Bea rummaged through her luggage, talking too fast. ‘I have some herbs that can help with swelling.’
Preston cocked a curious eyebrow. ‘Do you, now?’
She flushed uncontrollably. Swelling was an unfortunate choice of words just now. ‘Swelling, as in bruising,’ Beatrice clarified, finding the packet she wanted.
‘Of course.’ Preston’s response was far too benign to actually be harmless. ‘What other kind of swelling could you have possibly meant?’
Beatrice chose to ignore the comment. ‘This is calamine and elm powder.’ She dumped a bit of the dried herbs into some warm water and stirred until it was pasty. ‘I’m making you a poultice. I think we’ll wrap your ribs after all. You’ll be more comfortable.’
She wouldn’t be, though. Getting the poultice on him would require close contact while she tied strips of cloth. She probably should have thought that one through a little better. Preston sniffed the air as she wound the strips about him. ‘Calamine smells like mint,’ she said before he could ask.
He lifted an arm to help her with the binding. ‘And the lavender?’ He breathed in again. ‘I think that must be you. Lavender smells...peaceful.’
‘Not like me at all, then.’ Beatrice laughed. Peaceful wasn’t a word she’d use to describe herself. She was outspoken, restless, sometimes spontaneous, and as a result sometimes quick to impatience.
‘You are more peaceful now than I remember you, though,’ Preston said as she tied off the last of the strips and stepped back to check her handiwork. ‘I think motherhood becomes you.’
Most likely, he meant the remark empirically, but the hour was late, the day trying and the evening more so. Such events tinged their small room with an undeniable intimacy as they looked at one another, perhaps seeing a little more of who they’d become: the mother, the gentleman warrior. Beatrice picked up her supplies, stifling a yawn.
‘Get ready for bed, Bea. You’re exhausted. I’ll take the chair tonight,’ Preston offered, saving her the awkwardness of bringing up the subject of sleeping arrangements.
‘We should share the bed.’ Beatrice disappeared behind the dressing screen with her nightgown, suddenly self-conscious. ‘With those ribs, you need to lie down.’ Why was it she could nurse a baby in front of him, but was nervous about stepping out in her nightgown? The nightgown was quite a modest garment, loose and flowing, the cotton thick enough not to be revealing in the firelight, at least she hoped it wouldn’t be.
He was going to protest. She could tell by the shifting of his body on the other side of the screen. He was thinking over the best way to argue. She couldn’t have that. She was going to have to take charge and insist. Beatrice stepped from behind the screen and walked over to the bed, pulling back the covers with the same efficiency she’d relied on all night. ‘Preston, don’t be ridiculous about this. You’re hurt and we’ve been friends for ages. We can surely survive a night together.’
She didn’t worry they’d actually do anything. There would be no forgoing of common sense. That wasn’t what she was concerned about. She was concerned her mind would never be the same—that she wouldn’t be able to look at him the same way. All neutrality would be lost and she needed that neutrality to survive this week. What would happen without it?
Preston nodded, perhaps recognising his ribs needed the bed more than his gentleman’s pride needed to be assuaged. ‘I’ll keep my trousers on, but I’m going to need help with my boots.’
‘Of course.’ She felt foolish all of the sudden. She’d forgotten about his boots. She knelt and helped him tug them off. Then she crawled into bed, trying to ignore the sounds of a man going through his bedtime rituals behind the screen. She had not realised intimacy came in so many varieties until this trip.
Preston lay down on the other side of the bed and turned down the light. The gesture swamped her with the sensation that this was what it must be like to sleep beside a husband every night, to feel the bed take his weight, to hear his body shift as he got comfortable. She didn’t know.
‘Bea, are you sure?’ Preston asked from his side. ‘I don’t want you to think...’
She completed his thoughts. ‘Think what? That you’d take advantage of me because I’m not a virgin? That you don’t have to behave honourably because I’ve shared a bed with a man before? I don’t think that, Preston. The man who fought for me downstairs is not a man I’d associate with those behaviours.’ She paused and then plunged ahead softly. ‘My lover never took me to bed, at least not in the literal sense.’
It seemed important that Preston knew that.
‘We were never even naked together.’
She hadn’t told May that in their long months at the cottage. She’d seldom spoken of her lover, but here in the dark with Preston the words were easy, perhaps because telling him these things didn’t require a name and Preston wouldn’t push for one.
‘It was all furtive lovemaking in haylofts and barns,’ she said. The kind of lovemaking done with skirts up and trousers down against a wall, clothing a mere yank or twitch away from being righted—just in case. It was just one more way Alton had failed her. She’d given him everything and he treated the gift, treated her, as something of negligible value, to be disposed of when he was finished.
Preston’s hand found hers among the bedclothes. ‘Did he force you, May?’
‘Will you be disappointed if I say no?’ Bea said quietly. Her parents had wanted it to be force. Rape was somehow a viable explanation for what had happened, whereas having consensual sex out of wedlock was not.
‘No.’ Preston sighed in the dark. ‘I’m glad you weren’t forced. I wouldn’t want you hurt or coerced. But I am sorry it wasn’t a better experience.’
Should it have been? Better? The question was on the tip of her tongue, but she held it back, the question too leading to ask even in the dark. Still, the thought stayed with her as she drifted towards sleep. Admittedly, sex had not lived up to her preconceived ideas and she did have some, not only from the flowery allusions found in books, but from more scientific experiment. She could give herself some modicum of pleasure and that discovery had led her to believe sex would render an even larger pleasure when shared.
It hadn’t. Instead, sex had been messy, sticky and quick. Thank goodness for the last bit because barn walls often had splinters, hay was prickly, and one’s legs had a tendency to cramp up if they were wrapped around someone else’s waist too long. But there had been none of the troubadours’ pleasures or the scientists’ hypotheses she’d come to expect.
Had she missed something? Or was it that the pleasure was for the man alone? Her lover had seemed quite pleased afterwards. Science was primarily written by men, after all. Perhaps they had simply not considered the woman. Perhaps lonely pleasure was all she should expect. But, what if she was wrong? What if Preston knew something she didn’t? He’d certainly have more experience to draw from.
She twisted on to her side, contemplating Preston in the dark. The lucky man was already asleep. Preston was fast becoming a repository of secret talents. First, the dazzling display of boxing skills and knife work tonight and now this, the hint of sensual, forbidden knowledge. What sort of knowledge lay just six inches away? What did Preston know that she didn’t? That particular speculation was scientific curiosity. It was a tempting concept, but not nearly as wicked as the next: what would it be like to test the hypothesis of pleasure with him? Would it be worth breaking her rules? Bea rolled on to her back