And he was sorrier still that by this time next week, he’d likely be in London, miles and miles away from his children, unless…
“Percival?”
Esther stood in the doorway, tall, slim, and elegant in a chemise gown of soft green and gold. The morning sun gave her a luminous quality, and with her standing above them, Percival was reminded that his wife was a beautiful woman.
Also quite pale.
“You’ve caught me out. I chased off the nursery maid to cadge a few moments with my first and second lieutenants. Won’t you join us?”
Bart scooted free, and Gayle followed suit. “Good morning, Mama!” They pelted up to her, each boy taking her by the hand, Gayle waiting silently while Bart chattered on. “Papa was reading us a story, but he didn’t finish. He said we can shoot down Gayle’s stupid birds on our next outing.”
When Percival expected Gayle to enter the verbal melee with a ferocious contradiction, Gayle’s gaze strayed to the door, behind which baby Valentine, King of the Dirty Nappies, held court.
Esther moved into the room, a boy on each side. “I’m sure your father said no such thing. I thought we might work on drawing tigers this morning though, and tigers might try to catch the birds as they flew away.”
“Tigers!”
Why did Bart shout everything, and why did nobody correct him for it?
Percival unfolded himself from the floor. “You’d make a very poor tiger indeed if you can’t be any quieter than that. Why don’t you creep down to the library and have a footman fetch you some paper?”
More paper in addition to whatever they’d wasted making Gayle’s birds. No wonder coin was in such short supply.
The boys crept away, growling and swiping their paws in the air, leaving Percival alone in daylight hours with his wife. His tired, lovely wife who had fainted the previous day and not told him about it. He slid his arms around her and drew her against his body.
He would not be a clodpate like he’d been the previous night.
He would ask her about her health. He would ask her how she felt about him going to London. He would compliment her on their children—a surefire strategy for happy marital relations.
The scent of roses came to him as she relaxed against him. “Madam, we can lock that door, you know.”
She pushed away, smiling. “Only to scandalize all and sundry when the boys start pounding on the other side.”
The interlude was unexpected, and Percival was glad for it. They so rarely had privacy when they weren’t both tired and full of the tensions and trials of the day. “Will you sit with me for a bit, Wife?”
She gave him a curious look and let him lead her to the table near the window.
Which would not do. He changed course and took a seat in the largest reading chair the nursery had to offer, which was quite large indeed.
He gave a tug on her wrist, and she tumbled into his lap. “Percival!”
“Hush, madam. You and I have cuddled up in this chair when you were magnificently gravid. We fit nicely now.”
She harrumphed and gracious God-ed once or twice under her breath, then settled easily enough.
“How are you, wife of mine? And I did not suggest Bart could stone Gayle’s paper birds.”
She relaxed against him. When had his wife gotten so lithe? So… skinny?
A practical, unappealing thought came to him: in London, a man did not have to pay for a mistress. Court was a very proper place, true, but outside of court, merry widows and straying wives were thick in the corridors. The idea of stepping into a dark alcove with some peer’s well-fed, deep-bosomed spouse—all painted and powdered the better to display her wares—was vaguely nauseating.
Though Esther had fainted. A considerate husband did not overly tax his wife.
Said wife snuggled closer on a soft rustle of fabric. “Boys are bloodthirsty, especially in company with one another. You were kind to offer to go to London. How long do you think you’ll be gone?”
Too long. Holding her like this, the quiet morning sunshine firing all the red and gold highlights in her hair, Percival felt two emotions well up and twine together.
He kissed her brow, yielding first to the tenderness assailing him so unexpectedly. “I don’t know how long I’ll be away. There’s always warfare in some corner of the realm. We leave the Americans to their wilderness only to find some raja has taken the Crown into dislike. Colonials don’t fight fair. Our boys line up in neat rows, muskets at the ready, while the natives fire at them from up in the trees or while dodging about in the underbrush. The wilderness ensures only the conniving and determined survive, and the colonials have been breeding those qualities for centuries.”
She tucked herself against his chest. “If I haven’t said it before, Percival, I’m saying it now: I am glad you resigned your commission. England expects much of her military, and I would not know how to go on were you lost to me.”
The tenderness expanded as she lay against him, soft, pretty, rose-scented, and dear. He posed the next question quietly. “Esther, are you carrying again?”
Because if she were, it might explain the despair trying to choke its way past the tenderness.
“Thomas tattled on me?”
That was not a no. Percival closed his eyes and prayed. Not a prayer for wisdom or for guidance or for strength to know how to stretch their coin yet further, not even a prayer for strength to endure.
He sent up a prayer for his wife.
***
How long had it been since Esther had enjoyed her husband’s embrace? Between the baby being not quite weaned, the older boys climbing all over her, and Victor grabbing at her hands and skirts, Esther often felt her only privacy was in the bath, and then only if her husband did not walk into the room and offer his dear and dubious brand of “assistance.”
Something he hadn’t done in… quite some time.
