Having Patience (8 page)

In fact, James doubted that Patience realized she was afraid at all.

There was only one place to start but James was determined. He owed his wife—and himself—that much.

Chapter Six

Tears spilled down her cheeks. Patience swiped them away. She could scarcely read she was crying so hard. James was unhappy with her. He’d accused her of all manner of ridiculous things.

Afraid!

Poppycock!

She wasn’t afraid. Her gaze fell on the words on the page but she stared without seeing. Her mind swept back over the things she and James had done together. She’d, in fact, been quite courageous. She’d dared to share her darkest desires with her husband and last night—she sniffed—he’d thrown it all back in her face.

Even after spending most of the night sobbing, fresh tears emerged and Patience resisted the urge to throw the book across the room.

Instead, she tossed it on her bed, stood and began to pace.

Why was she bothering to choose another passage? James had not invited her to have breakfast with him. He hadn’t requested she bring a book to him today.

No. He’d declared in no uncertain terms that he intended to consummate the marriage tonight. Well, he could do as he pleased. That didn’t mean Patience had to enjoy it.

Her gaze drifted to her bed. Would he take her there—she looked at the carpet—or would he tumble her on the rug as if she were a licentious scullery maid like he’d nearly done last night?

Despite her roiling emotions, her channel tightened in anticipation. Deep inside, she wanted him to take her, to force her, to tie her and blindfold her so she could spiral into that bliss of pure physical sensation she couldn’t seem to enjoy when she was free to participate at will.

She closed her eyes, her limbs warming at the thought of it. Only when her will was taken away, her control quelled, did she feel…perfect. Opening her eyes, she stared at the book on her bed. What would he do if she chose a scenario where the hero tied and took the heroine? Would that please him?

Her heart seemed to rise and pound in her chest at the thought. She could hardly breathe. She couldn’t begin to swallow.

Forcing her lungs to fill with air, she took up the book and then sank into one of the chairs beside the hearth. She thumbed through the pages. She had to show him that she was sorry. She gnawed her bottom lip. Would he want to
punish
her?

Her clitoris pulsed at the memory of his finger pushing and probing inside her channel the night before. She took a deep breath. Last night, she would have been willing to allow him to do anything to—

To…

“Oh, dear Lord,” she said aloud, her voice but a breath. Realization sank straight to her chilled toes.

Everything they’d done thus far had involved James doing something
to
her. Not
with
her. When he’d kissed her, when he’d elicited a response from her, she’d closed herself to him. She’d been unable to participate.

Suddenly, she felt like a selfish dolt.

No wonder he was so frustrated with her. Even though she’d done something previously unthinkable to her last night and had taken him in her mouth, she’d only done so because she enjoyed the sensation of being punished, dominated. She hadn’t considered the act might be pleasing to James until she’d experienced his reaction. Even though she’d been tied and blindfolded, she’d truly enjoyed giving him pleasure.

The memory of the sound of his harsh breaths and the feel of his thick, hard cock pulsing seed down her throat filled her with fresh desire.

She squeezed the book in her hands so hard her knuckles burned from the strain. At every turn, he’d shown patience and understanding. He’d done everything—
everything
—she wanted without asking why, without judging her, without condemnation and without demanding anything in return. Like a willful child, she’d greedily taken all he’d offered without so much as giving him a kiss in return.

Well…with one exception. The memory of the kiss they’d shared last night washed over her.

“Naughty, naughty girl!”

Miss Killian had been right about her all those years ago.

Patience shuddered at the haunting voice resounding in her head.

The awful image of her brother, his neck broken and grotesquely twisted while her mother clutched her own belly and dropped to the marble floor festered like an ulcer in Patience’s head.

All her life she’d lived with the guilt of knowing she was responsible for not one death but two. And now, in spite of herself, she was killing her own marriage before it had ever begun. Even armed with the knowledge, Patience felt powerless to stop it.

She bit her bottom lip as she looked once more at the book and then at the box of books in the corner of her room. She wasn’t powerless. Not at all.

Casting the book aside, she went to her secretary and pulled several sheets of foolscap from the top drawer.

After dipping her pen in a bottle of ink, she began to write.

* * * * *

“James! What a surprise!” Patience’s father, the Earl of Blickley, exclaimed as he limped into his parlor. “To what do I owe this unexpected visit?”

James crossed the room to shake his father-in-law’s hand. “I suppose your question would be more appropriately phrased as to whom you owe my visit.”

The old earl’s eyes widened and he cleared his throat. James could tell the man had once been a fine looking gentleman. If he’d resembled his portrait on the wall, he’d looked rather like a male version of Patience. Now, he was aged, portly and hobbled with the stiff gait of an old man.

“What has Patience done, now?” the earl asked, chagrined. He gestured for James to sit.

With difficulty the earl lowered himself onto a leather upholstered settee. “My knee always alerts me to impending rain,” he complained, rubbing the offending joint through his tan breeches.

“Ah,” James commiserated remembering that the earl complained of his aching knee at every opportunity. “The result of a riding accident, wasn’t it?”

The earl grunted. “It’s been fifteen years. The physician wanted to amputate the damn thing.”

James winced.

The earl chuckled. “On days like this, I deserve a swift kick in the breech for not letting him cut the blasted thing off. But back to the matter at hand. Has my daughter displeased you?”

“On the contrary. Patience is a very pleasing bride.” James had not come here to reveal his wife’s secrets but rather to find out why she harbored them. “I was merely curious about her…governess. Miss Killian.”

