“She did, huh?” Trevor said, but he smiled. “She was very young at the time.”
“But Trevor,” Ursula said, confusion writ clear on her young face, “I thought you adored Helen. I thought she was the luckiest woman to have you until she died.”
Fanny was silent. She was looking longingly at the spiced pears but took an apple instead.
Trevor merely shook his head at his sister, still smiling. He said now to North, “I understand that you, like Marcus, have wisely avoided the fighting on my shores and stuck instead to that very short fellow, Napoleon. I salute you both for your caution. I shouldn’t have liked to stick my bayonet into either of your bellies had you attempted to come into Baltimore.”
“Ho, Marcus, shall I take him outside and pound him into the ground?”
“You couldn’t,” James said. “Trevor is stronger than a horse and he’s fast.”
“I heard you say he was a dirty fighter, James,” Ursula said.
“What’s a dirty fighter mean?” Fanny wanted to know, the apple halfway to her mouth.
“That, my children,” said Aunt Wilhelmina, “is quite enough. It is more than enough. You’ve quite overset my nerves. Sampson, please tell Badger to make me some lemon curd to settle my innards.”
Antonia whispered to Fanny, “I think we should go tell the Duchess. She probably needs to have a fun laugh.” The Twins slipped from their chairs after a nod from Aunt Gweneth, and out of the morning room.
“I still don’t want you to leave, Willie,” Aunt Gweneth said.
Marcus gave her a sympathetic smile. “We must allow such decisions to reside with Trevor, ma’am.”
“Why? He’s as young as you are, Marcus. Why should he have the final say? She’s his mama; he’s not her husband.”
“He’s still the man, Aunt Gweneth. He’s the head of the family.”
“Bosh,” said Aunt Wilhelmina. “He’s a mere twenty-two, twenty-three, at most. I told him that just the other day when he mistakenly claimed to be nearly twenty-five. I will speak to him, Gweneth. He will come to reason.”
Trevor just shrugged, grinning down at his plate. Marcus and North exchanged expressions that none of the females at the table comprehended.
They faced each other in the Duchess’s bedchamber.
“No. I forbid it. That’s it.”
“Marcus, I’m fine, I promise. I’ll go quite mad if I stay in this bedchamber for another instant. Please, I want to go riding. I’ll be most careful.”
He had his steward, Mr. Franks, to suffer for a good two hours. Crittaker was hanging about, with a hopeful expression with fistfuls of accounts to review and a score of letters to answer. Two of his tenants wanted to see him. He said, “I’ll ride with you. You can’t go alone.”
She threw her arms around him. “Oh, thank you.”
He eased his own arms around her back and gently hugged her to him. “You’re so skinny, Duchess.”
“I won’t be for much longer. By fall, I’ll be as round as the pumpkins over in Mr. Popplewell’s farm.”
He said nothing. His arms loosened around her.
“Marcus.”
She’d raised her face and he looked at her a moment, into those deep-blue eyes of hers, so very deep her eyes, filled with uncertainty, too much uncertainty, and oddly enough, caring. Caring for him? He supposed so. Otherwise, why should she have gone through with the marriage? A man’s honor would carry him so far, but surely there were limits. A woman’s honor? He didn’t know, but he did know her. Her honor went deep. He kissed her then, his tongue lightly stroking her lower lip. She came up on her tiptoes, fitting herself to him more tightly.
“I can’t make love with you yet, else that damned too young Doctor Raven would have apoplexy. No, Duchess, no. Ah, you taste marvelous, you know that? And you’re so bloody soft and giving. You enjoy me, don’t you?”
“There can’t be another man like you in the world, Marcus. Even that poacher Trevor or the silent and brooding Lord Chilton can’t come close to you.”
He grinned even as he continued kissing her, nipping lightly at her lower lip, slipping his tongue into her mouth, his breath warm. “Is that a compliment or a condemnation?”
“You want me, Marcus. I can feel you.”
“If you couldn’t feel me then I should go slit my wrists. I want you every time I even think about you, anytime I smell that perfume of yours, whenever I hear your skirts swishing.”
But he didn’t want the child she carried because he hated her father so very much.
