Henrietta was tucked into a corner, Anabel against her chest, both of them fast asleep. From the way Anabel’s eyes looked swollen even in her sleep, he guessed she’d probably wailed up a storm before napping. Josie was sitting on the other seat, one leg curled beneath her, sucking her thumb. As soon as she saw him, she took out her thumb and said, “Shhh! Anabel is sleeping!”
“I see that,” Darby said, sitting down next to her and nodding to the footman, who closed the door. The carriage resumed its slow, lumbering journey. “I thought I would join you, in case Henrietta needed some assistance. Have you had a pleasant journey?”
Something about the dedicated way that Josie was sucking her thumb and staring at her boots made him suspicious. “You have had an easy journey, haven’t you?”
She didn’t answer. “Josie?”
Finally his little sister took her thumb out of her mouth and said, “I can call her Henrietta, because she married my brother.”
Darby blinked. “Good.”
“She has a temper,” Josie said in an offhand sort of way. “Look.” She pointed to one of the little lamps that was attached to the carriage walls. It seemed fine to Darby, but Josie stared at it with satisfaction. Presumably the shade had suffered some sort of abuse.
Well, Darby thought, my mother threw roast beef. I suppose I could prepare myself for flying lampshades. Josie didn’t seem perturbed. In fact, displays of temper probably made her feel quite at home. He had a vague sense that she had been present the Christmas before last—well, obviously Josie had been summoned downstairs at some point, but was she downstairs when his stepmother launched a tureen at the vicar? All his father had said was, “Damme if you haven’t bent the edge.”
I can cultivate the same lassitude, Darby told himself. Now he had been in the carriage a few moments, he could hardly smell an unpleasant odor at all. What’s more, Henrietta’s hair was falling out of its snood, and she looked unusually disheveled, which made him remember that every journey had its end—and this one would be his wedding night.
Josie’s eyes were looking heavy, and Darby guessed that she would be asleep in a moment. He hesitated a moment, then picked up Anabel and plopped her into the half-empty basket on the floor. It could have been designed just for the purpose; the child barely shifted in her sleep. Then Darby sat down next to his wife and pulled her against his shoulder.
She opened her eyes briefly, looked at him in a dazed sort of way, and said, “I warned you!” and went back to sleep.
So Darby propped himself into the corner and watched Josie drift to sleep. By the time her eyes closed, he had decided to please himself and remove that little netting that Henrietta used to keep her hair in place. Slowly, slowly, he began removing just as many of his wife’s hairpins as he could reach without waking her up. No wonder her hair seemed so docile. She wore far more pins than he would have guessed a woman needed. Finally, he managed to ease the little net she wore on top of her head off and toss it to the side. No wife of his was going to dress like a grandmother.
Two minutes later, he knew precisely why Henrietta Maclellan resorted to a hairnet and more hairpins than one normally saw in a mercer’s shop. Her hair tumbled down her shoulder like a lion’s mane, streaked and shot with gold and amber. It didn’t curl: the word curl brought to mind ringlets, and little girls. It leaped with fire, unruly and ungoverned, all the way to her waist. His fingers ran through great masses of rough silk.
Naturally she was wearing a traveling gown constructed with no regard to the female body. It was thick, and the seams didn’t even lie flat in places. Darby ran an experimental hand down Henrietta’s front, but he couldn’t feel anything other than poor seamsmanship. Well, there were bumps that likely hid her breasts, but damned if he could feel their shape. Not that he needed touch to remind him, he thought a bit grimly. The swell of her breasts in his hand haunted his dreams. His fingers traced the sturdy wool of her bodice. Under this wool, her breasts were the color of the finest cream lace, yet far softer. And from cream bloomed a nipple as dusky as a late rose.
Josie snorted in her sleep and Darby froze. It was not very gentlemanly to feel his wife’s chest in the presence of children, even sleeping children. He left his hand on the warm curve of Henrietta’s right breast, or at least on the rumpled broadcloth presumably covering her breast, while he thought about it. Then he stopped thinking and began feeling the shape of her body with his hand again. It was rather like trying to guess the shape of a fruit in the dark.
