“I would like to help, actually,” Iris said. “I am eager to meet the tenants, and I do think that the gifts would be more meaningful if I helped to pack them myself.”
“I don’t know that we even have eighteen baskets,” Mrs. Hopkins grumbled.
“Surely they don’t need to be actual baskets,” Iris said. “Any sort of container would do. And I’m sure you will know the best things with which to fill them.”
Richard just grinned, admiring his wife’s easy handling of the housekeeper. Each day—no, each hour—he learned something new about her. And with each revelation, he realized just how lucky he was that he had chosen her. It was so strange to think that he probably would not have looked twice in her direction if he hadn’t found himself forced to find a bride so quickly.
It was difficult to recall just what he’d thought he’d wanted in a wife. A substantial dowry, of course. He’d had to give that up, but now, as he watched Iris make herself at home in Maycliffe’s kitchen, it no longer seemed so urgent. If the repairs he needed to make to the house had to wait a year or two, so be it. Iris was not the sort to complain.
He thought about the women he had considered before Iris. He could not remember much about them, just that they had always seemed to be dancing or flirting or tapping his arm with a fan. They were women who demanded attention.
Whereas Iris earned it.
With her fierce intelligence and her quiet, sly humor, she had a way of sneaking up on his thoughts. She surprised him at every turn.
Who would have thought that he’d like her so well?
Like.
Who liked a wife? In his world, wives were tolerated, indulged, and if one was very lucky, desired. But liked?
If he hadn’t married Iris, he’d want her for a friend.
Well, he would, except for the complication of wanting so badly to take her to bed he could barely think straight. The night before, when he’d gone in to bid her good night, he’d almost lost control. He’d wanted to become her husband truly, he’d wanted her to know that he wanted her. He’d seen her face after he kissed her on the forehead. She was confused. Hurt. She’d thought he didn’t desire her.
Didn’t desire her?
It was so far from the truth as to be almost laughable. What would she think if she knew he lay awake at night, taut and burning with need as he imagined all the ways he wanted to bring her pleasure. What would she say if he told her how much he longed to bury himself within her, to imprint himself upon her, to make her understand that she was his, that he wanted her to be his, and he would gladly be hers.
“Richard?”
He turned at the sound of his wife’s voice. Or rather, he turned partway. His wicked thoughts had left their mark upon his body, and he was relieved that he could conceal himself behind the counter.
“Did you say something?” she asked.
Did he?
“Well, you made a sound,” she said with a shrug.
He could only imagine. Good Lord, how was he going to get through the next few months?
“Richard?” she said again. She looked amused, perhaps a little delighted at having caught him woolgathering. When he did not immediately reply, she shook her head with a smile and turned back to her work.
He watched her for a few moments, then dipped his hands in a nearby bowl of water and discreetly patted his face. When he was feeling sufficiently cooled, he walked over to where Iris and Mrs. Hopkins were sorting through items.
“What are you putting in that one?” he asked, peeking over Iris’s shoulder as she placed items into a small wooden crate.
Iris glanced up at him only briefly. She was clearly enjoying her work. “Mrs. Hopkins said that the Millers likely need some new linens.”
“Dishcloths?” It seemed a rather plain gift to him.
“It’s what they need,” Iris said. But then she flashed him a smile. “We’re also adding some biscuits just as soon as they come out of the oven. Because it’s always nice to get some things you want, too.”
Richard stared at her for the longest moment.
Self-consciously, she checked her dress, then touched her cheek. “Do I have something on my face? I was helping with the jam . . .”
She had nothing on her face, but he leaned forward and lightly kissed the corner of her mouth. “Right here,” he murmured.
She touched the spot where he’d kissed her. She gazed at him with an expression of wonder, as if she wasn’t sure what had just happened.
He wasn’t sure, either.
“It’s all better now,” he told her.
“Thank you. I—” A faint blush stole over her cheeks. “Thank you.”
