Not Quite a Husband Read online

  She wasn’t sure when the kiss ended. She emerged from a daze and had to blink for everything around her to come back into focus.

  “Promise me you won’t kiss me again,” he said. “Or you will ruin me for all other women.”

  Likely he delivered the same line to every woman he’d ever kissed—it was too perfect to be spontaneous. But it made her dizzy all the same. She nodded slowly.

  “Good. Because I would never forgive you, were you to break my heart.” He smiled, the very image of gilded youth, beloved of the gods. “Now shall we go before Callista comes looking for us?”

  Over breakfast, Bryony feigned a steady interest in the blood-and-gold sunrise over the jagged peaks that formed the eastern wall of Chitral Valley. But out of the corner of her eye, she followed Leo’s movements around the camp. He supervised the dismantling and packing of the tents, checked the load on each mule, conferred with the guides, and even spoke to a few of the coolies and the ayah in some native tongue.

  This last did not reassure her, for she had seen sahibs and memsahibs go at their native attendants in a mixture of English and what they believed to be Hindi and then simmer in frustration when the attendants returned with a sheaf of betel leaves instead of a glass of water.

  But she was in his hands now.

  The Chitral region was the pinnacle of the Hindu Kush, containing its tallest peaks and greatest glaciers. From Gilgit, Leo had come via the 12,000-foot Shandur Pass. To return to the plains of India, they would scale the 10,500-foot Lowari Pass, cross into still-mountainous Dir, and proceed south.

  Mountain travel was one of Bryony’s least favorite pastimes. Her trip from Kashmir to Leh, with a trio of English tourists, had been marred by squabbling coolies, bad food, and incessant complaints on the part of the English tourists about the laziness and untrustworthiness of all Kashmiris. The trek from Leh to Chitral, while without quite the bad blood, had suffered from chronic disorganization, the cooks falling far behind while the travelers starved, cake for tea saturated in fishy oil because it had been packed next to an open tin of sardines, and the Braeburns’ galvanized iron bath unusable for much of the trip, as a result of having had three holes knocked in it from careless handling.

  “You said we can be in Peshawar in one week?” she asked when he came to tell her that they were ready to depart.

  “Peshawar is out of our way. Nowshera is closer.”

  “We can be in Nowshera in one week?”

  “I can in four days. Whether we can in a week depends on how hardy a traveler you are.”

  She was hardy enough. But he had shadows under his eyes. He was thin almost to the point of gauntness. And despite the tan of his skin, his face had a pallor to it.

  An unwilling concern tugged at her. The constant travel of the past so many weeks had worn him down. He must be close to a state of exhaustion. To attempt to reach Nowshera in four days—or even a week—would probably send him into a breakdown.

  “Have you had breakfast?” she asked.

  He’d already started to walk away. He stopped. “I had something earlier.”

  “What did you have?”

  He frowned, as if irritated by her detailed questioning. “Some porridge or such.”

  That was scarcely enough nutrition for an already underfed man who had a strenuous trip ahead. She examined him again, looking for some visual clue to his state of less-than-robust health.

  “Are you suffering from a suppressed appetite?”

  “I would have thought that to be a natural result of seeing you,” he said, in perfectly polite viciousness.

  She bit her lower lip. “Is that a yes or a no?”

  “That is an ‘I don’t need a doctor so leave me be.’” He pivoted on his heels, then turned back toward her. “And even if I did need a doctor, you are the last doctor I would choose.”

  Are you quite certain you haven’t developed some dreadful condition that will lead to much bleeding, vomiting, and putrefaction? Will had asked—only half jokingly—when Leo had relayed the news of his betrothal. I’ve never known Bryony Asquith to display the least interest in a healthy man.

  You are feeling inadequate because she never displayed the least interest in you, Leo had replied, laughing, on top of the world, gloriously young and gloriously stupid.