And yet, Percival still wore the sandalwood scent he’d used when they courted, and she still loved it. She still loved how his hands felt caressing her back in slow, smooth sweeps, still loved that he could tease about locked doors and broad daylight.
Loved him.
The realization brought relief, because it was also true she didn’t always like the man she’d married, and often didn’t agree with him.
“I don’t know if I’m carrying. My monthly is not regular.” Hadn’t been regular since she’d started keeping company with her husband. Percival shifted beneath her while Esther tried to recall if they’d even had relations since last she’d bled.
His hand on her back went still. “Ah.”
What did that mean? Ah?
“Do you want more children, Percival?” In the name of marital diplomacy and not shouting at Percival when anyone could hear, she refrained from bellowing: You can’t possibly want more children, can you, Percival? Not so soon…
He was silent for a moment while his fingers resumed tracing the bumps of her spine. Esther strongly suspected he wanted some daughters. Once upon a time, they had both foolishly admitted to wanting a large family, equal cohorts of sons and daughters.
“I want my wife to be healthy and happy more than I want anything in the world.”
He sounded like he meant it, also like he only realized he meant it as the words left his lips.
“I’m in good health. I’m just… tired.”
“Tired to the point of fainting, Esther?” He kissed her brow again, something he did with breathtaking tenderness.
“Thomas should be pensioned. I swore him to secrecy, and I was light-headed only because I stood up too fast.”
When she had been pregnant, she’d expected the occasional swoon, though none had befallen her. Ladies in the country, particularly women with a baby at the breast, wore front-lacing corsets without stiff reinforcement and were thus able to breathe easily.
Esther closed her eyes and let herself enjoy the languor her husband was weaving right there in the nursery.
“Come to London with me, Esther.”
In his way, that was a question, an invitation phrased as an order. Put like that, the idea of leaving Morelands, with its confused duke, its ailing heir, and its upset household staff held a wistful sort of appeal.
“I’m still nursing Valentine every evening. He won’t settle without it.” And sometimes, the little mite woke up fretful in the night, and Esther indulged him again because nothing else consoled him. The man who snored the night away beside her might have known this. He might also have known that most midwives swore breastfeeding made it harder to conceive babies in close succession.
Percival was quiet in the manner that told Esther he was strategizing, weighing alternatives, considering angles. The military had lost a great general-in-the-making when Percival had sold his commission. Esther felt not the least twinge of guilt over their loss.
“I would miss you, were you to remain here,” Percival said. This time he kissed her closed eyelids. “Keeping the army in decent boots and dry powder is important too. Lives depend on it.”
Despair tried to push aside the sense of sanctuary Esther felt in her husband’s arms. His Grace was failing, Peter’s health was precarious, and in London, Percival would be assailed by all those seeking to curry the favor of the Moreland heir, which he could well be in a very few years.
“I will miss you, but the children need me, Husband.” And her husband did not need her. Esther tucked closer rather than face the question of whether she needed him. “I never wanted to be a duchess.”
Bad enough she was Lady Esther.
“If God is merciful, we will dodge the title for many years, and Arabella is yet young enough she could have a son.”
Arabella hadn’t had intimate congress with Peter for years. To hear the lady tell it, her husband simply wasn’t up to the exertion. Despair tightened its hold when Esther recalled that London boasted women aplenty willing to grace her husband’s bed.
“I will miss you very much, Percival. Perhaps by the holidays I can wean Valentine, but to leave the children here, alone, in winter…”
“I know. A doughty old duke, a preoccupied, ineffectual heir, Arabella and Gladys absorbed with their daughters… I know.”
His understanding was something new. Esther cared neither from whence it sprang nor whether it grasped the particulars of her concern. The idea of contending here without him, each meal a battleground, each day a trial…
She did need him, and perhaps in every way that counted, she was losing him. The thought made her want to cling and beg and weep, none of which would contribute meaningfully to the instant discussion.
And then her husband said something that put the urge to weep in a different light, a light of intense relief.
“Come to London with me, Esther. Pack up the children, the nursery maids, the whole kit, and come with me. In London, we’ll have command of the entire house staff, none of this squabbling over whose job it is to fetch the coal to the nursery. His Grace won’t bark at you one moment and forget who you are the next.”
Five years ago, all Esther could see was that Percival Windham had been far above her touch, gorgeous, and possessed of blue eyes that seemed to understand much and give away little. She had adored him for his gallantry, charm, and forthright manner.
Over time, the forthright manner was proving his best quality, and Esther rose to the challenge before common sense could lodge a protest.
“I’ll need some time to pack.”
His hold on her became fierce. “I can give you three days, and then, by God, the lot of us are getting free of this place.”
The way he kissed her suggested prisoners of war had never looked forward to escape with as much desperation as her husband felt about this trip to Town. Esther was just deciding she had the energy to kiss him back with equal fervor when the door burst open and Bart declared, “We found the paper, and we’re ready to make tigers now!”
***
“Why doesn’t Gladys use a wet nurse?”
If Tony thought Percival’s question absurd, too personal, or indicative of premature dementia, he didn’t show it.
