He wanted to show her the world, to give her everything she thought impossible to have. He wanted to see her full of joy. He wanted to watch her lose her bitterness and unhappiness, too much of which had been of his own making, but he didn’t want her to lose her clear-sighted cynicism, the edge that sharpened her wit. He wanted her to be herself, her happiest, truest self, and all his. And he was beginning to suspect he was in love with her.
* * *
Elizabeth saw the ardor in Jack’s eyes as he settled down beside her. Did he think he could seduce her in a stable, on a bitterly cold night, with Penelope ready to give birth, if not any moment now, any hour now? It was madness. They would surely freeze and have their most intimate parts mauled by straw if they made the attempt.
Yet didn’t that make this safe? For all that she had been willing to go to bed with Jack tonight, before they’d been called to this foaling vigil, part of her was still afraid that in giving herself to him she would lose the only scrap of power she had. But she could be near him now in the cold stable without fear that the situation would get out of hand. If he asked for too much from her, all she would have to do was remind him where they were. And so help her, but she was coming to like her husband so much. After years of solitude, it was lovely to have him near, to enjoy the bracing conversation of an equal mind, someone who had lived in the wider world she had only read of and longed for.
But it wasn’t just his mind that drew her. She loved to watch him move, tall and strong, graceful despite his slight limp. They had ridden out together that morning, and she had almost forgotten to concentrate on managing her pony, so caught up had she been in the easy, assured way Jack sat a horse, as if he and the great beast were one being. She could easily imagine him on the vast prairies of North America, hunting buffalo, instead of merely inspecting the upper sheep pastures of a modest Northumberland farm. And then there were his hands, so large and strong. It made her blush to think of it, but she had taken to dwelling on every smallest touch those hands had given her in the past week, whether a light brush of her shoulder as he helped her with her cloak when they were leaving the Ildertons’ dinner party, or their all too brief clasp at her waist as he helped her dismount after their ride had ended. She was even mad for his hair, all thick and dark but for the strands of silver that troubled him so. She wanted to sink her fingertips into it, to see if the silver wings over his ears felt any different than the rest of his brown curls.
Without conscious decision, she shifted to lean her head against his shoulder. Even with the layers of blanket, greatcoat and clothing between them, the solid, living reality of him sent a jolt of awareness all the way down her spine—or perhaps that was from his sharp, indrawn breath.
The barn wasn’t wholly silent. Elizabeth could hear Penelope pacing her stall and the other horses shifting and snuffling in their sleep, all as though from a great distance. Her breathing and Jack’s, both ragged and unsteady, echoed in her ears like a gun’s report.
Moving as slowly as if she were a skittish horse who might startle away, Jack shifted until his arm was around her back and the blanket covered them both. He sighed and tightened his arm around her waist, and she leaned back until her head was tucked neatly in the crook of his chin. Could he hear her heart hammering? How could he not, the way it pounded against her eardrums?
She felt him turn his head, and his lips brushed her forehead.
She sighed. She shifted and he shifted and before she knew it, she was half in his lap, lying in his arms, her lips mere inches from his. In the flickering light from the single lantern hanging in the stable corridor, his eyes were enormous and dark.
“It’s very cold tonight,” she heard herself say.
He nodded. “I wouldn’t be at all surprised if it snows again by morning.”
His breath was warm on her face and sweet, still scented with the port he’d drunk at the Ildertons. “Straw makes a prickly bed,” she pointed out.
“Uncomfortably so,” he agreed.
“Penelope might need us at any moment.”
“That’s why we’re here.”
“I wanted to make sure you understood.” Her voice shook.
“Perfectly. If we were to, say, kiss just now, nothing else could possibly happen.”
They had both drawn closer now, and Elizabeth wound one hand around his neck, sinking into his hair, mentally cursing the gloves that kept her from feeling it properly. “Nothing at all,” she whispered, pulling him down to her.
