“Please leave, Sebastian. Go back to Italy. I bewhored myself for you twice now; please don’t make me do it again.”
“Don’t ever say that about yourself,” he said. His eyes had the fierce rage of an eagle.
“I only say the truth,” she said. “That will be the world’s assessment if they find out what truly happened between us. Your presence here, on my estate, threatens to make that truth known to all. And that name—whore—will ruin this child’s future.”
His eyes were blue-black, burning into hers, but she could see that he was listening to her.
“When Miles and I agree to reconcile, that was the one thing he asked. He said that we had to live together, and we had to be discreet. Because it was important for the child’s sake. I keep dreaming that he’s there and that he’s asking me—begging me, really—to be a good mother.”
She looked down at Sebastian, kneeling by her side. Miles wasn’t the only one in her heart.
“Do it for Miles, if not for me,” Esme said, and there was a catch in her voice. “You owe his child that much.”
He put his head down on her arm, the first time that Esme had ever seen him show despair.
She put her hand on his head, and a gold tendril curled around her finger as if to keep her there. She walked out the door without looking back.
38
Food Fights Are Not Limited to the Young
The snowstorm lasted three days. Anabel’s stomach rejected several meals. Josie had a tantrum in which she began a fierce and familiar refrain—“I’m a poor, motherless child”—but then broke off because she realized that Henrietta was telling Anabel a story and she might miss it. It was her favorite tale, about the angry little lampshade who traveled all the way to Paris. Henrietta pretended not to notice what almost happened, and simply welcomed Josie on her lap.
In fact, Josie was almost startlingly good. The low point was when she threw a spoonful of mashed potatoes at her sister, but then she wasn’t the only one playing with her food during the three days they spent in the Bear and Owl.
For example, the second evening, Henrietta and Darby ate supper in their private chamber. Without a moment’s warning, he coolly tipped a spoon of trifle down the low neck of her gown.
Henrietta just sat for a moment, mouth open, staring at him while the icy trifle slithered between her breasts and caught on the top of her corset.
He got up just as elegant and sophisticated as he always was. “Have you suffered an accident, my dear? Here, do let me help.” And he started nimbly undoing the fastenings to her gown while she wondered whether she had misunderstood. Perhaps the trifle flew out of his spoon—but no.
It wasn’t until he had her standing and was briskly unlacing her corset that she caught a good glimpse of his face. His silky brown gold hair was falling out of its tie at his neck. He was wicked—wicked! His hands teased as they untied, tracing the sticky chill of the trifle.
“What a pity,” he said, “I believe you’ll have to travel without your corset.”
She narrowed her eyes at him. “I have others, sir.”
“But this monstrosity”—he held it up in the air—“is what has been making you resemble a marionette, and has been making your gowns hang on you as if these luscious pieces of you didn’t exist.” His fingers left trails of fire across her breasts.
“You cannot make me into a person like yourself,” she said.
“What sort of person?” he asked silkily.
“Elegant,” Henrietta said bluntly. “Dresses will never look their best on me. I limp and I am short besides.”
He laughed and there was genuine amusement in his voice. “Clothes exist so that a man can see through them and imagine an unclothed woman. Height has nothing to do with it, and neither does your weak hip.”
“Darby, clothes exist to decently cover the body,” she observed.
“You called me Simon last night,” was all he said, pulling off her chemise.
She blushed, even thinking of the previous evening. “I was not myself.”
He smiled at her, a sinful mischief in his face. “One says many things in the heat of passion that should not be aired in the morning.”
He had found the very beginning of the sticky trail of sweetness, at her collarbone, and he was licking it. Down and down he went, and his wife said not a word even when he was on his knees before her, still lapping the trail of the trifle. Lower—lower than where the errant piece of cake traveled. When her knees folded and she said, “Simon! We’re not in a bedchamber!” he merely rose, threw the bolt on the door, and then returned.
