“I’ve never gone visiting with my cousins,” Iris said self-consciously.
Richard hopped down and then offered her his hand. “Why do you sound so unsure all of a sudden?”
“I suppose I’m realizing how little I know.” She motioned to the house. “I had assumed all tenant farmers lived in little cottages.”
“Most do. But some are quite prosperous. One does not need to own the land to do well.”
“But one does need to own the land to be considered a gentleman. Or at least have been born into a landowning family.”
“True,” he acceded. Even a yeoman farmer would not be considered gentry. One needed larger holdings for that.
“Sir Richard!” came a shout.
Richard grinned as he saw a young boy running toward him. “Tommy!” he called out. He tousled the boy’s hair when he bounced into place in front of him. “What has your mother been feeding you? I believe you’ve grown a foot since our last meeting.”
Tommy Burnham beamed. “John’s got me working in the fields. Mum says it’s the sunshine. I must be a weed.”
Richard laughed, then introduced Iris, who earned Tommy’s everlasting devotion by treating him like an adult and offering her hand for a shake.
“Is John in the house?” Richard asked, reaching into the wagon for the correct box.
“With Mum,” Tommy replied, with a jerk of his head toward the house. “We’re taking a break to eat.”
“Is this the one?” Richard murmured to Iris. At her nod, he lifted the box out and motioned for her to begin walking toward the house. “You’ve other men working with you in the fields, though, don’t you?” he asked Tommy.
“Oh, yes.” Tommy looked at him as if he were daft to even consider that they might not. “We couldn’t do it ourselves. Don’t even need me, really, but John says I’ve got to do my part.”
“Your brother is a wise man,” Richard said.
Tommy rolled his eyes. “So he says.”
Iris let out a little laugh.
“Watch out for her,” Richard said with a tick of his head toward Iris. “Like you, she’s got far too many siblings, and she’s learned to be quick.”
“Not quick,” Iris corrected. “Devious.”
“Even worse.”
“He is the oldest,” she told Tommy meaningfully. “What he achieved with brute force, we’ve had to manage with our wits.”
“She’s got you there, Sir Richard,” Tommy chortled.
“She always does.”
“Really?” Iris murmured, her brows high.
Richard just smiled secretively. Let her make of that what she will.
They entered the house, Tommy calling ahead to his mother that Sir Richard was here with the new Lady Kenworthy. Mrs. Burnham bustled out immediately, wiping floury hands on her apron. “Sir Richard,” she said, bobbing a curtsy. “This is indeed an honor.”
“I have come to introduce my wife.”
Iris gave a pretty smile. “We’ve brought you a gift.”
“Oh, but we should be giving gifts to you,” Mrs. Burnham protested. “For your wedding.”
“Nonsense,” Iris said. “You are welcoming me into your home, onto your land.”
“It is your land now, too,” Richard reminded her, setting the box of treats on a table.
“Yes, but the Burnhams have been here a century longer than I have. I still must earn my place.”
And just like that, Iris won the everlasting loyalty of Mrs. Burnham, and by extension, all the tenants. Society was the same no matter the sphere. Mrs. Burnham was the matron of the largest of the local farms, and this made her the leader of Maycliffe society. Iris’s words would have reached the ears of every soul at Maycliffe by nightfall.
“You see why I married her,” Richard said to Mrs. Burnham. The words flowed naturally from his smiling lips, but once said, a little prick of guilt sparked in his gut. It wasn’t why he’d married her.
He wished it was why he’d married her.
“John,” Mrs. Burnham said, “you must meet the new Lady Kenworthy.”
Richard hadn’t realized that John Burnham had entered the small foyer. He was a quiet man, always had been, and he was standing near the door to the kitchen, waiting for the others to notice him.
“My lady,” John said with a little bow. “It is an honor to meet you.”
“And you,” Iris replied.
“How fares the farm?” Richard asked.
“Very well,” John replied, and the two of them spoke for a few minutes about fields and crops and irrigation while Iris made polite conversation with Mrs. Burnham.
“We must be on our way,” Richard finally said. “We’ve many more stops to make before heading back to Maycliffe.”
“It must be quiet with your sisters gone,” Mrs. Burnham said.
John turned sharply. “Your sisters are gone?”
“Just to visit our aunt. She thought we could do with some time alone.” He gave John a man-to-man sort of smile. “Sisters don’t add much to a honeymoon.”
“No,” John said, “I imagine not.”
They made their farewells, and Richard took Iris’s arm to lead her out.
“I think that went well,” she said, as he helped her up into the wagon.
“You were splendid,” he assured her.
“Truly? You would not just say that?”
“I would just say that,” he admitted, “but it is true. Mrs. Burnham adores you already.”
Iris’s lips parted, and he could tell she was about to say something like “Truly?” or “Do you really think so?” but then she just smiled, her cheeks flushing with pride. “Thank you,” she said softly.
He kissed her hand in reply, then gave the reins a flick.
“This is a lovely day,” she said, as they drove away from Mill Farm. “I’m having a lovely day.”
