Not Quite a Husband (5 page)

He laughed then, a burst of mirth, as if he’d been keeping a straight face a long time and finally could no more. “I’m sorry. You looked so studious when I came in, I couldn’t help myself.”

It took her perhaps a dozen heartbeats to understand that he’d been teasing her. That none of it had meant anything
.

“Come.” He offered her his arm. “Your sister was looking for you. I told her I’d locate you and take you back.”

She rose and pushed past him. “It was not funny.”

“I apologize. I didn’t mean to take it as far as I did. But you were so delectably innocent—”

“I am not. What’s making love but a penis penetrating a vagina, discharging semen in the process?”

He was taken aback. Then he smiled lopsidedly. “That is most edifying. And here I thought it was all about valentines and sonnets.”

“Well, I’m glad
one
of us is amused,” she said huffily
.

She made for the door, but he reached it before she did
.

“You are angry. Was I truly reprehensible?”

“Yes, you were.” Here she was, following in the wake of this beautiful young man like a devoted dog, while for him
she was but an elderly virgin—almost twenty-eight, oh the horror—and any thoughts of intimacy with her must begin and end in farce. “I will have you know I do not lack for masculine admiration. And I know exactly how to sin to keep my virtue intact. There is frottage. There is manual manipulation. There is oral stimulation. Not to mention good old bugg—”

He kissed her. She had no idea how it happened. One moment she was in the middle of her irate speech and he had his back against the door. The next moment
her
back was against the door, he was kissing her, and she was frozen in shock
.

He pulled back slightly. “My God,” he murmured. “Did I just do that?”

The door seemed to vibrate behind her back; the Gs and Fs and D flats from the drawing room sent hot little pings along her vertebrae. Leo Marsden kissed her. She didn’t know what it meant. Did young people kiss for amusement nowadays? Should she demand an apology? Did women still slap men for such unauthorized incursions?

“You had me convinced for a moment …” His voice trailed off
.

Of course she meant to convince him. She wanted him to think that beneath her elderly virgin exterior was a Messalina who hosted wild orgies at dispensaries across the city. But what did that have to do with anything?

“I might as well kiss you properly now,” he murmured
.

“I suppose you might as well,” she heard herself answer, still indignant
.

His lips came very close to hers. “What kind of soap do you use?”

“I don’t know. The strongest.”

“You don’t smell like any other woman I know.”

“What do they smell like?”

“Flowers. Spice. Musk, sometimes. You, on the other hand, make me think of industrial-strength solvents.”

She stared at his mouth. “Do you like industrial-strength solvents?”

His lips curved a little. And then he kissed her again, a curious but unhurried kiss, as light as a butterfly’s landing, as patient as the tides. A kiss almost innocent enough for public viewing—he touched her nowhere else, except for his fingers under her chin. A kiss that felt oddly like falling, and oddly like flying
.

So this was why people did it, she thought faintly, despite the act of kissing being one of the surest vectors of disease transmittal. How strangely pleasurable it was. And breathtaking. And electrifying—currents must have been generated by the locking of their lips, because every nerve in her sizzled, every cell sang
.

She wasn’t sure when the kiss ended. She emerged from a daze and had to blink for everything around her to come back into focus
.

“Promise me you won’t kiss me again,” he said. “Or you will ruin me for all other women.”

Likely he delivered the same line to every woman he’d ever kissed—it was too perfect to be spontaneous. But it made her dizzy all the same. She nodded slowly
.

“Good. Because I would never forgive you, were you to break my heart.” He smiled, the very image of gilded youth, beloved of the gods. “Now shall we go before Callista comes looking for us?”

O
ver breakfast, Bryony feigned a steady interest in the blood-and-gold sunrise over the jagged peaks that formed the eastern wall of Chitral Valley. But out of the corner of her eye, she followed Leo’s movements around the camp. He supervised the dismantling and packing of the tents, checked the load on each mule, conferred with the guides, and even spoke to a few of the coolies and the ayah in some native tongue.

This last did not reassure her, for she had seen
sahibs
and
memsahibs
go at their native attendants in a mixture of English and what they believed to be Hindi and then simmer in frustration when the attendants returned with a sheaf of betel leaves instead of a glass of water.

But she was in his hands now.

The Chitral region was the pinnacle of the Hindu Kush, containing its tallest peaks and greatest glaciers. From Gilgit, Leo had come via the 12,000-foot Shandur Pass. To return to the plains of India, they would scale the 10,500-foot Lowari Pass, cross into still-mountainous Dir, and proceed south.