But she had taken advantage of his absence to pull a plate from the table. He turned around and found her standing there, laughing, all her glorious hair tumbling over her shoulders, her gown, corset and chemise in a heap on the floor. She was naked but for pale blue slippers and delicate stockings tied in tidy bows at her knees. Naked, she was the most elegant woman he ever saw. She was holding a plate of trifle in her hand, but he hardly noticed that.
“You take my breath,” he said slowly. “I cannot believe that you were still there for me to find. Even the dullards of Limpley Stoke must have seen how exquisite you are.”
She grinned at that—who wouldn’t? She put her plate down for a moment and undid his neck cloth and put it neatly to the side. Then she pulled out his shirt at the neck and plopped a spoonful of trifle down his neck before he had time to think.
It was a terrible shock to find that his retaliation was ruthless: cold fingers, holding a bit of sugary cold sweetness, cupped over the warmest place in her body.
And that induced a dizzy, light-headed feeling…enough to make one lie on the floor.
It wasn’t until they traveled back to London and started to settle into Darby’s town house, that she realized what marriage was really like. It was about peeling back all the layers of clothing that covered one, and she didn’t mean only those made of cloth either. All her privacies were breached. She was truly naked to Darby.
Her husband liked to stride around the matrimonial bedchamber unclothed—who would have guessed? He, who was generally properly dressed in silk and lace, felt most happy without a stitch on his body. But he didn’t merely wish to be undressed. He wished her to join him in that naked state. And the whole business of the sheath stripped off another layer of privacy.
They discussed it, for one thing. She never would have imagined such a thing. When they first arrived in London, Henrietta would retreat upstairs after dinner, discreetly soak her sheath in vinegar and insert it. She didn’t like it. But she didn’t hate it either. In a way, she was fond of the sheath since it gave her the chance to engage in such wonderful intimacies with Darby.
But then one night he delayed her at dinner and she ended up on his lap. She was wearing an evening dress and no corset, as her husband had taken to sabotaging undergarments of which he did not approve. It was a bit odd for Henrietta to find that she was wax in the hands of her husband. He only had to look at her with those laughing brown eyes of his and she—she, who was running a household and a school by the time she was seventeen years old—would give in to whatever outrageous demand he levied.
At any rate, he was whispering wicked suggestions about drawing up her gown and sitting on his lap, and she was almost befuddled enough by his hands to do it, when she suddenly remembered and pushed his hand away.
“No, Simon! My sheath!”
He swept her up in his arms and carried her upstairs. Then he laid her on the bed and said, “Let me do it tonight.”
She blinked at him, truly shocked. “Absolutely not!”
“Why not?” he coaxed. His fingers were everywhere, her gown at her waist. “I’m quite certain that I can place it correctly.”
Given where his fingers were, he probably could. She gave a little involuntary moan. “No,” she breathed. “It’s private.”
“Your body is my body,” he said, leaning over her. His lashes were so long they cast shadows on his
cheek. “We’re married, Henrietta, remember? Weren’t you listening to the marriage service? I have to admit that I found it rather riveting, especially the bit where the vicar talked about men loving their wives as their own bodies.”
She stared up at him, dumbstuck.
Darby had a little smile, wry and expectant at once. “He that loveth his wife loveth himself: for no man ever yet hated his own flesh, but nourisheth and cherisheth it.”
He didn’t wait for a reply. He stood up and went over to the little table where her new lady’s maid had left a little glass of vinegar, and her sheath.
“I don’t think this is what is meant by the marriage vows!” she managed. “Is there to be no privacy?”
“None!” He was back at her side. One of his hands was on her breast, making it difficult to speak. And his other hand…well, he did know her anatomy as well as he boasted.
Later they lay together in a heap of tangled limbs. He traced a figure on her creamy flank. “Does your hip hurt when we make love?”
She shook her head.
“What makes it hurt? You were in pain this afternoon, weren’t you?”