“No coin,” Tony replied. “A wet nurse is something of a luxury, and I’m the impecunious youngest son. Then too, Gladys says children get attached to their wet nurses, and my lady wife is very particular about who gets attached to whom.”
No coin, perhaps this, rather than the parenting biases of the mercantile class from which both Esther and Gladys sprang, was why Esther had also eschewed a wet nurse.
The horses walked along for another furlong before Percival comprehended that Tony was referring to his wife’s opinion on mistresses. In Canada, he and his brother had spent hours on horseback like this, tramping through wilderness as yet ungraced with roads. The distances rather forced a man to parse his companion’s silences.
“She told you as much, did she? No other attachments for you?”
Tony stared at his horse’s mane, which lay on the left side of its neck—an oddity, that. “She said in so many words that he who goes a-Maying will come home to find his wife has gone a-straying.”
“My sister-in-law is a poetess. What happened to your gray gelding?”
“Sold him. A man can ride only one horse at time.”
The poetess was married to a philosopher, and this jaunt to London was looking to be a very long, cold trip indeed.
Percival stretched up in his stirrups then settled back into the saddle. “At least the roads are frozen. God help us if it warms up this afternoon.”
“More likely to snow or sleet,” Tony said, gaze on the sky. “Even so…” He swiveled a glance over his shoulder at the traveling coaches lumbering along behind them.
“Even so, God have mercy on anybody trapped in a coach with my children,” Percival finished the thought. And then, because he had no one else with whom to discuss the situation, and because, for all his impecunious-younger-son blather, Tony had always kept his confidences, Percival added, “There’s something amiss with my wife.”
Tony darted a glance at his brother then fiddled with his reins. “Esther Windham would no more go a-straying—”
Percival cut that nonsense off with a glower. “Your defense of the lady’s honor does you credit, of course, but not everybody is preoccupied with straying, Anthony.” Intriguing topic though it might be. “Did you notice, when the coaches were being loaded, that Gladys had to direct the footmen and nursery maids and so forth?”
“Gladys likes to direct. It’s one of her most endearing features, and has many interesting applications. She frequently directs me to disrobe in the middle of the day, for example, and ever her servant, I, with an alacrity that would astound—”
“Must you sound so besotted? Gladys is remaining at Morelands and had no cause to be involved in the packing. A woman normally likes to take charge of her own effects.”
This silenced the besotted philosopher for nearly a quarter mile. “The Windham ladies are friends, I think. Being daughters-in-law to a difficult duchess did that for them, and Peter and Arabella were lonely before we sold our commissions.”
“Arabella, certainly.”
With Peter, it was harder to say, since he was frequently to be found in the intellectual company of that pontifical nincompoop, Marcus Aurelius, or others of his antique and gloomy ilk.
“What do you think is wrong with Esther, Perce? She seems hale enough to me, if a bit harried.”
That was some encouragement. Tony noticed more than most gave him credit for—or he had prior to his marriage.
“She fainted on her last outing with the boys, before the weather changed.”
“She’s breeding?”
Percival wanted to shout at his brother for leaping to t
he obvious conclusion. Wanted to knock him off his damned horse and pound him flat. “Possibly.”
“For God’s sake, Perce, use a damned sheath. Better some sheep give up its life than you overtax your wife. The succession is assured four times over, and Gladys and I may yet bring up the rear with a few sons of our own.”
“Sheaths can break.” Did break, with alarming frequency.
“Bloody bad luck. Condolences then, or congratulations. Both I suppose.” Tony was studying the road ahead with diplomatic intensity. “Maybe you’ll get a girl this time. Girls are”—his expression turned besotted, again—“they’re magical. I can’t describe what it’s like when a daughter smiles up at her papa or takes his hand to drag him across the nursery.”
Sweet suffering Christ.
“Esther claims she just stood up too quickly, but I asked Thomas about it. Damned old blighter had to think first—said he was sworn to secrecy and would not betray her ladyship’s confidences.”
Comet made a casual attempt to nip Tony’s gelding, proof positive nobody was enjoying this journey.
Tony nudged his horse up onto the verge beside the wagon rut. “Good man, Thomas. When nobody else can reason with His Grace, Thomas can talk sense to him. Calls him Georgie, like they were mates.”
Anthony seemed intent on providing one irritating rejoinder after another. Percival forged onward despite his brother’s unhelpfulness.
“I told Thomas I knew Esther had fainted, and wanted him to confirm particulars only. It was a protracted exercise in yes-or-no questions. I swear I’m going to pension him come summer.”
“You’re not going to pension anybody, and neither is Peter. His Grace has the staff’s complete loyalty, and well you know it.”
“Anthony Tertullian Morehouse Windham, I am well aware of the strictures upon our household.” The plaguey bastard smiled, and as much to knock him figuratively off his horse as anything else, Percival got to the heart of the matter. “My wife lied to me.”
Tony grimaced. “Not good when the ladies dissemble, though in a small matter one can overlook it.”
Duke and His Duchess Page 3