As was he. The loveliest in memory.
Chapter Fourteen
Three days later
SHE WAS FALLING in love with her husband. Iris didn’t know how it could possibly be more obvious.
Wasn’t love supposed to be confusing? Wasn’t she supposed to lie in bed, agonizing under the weight of her tortuous thoughts—Is this real? Is this love? Back in London she’d asked her cousin Sarah about it—Sarah, who was so thoroughly and obviously in love with her husband, and even she had said that she hadn’t been sure at first.
But no, Iris always had to do things her own way, and she simply woke up in the morning and thought to herself, I love him.
Or if she didn’t yet, she would soon. It was only a matter of time. Her breath caught whenever Richard walked into the room. She thought about him constantly. And he could make her laugh—oh, how he could make her laugh.
She could make him laugh, too. And when she did, her heart leapt.
The day they had visited the tenants had been magical, and she knew he’d felt it, too. He had kissed her as if she were a priceless treasure—no, she thought, not like that. That would have been cold and clinical.
Richard had kissed her as if she were light and warmth and rainbows all rolled into one. He’d kissed her as if the sun were shining down with a single beam of light, just on them, only on them.
It had been perfect.
Pure magic.
And then he hadn’t done it again.
They spent their days together, exploring Maycliffe. He gazed warmly into her eyes. He held her hand, he even kissed the tender skin of her wrist. But he never brought his lips to hers.
Did he think she would not welcome his advances? Did he think it was still too soon? How could it be too soon? They were married, for heaven’s sake. She was his wife.
And why didn’t he realize that she would be too embarrassed to ask him about it?
So she kept pretending that she thought this was normal. Lots of married couples kept to their own bedchambers. If her own parents ever slept in the same bed, she didn’t know about it.
Nor, she thought
with a shudder, did she want to.
But even if Richard was the sort of man who felt that married couples should maintain their own chambers, surely he would wish to consummate the union? Her mother had said that men liked to do . . . that. And Sarah had said that women could like it, as well.
The only explanation was that Richard did not desire her. Except she thought . . . maybe . . . he did.
Twice she had caught him watching her with an intensity that made her pulse leap. And just this morning he’d almost kissed her. She was sure of it. They had been walking the winding path to the orangery, and she tripped. Richard had twisted as he caught her, and she’d fallen against him, her breasts pressed flat against his chest.
It was the closest she had ever been to him, and she looked up, straight into his eyes. The world around them had slipped away, and she saw nothing but his beloved face. His head dipped toward hers, and his gaze dropped to her lips, and she sighed . . .
And he stepped back.
“Forgive me,” he’d murmured, and they were once again on their way.
But the morning had lost its magic. Their conversation, which had grown so easy and free, was once again stilted, and Richard did not touch her, not even casually. There was no hand at her back, no arm looped with hers.
Another woman—one who had more experience with the male sex, or maybe one who could read minds—might understand why Richard was acting as he did, but Iris was mystified.
And frustrated.
And sad.
Iris groaned and turned back to the book she was reading. It was late in the afternoon, and she’d found an old Sarah Gorely novel in Maycliffe’s library—presumably the purchase of one of Richard’s sisters. She could not imagine he would ever have bought it. It wasn’t very good, but it was dramatic, and most importantly, it was distracting. And the blue sofa in the drawing room was exceedingly comfortable. The fabric had been worn down just enough to make it soft, but not quite so much as to render it careworn.
She liked reading in the drawing room. The afternoon light was excellent, and here, at the heart of the house, she could almost convince herself that she belonged to this place.
She’d managed to lose herself in the story for a chapter or so when she heard footsteps in the hall that could only belong to Richard.
“How are you this afternoon?” he asked from the doorway, greeting her with a polite dip of his head.
She smiled up at him. “Very well, thank you.”
“What are you reading?”
Iris held up the book even though it was unlikely he could read the title from across the room. “Miss Truesdale and the Silent Gentleman. It’s an old Sarah Gorely novel. Not her best, I’m afraid.”
He came fully into the room. “I have never read anything by that author. But I believe she is quite well-known, is she not?”
“I don’t think you would like it,” Iris said.
He smiled—that warm, languid smile that seemed to melt across his face. “Try me.”
Iris blinked and looked down at the book in her hands before holding it out toward him.
He laughed merrily. “I could not take it away from you.”
She glanced up at him with surprise. “You wish for me to read to you?”
“Why not?”
Her brows rose into doubtful arches. “Don’t say I didn’t warn you,” she murmured, and she scooted over a little on the sofa, trying to quash the sting of disappointment when he instead sat in a chair across from her.
“Did you find it in the library?” he asked. “I imagine it was Fleur’s purchase.”
Iris nodded as she took note of her place before turning back to the beginning. “You have the entire Gorely oeuvre.”
“Really? I had no idea my sister was such a devotee.”
“You did say she likes to read,” Iris remarked. “And Mrs. Gorely is a very popular author.”
“So I’m told,” he murmured.