Her eyes fell shut as his lips met hers in a sweet, leisurely caress that demanded nothing. He broke the contact only to kiss the corner of her mouth, nuzzle her nose to nose and then come back for more.
Elizabeth sighed, opening her mouth, then daringly let her tongue dart out to taste his soft lips. He went stock-still for the space of a heartbeat, then groaned, hauled her against him and plunged his tongue deep into her mouth.
After that it was all touch, all sensation. She had wanted it to be cold, wanted them hemmed in by clothing and blankets, but all the layers seemed a great nuisance now as she wrapped her other arm around Jack’s shoulder and they twisted together until she was lying on the open greatcoat with him poised above her, the fresh straw springy beneath her. She loved the weight of him pressing her down into the straw, big and strong and male. She’d been alone too long, untouched too long. Why had she been delaying this?
Through all the layers separating them she could feel his male hardness, pressing insistently at her hip, and she twitched appreciatively against him. He growled—noisy beast, this husband of hers—and raked a hand down her side to cup her posterior and pull her against him in a rhythmic rocking motion.
He broke the kiss but stayed close, nose to nose, breathing hard. “Oh, God, Elizabeth. Is it really that cold?”
Some distant part of her murmured she might regret this in the morning, but she ignored it. “I’ve never been warmer,” she gasped.
She kissed him again and he began to work at the buttons on her pelisse. This wasn’t how she’d imagined this, but she didn’t care. That same distant part of her mind commented that the mere thought of a stable was going to set her to blushing from now on, but she didn’t care about that, either, and—
A shrill neigh, almost an equine scream, shattered the peace of the night.
Reality rushed back like a gust of cold air. Jack pushed up on his hands. “Penelope.”
“Yes,” Elizabeth agreed, unable to meet his dark eyes.
He moved to rebutton her pelisse, but she pushed his hands away. “I’ll do that. Go to her.” They would never forgive themselves if anything went wrong with Penelope, and they had more than enough guilt between them already.
He nodded and scrambled to his feet, muttering curses as he came down awkwardly on his right leg, then hurried across the corridor into Penelope’s stall. Elizabeth got to her feet and followed as quickly as she could untangle herself from her twisted skirt and petticoat and their rumpled nest of blanket and coat. It was just as well, she told herself as she fastened her pelisse tight up to her neck again. This was no way to consummate a marriage, scrambling together in the straw, overcome by desire that had somehow blazed up from a single kiss, for God’s sake.
It couldn’t have taken her more than half a minute to get herself sorted out and into Penelope’s stall, but Jack had transformed completely from passionate lover into worried horseman. The mare was down on her side, and he was crouched by her hindquarters, biting his lip.
“Her water’s broken, but there’s no sign of the feet yet.”
Elizabeth nodded. That was a bad sign. For a mare, a good birth was a quick birth. “I wonder if the foal’s legs are bent,” she said. A foal needed to emerge feet first, its long legs stretched out straight, with its muzzle along them, or it would get stuck in the birth canal until both mother and foal died.
Jack stood and began divesting himself of his coat. “I’ll check.”
To her surprise, Jack looked pale and sick
at the thought. He had grown up around horses. But, then, he had also joined the army as an undersized lad of sixteen, and an infantry regiment was no place to learn the management of a foaling gone wrong. “No,” she heard herself say. “I’ll do it.”
“What?” He gaped at her. “I’m not afraid.”
He was, or he wouldn’t be so quick to deny it. She began unbuttoning her pelisse again. “But have you turned a foal’s legs before? I have.”
“But...why? Don’t the Purvises...”
“They cannot be everywhere at once during foaling and lambing season. I learned.” She shrugged of her pelisse and regarded her tight sleeves with dismay. Normally she wore men’s clothing when she helped with foaling or lambing, but she hadn’t been quite willing to do so before her husband. “Do you have a knife?”
“Of course. What do you need?”