The earl’s face contorted as he thought and then he nodded. “Miss Killian. Yes.” He waved his hand in a gesture of dismissal. “She left once Patience was educated. Are you displeased with her education? I’m certain a tutor could be—”

“No, that’s not the issue,” James said. “Do you, or perhaps any of your staff, know where Miss Killian might have gone after she left Walnut Grange?”

“I do not,” the earl said.

James tried to keep the disappointment from showing on his face.

“But the head housekeeper, Mrs. Donahue, might know,” the earl added.

James gaze flicked to the portrait of Patience’s mother. So young. So full of life. “Your wife…she was a lovely woman. I imagine you must miss her terribly.”

The earl twisted around and studied the portrait for several seconds before he turned back to James. “I do,” he said simply.

An awkward silence pervaded. James had hoped the man would open up and talk about her death but he didn’t. Carefully, James prodded. “It must have been difficult being a widowed father.”

“I lost three people dear to me that day,” the earl said darkly.

James moved toward the edge of his seat. “Three?”

“Margaret was with child. The trauma of Harry’s death was too much for her,” the earl explained.

James swallowed. This was much more difficult than he’d thought it would be. “I was under the impression they died from sickness. What happened to…to Harry?”

The stricken expression on the earl’s face made James nauseous. But he had to keep going, to keep pushing. He had to know why Patience was so afraid of intimacy.

“He…fell. Took a tumble down the stairs.” The earl’s gaze drifted out the parlor door to the marble inlaid foyer.

James’s eyes followed, stopping on the graceful coil at the end of the brass balustrade. A tremor rattled his spine at the knowledge a child had died at the base of those very stairs. But if Harry had died from a fall, how had the mother died?

“Margaret heard the commotion and was the first to discover Harry—dead from a broken neck,” his tear-rimmed gaze swiveled back to James. “She and the child inside her perished four hours later.”

“Where…where was Patience when this happened?” James asked. His gut wrenched at the thought of her suffering the deaths of her mother, brother and unborn sibling all in the same day.

The earl stared as if the question had never crossed his mind. “I’ve no idea. With Miss Killian, I assume.”

Thoughts tumbled in James’s head. Certainly, the deaths affected Patience. Perhaps she feared if she loved someone, she would lose them. Her father seemed disinterested. Did he somehow blame Patience for the deaths? If he did, his reproach had to be misplaced. Patience had only been a wee child at the time.

Hopefully, the answer to Patience’s distress lay with Miss Killian. As the earl changed the subject and began regaling James with the boring details of running Walnut Grange, impatience nagged at James to end his uncomfortable visit and find the head housekeeper.

Two solid, dreary hours of boring stories and gossip passed before the earl rang for the head housekeeper, Mrs. Donahue.

Within minutes a very bewildered Mrs. Donahue appeared. The diminutive woman was not the type woman James would have imagined could run such a huge manor. He could have stretched out his arm and Mrs. Donahue could have stood at her full height underneath it.

Her salt and pepper hair was pulled back so severely it caused her gaunt face to appear drawn. Her sharp eyes darted between the earl and James.

“Lord Somerset would like a word with you,” the earl said.

Mrs. Donahue bobbed into a knee-cracking curtsy. James reached for her arm and helped her to rise. Surprised, she stared. “How may I be of assistance, milord?” she asked in a clipped Irish accent.

“Do you happen to know the whereabouts of Lady Somerset’s former governess, Miss Killian?” James asked.

Mrs. Donahue’s thin lips parted in shock. Again, her gaze flitted back and forth between the old earl and James.

“Madam, if you know, tell it,” the earl bellowed.

“After her employment was concluded here at Walnut Grange, she was unable to procure another position and she went…mad,” Mrs. Donahue stammered.

“Mad?” both James and the earl asked in unison.

Mrs. Donahue nodded. “She’s been in Bedlam asylum nigh three, nay, four years now.”

James’s heart sank. Conditions in London’s asylums were deplorable. Four years? Miss Killian might be incurably insane or perhaps even dead. At any rate, Patience’s secrets were lost with her.

* * * * *

After putting her pen aside, Patience rubbed her sore hand. She glanced at the clock and was astonished at how quickly the hours had flown by. Of course, the sheaf of sheets of foolscap filled with writing was also a testament to how long she’d been sitting here.

She looked over her work. She’d poured her darkest desires out on those pages and in the process and space of three hours, she’d learned more about herself than she had realized in her lifetime.

She’d also discovered that she was very much in love with her handsome husband.

The knowledge shook her to the core. She took a deep breath and blew it out. Loving James hadn’t happened overnight. No. Now, she saw how careful, how patient he’d been with her. He’d sacrificed his own desires to help her find hers.

Her heart leapt and she placed her hand over it as if she were trying to keep it from bursting out of her chest. She giggled aloud. “I love him,” she whispered, the realization stunning her. “I love my husband.”

Flipping through the pages, she perused what she’d written. She’d taken care to include scenarios where she interacted
with
him rather than writing scenes where the hero of the story did things
to
the heroine. Putting the words on paper had liberated her in a way reading and enacting the stories had not.

And while she still entertained fantasies of having control robbed of her, she now wanted to share the pleasures that could be had with her husband.

Eager to apologize for her reticence the night before and to give him her story, Patience gathered the sheaves of foolscap and scurried toward James’s study.

She knocked on the door but there was no reply. A sense of alarm caused her stomach to knot but she forced the unwelcome emotion away. He had stepped out. That was all.

She’d leave her story as a surprise and he’d be back soon to read it. Imagining it inspired her. He couldn’t still be angry with her after he read what she’d written. He just couldn’t.

Heart hammering, she twisted the door handle and stole inside the cold, dark office. There was no fire in the grate. All his correspondence had been neatly tidied by the staff. Patience wondered if he’d been here at all.