She wondered in that moment if he’d wanted her to miscarry the child. No, he wouldn’t ever have wished for it consciously, not Marcus. She shook her head even as she moaned into his mouth, even as she accepted that child or no child, it was Marcus who was at the center of her life, at the center of her heart.
“By all that’s holy, I want you.” His hands swept down her back, cupping her hips, and pulling her hard against him.
“Yes,” she said against his mouth. “I’m perfectly fine.”
In the next moment, he pressed her against the wall, lifting her. “Put your legs around my waist.” She did, not understanding, but that confusion lasted just a moment, just until he’d freed himself from his trousers, pulled up her gown and widened her for himself. He came up high into her and she was ready for him, warm and soft, so very eager, and she moaned even as he filled her, even as his fingers stroked her flesh, and his tongue was deep in her mouth. He climaxed, his big body shaking, clenching as his muscles released and tightened, pushing for he knew she hadn’t yet reached her release and she knew even as she grew closer and closer that he wouldn’t ever stop until she’d gained such pleasure she’d yell with it.
She gasped when the urgent feelings began to roil through her, tensing her legs, making her want to scream, but she didn’t because she was gasping into his mouth, and he took her cries when they built and kissed her, pushing her and pushing her more until she was limp and exhausted against him. Slowly, her legs slid off his flanks. He held her close, still kissing her, stroking her, and he said, “I missed kissing your beautiful breasts.”
“And I missed kissing your belly, Marcus, though I’ve yet to do it. You always distract me. Perhaps I could kiss you even lower, do you think?”
He groaned at that, lightly slapped her buttocks, then caressed them.
“Bathe yourself, sweetheart, and then, if you’ve still the energy for it, I’ll take you riding.” He paused a moment in the adjoining doorway. “If you’d like to try that, I shouldn’t say nay.”
She gave him a very inquisitive, very absorbed look that made his belly clench in lust. Perhaps, just perhaps, this was the beyond Badger had spoken about. She couldn’t wait.
26
THE COLONIAL WYNDHAMS took their leave on Friday morning, mountains of luggage piled high atop the traveling chaise Trevor had procured for his family.
Aunt Wilhelmina said to the Duchess, “You look quite well again, more’s the pity.”
“What did you say, Mama?”
“My dear James, I only told the Duchess that she looked well and surely she could join us in the city.”
“Just so, ma’am,” the Duchess said. “Just so and I hope that you may fall ill of a vile verbal plague.”
“And what did you say, Duchess?” James asked, grinning behind a gloved hand at her.
“Ah, I merely hoped your mother would call upon us again someday.”
Aunt Wilhelmina stared hard at her, continuing in a lower voice, “It’s remarkable how you are able to repair yourself time after time. Surely someday there will be an end to it.”
“Doubtless you’re right, ma’am. However, in the natural order of things, since you’re many years my senior, you will quite probably reach your end before I do.”
“One can only hope,” Marcus said under his breath but still within hearing of his American aunt.
“You deserve to die too. Her insults you approve.”
“Good he
avens, Mama? What did you say?”
“Nothing at all, Ursula, merely that Marcus deserves a shy wife, one who doesn’t insult her relatives, which is what the Duchess does, doubtless out of ignorance brought on by her lack of breeding.”
The Duchess laughed.
“You are such a crone, ma’am. I hope you get clipped by a carriage wheel.”
“Marcus,” Aunt Gweneth nearly shrieked. “What did you say?”
“I just told Aunt Wilhelmina that she deserves a throne for her kindness and a new carriage.”
“You have your nerve, young man.”
“Yes, I finally appear to, don’t I?” He gave her a slight bow, then turned away to Trevor. “Trevor, you mincing dandified sod, doubtless the Duchess and I will see you in London. How long do you intend to remain in England?”
“James wants to visit all the flesh pots, every gambling hall, every den of iniquity.”
“Our capital is rich in sin,” North said. “Thus it should take you a good ten years, then.”
“James is very young. He’s fast. I’ll wager he has his fill in three months. Possibly less time were you to come to London and be, er, our guide. What do you say, North? Marcus?”
