A Momentary Marriage(74)

“Mm. I suppose.”

“I shan’t say a thing to Laura.” Graeme rose. “You should go up and lie down, get rid of your headache.”

“No, I didn’t mean . . .”

“It’s fine.” Graeme smiled. “I’m the last person you need to play stoic with, James, you know that. I must pay my regards to your mother and the other ladies anyway.”

James stood up and followed him to the door. It seemed craven to seize on Graeme’s excuse. But maybe his cousin was right; things might improve if he lay down and slept. At least he could avoid being pulled into the drawing room by his mother.

He turned down the hall in the opposite direction, Dem padding along behind him, and climbed the back stairs to the next floor. He thought about the way Laura would soak a cloth in lavender water and lay it across his forehead, and he wished he had one of those rags now. Even better would be to have Laura sink her fingers into his hair, rubbing his scalp in that way that turned him to butter. It was amazing, really, this new affinity for being coddled.

He had always considered himself so independent, so self-contained, so little in need of someone else’s attention. He hated being cosseted. Why had it felt so good when Laura did it? Why did he miss it now?

James hesitated outside the door of his chamber. Dem tilted his head inquiringly. James looked down at him. “I know. I’m a fool, aren’t I?”

He walked on to Laura’s open doorway. Dem followed and squeezed past him into her bedchamber. Tail going at a slow pace, the mastiff trailed around the room, sniffing at this and that, reacquainting himself. James understood how Dem felt; he, too, had an urge to walk about the room, picking up her perfume bottle and sniffing it, trailing his hand along the cover of her bed.

Why had he insisted on going back to his room to sleep? It was much nicer here, really. All the reasons he’d told himself held, of course—his shaving stand was there, his clothes, everything. It was what he was accustomed to; he liked the comfort of his own bed. He liked to be alone.

But it was damned quiet and empty.

It wasn’t like this room, which even in Laura’s absence was filled with her presence. Her dressing gown was tossed across the foot of the bed. The cameo she often wore lay on top of her enameled jewel box. Her jars and bottles lined the vanity, the tortoiseshell brush and comb before them. Beside the brush set was a dainty glass dish containing the jumble of her hairpins. There was a squat perfume bottle of amethyst-colored crystal, with an arching metal spritzer and oblong bulb. The faint scent of lavender, Laura’s scent, hung in the air.

The furniture was mostly the same, heavy and dark, but she’d made the place her own—a low rocking chair by the window, decorative pillows strewn across the bed, a delicate lace runner along the dresser. Everything seemed softer here, more inviting. Feminine and faintly mysterious and therefore alluring.

He thought of what it would be like to lounge on the bed and watch her brush out her hair or pin it up, spray a little mist of perfume at her throat, clasp a strand of pearls around her throat. He thought of putting the pearls around her throat himself.

Trapped in his unsatisfying thoughts, he roamed to the window to gaze out. Laura was climbing up the steps from the garden. She wore no hat, and her blond hair gleamed in the sun. James leaned closer.

She looked up at the terrace, and a smile broke across her face. Below him Graeme stepped into view. As James watched, Laura ran lightly up the steps, her hands held out to Graeme. Her face glowed; James knew that if he were able to see her eyes, they would be shining. Something in James’s chest clenched, tight as a fist.

Did she still love the man? Graeme had pined for years over their blighted love; there was little reason to think Laura would not have done so, as well. And while Graeme had been pulled from that mire by his wife, had found love and happiness, Laura had never married. She had lived at home with her father, tending to him, helping him, no real life for her except in her music.

If he wanted to write a romantic tale of sorrow and lost love, with some wretchedly saintly heroine to suffer it all, Laura would be the perfect subject. The fact that Laura had faced her situation with a level head and a pleasant nature did not make her loss any less real.

James might dismiss the idea of love enduring over the years as maudlin sentimentality. But he was not the one who had to live this way, constantly reminded of what she had lost. He was not a woman of sensibility, artistic and loving and loyal.

Nor did it matter that James had not meant to put her in this situation, that he had tried to give her a rosier future than the one facing her. The result was still the same: Laura had saved James, and in doing so, had manacled herself to a marriage she did not want with a man she didn’t like, let alone love.