The Other Side - J. D. Robb [39]
Bettina sat back and folded her hands. Did he have any idea how hurtful it was for him to mock her so? She never spoke in such a shrill voice, and the boy would do better once he was accustomed to an audience.
“I’m sorry, dearest,” Harry said quickly. “I can be a fool when things are not going as I would like.” He reached for her hand but stopped. Bettina looked down at the hand that responded to her commands: dark hair about the wrist, a smattering of lighter hair around the knuckles ending in the blunt nails of Harry’s very manly fingers. Harry looked away. Ah, so he, too, was having a hard time adjusting to the change of body.
“I am sorry,” he said again. “I must remind myself that you are in my body, wearing my clothes, but you are still very much my Bettina. Even now I can tell I have hurt your feelings by the way you move back and become so formal as though I am preparing to strike you.”
“Oh no—!” She began to reassure him, but he spoke over her protests.
“Yes, you know I would never take a hand to you. Never.”
She did always move back. “That was something else I learned from my brothers. If I wanted them to stop teasing me, or otherwise being mean, I would pretend that what they said did not bother me at all. How odd that I do that even now.” Bettina laughed. “I wish—”
“No!” Harry yelled. “Do not wish anything.”
She bit her lips, pressing them together, and nodded. They were silent a moment. This time he touched her wrist, covered by shirt and coat.
“Continue with your memory of the evening. Where could we have been given the coin? Someone must have slipped it to us.”
“The butler when he handed us our hats and things? No, Harry, someone put it in this room while we were out. There is no sense in asking Freeba. She will insist she knows nothing if it might mean trouble for her.”
“I will ask her anyway. Later, when I am dressing.”
Bettina could tell he wanted to send for Freeba this minute but restrained himself. “You can try, but you will have to question her with my sensibilities and not with your inclination to browbeat her for the answer you want.”
“I do not browbeat the servants.”
“Yes, you do. Last week you left the footman in tears when you found him chatting with one of the serving girls while at his post. And just yesterday you practically gave a sermon on honesty when the youngest groom admitted he said he had checked the horses and was caught in the lie.”
“Both of them are lucky to still have their positions, but we will discuss the subject another time, Bettina. Right now we are supposed to be talking about what happened last night so we are not faced with another night in each other’s bed.”
“Please do go on, Harry,” she said with all the hauteur she could summon and forbore to mention that his mattress was much too soft for her liking.
“Very well,” Harry said and thought for a moment. “We left Ellsworth’s before supper, and when we arrived back home, you suggested that we have a glass of champagne here in your bedchamber, and I hoped that meant we would end up together in bed. Instead, you brought up an affair with Patricia Melton and were thinking the worst of me.”
“Oh no, Harry, the worst would be if you went from her bed to mine.”
He was silent for so long that she was afraid that is exactly what had happened.
“Patricia Melton lives to tempt and tease, Bettina.” The edge in his voice made it clear this was a subject he had no desire to discuss.
“I was so angry with you last night.” And still am, she thought. “I was about to tell you to leave my chamber when I was distracted by the coin.”
“Why did you pick it up?”
“Because I didn’t recognize it, and I wondered how it came to be on my night table.” She could see it still, glinting as though demanding her attention. “Then we made those misguided wishes.”
They stared at each other, her anger and his frustration replaced by the memory of the hideous