by Karen Ranney
“I shall be quite happy on my cot,” she said. Her voice sounded perfectly normal and without a betraying quiver to it. Years of standing before her father and hiding her true emotions had made her quite adept at managing fear.
“A pity, then,” he said.
She heard him plump up the pillows, then the squeak of the mattress straps as he sat on the bed.
“Do you want me to leave the light on?”
“That is not necessary,” she said. “I can settle myself perfectly well in the dark. There is nothing in the dark that wasn’t there in the night.”
She was startled to hear him chuckle.
“Do you think this situation amusing, Mr. Eston?”
“I think you are vastly amusing,” he said. “More than you could ever imagine.”
She didn’t know whether to be affronted or relieved. Surely a man who was amused by a woman could not be intent upon ravishing her?
Perhaps she should be like Scheherazade and tell him a tale to entertain him. And unfortunately, the only tales she knew were of Chavensworth. No doubt her life here was boring to him.
“Have you traveled a great deal?” she asked.
“I have, in the past,” he said. “Of my future, I can’t speak. It has a great deal to do with you.”
“I shouldn’t think that I would be an object of consideration, Mr. Eston,” she said.
She turned to face him, relieved that he was covered by the sheets and the coverlet. His shoulders were bare. The rest of him must be bare as well.
She looked away again.
“Chavensworth may keep you here, Mr. Eston. It’s beautiful, is it not?”
“It’s a building, Lady Sarah. As a building, it’s to be admired. I wouldn’t call it beautiful, however.”
“Are you that prideful a man that you will not admit to admiring anything? Not a structure, not God’s handiwork, nothing that you yourself did not build or cause to be constructed?”
“In other words, am I like the Duke of Herridge?” he asked. “No doubt your father’s arrogance has colored your opinion of all men. I am not like your father.”
She had no rejoinder for him. Only time, and perhaps familiarity, would tell exactly who he was. But at this moment, she wasn’t about to say that. Instead, she only nodded.
A moment later, the lamp was extinguished, and they were in darkness.
“I can smell you,” he said. “Do you think that’s entirely fair?”
“I beg your pardon?” She navigated to her cot and sat down on the edge of it, staring up at the bed on its dais. He was a shadow in the darkness, but she could tell well enough that he was sitting up and looking at her. She wouldn’t have been surprised to see his eyes gleam like a cat’s.
Intentionally ignoring him, she lay down on the cot, grabbing the edge of the sheet with both fists and pulling it up to her chin.
“You smell of roses. Here I am, a celibate bridegroom, and my bride lies in her solitary cot smelling of roses and moonlight.”
“You cannot smell of moonlight,” she said. “Moonlight has no scent.”
“You have evidently never smelled a summer night in Borneo.”
“I have never left Chavensworth,” she admitted. “Other than to London, of course. But the world comes to London. Why should we ever leave?”
“If you have to ask that question, then the answer isn’t important.”
Now she was affronted. She stared up at the darkened ceiling, wondering how she should respond. “I have always been a person who loved knowledge,” she said.
“Some people do not like to travel,” he said. “It’s enough for them to remain in their homes for all of their lives.”
“Are you berating them because that’s a choice they made? Perhaps they don’t have the funds to venture far from home.”
“Which is your excuse? Is it a choice? Or simply because you’ve never been given the opportunity? What faraway land would you see if you had the funds and the time?”
“I could spare the funds from Chavensworth,” she said, lying and disliking that fact intensely. “Up until our marriage, Mr. Eston, I was a single woman. Single women do not travel although it’s encouraged for single men. Besides, I have had other duties to occupy me.”
He didn’t challenge that statement, possibly remembering her mother’s condition. But neither did he ease her mind by saying something conciliatory, a politeness anyone else might utter. But he was not anyone else, and these were not the usual circumstances either, were they? There was nothing in any of the books or periodicals she’d read addressing a marriage like this.
