His brow furrowed. “Where did you hear about that?”
“The servants,” Jane said.
“Yes, she was,” he said, running a nervous hand through his hair. “She’s also the cause of that burned doctor’s bag. She died of a terrible fever.”
“A patient, here?”
He hesitated a moment, then shook his head. “She was the daughter of a close family friend. They didn’t feel they could care for her at home, and they didn’t trust her to the local physicians. I told them it was foolish, that I was ill-suited to care for her, but they insisted.”
“And she died here.”
“Yes. To my great shame.”
Shame. Well, they had that in common.
She sat back in her chair, body softening. She was ill-suited to such isolation, it seemed, and returning to the surgery in the morning sounded more and more appealing. A little distance, and she’d stop jumping at shadows.
“A patient,” Jane repeated, and she rubbed at her temples, willing her blood to leave her enflamed cheeks. “And here I thought you had some grand, dark secret.”
“Really, a child?”
“A child, or—some standing arrangement with a mistress, who stopped accepting your payments years ago?”
That drew another laugh out of him. Leaning across the table, he reached out and took her hand. She gave it over to him gratefully, sheepishly, needing the warmth of his touch, the solid connection of it. “I promise, I have no such sordid history for you to discover.”
“Truly?”
“Truly.” He came around the table to her side, never letting go of her, and she rose to meet him. Gently, he cupped her face with his free hand. “I know our start these last few days hasn’t been the most auspicious, but I swear to you, I am yours. Every inch save what this house demands of me.”
Their lips were almost touching. He looked at her with longing, as if her suspicion had not disrupted anything between them. Jane’s breath caught. Her heart quickened.
“I think I have been very foolish,” she murmured.
He smiled. “No. Not foolish—cautious. Cautious but bold. Traits I admire greatly.”
His thumb traced the line of her jaw. She was melting at his touch, in happiness and relief. Relief that, perhaps, she had not been foolish after all, that she had not let herself be misled.
That he was as good as she knew him to be.
“I was afraid that I would have to hate you,” she confessed, intoxicated by his breath against her mouth, by the intensity of his gaze. “And angry that I had to.”
He did not answer, but closed the bare distance between them and kissed her fervently, heedless of who might be listening, watching. She was momentarily stunned; he had touched her fondly the morning after their wedding, but that had been all, and she realized she’d thought, perhaps, he might not ever touch her so again, let alone with desire, with passion.
But no, it had only been the house between them. Bad nerves.
His kissed her slowly but with such intensity that her knees weakened, and she wrapped her arms around him as if to keep herself upright. His hand slid along her waist, down and around her hip, and nudged her closer to him.
What had she been afraid of? Nothing; there was nothing to fear, especially not as she drank him in, learning how to kiss by each touch of his lips. She followed him as he pulled away, as he took her hands again and led her after him.
On the second-floor landing, Augustine pulled her close once more, stealing another kiss, as if the distance between the top of the stairs and his bedroom was an unfathomable, unmanageable distance, as if he would die without another drink from her lips.
Then the bedroom, where he fumbled with the fasteners of her dress, and she with his waistcoat. She forgot to be ashamed of her nakedness as soon as she could see his shoulders, his collarbones, every inch revealed to her becoming a marvelous whole. She kissed him again, let him lead her to the narrow bed, tumbled to the mattress wrapped around him.
After, they lay quiet together among the pillows, tangled together. She studied him, how his dark hair clung to his skin from sweat, how his brow no longer held its near-constant furrow. He looked at ease, as at ease as she felt, and she stretched out along the sheets, breathing in that freedom.
What had she been afraid of?
Isolation was the culprit, not this house. The burned doctor’s bag, Mr. Purl’s drunken stories … why should she fear them?
She had only one question left, one last worry, inexplicable and whispering.
“What of the door?” she asked as she nestled beside him. “There are so many locks.”