“It was my pleasure.”
And it was.
For the next two hours Richard pretended to help with baskets. Iris and Mrs. Hopkins had everything well in hand, and when he tried to make a suggestion, it was either waved away or considered and found wanting.
He didn’t mind. He was happy to assume the position of biscuit-tester (uniformly excellent, he was happy to inform Cook), and watch Iris assume her role as mistress of Maycliffe.
Finally, they had a collection of eighteen baskets, boxes, and bowls, each carefully packed and labeled with the surname of a tenant family. No two gifts were the same; the Dunlops, with four boys between the ages of twelve and sixteen, were given a hefty portion of food, while one of Marie-Claire’s old dolls was placed in the basket for the Smiths, whose three-year-old daughter was recovering from croup. The Millers got their dishcloths and biscuits, and the Burnhams a hearty ham and two books—a study of land management for the eldest son, who had recently taken over the farm, and a romantic novel for his sisters.
And maybe for the son, too, Richard thought with a grin. Everyone could use a romantic novel every now and then.
Everything was loaded into a wagon, and soon Richard and Iris were on their way, bound for all four corners of Maycliffe Park.
“Not the most glamorous of conveyances,” he said with a rueful smile, as they bumped along the road.
Iris put her hand on her head as a stiff wind threatened to steal her bonnet. “I don’t mind. Goodness, can you imagine trying to transport all this in a barouche?”
He didn’t have a barouche, but there seemed little reason to mention this, so instead he said, “You should tie your bonnet strings. You won’t have to keep holding your hat.”
“I know. I’ve just always found it uncomfortable. I don’t like the feeling of them tight under my chin.” She looked over at him with a sparkle in her eye. “You should not be so hasty to offer advice. Your hat is affixed upon your head in no way whatsoever.”
As if on cue, the wagon took a bump just as the wind picked up again, and he felt his top hat rising from his head.
“Oh!” Iris yelped, and without thinking she grabbed his hat and pushed it back down. They had been sitting next to each other, but the movement brought them even closer, and when he slowed the horses and allowed himself to look at her, her face was tipped up toward his, radiant and very, very close.
“I think . . .” he murmured, but as he gazed into her eyes, made even more vivid under the bright blue sky, his words fell away.
“You think . . . ?” she whispered. Her hand was still on his head. Her other hand was on her head, and it would have been the most ridiculous position if it weren’t so utterly wonderful.
The horses ambled to a stop, clearly confused by his lack of direction.
“I think I might need to kiss you,” Richard said. He touched her cheek, the pad of his thumb stroking softly across her milky skin. She was so beautiful. How was it possible he hadn’t realized just how beautiful until this very moment?
The space between them melted into nothingness, and his lips found hers, soft and willing, breathless with wonder. He kissed her slowly, languorously, giving himself time to discover the shape of her, the taste, the texture. It was not the first time he’d kissed her, but it felt brand-new.
There wa
s something exquisitely innocent in the moment. He did not crush her to his body; he did not even wish to. This was not a kiss of possession, nor one of lust. It was something else entirely, something born of curiosity, of captivation.
Softly, he deepened the kiss, letting his tongue glide along the silken skin of her lower lip. She sighed against him, her body softening as she welcomed his caress.
She was perfect. And sweet. And he had the strangest sense that he could stay there all day, his hand on her cheek, her hand on his head, touching nowhere else but at their lips. It was almost chaste, almost spiritual.
But then a bird cawed loudly in the distance, its sharp call piercing the moment. Something changed. Iris grew still, or maybe she simply breathed again, and with a shaky exhale, Richard managed to pull himself a few inches away. He blinked, then blinked again, trying to bring the world into focus. His universe had shrunk to this one woman, and he could not seem to see anything but her face.
