The Unintended Bride (29 page)

"So perhaps it belongs to something in this room?" Hero could see nothing that required a key to open it. No boxes, no cabinets, no drawers.

"Where could it be?" she wondered aloud. To her surprise, Arthur dived beneath the table and then reappeared to take her hand and pull her under the table with him. "See?"

There was a cabinet in the thick central leg of the massive table. A cabinet large enough to hold a manuscript. And a brass lock in which a key might fit. She wanted to shout with excitement, but managed to control her impulse. "Do you have the key?"

"No," he answered with chagrin after a thorough search of his pockets. "I have not thought of it for some time, I'm afraid. I did not ever truly believe I would remember where I had seen it. I was not even certain I ever had seen it before."

"We must get it at once."

"Unfortunately, we must wait until our return to Camelot, I'm afraid."

Hero was relieved to have an excuse to leave the Delagrace household. They tried to speak of other things on the journey back home, mindful of the curious gazes of Grandmama, Digby, and Gwen, who had accompanied them as their guest to stay for a few days' time.

As soon as they arrived, without excuses, they hurried up the stairs to their rooms.

"Where is it?"

Arthur stood, a perplexed look on his face. "I can't remember exactly."

"Did I have it last? I took it from the site when you threw it to the ground."

"No, remember you gave it back to me in the carriage."

"Oh, yes." She thought a bit. "You put it in your pocket then."

For a few moments they both searched the pockets of his waistcoats. The effort, however, yielded no key.

"Could it have fallen out?"

"Or perhaps I transferred it to a safer place."

They searched diligently, Hero on the floor, looking for a small shiny key that might have tumbled under the bed, beneath the dressing table, in the bed itself.

Arthur searched his belongings, the box that held his diamond stickpin, his other valuables.

Nothing.

He pressed his lips together in chagrin. "Where could it have gotten to?"

"I wish I could remember clearly…" Her temples ached and she removed her spectacles to rub at them, hoping that would help restore her memory.

He caught a breath in dismay. "Could we have left it back at the inn?"

"No." She could remember that much. "I had it with me then."

"What about the second inn we visited, on the way home?" he asked.

"No." Again she was certain. "I remember holding it in my hand after we reached Camelot." She sighed. "I cannot think of another place it might be."

Despite an extensive search, the key was not to be found.

He paused. "It should be here."

"But it is not." She asked, afraid of the answer, "Could someone have taken it?"

"Yes, I suppose so." He looked as unhappy at the idea as she felt. "But who?"

They tossed the room, but the key was not to be found. Excitedly, she grasped his arm. "We will find it and then we will know, Arthur. You cannot send me away now."

"I must —" He paused. "Very well then. Another few days, until we find the key and unlock the cabinet."

She stopped him with a finger to his lips, and led him to a seat at the Round Table. "We must settle this once and forever."

"Settle what?"

"The matter of our marriage." She blushed. "And the thing that married couples do that we do not."

"I do not want to hurt you." He reached for her hand.

She moved her hand away, so that he could not grasp it and looked directly into his eyes. "I want to ask you a question, and I want you to tell me the truth, even if you think it will hurt me. Will you agree?"

"I will."

"I mean it. The truth. I have seen you lie with utter conviction when you think it right, but this time you will do me no favor by telling me lies."

"Ask your question."

"Do you see any possibility that you will one day wish to make love to me for some other reason than you have forgotten yourself?"

He blinked. He opened his mouth. He closed his mouth. The same look she had seen on his face when he'd solved an interesting puzzle crossed his expression. And then he began to laugh.

She stood up in a flash of humiliation, but his arms were around her and his mouth at her ear, whispering his answer so that only she could hear. "Do what you will with this truth, wife. There is not a day, an hour, a minute when I do not wish to make love to you."

She turned her face into his neck and inhaled his scent. "I would like to believe you, but I'm afraid I need evidence."

She protested when he pulled away from her, but he sat back, gazing at her with a steady intensity that made her heart beat faster.