“Shall I sleep on a cot for the rest of my days?” she asked, giving voice to an earlier thought. “Will you aid me in rising as my joints stiffen?”
“Can you see yourself being stubborn until you’re an old woman?”
“Stubborn? Is that what you call it? I call it not being a harlot. I don’t know you, Mr. Eston. Bedding you would be tantamount to acting the part of a loose woman.”
“And you would never act in such a way, would you?”
The question was strange, but not because it was intrusive. She had come to expect that from her new husband. No, it was the way in which he had spoken it, almost kindly, pityingly.
“It has been impressed upon me from a very early age,” she said softly, “that I am the Duke of Herridge’s daughter, and as such, there is a standard of behavior for me.”
“But not for anyone else?”
“Of course there is. Everybody, regardless of his role in life, has a set of standards. The groom is not to polish the silver. The footman is not to curry the horse.”
“And the duke’s daughter is not to feel passion, is that it?”
She sat up and stared at him. “I really do insist that you don’t use that kind of language in front of me, Mr. Eston.”
“Passion?”
“Exactly. I am not a woman of the streets. I do not doubt that you are unaccustomed to associating with my type of woman.”
“And what type of woman would that be? Narrow-minded? Terrified? Tell me, Lady Sarah, do you wear a corset to bed?”
“I have no intention of discussing my undergarments with you, Mr. Eston. Not now, not ever.”
“Do you know that the women in Fiji wear nothing at all but a grass skirt? Their breasts are allowed to hang unbound. They’re quite lovely.”
She lay back on the cot, her arms at her sides, her eyes scrunched shut, and her mind deliberately focusing on something other than his comments.
“I should like to see your breasts unbound, Lady Sarah. I imagine they’re quite large. Are your nipples coral? Or are they the most delicate pink?”
She drew the sheet up over her head, ignoring the fact doing so left her feet bare. Let him comment upon her naked toes, anything other than her breasts. She had never even called them breasts to herself. It was her chest, simply put. She was a woman, and that was one of the things God had granted women. They had chests. But he was calling attention to the fact that it wasn’t simply a chest. She had breasts, two of them.
If he didn’t cease, she would never be able to sleep. She would lie there in a bright red stew of humiliation long after he had fallen into his dreams, no doubt of a libidinous nature.
“I imagine they’re exquisitely sensitive. Never having seen the light of day, so to speak. Do you allow yourself to bathe them? Or is it done with a far-off gaze, an admonition to feel nothing from your body?”
She drew the sheet down below her eyes. He really must cease now. To speculate on how she bathed was too much, especially since he was excessively close to the mark.
“I imagine your shoulders are beautiful as well. I should like to see you in an evening gown, something frothy and totally unlike you. Something overly feminine, perhaps.”
She was excessively feminine. Who was he to say such a thing to her? Their acquaintance had lasted a matter of hours. What did he know of her?
She shut her eyes and prayed fo
r sleep. Let her be able to ignore him. Let everything he said be nothing more than the drone of an insect, or the sound of water like one of the fountains in the garden. She would simply treat his words like the trickle of water and pay no attention to the meaning.
“Breasts are vastly underrated, Lady Sarah. They are a source of great pleasure for a woman. Did you know that? It is not simply a place for a babe to suckle. A grown man likes to suckle as well.”
Water dripping over the stones, that was all his words were. In the water garden, there was a tiny little piper, Pan, standing atop a curling leaf, water pouring from his flute. Or there was a larger statue of Poseidon, the God of the Sea, roaring up from the curved bowl of a large fountain, balancing three voluptuous mermaids on his shoulders.
They were bare-chested as well.
“Cease, Mr. Eston.”
“Douglas.”
“I really must insist,” she said.
“Douglas.”
“I really must insist. Douglas.”
“Sleep well, Lady Sarah.”
She turned her head and frowned toward the bed. Had that been his intent all along? To get her to call him Douglas? Could he be that Machiavellian, that cunning?