“Now, brother, don’t rush me,” James said, throwing up his hands. “A man must come of age knowing every vice in existence so that he may be a wise father to his sons.”
“Goodness, you gentlemen are quite depraved,” the Duchess said. “I don’t know if I should allow Marcus to join you. Besides, my husband doesn’t know anything at all of such places, do you, my lord?”
“Nary a thing,” Marcus said cheerfully. “Not a blessed whit of a thing. Consider me a devout and pious Methodist when I enter the evil climes of London.”
“You will write me often, Willie?”
“Certainly, Gweneth. Oh, how I dislike leaving the Wyndham legacy to him and to her. It’s the American Wyndham legacy.”
“Despite all the remarkable clues we found, ma’am,” Marcus said easily, “I’m still not convinced there’s anything to be discovered. This Janus-faced nine business with the lurking monster, surely it is a monk’s ravings, nothing more. It’s fancy, whimsy.”
“I agree,” Trevor said. He shook Marcus’s hand, looked down at the Duchess, then lightly kissed her forehead, and stepped back. “Now, we’re off. Marcus, take good care of your beautiful wife. North, I hope to see you again. If you come to London, Marcus has our direction. We’ll all repair to those infamous flesh pots together. You’re not a Methodist, I hope?” He kissed each of the Twins and Aunt Gweneth, then turned to wave good-bye to Sampson, Badger, Spears, and Maggie.
“You’ve got quite a collection of interesting specimens here at Chase Park,” James said, waving now himself. “Maggie is quite the most unusual lady’s maid I’ve ever encountered. She actually patted my rear end, Marcus.”
“I trust you gave as good as you got,” Marcus said, and assisted Aunt Wilhelmina into the carriage.
“I tried,” James said, “but she just smiled at me and told me to come see her again when I’d ripened.”
They watched the carriage roll down the long wide drive of Chase Park. They waved when Ursula stuck her head out the window and shouted another good-bye.
“How dispiriting it is when such loving guests take their leave,” Aunt Gweneth said. “We’ll be quite low now.”
“It was Trevor’s decision,” Marcus said. “I swear, Aunt Gweneth, I didn’t order dear Wilhelmina to leave, despite her strange proclivities and her quite malicious tongue.”
“Still,” Aunt Gweneth said, sighed, and walked with her shoulders drooped back into the house.
Maggie sniffed loudly when she was close enough for the Duchess to hear her. “That old besom is a horror. I don’t trust her an inch, Duchess. I’m certain she was the one who pushed you down the stairs and struck your poor head in the library.”
“How did you know about the stairs, Maggie?”
“Why, Mr. Sampson told me. And Mr. Badger. And Mr. Spears. We discussed it, naturally. That’s why you were never alone until that old crone finally took her leave. My pity flies toward all the innocent folk in London.”
“It does rather boggle the imagination,” the Duchess said.
“Amen, Duchess,” Badger said at her elbow. “Now, you’re looking just a bit pale. Come into the Green Cube Room and I’ll bring you some nice tea.”
The peace lasted until the afternoon. At one o’clock, just when they were all settled down for luncheon, Sampson appeared in the morning room and said in a voice of a king bestowing a prize to his champion, “Your mother has arrived, my lord.”
“Good God,” Marcus said, dropped the fork that held a bite of rare roast beef, or as Badger called it—rosbief anglais à la sauce des fines herbes—and rose. “She’s early, but why am I surprised? She was early in labor with me and has never let me forget about the hideous pain I forced upon her. I keep telling her that I have no recollection of it, nor do I believe I planned to torture her. Also, since I arrived early, did I not save her some pain?”
The Duchess rose to stand beside him.
He took her hand. “Everyone continue eating. The Duchess and I will sacrifice ourselves on the hearth of filial duty.”
The earl’s mother, Patricia Elliott Wyndham, a lady of fifty summers with only about forty of them apparent on her face, was very elegant, small, with a lovely head of thick black hair. Not a strand of gray in the entire lot, and eyes as blue as her son’s.