"It is my turn to ask you to be truthful."

"Always."

"Gabriel Digby."

There was a slight release of the tension that had grown around her heart at that unexpected name. "Gabriel Digby?"

"I am, after all, not the man you planned to marry. I do not like to think you pine for Digby while you are in my arms."

She put a finger to his lips to stop his words. "He was on the verge of proposing. That does not mean I intended to accept."

"No?"

She smiled, hoping that he could read the truth of it in her eyes. "You would laugh if you knew how many schemes I had to hatch, how many careful plans and near misses I had in order to make certain he could not propose."

"But he is a fine man. He would have made you a good husband."

"He is. And perhaps, with luck, he will make Gwen a good husband. But he never would have made me one. You have had my heart since I first met you in Simon's breakfast room." She laughed at the memory. "The sheer look of horror when you saw all the Fenster females at their worst and you did not run. How could I not have fallen in love with you?"

"Yes, I remember that morning well — it was the first time I discovered that females could be enchanting in bunches." He smiled, too, and then a shadow of doubt came across his expression. "But — "

"Digby and I are not like you and Gwen, you must understand. I had no intention of accepting his suit." She closed her eyes, preparing for the worst.

"I did not want to marry Gwen." His statement was so blunt, she wasn't sure she had heard him correctly.

"But you were — "

"My grandmother and Gwen's father were quite happy with the match. Gwen and I were never actually consulted. I have considered her a friend all these years. But I could not think of her as a wife, as a boon companion, as a " — his voice grew husky — "as a lover."

His eyes warmed as he allowed himself to look full into hers, to plumb the depths without fear. Even as he gazed, his hands were warm against her cheek, her neck, skimming down her arms. With a shaky sigh, he asked one last question, "Are you ready to put this matter to the test? To allow me to show you the evidence of my desire to make love to you?"

She nodded. "May I request we do more of the pleasurable part of the matter, and leave out the part that leads to undue discomfort?"

He bent down to press a laughing kiss into her neck. "All of it is meant to be pleasurable."

She looked at him dubiously.

"I have it on good authority, but I am willing to prove that to you, too." He took her hand and led her to his room. She waited for him to lift her to the bed, but he did not. Instead, he rummaged through a chest of drawers and drew out three books. She recognized them as volumes from the third floor attic room of Peeble's Bookshop. "Does Mr. Beasley know you bought these? After we were trapped up there?" A wave of embarrassment made her faint.

He smiled. "I bought them through an intermediary. No one will ever know our secret."

"Why did you buy them?"

"Because, as I have so ably proved, I know nothing of pleasing a woman. I have not needed to know, until I married you."

She looked from the books to his face, recognizing his expression at last, for what it was — the mirror image of her own. Untutored, but eager nonetheless. "You have been studying these? In order to—"

He lifted her to the bed, but he did not lay her back against the pillows and come over her, as he had in the carriage. Instead, he perched her on the edge of the bed and lifted her skirts and shift until he stood between her bare thighs. He began to undress her, slowly, teasingly, kissing the flesh that he exposed as he exposed it.

She whispered against his neck, "I am at a disadvantage, I have only those stories I read while we were trapped in the attic. And none of them dealt with a situation like this."

"You can kiss me. You can touch me. You can —" His breath caught in his throat when she unfastened his shirt with nimble fingers and began to work on his trousers. Shakily, he laughed. "You are at no disadvantage that I can see."

Like the scholars they were, they explored with purpose, until they were both without clothes and almost without reason and he said in a ragged whisper, "I will try not to cause you discomfort."

She tensed as he pushed inside her, but there was no discomfort this time. She said softly, "Your study has proved successful, I believe."