She was sleeping on a cot that was anything but comfortable, staring up at her husband, who was a little more than a stranger. Sarah had the distinct feeling that she’d been bested, and that Douglas Eston might be a bit more complicated than she’d once believed.
Chapter 6
An hour past dawn, Douglas found Chavensworth’s library.
Evidently, the Duke of Herridge had not been able to make his mark on this room to the degree he had his town house in London. There was no clutter here, no ostentation. The floors were whitewashed, the bookcases painted white, and the ceiling the same pleasant pale green as new grass. Scattered throughout the room were pedestals topped with marble busts of philosophers, Romans, and no doubt past Dukes of Herridge. At one end of the library were two heavily embroidered chairs with tall backs and deeply carved arms. Above them hung a portrait of a man, and beside him the painting of a woman, both dressed in outdated clothing. The first Duke of Herridge and his duchess?
Chavensworth’s library boasted two levels, one accessible from the main corridor on the ground floor and the second only gained through a circular iron staircase in the middle of the room. He found himself exploring the books, amazed at the number of them.
Someone had gone to a great deal of effort to catalog all the volumes. Each bookcase was labeled by subject matter, and the books in the fiction section had been shelved by author.
I am a woman who strives to be knowledgeable. Lady Sarah’s words. Was this library so perfect because of her efforts? Or had she hired someone to care for Chavensworth’s volumes? Either way, she evidently thought highly enough of the room to devote some attention to it.
Douglas made his way to the windows on the other side of the room. In front of them rested an enormous mahogany desk. He sat back in the chair, pulled his notebook from inside his jacket, and opened it, beginning to write what he’d learned the night before: How Sarah was to be addressed, and the fact that the daughter of a duke never loses her title—she simply changed her last name. When he was finished, he put the leather notebook back into the pocket of his jacket and stood, leaving the library and almost colliding with Thomas.
He’d evidently disturbed Thomas in his early-morning routine, because the young man wasn’t as sartorially perfect as he had been the day before. Instead, he wore a leather apron and smelled of something pungent and unpleasant.
“Cleaning the privies?” Douglas asked.
“Demonstrating how to make copper polish, sir,” Thomas said. “It’s Lady Sarah’s recipe, but I didn’t want to disturb her.”
Douglas tucked that knowledge away for later.
“Is there anything I can do for you, sir?”
“Nothing,” Douglas said. “I wake early as a habit.”
Thomas nodded and left him, but Douglas could see it was with some reluctance. Did the young man think he was about to steal the silver? Once, he might have considered it. Now, however, he could have purchased a dozen Chavensworths. Perhaps he simply looked disreputable, the shadow of the alleys of Perth still clinging to him.
He brushed that thought aside and continued his exploration.
When Sarah awoke in the morning, it was to find that her husband had already left the Duke’s Suite.
She sat up on the edge of the cot with some difficulty, given that every muscle in her body had stiffened. She missed the clinging softness of her feather bed, with its sweet smell of lavender and heavenly smooth sheets.
It had taken her ages to fall asleep last night, and as tired as she felt right at the moment, she might not have slept at all.
Very well, if this was to be her married life, then she would make the very best of it. She would have Chavensworth’s carpenter construct her a bed frame, and the second-floor maids could stitch together a mattress, slightly smaller in dimension than her own feather bed. Nonetheless, it would be vastly more comfortable than the military cot on which she’d slept last night.
Mr. Eston—Douglas—had probably slept like a baby. That thought immediately conjured up an image of a baby’s head against her bosom, his mouth against her breast. She pressed both hands to her chest as if to ward off the image itself. She was left with the sound of his voice echoing in the chamber as if he had just spoken those shocking words. It is not simply a place for a babe to suckle. A grown man likes to suckle as well.
