging at her mind. She resisted the pull; it might be morning, but it was early yet and she was so snug and warm, her cheek resting on firm, resilient flesh, on a hot swell of hard muscle lightly dusted with curling hair, her body cradled in a pair of steely arms…

She opened her eyes, then drew in a slow, careful breath. She lay sprawled over Charlie, held securely in his arms. Naked, he lay on his back. Her fine lawn nightgown had ridden up to her waist; her bare legs were tangled with his amid the rumpled covers.

A peek at the distance to her edge of the bed confirmed that this was not his doing. He hadn’t moved; she had.

She mentally cursed. From the slow cadence of his breathing, she thought he was still asleep, but from the morning light filtering into the room, she judged it was close to—indeed, possibly past—the time he usually awoke.

Drawing in a shallow breath, she held it, and tried to inch out of his arms.

They tightened. “No.” Two seconds ticked by. “Just let me hold you.”

His tone made her blink; this was not Charlie the arrogant but Charlie the vulnerable—a being she hadn’t met before. She couldn’t see his face without pushing back from his embrace and lifting her head, and with his arms lying heavy over her back she’d have to fight his hold to do that—and she was sure he wouldn’t let her, not before he’d found his impassive mask and stuck it firmly in place. Curious, she let her tensed muscles ease; sinking back onto him, senses at full stretch, she waited.

He shifted his head; his lips pressed against her hair. “I’m sorry about your aunt’s diary. You were close to her, weren’t you?”

She focused on her hand, resting beside her face, her fingers spread over his chest, over his heart. “Yes.” When he said nothing more, just waited, she went on, “She was…special to me, and that book was all I have to remember her by, and I’d only read the first pages—it starts in January 1816, so I expect it covers that year. She didn’t use it as a diary so much as an occurrence book. The entry I read described a party at Lord Wragg’s country seat, followed by a recipe for quince jelly extracted from his house keeper.”

“Daily life. The bits and pieces.”

She nodded, her cheek shifting against his chest; she felt insensibly comforted by the simple nearness. The closeness. “I meant to go back and read it all when I had time…when the mood gripped me.” At the time, her mind had been too full of her own thoughts to absorb anyone else’s. She sighed. “But now it’s gone and I’ll never…never be able to use it to connect with her again. I feel like I’ve lost my last link to her.”

Never again, she vowed, would she let the chance to connect with another soul slip through her fingers.

“But you haven’t.” His tone was gentle, soothing. Again his lips brushed her hair. “You loved her and she loved you—the diary was a symbol of that, but your love remains. You haven’t lost that. Isn’t that the real link?”