Except that all he could feel were her garments. He could feel each separate bone in her corset, which meant that his bride was wearing undergarments as restrictive and as heavy as those his grandmother presumably had worn. He idly traced each up-and-down spear, feeling through the layers of rumpled wool. No wonder Henrietta kept her back rigid. She didn’t have a choice.
For her part, Henrietta was enjoying herself far too much to open her eyes. It was oddly soothing to wake from sleep to find Darby’s long fingers dancing over her breasts, sweeping down her sides. She almost shivered, it felt so good, except that would give her away. Even through layers of wool and corset and linen, her body knew his hand was there.
He seemed to be feeling her corset now. Henrietta’s eyelids trembled and almost opened, tense with the desire to demand what he was doing. It was intoxicating, the sense that his fingers were gliding over her breasts. The very thought made her heart thud in her ribs, made a tremor of feeling quake down, down between her legs. It was as if he skimmed the surface of water, and she were just below. Longing for him to break the surface. Her breasts tingled and almost begged for his touch.
She opened her eyes with a little gasp. His fingers stopped instantly, relaxed as if he were doing nothing more than prop up his sleeping wife, and had happened to drape his hand on her chest.
For a second his eyes burned down at her. Then she saw, deep in their depths, a glint of laughter. He knew she wasn’t asleep. He’d guessed somehow. She never could keep a secret.
“Enjoying yourself, darling?” he whispered, bending his neck so that his breath stirred the curls on her forehead.
She should deny it…she should claim sleep…she should act like a lady. She sat up and thought about what she wanted to do next.
“Are you comfortable?” he asked, and his husky, almost sleepy voice made her feel like sagging back against his shoulder. It was as if he heard her thoughts. “Why don’t you lean back, Henrietta?”
She never, ever leaned, or sagged. “Keep your back straight and your deformity will be less noticeable,” one doctor had advised. Henrietta had never forgotten that advice.
Suddenly she leaped up. “The children!” she gasped.
“They’re both asleep,” he said, pulling her back against him. She lost her balance and fell directly onto his lap. His breath caressed her neck.
“What on earth has happened to my coiffure?” As she twisted to the side to recapture the heavy fall of hair, she heard the oddest, almost stifled noise from Darby.
“Is something the matter?”
Darby had to think about how to answer that. The cruel gods who had designed corsets had forgotten to cover Henrietta’s curving little bottom with whalebone. It rounded into the juncture of his legs, intoxicatingly round, soft and tender. She probably had no idea what was jutting between his legs.
But she sure as hell noticed something. She kept wriggling, trying to find a comfortable spot.
He put his hands on her waist and placed her next to him on the seat. His wife was looking about, obviously wondering where her little hairnet had gone.
Then her eyes widened as she noticed something else was missing. “Where’s Anabel?”
“Here,” Darby said, lifting the top of the picnic basket proudly. It was an admirable baby carrier, if he said so himself.
“You put Anabel in a picnic basket? And then you put a—a top on the basket!”
“She couldn’t suffocate,” Darby pointed out. “The basket is made of w
oven reed, and there’s plenty of air.”
Henrietta stared at him, mouth open, and Darby was fairly sure that had there been a side of roast beef in the area, it would now be sailing through the air in his direction. So he moved first.
No gentleman’s kiss, this.
It was a warning, an advisory, a precursor to the evening. If she didn’t know why his lap had turned into such a lumpy seat, Darby certainly did. For some unknown reason, his drably dressed little wife had him aching with lust in a way he hadn’t experienced even when he was infatuated with the third housemaid. It was a deep, hungry need that he felt, one as primitive as anger or grief.
His tongue invaded her mouth in the way that the Cossacks invaded small villages: invasion first, questions after. It was a kiss that spoke of nakedness, of breasts without corsets, and laps without trousers.
