Page 122 of The Muse of Maiden Lane

John Turvey, Stella’s groom, emerged from the coach house to take charge of Samuel. “Anything I can do, ma’am?”

“Shall I send Turvey for the doctor?” Stella asked Teddy.

“No doctor,” Teddy replied. “It’s Jennings I require. Not anyone else.”

The same stricken look appeared in Stella’s gaze. It didn’t last. She rallied herself in an instant, taking on an air of stern efficiency. “I’m not anyone else,” she told him curtly. And then to Turvey, “Wait for my word. I may yet have need of you.”

Turvey nodded gravely before leading Samuel away with the wagonette. Teddy’s canvas, easel, and supplies were still covered in the back of it.

“I won’t have my canvas left in the coach house all night,” Teddy said to Jennings.

Jennings didn’t stop to retrieve it. He rolled Teddy straight into the dimly lit house, with Stella following close beside them. “I’ll fetch it inside later, sir. Soon as I’ve finished tending to you.”

Tending to him.

As though Teddy was an invalid who must be nursed!

Teddy’s fingers clenched on the arms of his chair. He stewed with anger, miserable to the point of incivility, his legs aching as though Satan himself were gnawing at the fraying sinew of Teddy’s calf and thigh muscles.

Stella accompanied him into his bedroom, lighting the lamps as Jennings lifted Teddy onto the low, four-poster bed. Teddy had ordered it specially from a furniture warehouse in Ludgate Hill. Its height enabled him to move from bed to chair and back without assistance.

But not tonight.

Tonight, for as long as these blasted cramps lasted, Teddy was completely reliant on Jennings.

“Tell me what I can do,” Stella said.

“You can go,” Teddy replied. And then, the rasping words wrenched out of him on another brutal spasm: “I don’t want you to see me like this.”

Stella’s taut expression softened with tender understanding. But she didn’t leave. Instead, she sank down onto the edge of the mattress beside him, the paillettes on her net-covered gown tinkling like silver bells. “I’m your wife,” she said simply.

And that was that.

Thirty

Stella had never undressed a man before. Then again, she’d never had a husband.

How was a lady meant to behave in such circumstances? In Teddy’s bedchamber for the first time—on their wedding night, by heaven. And here they were, on the bed together, while Jennings lumbered about the room, first kindling a fire in the hearth, and then tugging off Teddy’s boots.

Stella ignored the trembling of her fingers as she unknotted Teddy’s cravat and unbuttoned his jacket and waistcoat. She removed the garments from him one by one, tossing them onto the upholstered armchair that stood at the side of the unusually low mahogany bed.

This wasn’t a romantic disrobing. Any idea of that had been dispelled before she’d begun. Teddy was as sullen as an injured bear, glowering at her as much as he glowered at Jennings.

“Leave my shirt,” he said when she moved to lift it up. “It’s my trousers that have to come off.”

A blush threatened. Of course, his trousers must be removed. She felt a fool for not having thought of it straightaway.

Jennings was already at the end of the bed, having just dispensed with Teddy’s boots. “Shall I help, ma’am?”

“Er, yes, thank you.” Stella rose from the bed.

It wasn’t virginal prudishness that made her withdraw. It was pure pragmatism. She hadn’t ever touched Teddy’s legs, let alone seen them. She didn’t know what helped or hurt him. And she wasn’t about to try to learn now at the cost of expediency. Not when he was so obviously in pain.

Teddy unfastened his trousers himself, shoving them down over his hips. Jennings took over then without being asked, stripping the trousers the rest of the way from Teddy’s legs.

Stella was almost afraid to look. It felt like the rankest violation of Teddy’s privacy. A violation to which it appeared he had already bitterly resigned himself. No longer snarling at them, he lay back against the pillows, silent and stoic. His brow was damp with perspiration, and a muscle worked rhythmically in his jaw. He stared straight ahead, his gaze fixed on nothing,

“You don’t want to witness all the indignities I must put up with on account of being in this chair,” he’d told her when she’d first broached the subject of their sharing a bedchamber.