“Only a trifle,” she said, surprised. She was certain that she had concealed it. “I was tired.”
“You should have told me. Madame Humphries is so overjoyed to be dressing you that she would have kept you standing all afternoon.”
Henrietta smiled. She still didn’t care two pins for clothing, but it was rather astounding to discover how differently she looked in clothing not designed and sewn by Mrs. Pinnock.
“I find it interesting that your lame hip looks precisely the same as the other,” Darby said. “I don’t understand why doctors believe that you would be unable to bear a child, Henrietta. There’s no difference between this hip”—he caressed it again—“and that of other women.”
Henrietta frowned. She didn’t like to think about other women’s hips in relation to her husband.
He knew, of course. “Not that I plan to compare your luscious hip to anyone else’s,” he said into her ear. “Why don’t we visit a London doctor, Henrietta? There’s a famous physician on St. James’s Street who is also an accoucheur. Ortolon, I believe his name is.”
“Whether you can see the problem or not, it exists. Truly, it was a miracle that I survived,” she said earnestly. “And my mother was not so lucky.”
“Were people cruel when you were growing up?”
“Not cruel,” she said slowly. “It was more that the reality of it was cruel. Because I grew up in a very small village, there was nothing unexpected about anyone’s future. Billy Lent was the bad boy in the grammar school, and everyone said he was bound for the Assizes. Sure enough, he was sent there before he reached eighteen. I was lame, and everyone said I would never marry.”
She looked at him with a glimmering smile. “I would have seen it as a crueler fate if I had imagined someone like you walking down the High Street of Limpley Stoke.” Warm brown hair tumbled past his perfectly shaped ear. The drape of linen sheet over his hip turned him into a Roman senator.
“Did you never dream of marriage, then? You must have!”
“Of course I did. But I thought I would find an older man, someday, perhaps a widower with children. Someone who would wish for a companion, not—”
He raised his mouth from her breast. “Not a bedmate.”
“I didn’t quite understand that,” Henrietta said.
“That’s right. You hadn’t put together marital pleasure and babies, did you?”
She shook her head, and then added, teasingly, “And I still can’t countenance why it’s so important to gentlemen!”
“Probably wouldn’t have been important to the kind of doddering old stick you thought of marrying.”
“I didn’t imagine doddering. But what other choice did I have?”
“I was just lucky enough to be the first gentleman to walk into that village, Henrietta. There’s not a man among my friends who wouldn’t have leaped at you, hip or no hip.”
“Rees wouldn’t have,” she pointed out.
“Ah, but he would. As a matter of fact, he’s having a difficult time accepting the fact that he finds you amusing, and intelligent, and beautiful,” Darby said, his lips leaving scorching little trails on her skin. “Thrown his world into a spin, you have.”
“He isn’t!” Henrietta gasped.
“Poor sod. He’s too late. You’re mine.” He pulled her closer, under his body.
She clutched his forearms. “But what about children? Wouldn’t all those London gentlemen have wanted children?”
“Not unless they were firstborn,” Darby said, his mind obviously elsewhere. “I don’t have an entailed estate trailing behind me like the wag on a dog. There’s a fair number of us out there just like myself, you know. Now, if you’ll excuse me, love—”
But she managed to gasp, even as he eased between her legs and that familiar melting ache spread down her body, “I still think they would have wanted children.”
The muscles in his shoulders bulged. Henrietta flicked one with her tongue.
“They wouldn’t give a damn,” Darby said. “They wouldn’t give a damn if they could just be here with you.” He looked down at her so fiercely that she knew he spoke the truth—as he saw it, anyway. “But they can’t,” he said against her mouth. “No one will ever have you but me. You’re mine, Henrietta.”
There was nothing to do but smile.
39
Knowing One’s Enemy
“That’s not the proper way to advance your troops,” Josie said uncompromisingly, reaching out her hand and stopping Henrietta’s contingent of tin soldiers. One fell on his face, and she carefully set him back in formation. “If you bring them around the turn of the hill there, you’ll be seen by my sentry. You mustn’t be seen. That’s a rule.”