He was gentle. At first. But she gave him no hint that she minded when his own passion made him grow bolder. At first, as he moved slowly inside her, he kissed only her lips, but then he was not satisfied with that. He moved, first to her neck, then to her shoulder, then to the delicate flesh of her inner wrists. After he could take no more of the torment, and shuddered deep inside her, he did not stop his exploration. Down to her belly, the back of a knee. He wanted to taste her everywhere, he wanted to hear the little sounds of pleasure she made. He wanted to hear them forever.

And so it was nearly dawn before she slept, warm and trusting against him.

Arthur did not sleep at once. There had been no sign of regret in her expression — and he had observed her carefully. He had seen only passion, response, joy, amazement at the sensations they had managed to coax from each other's eager bodies.

As he lay quietly contemplating his good fortune, he saw the rose pattern on the wall opposite shift slightly. He half closed his eyes and watched as the wall opened. Were his eyes playing tricks on him? No. It was a secret door.

He tensed, wondering if he should leap up and chase away the intruder, or remain as if asleep and see what the prowler was up to. He chose to remain still, but he was tensed to protect Hero if it turned out that someone was indeed trying to harm her.

The shadowy figure crept toward the washbasin on the bureau and, after a second's bustle, just as carefully crept back toward the wall, disappeared, and the wall once again appeared as normal.

Arthur leaped from the bed and lit a lamp. A little light exposed what the prowler had been up to. Another note had been left on the bureau.

He was almost afraid to pick it up and read it. He wanted no more than to rest in bed with Hero. To wake her in the morning with a soft kiss and more lovemaking. The note was more likely to send him away into the night, away from her, away from what he held most dear. And all for what? A musty old book manuscript that held no secrets a modern printed text couldn't reveal?

His cynicism shocked him. Since when had he begun to view his quest with such rancor?

He curled up again next to Hero, the note clutched in his palm. He would read it tomorrow. Nothing of importance would suffer if he spent one night next to her, thinking only of her.

She curled into him with a soft sigh of pleasure and comfort, and he knew he had made the right decision.

When Hero woke, all she could think of was how right it felt to have him beside her, warm and strong.

His smile, however, was troubled. At first she thought it was just the look of a man who was not sure how his wife would greet the morning. But then she noticed the dark smudges under his eyes.

She thought the worst of course. Perhaps he had not felt the joy that she had felt when — "What is the matter? You do not regret — "

"Never." He held her close. "Never."

She relaxed, knowing somehow that he told the truth on that matter. "Then, what has you so restless?"

He told her of the secret passageway.

At first, she thought he had been dreaming, and she laughed at his tale. "A secret passageway? Arthur, really, I would more likely believe that you had seen a dragon breathing fire outside the window."

"It was no dream. I am certain of that." Arthur could not blame her for not believing him. Even he might have doubted his story, it sounded so far-fetched in the light of day.

"I cannot believe it." She gazed sharply at the wall he had indicated held a secret door. "There? It was there?"

"Yes."

"But there is not anyplace a door could be — "

"I know what I saw." He did not know how to convince her. But there was the note, still clutched tightly in his fist. He held it out to her.

She stopped smiling, her expression growing unbearably serious. "You found another note."

"He left it. He came into the room by the secret door in the wall, left this note on the dressing table, and then left, again through the secret door."

Apparently, the note was enough to sweep away any lingering doubts she might have entertained. "What does it say?" she asked anxiously.

"I don't know. I didn't read it," he answered. And didn't want to, he confessed to himself. But he lifted it, smoothing it out, and read slowly. "The key is the key."

The looked at each other in amazement. "The key. Do you suppose he took it?"

"It is certainly possible."

She leaped out of the bed. "What part of the wall moved."

He took a moment to admire her, standing as she was so adorably disrobed. He pointed to where he had seen the wall move. "Here. Why?"

She took her fingers and began to run them lightly over the wall. "We must try to find the mechanism that will open the door to us."

He got out of bed and began to look as well. But it seemed futile to him. "I don't see how that can help — "

She knocked on the wall, her ear pressed against it. "Perhaps he took the key to keep us from finding what he has hidden from us." She knocked again, a little farther down the wall.