Trusting Miss Trentham

Chapter 11

Chapter Eleven

Dinner was chitterlings, and a suet pudding. “Chitterlings?” Letty said, trying to determine what exactly was on her plate. Some kind of sausage? “What a curious name. Do you know what it is?”

“Pig intestines,” Reid told her.

“Oh.” Letty cut herself a small piece and chewed dubiously. But the chitterling, stuffed with savory breadcrumbs and fried with bacon, was surprisingly tasty. “It’s good. You must have some.”

Reid glanced at her sardonically. Did he take her comment as a request?

Letty kept an eye on his plate while she ate. He did eat quite a few chitterlings, and he even suffered to eat several mouthfuls of suet pudding. Not nearly enough food for a man of his size, but significantly more than he’d eaten their first night here.

“Do you prefer brandy or port, Mr. Reid?”

His eyebrows rose. “Now?”

“In general.”

He shrugged. “Brandy. Why?”

“Just curious.”

Later that evening she had a discussion with the landlord, which resulted in the man bringing her a bottle of his best brandy, a glass, and a teaspoon. Letty placed the tray on a chair by the door, out of the way. “I shall take you to London next month,” she told Eliza, while the girl brushed out her hair and plaited it neatly. “To a very good lying-in hospital in Holborn. It’s a little early, I know, but I think it’s the best place for you.”

The girl’s eyes met hers in the mirror.

“It’s a charity hospital, but I promise you it’s very clean and respectable. You’ll be quite safe there.”

After a moment, Eliza bit her lip and nodded. “Thank you, ma’am.”

Her hair plaited, Letty turned to face the girl. “I imagine you’d prefer not to keep the child, but . . . I may be wrong?”

Eliza shuddered, and shook her head. “I don’t want it, ma’am.”

The poor wee thing, unwanted before it was even born. “Then it shall be placed in a foundling home. I know some very good ones. You may be certain the child will be well cared for. And when it’s old enough, it can go into service. How does that sound?”

Eliza’s eyes filled with grateful tears. “It sounds perfect, ma’am.”

Letty looked the girl up and down. “You need a new gown. That one’s looking tight. I’ll buy you one tomorrow.”

“I can let out the seams again—”

“A new gown,” Letty said, firmly. “Now, off to bed with you. I shan’t need you any more tonight.”

Eliza smiled through her tears and bobbed a curtsy. “Thank you, ma’am. Goodnight, ma’am.”

At a quarter past one, Letty woke to the now-familiar sound of Mr. Reid’s nightmares. She lit her candle, threw a shawl around her shoulders, shoved her feet into slippers, and grabbed the tray.

Tonight, she wasn’t hesitant; she entered Reid’s room without knocking, put the tray down, and hurried to his bedside.

This wasn’t sleep; this was torment. Reid thrashed, his tendons standing out, muscles straining, sweat beading his skin. His breathing was loud, harsh, irregular.

“Icarus! Wake up!”

Reid was locked in his dream. His face twisted. His breathing became harsher. He bucked wildly. A cry of pure distress tore from his throat.

“Icarus!” Letty grabbed his shoulder and shook him hard. “Wake up!”

Reid’s eyelids snapped open. His arm lashed out at her.

Letty ducked back swiftly. “Icarus! It’s me.”

Reid lunged up from the bed, murderous savagery on his face.

“Icarus! Stop!”

He halted, half out of the bed, one bare foot on the floor. He blinked—and she saw him come back into himself. Awareness, understanding, and recognition flooded his face.

Letty watched warily as Reid fumbled for the bed and sat. Her heart hammered loud and fast at the base of her throat. Lord, he’d been as mad as a berserker.

But Reid no longer looked dangerous. His skin-tone was gray and he was perceptibly shaking. He rubbed his face hard, as if trying to scrub the nightmare away.

“Back into bed!” Letty said briskly.

She plumped the pillows, hauled the sheets and quilt into order again, and put Reid to bed as if he was a child, propping him up to half-sit. He obeyed without protest, shivering hard. He looked slightly dazed, as if his body was in Basingstoke, but his thoughts were somewhere far, far away. His breathing had a faint hitch to it.

Letty poured a generous glass of brandy and handed it to him. “Drink this.”

Reid obeyed, gulping a mouthful. He inhaled sharply, and coughed. “Jesus!” It took him several seconds to catch his breath. The dazed look was gone and there was faint color in his cheeks. “What the devil?”

“It’s brandy,” Letty said.

“I realized that.”

“I thought it might help.” She perched beside him on the bed, curling her feet under her. “Go on, drink it all.”

Reid hesitated, and took a sip.