  He raised his hand for an ironic tip of the hat toward her, but she reached forward and caught his wrist. Her fingers were cool, her grip firm but not tight: impersonal. And her hair, her beautiful hair, ruined, like a bolt of silk slashed by a careless knife.

  “You may not have a choice of doctor,” she said calmly. “The next nearest trained physician is at the garrison in Drosh. Beyond that, none until Malakand.”

  After fifteen seconds or so, she released his wrist and placed her palm against his forehead.

  He didn’t want to be so close to her. And he emphatically did not want her to touch him. “I’m not running a fever,” he said impatiently.

  Though he might, tomorrow. It had started almost a week ago, with dizziness and body ache. But he was well the next day, so he’d chalked it up to fatigue. Then the day after that, he’d run a low fever with chills. And so it went, one day relatively better, next day not so well. With every cycle, however, the fever got worse, as did the chills. Yesterday he’d even shivered when he’d passed through the sunless defile on his way to Rumbur Valley.

  She withdrew her hand and regarded him with some puzzlement. “No, there is no fever. Do you have any rashes or spots? Localized pain? Generalized pain? Dizziness? Shivering?”

  Will had been right. She was only ever interested in a man’s physical malfunctions.

  “No, nothing. I already told you, I don’t need a doctor. Let’s stop wasting time. We’ve a long way to go.”

  “Not today,” she said.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “I’m not used to being in a saddle anymore—I need a few days to get accustomed. I don’t wish to ride too long today.”

  He would have much preferred to get them through Lowari Pass by the end of the day—if the fever returned again tomorrow, more severe than the previous time, he didn’t know if he could handle either the trek up to the pass or the descent.

  Her request vexed him. Perhaps if she were a more delicate sort of woman … but when they’d been married she’d worked appalling hours. Despite her insubstantial frame, she was the last thing from delicate.

  “All right,” he said grudgingly. “I’ll make sure we don’t ride for too long today.”

  “Thank you,” she said. “Most kind of you.”

  She inclined her head and walked away toward her waiting horse. Only then did the strangeness of her request make itself felt. This was not at all like her. The Bryony he knew would rather have her haunches rubbed raw by the saddle than admit anything was the matter, the way she’d suffered through his lovemaking with clenched fists and rigid thighs.

  Sometimes people change, said a voice inside him.

  And sometimes they don’t.

  They crossed the river at Drosh, where Leo took the trouble to telegraph Callista from the British garrison to let her know that he’d found Bryony and that they would cable again when they had reached Nowshera. Afterward they had a light tiffin and continued on their journey—which, surprisingly enough, was smooth and without any memorable incidents whatsoever.

  They stopped for the day at the edge of an orchard and waited for the coolies to catch up so they could strike camp. Bryony sat atop a waist-high retaining wall, fanning herself with her straw hat. He stood with his back against the same wall, facing the slender blue river below.

  The river looped half a circle here, near the tapered southern end of Chitral Valley. The arable land on either side of the sinuous bend was terraced to cultivate tiers upon tiers of rice, maize, and fruit trees. But the scale of human occupation was dwarfed by enormous crags that jutted skyward on three sides.

  “You still don’t speak to your father?” he asked.


  The question snapped her out of her determined contemplation of the river. “I’ve never not spoken to my father,” she said.

  He looked up from the pear he was peeling with a pocketknife. Again she noticed his hard-worn hands. But their motion was still elegant: The peel of the pear fell in one long, unbroken curl.

  He’d bought the fruit from the owner of the orchard. Bryony liked pears very much. But she was damned if she would ask him for any. Perhaps later, when he was busy supervising the setting up of the tents, she’d slip away and buy a few for herself.

  “You don’t care whether your father lives or dies,” he pointed out.

  His hat sat at a careless angle on his head. His clothes could surely use a thorough ironing. And he seemed far too fatigued to be awake, let alone standing—she was very glad she’d chosen to limit his exertion by refusing to ride more than twenty miles. But she could not stop looking at him, standing there, peeling his pear, his jacket hanging loosely about his frame. And she could not help feeling for him something close to tenderness, as if he were a weary, lost traveler Fate had cast at her doorstep.

