The Bride Sale by Candice Hern

Author:Candice Hern [Candice Hern]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780061739682
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2007-04-05T04:00:00+00:00

The following days settled into a new pattern, always ending with Verity mixing up her infusion and taking it to James in the library. The day after their ride, when they had met again at the breakfast table, Verity had asked him if the drink had been effective.

“I slept like the dead,” he replied and gave that little twitch of the mouth that generally passed for a smile. In an instant, though, his manner became serious and his words faltered. “I…I cannot tell you what that means to me or…or how grateful I am. I do not recall the last time I felt so rested.”

Verity was pleased with yet another success from her herbal skills, but most especially she was happy to have been of help to James. This tiny accomplishment could be the first step in his real healing. She liked to believe so, and therefore continued to deliver the infusion each evening.

She detected subtle but noticeable changes in James over the next week. His eyes took on a brighter appearance and the dark circles beneath them began to fade. He appeared at the breakfast table more often than before, and ate more than his usual tea and toast. He took supper with her and Agnes most nights, and his manner was more relaxed, despite Agnes’s increased hostility.

And he actually smiled now and then. Not frequently, hardly more than once or twice. Verity expected no more, for his was a sober, guarded temperament. She wondered if it had ever been otherwise, long ago, before Spain. Nevertheless, the full smile that so transformed his face became less rare, and when he turned it upon Verity it sometimes made her weak in the knees.

On a dreary morning that threatened more rain, Verity worked in the kitchen garden, gathering roots and stalks that might still be useful during the winter months. She had more or less adopted this small garden and tended it daily, trimming dead wood and cutting back plants for spring growth.

She stood and surveyed the rows of plantings, denuded for the winter, and considered all her little medicinal successes with pride. It was not long, it never was, before her thoughts drifted to another sort of achievement altogether, one that gave her even more pleasure.

After her ride over the estate with James, a new kind of relationship had begun to blossom. She savored the friendship, for it was infinitely more sensible than the relationship she had expected when he had come to her bedchamber. But in the deepest reaches of her heart, when she was perfectly honest with herself, Verity knew she wanted more. She knew that her gratitude for his rescue at the auction—for she had ceased thinking of it as anything else—and her instinctive need to heal him were leading her into far more dangerous sentiments.

A canvas bag was slung over her shoulder, and Verity reached in and began to strew bits of straw at the base of some of the more tender plants as a protective winter mulch.

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