Letty sat quietly, watching him. How could a man go from terrifyingly dangerous to heartrendingly vulnerable in the space of a few minutes? It was more than the tremor in his hands and the hitch in his breathing. It was his hair, disheveled and damp with sweat. It was the hollow at the base of his throat, glimpsed through the open collar of his nightshirt. It was the bare wrists, exposed where his cuffs had ridden up.

For some reason, that shadowy hollow, those exposed wrists, made Reid seem so defenseless that Letty’s throat tightened painfully. She swallowed twice, and cleared her throat. “Is the brandy any good?”

“Tolerable.” The silver gaze settled on her face. “Thank you.”

Letty almost blushed. “You’re welcome.”

Sitting beside Reid on the bed, she could smell him, smell fresh male sweat. Inexplicably, it made her want to lean closer and inhale deeply, made her want to fill her lungs with his scent.

Letty looked away. The small vial of valerian caught her eye. One hurdle at a time.

She glanced back at Reid. His eyelashes were astonishingly long, and spiky with moisture. Had he cried in his dream?

He took another sip of brandy, rubbed his face roughly, sighed.

Letty wasn’t sure if it was the sigh, or the damp eyelashes, or the bleak weariness on Reid’s face, but she experienced an almost overwhelming urge to lean over and hug him.

She buried her hands in her lap and looked away again.

When Reid finished the brandy, Letty took the glass. “Would you like more? There’s a whole bottle.”

“I should be in my cups if I had any more.”

“Why not? If it would help you sleep.”

“I never sleep again.”

Letty’s eyebrows rose. This was unprecedented openness from Mr. Reid. “What else have you tried? Other than laudanum?”

He looked away. “You should go to bed.”

“What else have you tried?”

Reid glanced at her. His jaw tightened. A flicker of annoyance crossed his face. “It doesn’t matter. I told you, I’ll be—”

“Dead by the end of the year. Yes, I know.” Letty crossed to the tray. “I bought some valerian. Have you tried that?”

Reid didn’t reply. She looked over her shoulder to find him eyeing her narrowly.

“The apothecary said valerian’s not at all like laudanum. It’s not an opiate. It won’t put you to sleep, but it will encourage you to sleep.”

Reid’s eyebrows flicked slightly in disbelief. He said nothing.

Letty picked up the vial and the teaspoon and brought them to the bed. “I should warn you, it does smell rather bad.”

Reid eyed her even more narrowly, and then sighed, not a sigh of annoyance, but of resignation. “How bad?”

Letty uncorked the little vial and held it out.

Reid sniffed. His head jerked back. “Jesus!”

“Please?” Letty said. “Just once?”

They matched gazes for several seconds. Finally, Reid looked away. “All right, I’ll try it. Once.” There was an undertone in his voice that took her a moment to recognize: wryness. He was humoring her.

Letty measured out the valerian.

Reid swallowed it, and grimaced.

“Would you like a little more brandy to wash it down? Just a mouthful?” Letty splashed a small amount into the glass and held it out to him.

Reid swallowed the brandy, too.

“Do you normally r******w?” A glance around his bedchamber showed her six books stacked in a pile. “Which one are you reading?”

“The second volume of The Odyssey.”

Letty fetched the book, but she didn’t hand it to Reid; instead, she sat cross-legged on the end of his bed, and opened the volume. “From the beginning?”

“I am perfectly capable of reading myself,” Reid told her. The wryness was gone from his voice; in its place was a faint edge of irritation.

“I enjoy The Odyssey.” Letty opened the book—it was Alexander Pope’s translation—smoothed her hand over the first page, and began to read.

At the end of the third page, she risked a glance at Reid. The irritation had faded from his face. He looked almost relaxed.

By the end of the seventh page, his eyes were heavy-lidded and drowsy. Letty lowered her voice and spoke more slowly.

By the tenth page, Reid was asleep.

Letty closed the book quietly and crept off the bed.

She stood for a long moment, looking down at him. This was a Reid she’d not seen before. All the tension, the grimness, the bleakness were gone from his face. He didn’t look dangerous; he looked peaceful.

His hands lay limply. Beautiful hands. The sort of hands a Greek sculptor would prize, large and strong and lean-fingered. They seemed very brown against the white of the sheet.

She wanted to reach out and take one of them, wanted to lay her palm against his, slide her fingers between his. She wanted to lean down and kiss him, kiss those cheekbones, kiss that mouth.

Liquor and s*x, the old woman had said. The feather bed jig.

I wish I truly was Mrs. Reid.

Letty picked up her chamberstick and tiptoed from the room.