She was too smart a woman to believe in conjurers’ tales or superstitions of any kind, but if she were given to such things, she would have thought that he had the power of magic in his voice. The sound of his voice, the low timbre of it, the way he had of enunciating certain words, almost as if English wasn’t his native language, was fascinating. Where had he been born? Only one of a dozen—or a hundred—questions she had about the man who was now her husband.
Sarah stood and walked to the dais, wrapping her arms around one of the four posts, staring at the rumpled bedclothes. She could almost see him lying there, naked and abandoned, his arm thrown over the extra pillow, his hand stretched out, fingers splayed and reaching for her.
She blinked the image away before turning and stepping down from the dais. Moments later she was in her own chamber. She dressed before Florie arrived, choosing one of a dozen day dresses she’d had sewn for her by the seamstresses employed at Chavensworth. The design was one of her own making, and together with her corset, which could be laced from the front, allowed her to dress without having to wait on a servant. She had saved endless hours with such garments. Today, however, she waited for Florie for one reason only. She needed help with her hair.
“It’s an odd sign of vanity,” she said, watching as Florie brushed each tress before pinning it carefully into a curl at the back of her head. “It’s only hair. We should not care so very much about what our hair looks like.”
Florie’s gaze met hers in the mirror as she removed the hairpin from between her lips and spoke. “Why should we not, Lady Sarah? You would care if your dress was spotted. You would care if your gloves were soiled. Why would you not care about the state of your hair? Women are supposed to care about such things. If we did not, God might as well have labeled us men.”
“Oh, but then we should have so much more power,” Sarah said. “We could stomp around like roosters, crow to our hearts’ content, and say and do almost anything we pleased.”
Florie did not comment to that observation, which was just as well.
Why had she spoken so intimately to her maid? Perhaps it was because her only confidante, her mother, could no longer converse. Perhaps it was simply that she was lonely.
How utterly absurd. She didn’t have time to be lonely. She especially didn’t have time to be lonely this morning. After having been gone from Chavensworth for three days, there were more than enough tasks to occupy her.
; She thanked Florie and left the room armed with her journal and her pencil. At the top of the stairs, she grabbed the banister with her right hand and slowly descended. Her fingers registered that there was not sufficient wax on the wood to make the surface feel slippery and warm, and she made a mental note to discuss this with the housekeeper. Dust had been allowed to accumulate on a few of the portrait frames on the wall above her, and she observed that as well.
There were so many places of beauty throughout Chavensworth, so many wondrous things to stop and admire during the day. Her family’s history hung around her, was saved in the china cabinets, revealed in the linen-press. The legacy she’d been born to was there in each successive portrait, in the pressed flowers, in the books arrayed in the library.
Sarah nodded to a young maid industriously brushing the treads at the bottom of the stairs.
“Good morning, Abigail. How is that tooth?”
The girl smiled, showing a gap where the offending tooth had been only a few days earlier. “The blacksmith, he took it out, Lady Sarah. It still hurts some, but not as much.”
She patted the girl on the shoulder. “See Mrs. Williams today, and tell her I said to give you some Oil of Cloves. Put that on your gums both morning and night, and you’ll soon feel better.”
The girl nodded and continued with her work.
Sarah entered the Yellow Dining Room, the small family room where she always ate breakfast, and nodded to one of Cook’s helpers. The girl bobbed a curtsy, entered the kitchen, and returned a moment later with a hot kettle that she put on the sideboard.
Arrayed before her, just as her mother had always decreed, was breakfast the way breakfast should be presented at Chavensworth.
A cloth, heavily embroidered in shades of purple—to complement the fields of lavender visible from the window, was draped across the sideboard. Atop it, arranged in a pleasing pattern, was a sufficiency of knives, forks, saltcellars, butter dishes, and egg cups. Twin pitchers held milk and cream. Three chafing dishes warmed sausages and other meat selections. Toast, rolls, and breads laced with cinnamon were arrayed in a basket near the kettle.