And his wife, his little rigid-backed wife, understood the message all right. She braced her hands against his shoulders and said something incoherent. An admonishment, surely. But he could taste her…could taste the passion in her, even as she pushed at his shoulders. He merely grabbed her and pulled her across his lap again, a flare of fire searing his groin as her bottom settled on his legs. Then he took her mouth, fell into a dipping stroke, his hands holding her close.
Quite suddenly her tongue met his, shyly perhaps, willingly for certain. The raw lust that swept his body was a revelation.
Simon Darby never lost his composure. Never. Early in his life, he formed the opinion that raw emotion was inadvisable and unattractive. He had watched his stepmother burst into an ecstasy of rage while his father, still enthralled with his beautiful wife, hardly complained. Later Darby watched his father succumb to a gambling fever, unable to stop bidding higher and higher, even on cards of no value. Darby had early succeeded in curbing his own responses to appropriate measures.
But now, in the inner recesses of his mind, Darby was aware that his own wife might prove his undoing. He was trembling—literally trembling. He’d never shook while holding a woman in his life. It was mortifying.
He had to talk to her, explain that he wasn’t—
“What are you doing to Henrietta?” said a small voice from the other side of the carriage, with some interest.
His wife made a hoarse sound in her throat and tore away from him so quickly that she nearly pitched to the carriage floor.
Darby straightened and stared at his sister. How long had Josie been awake? She sat on the opposite seat, thumb in her mouth, looking at them with an inquiring expression.
“I was greeting Henrietta,” he said.
Josie’s eyes narrowed. “You never greet me like that,” she said.
“You are not my wife.”
Josie’s mouth instantly thinned to a mutinous line. Darby braced himself for an explosion of mamaless cries and shrieks, but Henrietta cut off the shriek as it was about to appear.
“Remember what I told you, dear,” she said, nodding at the lampshade.
To his immense surprise, Josie blinked and stilled. Clearly there was some ferocious threat attached to the lampshade.
“Mr. Darby does not mean to be sharp,” Henrietta continued. She was twisting up her great rope of hair as she spoke, winding it briskly, although how she thought to get it to stay on the top of her head without the hairnet (now snugly stowed in Darby’s pocket) he couldn’t say.
Luckily the carriage seemed to be rumbling over cobblestones, a sure sign that they had finally reached the Bear and Owl.
“Your brother and I were merely exchanging greetings,” Henrietta said. She gave up the effort to rearrange her hair and simply crammed her bonnet on over it. “Married persons do greet each other with a kiss when they meet unexpectedly.”
Josie looked unconvinced, but Henrietta serenely suggested that she replace her own bonnet, as they had undoubtedly reached the inn.
Darby was as unconvinced as his sister. He glanced down at his lap. If this was a mere greeting, what would his wife think of the night?
He looked at Henrietta and was gratified to see a flush of color high in her cheeks, a fullness to her bottom lip that spoke of his ravaging kisses.
Little flakes of snow were beginning to drift past the carriage as Darby stepped to the ground. It was only early evening, but the sky was dark and lowering, promising to storm. Henrietta handed him a barely awake Anabel. He looked around for a footman, but the only one available to carry the baby looked like a clumsy brute who might drop her. So to his surprise, he found himself carrying the child toward the inn. She woke up, gave him one of those toothless grins of hers, and called him mama. She was a snug little bundle of person, especially when she didn’t smell too markedly.
Small flakes of snow were falling into the fiery mass of Henrietta’s hair. They disappeared instantly, scorched, no doubt.
“I shouldn’t think we’ll be able to travel tomorrow,” he said, catching up with his wife as she led Josie toward the inn.
“Oh dear,” Henrietta said, looking at the sky.
He surrendered to a sweet temptation. “We may have to spend the day in bed,” he said, bending near her ear. “Just to keep our warmth, of course.”
