Page 11 of The Baron Takes a Wife

Elena felt a rush of affection for Irene, saying softly, “Perhaps you can write David to tell you.”

“Oh, Elena, I completely forgot. He just wrote that he is coming back for my Season!”

“What?” Elena felt all the air leave her lungs but sought to cover it with a polite cough as Maggie seemed to be watching Elena surreptitiously. Elena was aware that Maggie knew more about her marriage than Irene did. As her mind raced, she forced herself to catch her breath. David was good, she reminded herself. David was kind. She liked David. But she liked her life as it was, and he had not mentioned returning for the Season before. What could that mean? She did not know what she meant when she vaguely promised to think of “maybe someday” all those years ago, and she still had not considered that someday to be the near future. At the time, “maybe someday” was a faraway hope that she could be the girl she once was with no scar. The girl whose heart was still whole and unbroken. Which she would never be after Anatole’s betrayal and her fateful journey to Üsküdar. With that last thought, she unconsciously shuddered.

Perhaps he was just coming for this Season, she reasoned with herself. She knew that Irene would be delighted to see her brother, especially for her come out that she was so dreading, so she pasted on a smile and squeezed Irene’s hand. “How lovely. How is he feeling? And how long did he say he was staying?” Elena tried to ask casually.

“He didn’t say exactly. He said he would arrive in a fortnight.”

Elena tried to remember what a fortnight was in her head. Was it two weeks or four? Irene noticed her silence. “He’ll be here in fourteen days.”

Covering her embarrassment, Elena nodded. “Yes, well, we must get you to the modiste after this, so when your brother comes, you will have time to spend with him. I am sure he will want to see his favorite sister.”

“I’m his only sister.” Irene rolled her eyes and gave Elena a begrudging grin.

“Yes, but you must do me the courtesy of laughing because I rarely make jokes in English, even if they are bad.” Elena felt a twinge as she thought of her father’s jokes and how she missed them, even if they, too, were bad, and then grasped Maggie’s arm. “Come, I want to hear how this royal visit came about in the first place."

Chapter Four

David felt his heart pound in anticipation as his carriage drew nearer and nearer to his London townhouse. They knew he was coming. He reminded himself that he had written Irene that he would be arriving that day and a little of his improved condition. He knew that his sister read his letters to his wife, as Elena had started adding small notes at the bottom of Irene’s letters this past year. Clearly, she had picked up writing in English, and with each letter, he found himself skipping forward to her notes. They were written as she spoke, earnest and quietly funny. Using only the necessary number of words to convey her meaning. One of these notes had led him back here, though ostensibly he was returning for his sister’s first Season. In one of her notes, Elena had used the phrase “maybe someday.” While it was not in the same context they had discussed outside Balaclava, that phrase and another discovery began to give him hope. As he read the letter, he caught that smell of faint amber that always reminded him of her, and for the first time since he was wounded, he began to feel the stirrings of desire. Nothing full-fledged, no raw passion, but something tentative and new. Different than before he was injured. The doctors in Bern believed he had sustained a severe bruise to his spine and through treatments, exercise, and will, but most likely, sheer luck at where his injury was located, his ability to walk returned, though he would probably have to use a cane for the rest of his life. How odd that walking sticks seemed to be back in fashion among the ton when he couldn’t care less about the current fashion. While he had written that he was coming back for Irene, and he was, he really was. He was also coming back to know what “maybe someday” meant. He wanted to see if he could have a true marriage with Elena, if “maybe someday” meant someday soon or someday never.

As he handed his hat to the butler, Fields, when he came in, he saw the man’s gaze go straight to his right temple. He had grown so used to his scars that he had almost forgotten how jarring he must look to those who had known him most of his life. He allowed the older man a moment to avert his eyes.

“My sister?”

“With your wife, sir, in the music room,” Fields seemed to recover, respectable English butler that he was. “It’s good to have you back, my lord.” He heard faint chords and bursts of laughter, and something settled inside him.

“It’s good to be back, Fields.” He grinned, which barely hurt at all these days, and then started a quick pace with his cane toward the music room. He was surprised. His sister was a dab hand at the piano, but Elena? They had not talked much about music. Then he stopped in his tracks, recognizing the familiar melody as the notes crept down the hall. It was the song. The tune too sad to be a lullaby that she often sang softly to herself. But now, with the piano accompaniment, it sounded both like a memory of his childhood and something new and unfamiliar. He slowed when he came to the doorway, catching sight of his sister, Irene, seated at the piano, glancing warmly at Elena, who sat next to her humming. Irene looked so much like their mother, with her dark brown hair, almost black, and olive-green eyes like his that he had to stop a second and blink to remind himself it was his sister sitting there and not his long-gone mother. And Elena, although her forest green morning gown was utterly different from the drab gray gowns of Balaclava, seeing her again warmed him precisely like before. He felt his heart clench and beat as it had not since he had seen her last. He had come back with an off-hand hope, but at this moment, he knew his ultimate goal was to make it a reality. He just hoped she might eventually feel the same way, too.

They just needed to be reacquainted.

Lost in his thoughts, he did not hear as the music stopped.

“David!”

His sister rose quickly from the piano bench, throwing her arms around him. Behind her, Elena stood slowly, her features unreadable.

“We did not expect you until much later, my lord.”

Her “my lord” hung strangely in the air, as she had rarely, if ever, had called him that before.

“Please call me David like you used to, Elena. We need not stand on formality.” We are married, after all, he held himself back from adding.

She ducked her head, quirking her mouth slightly. He could tell she did not quite know how to act around him, standing back closer to the piano. He understood as he didn’t quite know how to act around her either. Their acquaintance had been so intense and so brief, then he had been gone these past three years. She was a woman with whom he had shared his darkest secrets, as well as a stranger from a faraway land.

“You adapted the song?”

“Yes, Irene heard me singing it one night—”

“David, you should have been there,” Irene jumped in, seeming oblivious to the tension and uncertainty in the room. “I had never heard anything like it before. It was like a Chopin, so sad and full of longing and—”

“Yes, I’ve heard it before,” he said softly, sharing a secret smile with Elena. “A long time ago.”

Elena shook her head as if to clear it from the moment before, then gestured toward the bellpull. “May I offer you refreshment? I do not quite know how to act in your house, though I have lived in it these past few years.”

He was grateful she had acknowledged the tension. “Yes, let’s ring for tea.”

“You British and your tea, it means everything. At home, when we had tea, we just drank tea.” She walked over to join them, a little more confidence imbued in her step.