Tempting the Bride - By Sherry Thomas Page 0,72
a father. One could say his love of Helena still had a hope of a prize in the end: that she would love him back as ardently, and be his private paradise in bed. But his love of Bea sought no gain other than to do the right thing by the girl—and to improve her lot to such a degree that he might someday forgive himself for his earlier negligence.
Every morning Helena walked behind father and daughter, her eyes fastened to the sight of their clasped hands, her ears wallowing in the music of their conversation—mostly a monologue on his part, sometimes regaling Bea with the medicinal properties of a native plant, sometimes recounting a story of the queen as a little girl, sometimes explaining why the housekeeper was miffed at one of the maids.
Explaining the world, detail by detail, to a girl who did not have an instinctive grasp of many of the intricacies of life.
He wasn’t content to simply provide for Bea’s current comfort; he was thinking of the day she would become a young woman, the challenges she would face. He wanted a normal life for her, or a life as normal as possible, given her various drawbacks.
And it touched Helena—even more than the murals he’d painted for the girl. Both were labors of love, but on this one he would never stop working for as long as he and Bea both drew breath.
One of Bea’s walking routes ended in a pond that must have served as inspiration for Old Toad Pond. It didn’t quite possess the whimsical charm of its fictional counterpart, but it did have clear water, abundant fish, a small forest of waving bulrush, and a grassy, sloping bank on which sat a pair of stone benches.
On this day, Bea walked Sir Hardshell on a harness and Hastings sketched, while Helena read letters that Miss Boyle, her secretary, had forwarded. Helena was apparently more ambitious than even she had supposed. Not content to publish only books, at the time of her accident she had also been in the planning stages of a new magazine, aimed at the increasing population of young working women. The editor she’d hired, a Mrs. Edwards, had written Helena about the articles she’d gathered in readiness for the first issue. Helena jotted down her notes in the margins of the letter, including a proposed meeting so she could reacquaint herself with Mrs. Edwards, whom she did not remember in the least.
The next letter, funnily enough, was from Miss Evangeline South, replying to Miss Boyle’s inquiry concerning the progress of “her” revisions on some of the later stories of the Old Toad Pond collection. Miss South stated that due to an unanticipated emergency in the family, “she” would need an additional fortnight for the revisions.
Helena showed the letter to Hastings, seated at her feet.
“She wrote me,” he said, smiling, “so I had to reply.”
He had a gorgeous smile. Sometimes she still wanted to shake her head. He could very well have used that smile on her, instead of that leer. “And are you in fact working on the revisions I wanted?”
“Every morning before you get up.”
He did seem to be always up before her. “You had better be working on the revisions, and not writing another one of your naughty tales.”
He glanced up at her, his eyes as naughty as certain parts of his story. “You never told me how you liked it, my one and only smutty story.”
“I haven’t finish reading it and therefore cannot render an opinion.”
He made a face of exaggerated disappointment.
She shook her head. “You authors, so anxious and delicate. Very well, I liked the passages I’ve read.”
Now he bent his face to his sketch and smiled again. And all sorts of hot sensations sizzled along her nerves. She didn’t tell him, but she’d been saving the rest of the story for him to read aloud to her.
But she wanted to wait until the remainder of her memory returned—and everything she’d once felt for Mr. Martin was dealt with—before she began developing a collection of silken cords to use on Hastings.
And for him to use on her, too, should the mood strike him, since she was a sharing soul.
“Why are you wearing that smirk?” Hastings demanded. “That is an up-to-no-good smile if I’ve ever seen one.”
She grinned toothily at him. “If you were ‘married’ to a pornographer, wouldn’t you smirk to yourself once in a while? Now, enough talk of subjects unfit for genteel ears like mine.