  “Geoffrey Asquith is a stranger to me.”

  “Fathers shouldn’t be strangers.”

  She shrugged. “Sometimes they are.”

  “Like husbands?” he said, not looking at her, smiling oddly.

  But apparently he did not expect her to answer that question, for he handed her a slice of pear. She hesitated, then stripped off one glove and accepted. The pear was cool and juicy, sweet with a trace of that faint bitterness particular to pears.

  She’d never imagined they’d be strangers. Sometimes she wished Miss Jones had never fallen prey to food poisoning. Then she would never have been called upon to perform the caesarean section in Miss Jones’s stead at that house on Upper Berkley Street. Then her illusion would have remained intact.

  And they might still be married, and today she might still be ignorantly content.

  She put her hat back on and tied the ribbons firmly under her chin. “So how was my father when you saw him last?”

  Unlike her, Leo had always been on the best of terms with everyone in her family. He seemed to find something to like about each one of them; and they admired him ardently in return.

  He raised one straight brow. “My, and here I thought you were completely heartless.”

  She stiffened. “Maybe I am. Maybe this is merely a pretense to converse.”

  He snorted. “You don’t know how to converse. Sometimes I think the spaces between the stars are filled with your silence.”

  “That’s not true. I talk.”

  “When you are forced to.” He offered her another piece of the pear. She had half a mind to decline, but the pear was very fresh and just the perfect ripeness.

  “When I dined with your family at the beginning of the year, your father seemed hale enough. Before I left, he presented me with a copy of his new book on Milton. I read it crossing the Red Sea.” He glanced at her. “You’ve never read any of his books, have you?”

  She shook her head. She’d never read them, but she’d burned some copies when she was eight or nine, when she still cared that Geoffrey Asquith had all the time in the world for his books but none for his daughter.

  “It was an excellent book, with much insightful analysis.”

  “I am sure it was. How was Callista?”

  “Same as always, full of quirks and oddities of her own. And still not married.”

  “She takes after me then. Everyone else?”

  “Your stepmother looked somewhat frail. She’d fractured her wrist the previous winter and hadn’t gone out in public for a while. Paul was the same. Angus was nursing a broken heart over having his marriage proposal rejected by Lady Barnaby.” He offered her yet another slice of pear. “But you don’t really care about them, do you?”

  He didn’t know her at all. And yet sometimes he knew her so well it frightened her.

  “How is your family?”

  He gave her a bemused look, but answered. “Well enough. Will and Lizzy have moved back to London. Matthew is commanding astronomical sums for his portraits. Charlie has decided he will marry any living, breathing woman willing to become a stepmother to his vast brood. And Jeremy is just busy being the earl.”

  His siblings all adored him, their baby brother. And both of his late parents had been devoted to him. The favorite, the beloved, who knew nothing of neglect and desperate loneliness.

  “And Sir Robert, is he well?”

  He is the finest young man I know, and you without question, the stupidest woman, Leo’s godfather had coldly informed Bryony on the eve of the granting of the annulment.

  “Quite well. It’s a good time to be a banker with all the gold wealth pouring in from South Africa.”

  She nodded. In time, a good chunk of that wealth would go to Leo. Would she still have had the courage to propose to him had she known of his place in his godfather’s will, known that he didn’t really need the money she’d bring to the marriage? Yes, probably. Once he’d kissed her, all she could think about was kissing him again and again—and doing everything else that had, until then, seemed ridiculous on paper, acts that ought to cause civilized people to die of embarrassment.

  “You should have saved a few of your questions,” he said, biting into the stump of the pear. “We will have nothing to say to each other for the rest of the trip.”

  She looked at him, looked at her now-empty hands, and realized that he’d given all the good pieces of the pear to her, that he himself hadn’t eaten any until now.

