Page 50 of Better Love Next Time
Happy Birthday. I hope this letter finds you as safe as Father Dunlevy assures me you are. I have no cause to doubt him as he is most patient and kind where my fears for you are concerned. This morning, Anthony Philips arrived for the second time this month. He had already given me your quarterly allowance his last visit, so I was surprised to see him. I took him on the Fairy, and without wind to fill the sails, he rowed us to Huntingdon. Your friend is a fine rower, very strong, and his knowledge of poetry is as broad as his chest.
Seized by a consuming misery, I wept for you and confessed my fears of your death. Anthony sweetly held my hand, assuring me you would want me to be happy and so, I should look toward the future, even if it is without you, for you will always be in my heart. He kissed my mouth and it made me slightly less sad.
Yours Looking Toward the Future,
Kitty
Look toward the future?
He kissed my mouth?
Slightly less sad?
Julian stuffed Kitty’s letters into the box. There weren’t enough curses to satisfy his rage. In truth, during his reading he had lost his finely honed skill for swearing. Nearly five hundred letters to his one. He deserved the gut-wrenching guilt and the self-doubt and the ruined leg. But he’d never excelled at martyrdom. He didthings about it.
He snuffed the candle and righted his crutches. Swinging to the stairs, he slid his backside down the steps and headed to the stables. He was going to get down on the able knee he had and apologize to Kitty. From there, he would grovel.
Entering the stables, he fumbled through the dark aisle and overturned a bucket on the way to the saddle room. The point of his crutch skidded through the water and he flew forward, twisting in time to avoid landing on his chin.
A stable boy waved a lantern in his face. “Would you be needing help, sir?”
“I want a horse.” He hopped to his crutches.
“Begging your?—”
“Saddle one now. Please.” If the surgeon hadn’t said Julian risked never walking again if he bore weight, he’d do it himself.
“Is there a particular hor?—”
“One with four legs.”
“Yes, sir.” The boy hurried off.
He used the mounting block for the first time he could remember, handing off his crutches to the boy and crawling on top of it. The big gelding, Turk, pinned an ear as Julian planned his attack. Grabbing the mane with both hands, he shoved off with his left leg and vaulted the dead weight of his right, up and over.
He gave Turk a hearty pat on the neck. “It’s the little things in life, isn’t it?”
The stable boy looked doubtful. “Would you like me to ride with you, sir?”
“Do I look like I need help?” With a grin, Julian motioned for the boy to hand him his crutches. Settled in the saddle, he reined the gelding out of the yard and rode south at a walk.
The slow pace grated his nerves. Until recently, he thought nerves were for women, like his mother when she wished to avoid tedious company. Hanging upside down, staring at death 150 feet below, with the ship heeling in a squall, Julian hadn’t had nerves. But now the moon tracked him through the grain fields and trees like a pest. Turk’s ceaseless, four-beat gait punctuated his thoughts like a dirge.
Crossing a fallow field, he passed the Notfelle hedge. Looming six feet high on the bank of a stream, Georgiana had conquered the monster on Turk while he had been trying to make something of himself. He’d gone hungry, been beaten by tougher men, become the tougher man who didn’t bully just because he could, used the brain no one gave him credit for, and none of it mattered.
He had to learn methods of thinking, flower mating, a dead language, and mythology. None of it would earn him a crumb of bread or a roof over his head. He had worn the same two pair of breeches for five weeks, with one leg cut off to fit over his splint. When the contraption came off in a month, would he be able to walk? Who cared? His knowledge of Shakespeare would be as broad as his chest.
How far had Anthony gone with Kitty? How many kisses? Had he touched her? On the boat he had built for her. Named after her.
Julian rounded Notfelle’s north wing toward the graves. He smelled the horse sweat lingering in the summer air. Under the lime tree, Julian saw her. Where he knew she would be because he knew her better than Anthony, who saw Kitty as afirst.
Lying on her side along the grave, her night robe bleached white in the moonlight, she talked to her mother. “…angry butI know you are relieved I don’t have to marry him. I pray he’s the last follower of the true faith in England. Oh, but what if Sir Jeffrey sends me to France?” She patted the grass. “True. He despises the Fr?—”
Turk nickered. Kitty pressed up on her hand, and it happened all over again. The parade of disappointment in her eyes, the stillness in her lithe body. Inside him, the rush of attraction, the fierce, pinpoint awareness of what he wanted and the steps required to get it.
Lifting his crutches from his lap, he braced them on Turk’s side and twisted slowly from the saddle. He sent the gelding off with a pat to his hindquarter to graze.
Kitty watched him as he maneuvered to the grave and lowered beside her. His gaze traced the line of her breasts. He saw where her hips flared out at her waist, met the slim length of her legs, and ended at two slippered feet.