Henrietta blinked. She didn’t remember games with her sister being quite so fraught with rules. “You should let me play my part, even if I do make a mistake,” she pointed out. “You’ll win all the faster.” Josie’s troops always won, since Henrietta spent most of her time trying to figure out how quickly she could sacrifice her own men and escape the battle.
“It wouldn’t be any fun that way. If you bring your men around to the west, they can try to attack from the rear of the castle.”
Henrietta sighed and started moving her troops all the way around the little crimson hassock to the “west” for a rear attack. It was tedious enough to make her look hopefully toward Anabel’s crib. Surely her afternoon nap was almost over.
The tin soldiers were looking rather more worn than they had a few months ago, when Josie found them in Esme’s nursery. The red soldiers could only be identified by a faint rosy tint that hung around their belts; all the rest of their paint had worn away. The blue soldiers were doing better, as Josie didn’t like them nearly as much. Some of them even had faint uniforms left. They weren’t given daily baths, after all, and they didn’t have to sleep with their commander, the way the red soldiers did. Henrietta had grown accustomed to feeling around Josie’s sleeping little body at night for hard metal lumps of male soldiery. As far as Henrietta knew, Josie never inquired how her troops managed the nightly climb from bed to bedside table.
“If you make a rear attack,” Josie said now, busily lining up her men on the battlements of the castle (alias the red hassock), “I am likely to pour boiling oil on you.” She looked up earnestly. “That’s not to discourage you, but I thought perhaps you should be warned.”
“What a bloodthirsty idea!” Henrietta said. “Where on earth did you learn about that revolting custom?”
“My brother Simon told me. He never makes a rear attack for that very reason. But then, he’s knows a great deal about everything.” Josie cast Henrietta a pitying look.
“Hmmm,” Henrietta said. “And just when did brother Simon teach you about the fascinating practice of boiling one’s enemies?”
“This very morning,” said a deep voice
, just over her head.
Henrietta looked up with a start. “I wouldn’t have thought you knew anything about battle strategies,” she said, resisting a wayward impulse to throw herself into her husband’s arms and kiss him senseless.
“There are many things you don’t know about me,” Darby said, crouching down next to his stepsister. “Why have you placed these men in a double rank, Josie? If a flaming arrow comes over the battlements here, you’ll lose all the men at one blow.”
Josie stared for a moment. “I’ll put them behind a pillar,” she said, pointing to empty space.
“Good idea,” Darby said, and Josie began carefully moving her soldiers.
“Couldn’t you construct these poor men some clothing?” Henrietta said idly to her husband. She held up a blue soldier. “The poor man is quite naked.”
“Fancy him in a nice lace shift, do you?” Darby said. “He’s a man of battle, for God’s sake, woman. Besides, I don’t fashion clothing.”
“Better lace than nothing,” Henrietta pointed out.
“I’ve had a note from Rees asking me if we’d like to attend the opening of his new opera. That’s a compliment for you. He’s never once asked me to attend an opening night.”
“How marvelous! When is it?”
“Tonight,” he said with a grin. “I have the feeling we’re an afterthought.”
Henrietta’s face fell. “Tonight? I’m not certain that I can attend.”
Darby raised an eyebrow. “Surely Madame Humphries delivered at least one evening gown amongst all those garments?”
“Henrietta’s leg hurts today,” Josie put in matter-of-factly. “She couldn’t come on our walk. The oil is boiling now.”
Which was an unsubtle call to come-and-be-boiled. Henrietta obediently began moving her soldiers into range of flaming liquids from above.
A large hand helped the last of her sacrificial lambs into place. “I’m sorry that you’re in pain,” Darby said, under cover of Josie’s war shrieks. Boiling oil was being delivered with howls of outrage.