  And she suddenly had one more question—because it was far easier to tell him that he no longer existed for her than to actually make it so. Because the tides of her heart demanded it.

  “And how have you been?”

  He tossed away the core of the pear. “What do you care?”

  She compressed her lips. And shrugged.

  “Ah, I forgot, you are but conversing,” he said, with a tilt of his lips that wasn’t a smile. “I would say I have done exceptionally well. I have traveled the world, met interesting men and beautiful women, and been feted and toasted wherever I went.”

  She could very well believe that: a simple return to his glamorous bachelor life.

  He wiped his hands with a handkerchief. Stowing the handkerchief back in his pocket, he braced his hands on either side of him. The hand closest to her rested in the shadow cast by his own person. Out of the direct reach of the light, the cuts and bruises on his knuckles weren’t so prominent, only the elegant shape of his fingers.

  During their extremely brief engagement, he’d called on her every Sunday afternoon. And whenever they were left alone in her father’s drawing room, he would set those long, tapered fingers upon her person. She’d let him hold her hand, but his fingers always stole further north. On his last Sunday call, he’d managed to not only unbutton her sleeve, but kiss her on the tender inside of her elbow. And she, trembling with newly awakened desire, had not been able to sleep a wink that night.

  “And you, how have you been?” he asked, as if it were an afterthought.

  Outwardly, other than her hair, she had not changed much. She was still more or less the same cool, aloof woman who garnered more respect than affection. On the inside, however, it had been impossible to return to the person she used to be.

  She’d been content. She had not wanted to marry. Nor had she much interest in the largely empty rituals of Society. Medicine was a demanding god and she a busy acolyte in its vast temple.

  Then he had come into her life. And it was as if she’d been struck by lightning. Or a team of archaeologists had dug up the familiar scenes of her mind to reveal a large, ancient warren of unmet hunger and frustrated hope.

  It took her some time, after leaving him, to realize that she could never go back to the staid, narrow obliviousness that had characterized much of her twenties, when she’d been blithely unaware of all the secrets and upheavals just beneath the surface
of her heart.

  But except for a curious restlessness that had her pack her bags and move to the opposite end of the globe every year or so, she’d coped—if she hadn’t been at peace, then at least she wasn’t at war with herself.

  Until he’d abruptly reappeared in her life.

  “I don’t know,” she said at last. “I suppose—I suppose I have survived.”

  Leo had lied. The happiest hour of his life was not his wedding. The week before the wedding he’d been away, giving a series of lectures at the Académie de Paris. And when he’d returned and they’d exchanged their vows, it had been the first time Bryony wore that expression he would later name The Castle, wooden and emotionless. Until the moment the Bishop of London had pronounced them man and wife, he’d had a lump of fear in his throat that she would suddenly jilt him.

  No, the happiest hour of his life had been when she proposed.

  He’d last seen her when he was fifteen. He never thought that eight years later, when he met her again, it would be as if no time had passed at all, that he’d still be as enthralled with her as he’d been as a boy.

  More, if anything.

  For she had become even more beautiful than he remembered. Cool and self-possessed. Capable and accomplished.

  He wasn’t so shabby himself. London celebrated him as a new kind of Renaissance man at the dawn of a new age. But he feared that he’d become too frivolous, that he was a little too tainted with the glitter and gloss of Society for her lofty soul.

  But at least she’d come to hear him speak at both the mathematical society and the geographical society. And had watched him with such grave attentiveness that he’d nearly lost his place in the lecture both times.

  He was completely enamored of the severely cut jacket-and-skirt suits she wore, so serious and put together—his lady knight, in her armor of crisp silk, ready to do battle with London’s microbes and infirmities. He adored the tarry-sweet whiff of carbolic acid, the great antiseptic beloved by her profession, that always clung to her hair—not that he often got close enough to smell her. And her quiet, so composed and assured, intrigued him far more than the endless babble the other young ladies were so fond of unleashing.