She held out her arms. “Cut off my sleeves.”
“What?”
“Cut them—they’re too tight to roll up. It’s my oldest dress, it’ll be ruined after this regardless, and we haven’t time.”
He shut his mouth in a tight line, nodded once and pulled a penknife from his coat’s tail pocket. Swiftly but carefully he slit each sleeve along the seam all the way up to where they met the sleeve puffs at her shoulders and ripped them free.
Bare-armed, Elizabeth sank to her knees behind Penelope. Gooseflesh stood out on her skin, but in her anxiety to save the mare she had chosen to have bred just once more, she hardly felt the cold. She waited for a contraction to pass, then took a deep breath and reached up the mare’s birth canal. She found the foal’s bent knees, unmistakable bone in the tunnel of slick muscle, then followed the legs up to the tiny chest and pushed the foal as hard as she could, back up the birth canal.
Another contraction struck, and Elizabeth pulled her arm free to wait it out. Jack was watching her, wide-eyed, as he crouched by the mare’s back, stroking her and murmuring reassuring noises. “I think I can turn the legs next time,” she said.
He nodded speechlessly.
The contraction ended, and she went back to her work. Fortunately, the contraction hadn’t been strong enough to undo all she had done to reposition the foal. She found the bent legs again, so slender and fragile, and carefully felt down the first one until she reached the tiny pastern. She took hold of it and gently pulled it straight—there!—then repeated the maneuver with the other leg just in time to beat the next contraction.
“Did you manage?” Jack asked as she sat back on her heels, gasping.
“Yes. It’s up to Penelope now.”
He edged around to join her, and they crouched side by side on the slick, wet straw. All their passion from earlier had fled, but somehow Elizabeth felt far more profoundly at one with him. When at last two black hooves poked out of the birth canal, one after the other, just as they ought to have done on their own, and the mare, she and Jack were all still breathing, she all but sobbed with relief.
Jack stood, rubbed at his bad leg and extended a hand. She took it, he pulled her to her feet, and they stood in each other’s arms, shivering, as Penelope accomplished the rest of the business as speedily and easily as a good broodmare should. The foal breathed and twitched its miraculously unbroken front legs even before it was fully born.
“Thank God, oh, thank God,” Elizabeth muttered.
Jack’s arm around her waist tightened. “Thank you. I never saw anything more splendid.”
She laughed a little wildly—if anyone had ever told her that one day her husband would call her splendid for thrusting her arms shoulder-deep into a horse—and then together they helped clear the now fully born foal from its amniotic sac.
“A filly,” Jack said. “Can’t tell if she’s black or dark bay.”
“Ten to one she’ll gray out like her dam and her sire, in either case.” For now, the filly was dark but for a tiny white sock on her right heel. Penelope lifted her head to regard her new daughter and the two humans with annoyance. Elizabeth couldn’t blame her, after what she had just endured. Then the mare heaved herself to her feet, and Jack and Elizabeth stood back as she nosed at the foal who, after several awkward attempts, managed to get herself up on her wobbly legs and stagger to her mother to nurse.
“We did it,” Elizabeth breathed.
“You did it. Did I mention you were splendid?”
“You did. But you can always tell me again.”
“That I will.” He kissed her temple, quick and hard. “Splendid woman.”
She chuckled. All at once she felt entirely at ease with her husband and glad she was married to him.
“Shivering woman,” he amended. “We need to get you into a warm house and warm clothes.”
“You too. The lads can see to the horses from here, as long as nothing dreadful is going on with the lambing.”
They watched a little longer to ensure the afterbirth came properly, and the mare and foal were none the worse for the harrowing delivery. Then Jack and Elizabeth washed their arms and faces as best as they could at the stable pump, gathered up their discarded clothing, wrapped themselves in blanket and greatcoat, and picked their way across the stable yard and garden to the house in the faint predawn glow.
