An Unspeakable Anguish by Baird Wells

Author:Baird Wells [Wells, Baird]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Two Birds Ink
Published: 2016-11-15T00:00:00+00:00

* * *

Hannah reclined into the embrace of her favorite maroon chaise, positioned by James in front of her favorite window because Mrs. Delford had insisted she should have all her favorite things, clucking and muttering over what Hannah assured her housekeeper was a minor injury. She handed off her hat to a pale and fussing Bethany, and James pounced, pinching at her hair pins.

“Leave it,” she said of her hair, slapping hands that wouldn’t be budged. “It’ll be a tangled mess if I lie here as long as you’ve instructed.”

“You will,” he managed over a pin held between his teeth. “And I’m just rearranging it so I can see.”

She wished he would stop. Her head throbbed with the echo of the constable’s baton, and a draining away of her outrage and her fighting instinct seemed to multiply the effect. James's ministrations were making it worse, but then he drew one last pin and buried his fingers at her crown, and Hannah withdrew all objection. There was strength in his long fingers, and an awareness of it in the way he raked and piled her hair with controlled restraint. Unthinking, she tipped her head and silently willed a roughness from him, arched for it against a searing white light behind her left eye, but James finished his task and pulled away.

“You’re clever enough to know this is going to hurt,” he said, claiming the small crystal of brandy left behind by Mrs. Delford.

Hannah took it, daring to slip her ring finger over his, a brush more intimate in that moment than their naked bodies. “You had better find me something stronger,” she warned softly.

His brows jumped, but he wasted no time producing a slim leather-wrapped flask from his breast pocket and topping up her glass. Despite his assured movements, there was a tremble to his hands. “I need you sensible,” he cautioned, but she was already tossing back the concoction and hissing out its burn.

She blinked owlishly at him. “Does that include sleeping through your prodding?”

“I’m a quick pair of hands,” he said, nipping off a length of silk.

Liquor flared behind her breastbone and ran molten through her veins, spreading a false courage. “You are unusually taciturn this afternoon,” she chided.

“And you are suitably flippant!” he poked back, threading his needle with such precision that she was briefly impressed into silence. “This afternoon was affecting. In many ways.”

“As it ought to be,” she agreed. “That’s what happens when we don’t tend the wash and knead the biscuits as we should.”

“I can’t have a chuckle over it,” he said, scooting by small jumps until his chest rested at her shoulder. “I can’t make light of watching you brutalized.”

“This afternoon was a microcosm of a woman’s lot. Who can help but laugh at the absurdity of what took place? Treat her as a queen, so long as her castle remains the kitchen.”

James said nothing, but she felt his thoughts, as clear as she might hear his spoken words. He smelled clean under a lingering odor of the street.

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