Page 31 of A Kiss Gone Wylde
“Then what would you call it?” he challenged, before taking a sip of his brandy. It was the first hint of a thaw between them.
Payne shrugged, sipped his own brandy and then answered, “Magnificent, sir. I would call it magnificent. She’s a veritable Valkyrie despite her diminutive stature.”
“You certainly sound like a man in love,” Thomas Wylde stated emphatically.
He wanted to deny it. The words sprang to his lips, and yet he could not force them out. He could not speak them aloud because he wasn’t entirely certain himself. If anyone had asked him to describe Anne or what his feelings for her had been, he would have said that she was lovely. He would have said that he cared for her. But he couldn’t have said anything about her wit or her warmth or the way she drove him to complete madness and then made him laugh until his sides ached. In three days with Benny, he’d experienced more intimacy—not simply physical intimacy—than he’d ever known with any other woman. The thought of something happening to her, of that spark that was simply her being extinguished, had nearly broken him. The relief that had swept through him when he found her at that inn, unharmed, had been staggering.
“With all due respect, sir, my feelings formywife are something that should be discussed between us before they are disclosed to anyone else,” Payne countered.
“Past tense,” Wylde mused aloud.
“Pardon?”
Wylde looked at him very directly. “In reference to the gentleman that accosted my daughter… you referred to him in the past tense. Why?”
“Because he attempted to abduct her—well, he succeeded in abducting her—today. In the process of rescuing her I was left with no alternative but to shoot him.” Payne uttered the statement as dispassionately as possible. It was not an easy thing—the knowledge that he had taken someone’s life, even if that life was as miserable and wasted as Wainwright’s had been. He also knew that he’d do it again. In less than a heartbeat. He’d been willing to negotiate, to try and talk Wainwright out of his madness, when it had been Gordon’s life on the line. The very second the threat had shifted to Benny, there’d been no hesitation.Because he simply couldn’t live in a world where she was not.In three days of marriage, she’d twisted him up like the paper flowers children hawked in the market.
“I’ll have the contracts drawn up,” Mr. Wylde stated. “I’ll send them by courier after my solicitor completes them… Benny’s dowry shall be placed in trust for any future children she may bear, if that is agreeable to you.”
“It is,” Payne answered.
The older man nodded. “Very well. Please do not ever give me cause to regret not simply putting a pistol ball in you.”
Payne realized that, if he gave the man cause to regret it, he might well wish for that pistol ball. Benny was far more important to him than he could have ever imagined and he couldn’t help but wonder what that meant.
19
Benny hadn’t requested the hot bath. She was certain that Payne must have ordered it for her as her mother and father departed with copious tears and many dark looks, respectively.
It wasn’t that she was ungrateful for the thoughtful gesture. The hot water felt positively divine. She hadn’t realized how much her struggles with Wainwright had impacted her until she could finally take a moment to relax. Her poor body was practically covered with bruises—small, none of them too serious, but numerous enough to warrant a few winces as she moved. Her wrist had taken the worst of it. She could see his finger prints on her skin. They were very visible reminders of what might have happened. To hide them, Benny dropped her hand beneath the water and tried to still her racing mind.
Some memories would not be quashed, however. And the terrible fears of what might have been would not be laid to rest. They tormented her every time she closed her eyes. So much so that she feared she might never be granted any peace from them.
The door opened and she could hear Payne moving about in their bedchamber. Unlike many married couples, he’d never entertained the notion that they would have separate rooms. But now she almost wished he had. She felt too vulnerable. Too raw and exposed. Still, there were conversations that needed to occur. Anne Bardwell. The questions about who she had been to him and what his feelings for her continued to be—they loomed large for her. Large and intimidating. She didn’t need to believe he loved her, Benny thought, despite the realization she’d come to about her feelings for him. But it would be hellish to imagine that he loved someone else.
The door opened and closed. She assumed it was the maid and rose from the tub, reaching for one of the plush towels to dry herself with. But the maid didn’t speak. She didn’t rush forward with Benny’s wrapper. And that was how she knew it wasn’t the maid at all, but her husband who had entered the bathing room.
With a heavy sigh, she turned to face him. Her wrapper was dangling from his fingertips. “May I have that please? I’m cold.”
“I have better ways to keep you warm,” he offered. It was in jest, of course. Even as she said it, he was extending the robe toward her.
Benny accepted it and slipped her arms into the voluminous sleeves. It would be easy to let him take her to bed, to let him kiss away all the hurt and fear while she lost herself in the pleasure he could give her. But in the morning, those questions would return. Those fears would return. And she wasn’t one to procrastinate.
Benny faced him directly and spoke with quiet conviction. “Since we married, we’ve been very quick to jump into the marriage bed. We know one another well enough in the biblical sense. I think we need to know one another in other ways now.”
He leaned back against the doorframe, feet crossed at the ankles, hands propped on his hips, head leaned back to expose the strong column of his throat. He looked world weary, tired beyond belief and so delectable she wanted to hurl herself at him and wrap all her limbs about him at once. But that wasn’t going to fix what was wrong between them. They needed more talking and less touching, at least for the time being.
“What would you like to know?” Payne asked.
Benny repeated the question that had plagued her for the entirety of the day. “Who was Anne Bardwell?”
He was silent for a moment. Then he sighed. “In all honesty, I struggle to remember her. I know her name. I know her face because I have—had— a miniature portrait of her downstairs in my desk. But I cannot recall the sound of her voice, the way she laughed… We were not betrothed, but we would have been eventually. I wanted an adventure, first. I think that is something you can certainly understand.”
“Did you love her?” Benny hated the desperation in her voice, she hated how fragile she sounded as she silently begged for it to not be so.
“I thought I did. You must understand, Benny… I was a boy then. Not even nineteen years old. I was infatuated with Anne, but not to the degree that I wanted to rush into marriage with her. I courted her, we had an unofficial agreement that upon returning from my grand tour, I would propose. And in that time, Anne was either seduced by another, or forced into—well, forced. I honestly do not know the truth of it now. I do know that she died giving birth to an illegitimate child in a filthy bed in a ramshackle building that someone had the nerve to call a hospital. It was anything but.”
“And the child?”