Mountain travel was one of Bryony’s least favorite pastimes. Her trip from Kashmir to Leh, with a trio of English tourists, had been marred by squabbling coolies, bad food, and incessant complaints on the part of the English tourists about the laziness and untrustworthiness of all Kashmiris. The trek from Leh to Chitral, while without quite the bad blood, had suffered from chronic disorganization, the cooks falling far behind while the travelers starved, cake for tea saturated in fishy oil because it had been packed next to an open tin of sardines, and the Braeburns’ galvanized iron bath unusable for much of the trip, as a result of having had three holes knocked in it from careless handling.

“You said we can be in Peshawar in one week?” she asked when he came to tell her that they were ready to depart.

“Peshawar is out of our way. Nowshera is closer.”

“We can be in Nowshera in one week?”

“I can in four days. Whether
we
can in a week depends on how hardy a traveler you are.”

She was hardy enough. But
he
had shadows under his eyes. He was thin almost to the point of gauntness. And despite the tan of his skin, his face had a pallor to it.

An unwilling concern tugged at her. The constant travel of the past so many weeks had worn him down. He must be close to a state of exhaustion. To attempt to reach Nowshera in four days—or even a week—would probably send him into a breakdown.

“Have you had breakfast?” she asked.

He’d already started to walk away. He stopped. “I had something earlier.”

“What did you have?”

He frowned, as if irritated by her detailed questioning. “Some porridge or such.”

That was scarcely enough nutrition for an already underfed man who had a strenuous trip ahead. She examined him again, looking for some visual clue to his state of less-than-robust health.

“Are you suffering from a suppressed appetite?”

“I would have thought that to be a natural result of seeing you,” he said, in perfectly polite viciousness.

She bit her lower lip. “Is that a yes or a no?”

“That is an ‘I don’t need a doctor so leave me be.’” He pivoted on his heels, then turned back toward her. “And even if I did need a doctor, you are the last doctor I would choose.”

Are you quite certain you haven’t developed some dreadful condition that will lead to much bleeding, vomiting, and putrefaction?
Will had asked—only half jokingly—when Leo had relayed the news of his betrothal.
I’ve never known Bryony Asquith to display the least interest in a healthy man
.

You are feeling inadequate because she never displayed the least interest in
you, Leo had replied, laughing, on top of the world, gloriously young and gloriously stupid.

He raised his hand for an ironic tip of the hat toward her, but she reached forward and caught his wrist. Her fingers were cool, her grip firm but not tight: impersonal. And her hair, her beautiful hair, ruined, like a bolt of silk slashed by a careless knife.

“You may not have a choice of doctor,” she said calmly. “The next nearest trained physician is at the garrison in Drosh. Beyond that, none until Malakand.”

After fifteen seconds or so, she released his wrist and placed her palm against his forehead.

He didn’t want to be so close to her. And he emphatically did not want her to touch him. “I’m not running a fever,” he said impatiently.

Though he might, tomorrow. It had started almost a week ago, with dizziness and body ache. But he was
well the next day, so he’d chalked it up to fatigue. Then the day after that, he’d run a low fever with chills. And so it went, one day relatively better, next day not so well. With every cycle, however, the fever got worse, as did the chills. Yesterday he’d even shivered when he’d passed through the sunless defile on his way to Rumbur Valley.

She withdrew her hand and regarded him with some puzzlement. “No, there is no fever. Do you have any rashes or spots? Localized pain? Generalized pain? Dizziness? Shivering?”

Will had been right. She was only ever interested in a man’s physical malfunctions.

“No, nothing. I already told you, I don’t need a doctor. Let’s stop wasting time. We’ve a long way to go.”

“Not today,” she said.

“I beg your pardon?”

“I’m not used to being in a saddle anymore—I need a few days to get accustomed. I don’t wish to ride too long today.”

He would have much preferred to get them through Lowari Pass by the end of the day—if the fever returned again tomorrow, more severe than the previous time, he didn’t know if he could handle either the trek up to the pass or the descent.

Her request vexed him. Perhaps if she were a more
delicate sort of woman … but when they’d been married she’d worked appalling hours. Despite her insubstantial frame, she was the last thing from delicate.

“All right,” he said grudgingly. “I’ll make sure we don’t ride for too long today.”

“Thank you,” she said. “Most kind of you.”

She inclined her head and walked away toward her waiting horse. Only then did the strangeness of her request make itself felt. This was not at all like her. The Bryony he knew would rather have her haunches rubbed raw by the saddle than admit anything was the matter, the way she’d suffered through his lovemaking with clenched fists and rigid thighs.

Sometimes people change
, said a voice inside him.

And sometimes they don’t
.

They crossed the river at Drosh, where Leo took the trouble to telegraph Callista from the British garrison to let her know that he’d found Bryony and that they would cable again when they had reached Nowshera. Afterward they had a light tiffin and continued on their journey—which, surprisingly enough, was smooth and without any memorable incidents whatsoever.