Iris looked over at him, and he regally inclined his head, signaling for her to begin. “Chapter One,” she read. “Miss Ivory Truesdale was orphaned on—” She looked back up. “Are you sure you want me to read this? I cannot imagine you will enjoy it.”
He regarded her with a deeply amused expression. “You realize you must read it now, after all your protestations.”
Iris shook her head. “Very well.” She cleared her throat. “Miss Ivory Truesdale was orphaned on a Wednesday afternoon, when her father was struck through the heart by a poison-tipped arrow, shot from the quiver of a Hungarian master archer, brought to England for the sole purpose of bringing about his gruesome and untimely demise.”
She looked up.
“Grim,” Richard said.
Iris nodded. “It gets worse.”
“How can it possibly?”
“The Hungarian archer meets his demise in a few chapters.”
“Let me guess. A carriage accident.”
“Far too pedestrian,” Iris scoffed. “This is the author who pecked a character to death with pigeons in another book.”
Richard’s mouth opened, then closed. “Pigeons,” he finally said, blinking several times in rapid succession. “Remarkable.”
Iris held up the book. “Shall I continue?”
“Please,” he said, with the particular expression of a man who is not at all certain he is treading the right path.
Iris cleared her throat. “For the next six years, Ivory was unable to face a Wednesday afternoon without remembering the silent swish of the arrow as it swept by her face on its way to her father’s doomed heart.”
Richard muttered something under his breath. Iris could not make out the exact words, but she was fairly certain crapulence was among them.
“Each Wednesday was torture. To rise from her meager bed required energy she rarely possessed. Food was unpalatable, and sleep, when she found it, was her only escape.”
Richard snorted.
Iris looked up. “Yes?”
“Nothing.”
She turned back to the book.
“But really,” he said with indignance, “Wednesdays?”
She looked back up.
“The woman is afraid of Wednesdays?”
“Apparently.”
“Only Wednesdays.”
Iris shrugged.
“What happens on Thursdays?”
“I was about to say.”
Richard rolled his eyes at her impertinence and motioned for her to continue.
Iris gave him a deliberately patient stare, signaling her preparation for another interruption. He returned the expression with equal irony, and she turned back to the text.
“Thursdays brought hope and renewal, although one could not say that Ivory had reason to hope, nor could one say that her soul was renewed. Her life in Miss Winchell’s Home for Orphaned Children was tedious at best and wretched at worst.”
“Tedious might be the first apt word of the novel,” Richard scoffed.
Iris raised her brows. “Shall I stop?”
“Please. I do not think I can bear to go on.”
Iris bit back a smile, feeling just a little bit wicked for enjoying his distress.
“But I still want to know how the Hungarian archer dies,” Richard added.
“That will spoil the story for you,” Iris countered, adopting a prim expression.
“Somehow I doubt that.”
Iris chuckled. She hadn’t meant to, but Richard had a way of saying things with a sly undertone that never failed to amuse her. “Very well. The archer was shot in the head.”
“That’s not terribly interesting.” At her look he added, “In a literary sense, of course.”
“The gun was fired by a dog.”
Richard’s face went slack.
“And we now have another silent gentleman,” Iris said with a superior smile.
“No, really,” Richard said. “I must protest.”
“To whom?”
That seemed to flummox him. “I don’t know,
” he finally said. “But a protest must be lodged nonetheless.”
“I don’t think the dog meant to shoot him,” Iris demurred.
“You mean the author does not make the canine’s motivations clear?”
Iris assumed a scrupulously even expression. “Even she lacks such talent.”
This was met by a snort.
“I did tell you that this was not one of her better novels,” she reminded him.
Richard appeared to be incapable of response.
“I could read from one of her other books,” she said, not even attempting to disguise her amusement.
“Please, no.”
Iris laughed merrily.
“How is it possible,” Richard opined, “that she is one of the most popular authors of our time?”
“I find her stories quite diverting,” Iris admitted. It was true. They were not terribly well written, but there was something about them that was impossible to put down.
“A diversion from sanity, perhaps,” Richard scoffed. “How many novels has Miss Gorely written? Or is it Missus?”
“I have no idea,” Iris admitted. She looked at the front and back pages. “There is nothing here about her. Not even a sentence.”
He shrugged nonchalantly. “That is to be expected. If you were to write a novel, I should not want you to use your real name.”
Iris looked up, startled by the brief flash of pain behind her eyes. “You would be ashamed of me?”
“Of course not,” he said sternly. “But I should not want your fame to intrude upon our private lives.”
“You think I would be famous?” she blurted out.
“Of course.” He regarded her dispassionately, as if the conclusion were so obvious as not to merit discussion.
Iris considered this, trying not to allow her entire body to suffuse with pleasure. She was fairly certain she was unsuccessful; already she could feel the skin on her cheeks growing warm. Her lower lip caught between her teeth; it was so strange, this bubble of joy, all because he’d thought that . . . that she was . . . well, clever.
And the mad thing was, she knew she was clever. She didn’t need him to say so for her to believe it.