Page 45 of An Inconvenient Vow

Once he had lathered and scrubbed himself clean, he stepped back into his braies and made his way over to the bed. It was narrower even than the one she called her own at Tipton Hall. After easing his way in, he realized there was no way he could distribute his limbs so that they were not touching hers, and after a moment, he stopped trying. Sabina shifted about a bit, and he realized she was attempting the same impossible feat.

“It is just as well the dogs did not sleep in with us. There is scarcely room enough in this bed for the both of us,” he commented dryly. She gave a murmur of agreement. Jeffree stared up at the ceiling. He felt acutely aware of where his thigh rested against hers. The last time they had shared a bed, he had woken up covering her backside in a most undignified manner.

Annoyingly, even the thought of it made parts of his anatomy stir in a disturbing fashion. For such an abrasive woman, she was a soft and pleasing armful. And those fucking braids. He had no notion why they affected him like they did. All through his wash, he had been stealing glances at them where they hung down from the bed. He wanted to touch them, to close his fingers about them and squeeze them tight in his fist.

The thought made his breath quicken. He imagined wrapping the honey-colored ropes of her hair about his hand. That thought made him groan faintly. He heard a rustle and guessed Sabina’s head had turned or lifted from her pillow bearer. She said nothing though, and he heard another rustle as though she had lowered it again.

“Was your first husband really gored to death by a boar?” he heard himself ask gruffly.

“Yes,” she answered after a faint pause. “I would not make up such a tale just to amuse your brothers.”

“But you were already living apart by that point?”

“Yes.”

“He never… tried to reclaim you from your father’s house?”

She sighed. “The first two times I left he did, but not the third.”

Instead of thinking the man demeaned himself to chase after her even once, he found himself asking, “Why not the third time?”

Again, she paused before answering. “You do not think twice was enough for any reasonable man?” Her light evasive tone caused him to turn his head sharply.

Of course, he could make nothing out in the dark. “Why did he not come for you the third time, Sabina?” he persisted, and he heard her give an audible swallow.

“Because… he knew I would not forgive him the third time,” she answered at last.

“Why?”

She huffed again and the blankets moved as her knees raised and then fell as she changed positions. “I do not want to talk about it.”

Jeffree pondered this a moment. Now that he thought about it, it struck him as strange that Wilfred Burrell should have allowed his married daughter to return under his roof. From the way he had strongarmed Sabina into remarrying for respectability’s sake, Jeffree would not have said his father-in-law was the sort to go against public opinion. That meant there had to have been a good reason for him to fly in the face of the judgment of his neighbors.

“Did Hendry beat you?” he hazarded, feeling his throat grow unaccountably tight. Some would say this was still a husbandly prerogative, of course, but a fond father might not agree.

“No,” Sabina answered. “I told you Miles’s faults already. He was no wife-beater.”

“Then why did your father allow your return?”

She moved again and he felt her foot brush his before she drew it hastily back. “My father did not precisely agree with my turning up on his doorstep,” she admitted grudgingly. “But well… the third time was sort of different.”

“And why was that?”

She didn’t speak for a long moment, long enough for him to nudge her foot with his own. That startled her into speech alright.

“It was our maidservant, Delia Selwyn,” Sabina began reluctantly. “She… disappeared one summer evening. Miles said she must have run off with her swain. He said she was flighty and a few other things that struck me as odd. She had always been such a firm favorite of his. Then when I was in the village some weeks later…” Her words trailed off.

“Yes?” he asked sharply. “You saw her?” For a moment, he had envisaged Hendry drowning the wretched maid in the duckpond. But no, that was absurd. If Sabina’s first husband had been a murderer Osborn would surely have uncovered the fact in the local tavern.

“Not her, but her aunt, Mistress Selwyn, the blacksmith’s wife. She apologized for approaching me, but they were desperate. It took me a moment to understand what she was telling me. Delia was expecting a child you see, and Miles had thrown her out. It was his child, of course. He had refused to provide for it, had threatened to deny it was his, but I knew the truth as soon as I heard it. It made perfect sense that he would have seduced the girl. I should have known.” Her voice sounded removed and cool, as though it was something that had happened a hundred years ago instead of two.

“Then what happened?” he asked. “What did you say to this Selwyn woman?”

“I promised her that provision would be made for the girl, of course, and then I confronted Miles and told him he must discharge his debt honorably. My family had held their heads high for generations in this part of the country and it was not for him to destroy our good name.

“Miles did not see it the same way. He sneered at my notions of honor, and said my father was an old dotard and I could return to him for good this time as he’d had enough of me. I told him my father was a greater man than he could ever hope to be. Then I packed my things and left for the third and final time. I never looked back.”

“You told your father of Hendry’s conduct?”