Chapter Twelve
Elizabeth and Jack let themselves in through the scullery door. It was closest, and both of them were shaking with cold.
Mrs. Pollard and her scullery maid, already hard at work on breakfast and the day’s baking, smiled at them. “Is all well with the mare, sir?”
“We have a fine new filly, safely delivered thanks to Lady Armstrong,” Jack said with a smile that made Elizabeth’s knees wobble.
“I’m glad to hear it, sir. We took the liberty of heating water for your baths—the full bath in your room, ma’am, and the hip bath in yours, sir.”
The full bath was big enough for both of them—a tight fit, but after last night Elizabeth wanted nothing more than to be as close to Jack as possible. They had waited long enough. She was past caring about what message she was sending him, or whether she was yielding too soon. She simply wanted him.
“Thank you, Mrs. Pollard,” she said. She took Jack’s hand. “I think we should go upstairs before we catch our deaths, don’t you, my dear?”
Somehow he must have read her intentions from her eyes or the tight grip of her hand, for his eyes lit as he said, “Absolutely.”
They didn’t speak again until they reached the top of the stairs, where ordinarily she would turn left and he right to go to their separate rooms. “Come with me,” she murmured. “The bath is big enough for two.”
He let out a shuddering breath. “Are you sure? If we share a bath, we won’t stop there.”
She swayed a little closer to him. “I don’t want to stop. I’m sure.”
He took her face between his hands and kissed her, hard. “Lead on, then.”
With a laugh, she drew away from him and all but ran to her door, pausing halfway there to glance over her shoulder to make sure he followed. She felt like a different woman than she had ever been before, someone seductive, confident and yes, even beautiful. The time for games was over, and the time for happiness had come.
He caught up with her by the time she reached her door and embraced her from behind as she fumbled at the latch. His breath was warm on her neck and she could feel him already hard against her and she laughed again, but this time breathily, a blend of nerves and hunger.
At last the door opened despite her shaking hands and they stumbled inside together. The room was still mostly dark, with little of the late February dawn piercing the thick drapes. But the fire glowed with red embers and a few flickering flames, and before it steam rose from the full tub.
“Heaven,” Jack breathed.
“Will we both fit?” she asked, looking at it with sudden doubt. She’d never tried this before, after all.
“We’ll manage, my practical wife.”
“Practical?” She supposed she was, and had just given the perfect
example of it, but it wasn’t what she wanted to hear from her husband at this moment of all moments.
He shut the door with a click and tipped her chin up for another kiss. “Splendidly practical and beautiful, but above all splendid.”
“Much better.”
He leaned against the bed to remove his boots, and she bent to help him. “Have you any praise for me?” he asked as the second boot slid off.
His voice was light and tender, but Elizabeth sensed the vulnerability behind the question. She gave it as serious consideration as she could manage in her hungry state while busy undoing her own half-boot laces. “You’re adventurous and generous, and you know how to listen,” she said once she stood straight in her stocking feet. “And so handsome I can’t wait to see more of you.”
“Ah.” He hugged her to him convulsively for a moment, then led her nearer the heat of the fire and the bath. He kissed her again, leisurely and thoroughly, and she lost herself in the warmth and intimacy of it, the slide and thrust of his tongue hinting at the far deeper penetration to come. She felt his fingers find the laces and hooks at the back of her dress and begin undoing them, and she didn’t care where he’d learned to get a woman out of a dress so quickly and surely because it felt wonderful when he reached up to push it off her shoulders. She helped, wriggling until it fell to the floor. She kicked it aside, drew her petticoat over her head and stood before him in nothing but her stockings, shift and corset.
He held her at arm’s length for a moment, his breath coming fast and hard. He drew his thumbs down and inside the top of her shift, over the tops of her breasts, seeking beneath her stays until he found her nipples. He flicked across them, then circled them with a more tender caress. Elizabeth’s knees wobbled and she let out a gasping whimper.
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