Her eyes were filled with amazement, the same expression, he thought, that must be in his own. Her lips were gently parted, offering him the tiniest peek at her pink tongue. It was the strangest thing, but he felt no urge to kiss her. He wanted just to look at her. He wanted to watch the emotions wash across her face. He wanted to watch her eyes as the pupils adjusted to the light. He wanted to memorize the shape of her lips, to learn how quickly her eyelashes swept up and down when she blinked.
“That was . . .” he finally murmured.
“That was . . .” she echoed.
He smiled. He couldn’t help it. “It definitely was.”
Her face broke into an echoing grin, and the sheer joy of the moment was almost too much. “Your hand is still on my head,” he said, feeling his smile turn lopsided and teasing.
She looked up, as if she needed to actually see it to believe it. “Do you think your hat is safe?” she asked.
“We might be able to risk it.”
She took her hand away, and the motion changed her entire position, trebling the space between them. Richard felt almost bereft, which was madness. She sat less than a foot away on the wagon bench, and it felt as if he’d lost something infinitely precious.
“Perhaps you should tie your bonnet more tightly,” he suggested.
She murmured some sort of assent and did so.
He cleared his throat. “We should be on our way.”
“Of course.” She smiled, first hesitantly, then determinedly. “Of course,” she said again. “Who will we be seeing first?”
He was grateful for the question, and the necessity of forming an answer. He needed something to prod his brain back into motion. “Ehrm . . . I think the Burnhams,” he decided. “Theirs is the largest farm, and the closest.”
“Excellent.” Iris twisted in her seat, peering at the pile of gifts in the back of the wagon. “Theirs is the wooden box. Cook packed extra jam. She said young Master Burnham has a sweet tooth.”
“I don’t know that he still qualifies as young,” Richard said, giving the reins a flick. “John Burnham must be twenty-two now, maybe twenty-three.”
“That’s younger than you are.”
He gave her a wry smile. “True, but like me, he is the head of his family and farm. Youth departs quickly with such responsibility.”
“Was it very difficult?” she asked quietly.
“It was the most difficult thing in the world.” Richard thought back to those days right after his father’s death. He’d been so lost, so overwhelmed. And in the middle of it all, while he was supposed to pretend he knew how to run Maycliffe and be a parent to his sisters, he was grieving. He’d loved his father. They may not have always seen eye to eye, but there had been a bond. His father had taught him to ride. He’d taught him to read—not the actual letters and words, but he’d taught him to love reading, to see value in books and knowledge. What he hadn’t taught him—what no one had dreamed was yet necessary—was how to run Maycliffe. Bernard Kenworthy had not been an old man when he’d taken ill. There had been every reason to believe that Richard would have years, decades even, before he needed to take the reins.
But truthfully, there wouldn’t have been much for his father to teach. Bernard Kenworthy had never bothered to learn it himself. He had not been a good steward of the land. It had never interested him, not deeply, and his decisions—when he bothered to make them—had been poor. It wasn’t that he was greedy, it was just that he tended to do whatever was convenient, whatever required the least time and energy on his part. And Maycliffe had suffered for it.
“You were just a boy, really,” Iris said.
Richard let out a short, one-note laugh. “That’s the funny part. I thought I was a man. I’d gone to Oxford, I’d—” He caught himself before he said he’d slept with women. Iris was his wife. She did not need to know about the benchmarks by which stupid young men measured their virility.
“I thought I was a man,” he said with a rueful twist of his lips. “But then . . . when I had to go home and be one . . .”
She placed her hand on his arm. “I’m so sorry.”
He shrugged, but with his opposite shoulder. He did not want her to remove her hand.
“You’ve done a remarkable job,” she said. She looked around, as if the verdant trees were evidence of his good stewardship. “By all accounts, Maycliffe is thriving.”
“By all accounts?” he said with a teasing grin. “How many accounts, pray tell, have you heard in your lengthy time in residence?”
She gave a gigglish snort and bumped her shoulder against his. “People talk,” she said archly. “And as you know, I listen.”
“That you do.”