She looked up at him, lips swollen from his kisses, and surprised him again. There was a flickering smile in her eyes, even curling the edge of those deep rose lips. Snowflakes flecked her hair and her eyelashes, but she was no snow maiden, frozen to the core.
He silently followed her into the inn door because he literally didn’t know what to say. The idea that a mere smile could cause heat to sweep his body like a fierce plague was frightening.
35
Dinner for Three
“Did you find the village organ of interest, Lord Godwin?” Henrietta said, resolutely trying to ignore her new husband. He was acting in the most foolish manner, pressing his leg against hers and smiling at her as if—as if—She wrenched her mind away from that thought.
The innkeeper bustled in and himself supervised the remove of fillets of turbot with a harrico of mutton.
“It wasn’t terrible.” If Lord Godwin didn’t precisely grunt, he sounded as if he had. Henrietta was beginning to feel indignant. She had been sitting here for nearly thirty minutes, doing her best to make pleasant conversation to the man who claimed to be her husband’s closest friend, and he was being abominably rude. That was the only word for it.
Even now, he was showing not a particle of interest in continuing their conversation, but just poking at his mutton as if it were undercooked. She took a sip of burgundy, cautioning herself not to fly into an extravagant comment. It was none of her business if the man was taciturn, and surly, and altogether—
She’d give him one more chance.
“Lord Godwin, what did you think of Napoleon’s exile to Elba? Do you believe that he’ll remain on the island?”
“Don’t give a hang either way.”
Henrietta spared her husband a glance.
“I wouldn’t even bother,” he advised her. “Rees hasn’t had a conversation with a respectable woman in so long that he doesn’t remember the language.”
But Henrietta was known for her persistence. “Wasn’t this past year tremendously interesting for France, Lord Godwin?”
“For Austria, perhaps.”
“Austria?”
“Beethoven’s opera Fidelio was performed for the delegates at the Congress of Vienna in autumn,” Rees said with perfect indifference. “Mrs. Darby, if you are trying to impress your husband by exhibiting your profound knowledge of international relations, could you please save the demonstration for your private quarters?” He drained his glass and set it down with a thump. “I assure you that I am sufficiently impressed by your abilities as demonstrated by your current marital status.”
Henrietta narrowed her eyes. The man clearly wanted to lure her into a demonstration of temper, likely to prove some moronic point he made to Darby about women’s temperament. She knew that all-male carriage ride was going to incite trouble.
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She thought about it for a second, then threw Rees a melting look from under her eyelashes. “What a pleasure, Lord Godwin, to see you become so unexpectedly verbal.”
He gave her a guarded look. He probably thought she was making advances to him. Rees is your husband’s closest friend, she told herself. Be kind to the man.
“I’m afraid I hadn’t realized until Darby told me just now that it was quite so taxing for you to speak to married women. Although I did notice that you had some difficulty making conversation to dear Mrs. Cable during Lady Rawlings’s dinner.” She gave him a kindly smile. “We will make this as uncomplicated as possible. I certainly wouldn’t want to disconcert you, especially now that I realize your topics of conversation are so limited.”
Beside her, Darby choked.
“I am certain that speaking to a respectable woman can be quite a strain. What could we discuss that would make you feel more comfortable? Let’s see…I gather that your latest houseguest is an opera singer. How very interesting that must be! Do you two discuss Beethoven on a regular basis?”
Rees Godwin kept chewing his meat, but she could see that she had his attention. Henrietta stifled a grin. She was feeling a rush of exuberance.
“She is indeed an opera singer,” Godwin finally replied. Just as Henrietta glimpsed a calculating glint in his eye, he added, scandalously: “With a lamentable tendency to sing in bed.”
“That must be due to her extreme youth,” Henrietta replied serenely. “There was a time when I was quite given to singing when I first awoke. I believe that ‘Peter Peter Pumpkin Eater’was my favorite. But let me see…what is the second line of ‘Diddle Diddle Dumpling, My Son John’?”