She eyed the Duchess up and down. “Marcus would come home as a boy and speak of you. He said you were quite the most unusual child he’d ever met, not at all like the Twins who were little nodcocks, he’d say. He said you were graceful and reserved and arrogant. He said if anyone looked at you, your nose went directly into the air and didn’t come down. I didn’t think he liked you very much. Why then did he marry you? And without writing to tell me of it until it was already done? And why in Paris, of all places?”
The Duchess smiled down at her new mama-in-law. “He fell in love with me, ma’am. He begged me to marry him, swore that he couldn’t continue with life without me, that even his port and his food counted for nothing if he couldn’t have me. He slavered. What could I do? I’m not a cruel woman. I didn’t want him to starve, to thirst to death, to throw himself beneath passing carriage wheels, for he is a man of swiftly burning passion and when he becomes, er, passionate, he is capable of doing anything. I just happened to be visiting in Paris and he was there. There wasn’t time for him to do his filial duty and consult with you. Isn’t that true, Marcus?”
“Absolutely,” the earl said. “Ah, which part of it, Duchess?”
“Also, ma’am, to be perfectly honest, I quite adore him myself. It was quite to my liking to marry him. I would have preferred if you had been there, but there wasn’t time. I am so very sorry.”
He stared at her, wondering, always wondering, for she had changed, his Duchess, and he couldn’t be certain what she meant anymore. She adored him? She’d wanted to marry him? It wasn’t just her damned honor, her sense of justice? Ah, there was thinking here aplenty for him to do.
“He always was a boy of intelligence and charm,” Mrs. Wyndham said. “Yes, the girls in the neighborhood were always simpering at him, flirting endlessly with him. It made him quite conceited, I fear. He gave them all hope, my charming boy, teased them and gave each of them his special smile. I have always wondered, Marcus, did you take Melissa Billingstage into the Billingstage stable and up into the hay loft?”
“I have no recollection of such an event, Mama, or of this Melissa girl. She wasn’t that quite delicious little flirt whose father was squire of Bassing Manor, was she? The girl with the huge pansy eyes and, er, quite substantial endowments?”
“You know very well—ah, there, Duchess, he’s done it again, trapped me into my own accusations as quickly as a heron can snag pilchards from the sea.”
“He is quite adept, isn’t he, ma’am? And he’s s
till quite conceited, but I must confess that it is part of his charm and thus part of him. His smile is probably the most special I’ve ever seen. It’s to his credit that he practiced it to perfection when he was a boy since it gives me remarkable pleasure.”
“She’s just the girl I would have chosen for you, Marcus,” his fond parent announced, taking the Duchess’s hand. “I see you’re wearing a strange wedding band. You must have mine for it has been in the Wyndham family for at least three generations. I will have it sent to you.”
“Thank you, ma’am. Do you agree, Marcus?”
“Certainly. I forgot about it.”
“She’s your wife, Marcus. It must be on her finger.”
“Er, just so, Mama. Welcome to Chase Park. How long do you intend to stay? Long or short?”
His mother gave him a frown that, if he’d had the Duchess’s objective eye, he would have known he wore the same expression when he frowned. “Sampson said that the Colonials just left. Of course, I knew of it already. Dear Mrs. Emory, my very good friend, wrote me when Mr. Trevor Wyndham said they would be leaving today. But I didn’t trust that woman’s tactics. I’ve stayed in Darlington for the past two days and stationed a man here to tell me when their carriage finally rolled out of the drive and took a left turn. I always detested that Wilhelmina woman.”
“But you’ve never met her, Mama.”
“It doesn’t matter. A mother knows everything. Isn’t she a rude, utterly obnoxious old crone?”
“Yes,” the Duchess said, “as a matter of fact she is. One never knows what will pop out of her mouth, and whatever does pop out, it’s invariably an insult.”
“I knew it. Well, my darlings, now I’m here, and everything will be so much brighter and happier. Where is Gweneth? Where are the Twins? What is this about the Wyndham legacy? And you, Josephina, you’ve been nearly murdered twice, according to Mrs. Emory. Do tell me all about it, my dear, I do so adore mysteries.”
“Her name is Duchess, Mama. Josephina is the name of a goat or a mallard.”
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