The Brigadier's Runaway Bride (Dukes of War Book 5) (13 page)

The nursery door creaked open. Soft candlelight from wall sconces in the corridor outlined her husband’s wide shoulders and tousled head.

“Why didn’t you wake me?”

“I had to feed the twins. That’s not something you’re equipped to help with.”

He entered the nursery and sank into the rocking chair next to hers. “You don’t have to do it alone.”

Sarah didn’t reply. There was no point in telling him she felt more alone than ever when he was inches away but still miles out of reach. But what was the alternative?

The only thing worse than no longer being desirable would be forcing him to feign his attraction.

She’d never had to feign hers.

His eyes looked just as sleep-deprived as hers, but it didn’t matter. She found him as irresistible as the day they’d met. He had changed, too, but the hardness in his muscles, the darkness in his eyes, somehow made him even more dangerously attractive.
 

He wasn’t just stronger than before. The piercing intensity in his eyes, the constant readiness in his stance enveloped him with an aura of coiled power. When all that singleminded focus was pointed at her, Sarah’s knees melted. She forced herself to look away.

’Twasn’t just that she yearned to feel his touch. She feared it. Dreaded the moment his firm hands gripped her waist—and discovered it now squished like pudding.
 

Her throat tightened. She was no longer the woman he’d left. The one thing that surpassed her desire for her husband was the terror of rejection. She agonized about the day Edmund would finally reach for her… only to be repulsed by what he found.
 

She wasn’t his dream woman anymore. She was over-tired, hyper-sensitive, stretched-out reality.

Sarah pushed to her feet and lay little Timothy back in his cradle. With any luck, perhaps she could steal another hour’s sleep.
 

She turned from the cradle and gasped to find Edmund towering just behind her. She hadn’t heard him rise from his chair. And now she was trapped between the sleeping babies in their cradles and the immovable wall of her husband’s chest. Her heart thundered as she lifted her gaze to his.

“Are you avoiding me?” His eyes were dark. Furious.
 

She kept her voice steady. “How could I avoid you? I live in your house. Sleep in your bed.”

When she slept at all. She’d once imagined married life would mean the sensual exhaustion of nights spent lovemaking. Not the delirious fatigue of taking care of twins, of falling into bed half-conscious, only to lie awake searching for a position that didn’t hurt her back or make her nipples leak.
 

Or bring her into contact with her husband.
 

So, yes. She was avoiding him. Or had been. There was nowhere to go but backwards into the cradles or forward into his arms.

She held her ground.

“Are you angry with me?” His eyes were dark, his voice deceptively light. “Is that the problem? You see me as a villain in all of this?”

Of course she wasn’t angry with him . She was bitter at the entire situation. For both of them. His homecoming should’ve been a dream come true. Their wedding, a fairy story. Their lives full of pleasure. Surely he felt the same.

“Do you see me as a villainess?” she snapped back.
 

He blinked in confusion. “You?”

She gestured toward her belly. “Me.”

He shook his head. “Bruges was more my fault than yours. I do not blame you for becoming pregnant.”
 

His words were carefully chosen.

She was not fooled. Her eyes narrowed. “What, precisely,
do
you blame me for?”

“I’m not angry at you.” His lips tightened. “I’m angry at everyone. At myself. I thought I was invincible.” He clenched his fingers. “I was wrong.”

She bit her lip.

“I thought my friends would never leave me. I was wrong.” His eyes flashed with hurt. “I thought I would be searched for, missed, rescued. I was wrong.”

Her heart twisted.

“I thought I would come home to you, to the life we used to have.” He clenched his jaw. “I was wrong.” His smile was bitter. “You cannot expect me not to be… disillusioned.”

She wrapped her arms about her stomach, hurt mixing with fury. “You have suffered. But you are not the only one who has faced challenges and disappointment. You can’t reappear after nearly a year and expect everything to be just as it was!”

His lip curled. “You tried to marry my childhood friend and give his name to my sons. They would have never known that I—”

“Did you expect me to wait on a
dead
man?” she exploded.

“I may be dead inside, but I’m more than alive enough for you.” He gripped her chin and covered her mouth with his.

Desire ripped through her like brushfire, lighting every nerve from the inside out. His teeth on her lips, his hands in her hair, his mouth claiming hers—
this
was what she had wanted. What she had feared. What she desperately needed.

Her tongue met his. Sparring. Mating. She reached for him, drowning in the delight of soft linen over hard muscle.
 

His body was hot to the touch. Strange and familiar. He tasted like Edmund, smelled like Edmund, felt like second chances. He kissed her as if she were as indispensable as air. As though his every heartbeat belonged as much to her as it did to him.

She’d lost a part of herself when she’d thought he’d died. Having him back was marvelous, but having his lips on hers was like having life again. She was no longer tired, but electrified. Her body thrummed with yearning, with anticipation, with desire. She wanted more than kisses—she wanted
him
.

His fingers reached for her waist. Not her waist. Her soft, loose flesh.

She jerked away instinctively.
 

He released her at once, leaping backward as if she were a grenade whose detonation would destroy them both.

Perhaps she was.