He watched as she smiled. It was a satisfied little turn of her lips, and he loved it.
“Will you tell me more about the Burnhams?” she asked. “All the tenants, actually, but we should begin with the Burnhams, as they are our first visit.”
“I’m not sure what you wish to know, but there are six of them. Mrs. Burnham, of course, her son John, who is now head of the family, and then four other children, two boys and two girls.” He thought for a moment. “I can’t remember how old they all are, but the youngest, Tommy—he can’t be much more than eleven.”
“How long has it been since the father passed?”
“Two years, maybe three. It was not unexpected.”
“No?”
“He drank. A great deal.” Richard frowned. He did not wish to speak ill of the dead, but it was the truth. Mr. Burnham had been too fond of ale, and it had ruined him. He’d grown fat, then yellow, and then he died.
“Is his son the same way?”
It was not a silly question. Sons took their cues from their fathers, as Richard well knew. When he had inherited Maycliffe, he, too, had done what was convenient, and he’d packed his sisters off to live with their aunt while he continued his life in London as if he had no new responsibilities at home. It had taken him several years before he realized how empty he had become. And even now, he was paying the price for his poor judgment.
“I don’t know John Burnham well,” he said to Iris, “but I don’t think he drinks. At least not more than any man does.”
Iris didn’t say anything, so he continued. “He will be a good man, better than his father was.”
“What do you mean?” she asked.
Richard thought for a moment. He’d never really taken the time to think about John Burnham, other than the fact that he was now the head of Maycliffe’s largest tenant farm. He liked what he knew of him, but their paths did not often cross, nor would anyone expect them to.
“He is a serious fellow,” Richard finally replied. “He’s done well for himself. Finished school, even, thanks to my father.”
“Your father?” Iris echoed, with some surprise.
“He paid the fees. He took a liking to him. Said he was very intelligent. My father always valued that.”
“It is a good thing to value.”
“Indeed.” It was, after all, one
of the many reasons he valued her. But this was not the time to say so, so he added, “John probably could have gone off and read law or something of the sort if he hadn’t returned to Mill Farm.”
“From a farmer to a barrister?” Iris asked. “Really?”
Richard gave a shrug. “No reason why it can’t be done. Assuming one wanted to.”
Iris was silent for a moment, then asked, “Is Mr. Burnham married?”
He gave her a quizzical look before returning his attention to the road. “Why such interest?”
“I need to know these things,” she reminded him. She shifted a little in her seat. “And I was curious. I’m always curious about people. Perhaps he had to return home to support his family. Perhaps that is why he was not able to study law.”
“I don’t know if he did want to study law. I merely said he was intelligent enough to do so. And no, he’s not married. But he does have a family to support. He would not turn his back on his mother and siblings.”
Iris laid her hand on his arm. “He is much like you, then.”
Richard swallowed uncomfortably.
“You take such good care of your sisters,” she continued.
“You have yet even to meet them,” he reminded her.
She gave a little shrug. “I can tell that you are a devoted brother. And guardian.”
Richard briefly settled the reins in one hand, relieved that he could point ahead and change the subject. “It’s just around the corner.”
“Mill Farm?”
He looked over at her. There had been something in her voice. “Are you nervous?”
“A bit, yes,” she admitted.
“Don’t be. You are the mistress of Maycliffe.”
She let out a little snort. “That is precisely why I feel nervous.”
Richard started to say something, then just shook his head. Didn’t she realize that the Burnhams were the ones who would be nervous to meet her?
“Oh!” Iris exclaimed. “It’s much bigger than I expected.”
“I did say it’s the largest holding at Maycliffe,” Richard murmured, bringing the wagon to a halt. The Burnhams had been farming the land there for several generations and over time had built quite a nice house, with four bedrooms, a sitting room, and an office. They’d once employed a maid, but she’d been let go when the family had fallen on hard times before the elder Mr. Burnham’s death.