Nora placed a palm on the center of his chest when he bent to kiss her once again. “I have something I need to discuss with you,” she began, her cheeks burning in mortification.
His blue eyes instantly softened and his bold, dark brows furrowed. “Is everything alright? Are you unwell?” His hold immediately gentled with concern.
“I am not sick…merely….” she was having trouble meeting his eyes. “My courses have arrived and I am afraid we cannot be together.” She gnawed on her lower lip, fearful of how he might react. She knew some men couldn’t abide womanly issues.
He cupped her cheek and tilted her face to look up into his and she knew she should have given him more credit. Thomas lived in a household full of women, afterall. “That is nothing to fret over. Are you in any discomfort? I believe Cook keeps some willowbark to brew into tea if you require it.” Nora shook her head and fell a little more in love with him. “Good.” He gave the tip of her nose a little peck. “So there will be no baby this month. We can be more careful from this moment on; though I do think a pregnancy might be just the special circumstances we require to be wed before I come of age.”
Nora’s heart leapt into her throat. “A baby!”
Thomas tilted his head. “Do you not want children? I always believed you did.”
“Of course I do,” she stammered. “I just hadn’t considered it a possibility.”
“It is a very real possibility.” Thomas leaned in and nuzzled her ear; his warm breath there made her knees weak. “Especially if we carry on as we did in the orchard.”
She narrowly resisted the urge to press a hand to her cramping lower abdomen. A baby.Thomas’sbaby. The ideaexcited her as much as it frightened her. “Maybe…we can wait just a little while longer for a child?” she asked hesitantly.
“If that is what you wish, then I will oblige. It is your body. Just know that the sight of you growing round with my child would make me a very happy man, indeed.”
Nora tossed her head back and laughed, throwing her arms around his neck and pulling him down for a kiss.
Some minutes passed before Thomas broke away. She recognized the now-familiar gleam in his eye.
“How about a walk, hm? I’ve some energy I need to work off.”
“Poor dear,” she feigned pity and slipped his arm through his, patting his hand as one might if comforting a small child.
“Be careful, minx.” Thomas’s grin was wolfish and made her skin tingle. “I will remember this and exact my revenge when the time is right.”
They spent two hours in pleasant conversation, meandering through the grounds and straying further and further away as they lost all sense of time and place. It was an easy thing to do when they were together. They walked until the afternoon clouds blotted out the sun, heralding an impending shower.
“You slip back in through the breakfast room and I’ll return through the front door a few minutes later,” Thomas advised Nora with a peck on her lips. “And I shall see you at supper.”
Nora sighed dreamily and allowed his arm to slip through her fingers. Two steps away and she already missed the solid strength of it. She could feel his eyes following her retreat, and it was everything she could do not to look back.
She was about to duck back through the servants’ stairs to the floor where the bedrooms were situated when a maid wrenched it open and nearly collided headlong with her.
“Oh! Miss Nora!” she bobbed a quick curtsey, her cap eschew. “The viscountess—she’s been looking for you.”
“Ah, thank you,” Nora stammered, her heart beginning to race in her breast. Could Lady Bexton have seen them in the gardens? Whatever would Nora have to say for herself if she were about to be confronted? She began to wring her hands together. The maid began to scurry away, but stopped when Nora asked where she might find her.
“Why, up in Miss Beth’s bedchamber, of course.” The wrinkle between the maid’s pale brows made Nora feel as if she’d asked a stupid question. “I’ve been sent to retrieve another bag from the physician’s cart; if you’ll please excuse me.” With that, the maid was off.
Nora’s dread quickly morphed into fear. Physician? In Beth’s room? Heart careening through her chest, Nora dashed up the servants’ stairwell rather than go all the way ‘round to the foyer and the main staircase. A curse escaped her lips when she tripped on the hem of her skirts, but she made quick work of the steps when she hiked the fabric up into her arms.
She was at Beth’s doorway in no time, though she panted and dark spots danced on the periphery of her vision. That was the last time she ran in a full corset.
The viscountess looked up at Nora’s entrance. Her pale face was drawn and her mouth was pulled into such a taut line as to be nearly nonexistent. She was perched on the edge of Beth’s bed, upon which lay Beth in nothing more than her shift. A large white bandage was wound around the side of her head and obscuring one eye, and there was a small red cut on the curve of her chin. Her perfect skin was nearly the color of the bandage. For the first time, Nora noticed the dark splotches on thevisctountess’s bodice, as if she’d cradled her wounded daughter to her breast. The physician was tying off another bandage on Beth’s forearm, his gnarled hands surprisingly nimble.
“W—What happened?” Nora panted just as the maid from downstairs brushed past her with an apology and handed a folded leather case to the physician.
“A fall,” the physician answered instead of the viscountess. “Miss Bexton experienced an episode during tea and dropped her cup to the floor. It shattered where she fell.” He unwrapped the case and extracted two dark glass vials. “Luckily, the worst cut was in her hairline and should heal well. Head and facial lacerations tend to bleed quite profusely even when the wound is minor.” He placed the vials on the bedside table, walked around the bed to share a few murmured words with the viscountess, gave a deferential bow of his head, and then took his leave. The silence he left in his wake was leaden.
“Where were you?” demanded the viscountess before Nora could speak.
“I was—”
“Certainly not in your room.” This was the coldest she’d ever heard the woman she’d come to regard as a second mother. Heavy footsteps came up behind her, and Nora didn’t need to turn to know it was Thomas standing in the doorway, too, now. She could sense him as if they were bound by an invisible tether.