“My apologies,” he said, his voice as stiff as his posture. “I lost my head. It shall not be repeated.”

That’s what she was afraid of.
 

She turned her back so that she would not have to see him walk away.

Chapter 13

A fortnight later, Edmund was still cursing the moment of weakness, the moment of intense
want
, that had made him crush his lips to his wife’s. She had obviously been far from ready. He had vowed not to pressure her. To never make her feel hunted or frightened.
 

And now she was more skittish than ever.

He tried to give her space to heal, to get used to having a husband and children. She was adamant against hiring nannies or wet nurses, which was why he spent an hour every afternoon in the nursery, up to his elbows in baby bathwater while Sarah caught a few moments’ sleep.

Despite her subtly disapproving frowns, the housekeeper always lent a capable hand—
she
, at least, saw the value in a live-in nanny—and Edmund had come to cherish these moments spent with his sons.
 

He wanted to be useful. To be needed.
 

He was neither.
 

Edmund had not birthed the babies. He could not nurse them. His wife did not want for his assistance. Bathing them was something Edmund could do. Helping whenever possible was how he could be a good father to his children, a good husband to his wife. To buy her an hour’s peace before it was time for feedings all over again. These were the moments when he felt things had perhaps worked out exactly as they were supposed to.

Until today.

Yesterday, the housekeeper had left for Leeds. Mrs. Clark hadn’t had a spare moment since Edmund had returned home, so when one of her parents had fallen ill, he could scarcely demand she eschew familial obligations in favor of helping a brigadier bathe a pair of twins. She would return in less than a week’s time. Edmund would simply have to handle things in the meantime.

It wasn’t going well.

The twins had been awake (and their mother asleep) when Edmund had first sent for the tub and warm water. The footman had fetched everything upstairs with his usual alacrity, yet the twins had still managed to fall asleep before they could be bathed.

Unless they’d learned to playact.

Edmund hated to wake them—the ornery devils were quite angelic in slumber—but Sarah never napped for long. This was his sole opportunity to ease her load.

So he’d inched over to the cradle and began to undress Noah.
 

Upon doing so, Timothy immediately started to shrill from the other cradle, giving credence to the idea that they had known Edmund was there all along and simply had no wish to be clean and bathed.
 

Edmund set down Noah and started with Timothy instead, which unfortunately served to set both boys howling. He strode over to the tub and lowered the protesting infant’s feet into basin, only to get a snootful of cold, soapy water splashed directly into his face.

The water had cooled while his imps had feigned sleep. Naturally.

He shook the suds from his hair and carried Timothy—now gurgling with delight—back to his cradle so Edmund could ring the footman for a bucket of hot water.
 

In the meantime, Edmund yanked off his cravat, his pocket watch, his waistcoat. If his sons intended to fight dirty, a soldier ought to be prepared. He crossed his arms over his waist and hiked his bath-splattered linen shirt up and over his head.
 

“What on Earth is happening in here?”

Edmund whirled about to see his wife standing in the open doorway. “I…”

“What
happened?
” she repeated in horror. This time, she was not looking at his discarded clothing, but rather the network of corded scars crisscrossing his chest and arms.

He put his shirt back on. “Waterloo.”

Her lip trembled. “Edmund—”

“Fresh water,” called the footman as he heaved two steaming buckets into the nursery. “Quite hot.”

Edmund pulled Sarah to his side.
 

After the footman dumped the first bucket into the tub, Edmund stopped him in order to test the water. He didn’t want it cold, but nor did he want it scalding. “Leave the extra bucket. We may have use for it later.”

The footman nodded and quit the nursery.

Sarah turned to Edmund and placed her fingertips to his chest. “Your scars…”

“We should hurry,” he said roughly. “Let’s get our sons bathed and back into their warm clothes.”

It was the right choice. The only choice. And yet his entire traitorous body felt bereft when her warm fingers lifted from his chest as she turned away.

“Will they both fit into the tub at the same time?” she asked as she moved toward Noah’s cradle.

He glanced at the tub. It was certainly large enough for two small infants. “Mrs. Clark and I usually do one at a time.”

Come to think of it, Edmund had no idea why. It would seem more efficient to bathe both at once, and be done faster. No need to muck with water temperature and the like.

“You take Noah,” he said. “I’ll grab Timothy.”

She began to push the baby’s blanket aside, then shot a startled look at Edmund. “Where are his clothes?”

Edmund’s neck heated.. “I was going to bathe him, but he’d fallen asleep and then the water grew chill… We should hasten, so the same doesn’t happen anew.”

He pushed up his sleeves and turned to the other cradle. Timothy blinked up at him innocently. A smile curved Edmund’s lips. “Your mother is joining us for baths today, so none of your tricks, little man.”

The moment he unwrapped the blankets swaddling his naked son, Edmund covered the baby’s naked middle with a clean, folded cloth—which Timothy immediately soaked with warm urine.
 

“
Ha
. Caught you.” Edmund tossed the soiled cloth onto a waiting towel in the corner. He lifted Timothy into his arms and turned toward Sarah—just in time to see Noah let loose over the cradle with an impressive arc of baby piss.