He was asking, delicately, if the matter had been small.
“She said she’d fainted because she stood up too quickly. Thomas had it that she’d stumbled twice on the way to the stream and had been waiting for the footmen to spread the blanket—just standing there—when she collapsed.”
“That, Percy, is not good. Not the lying, not the collapsing, none of it. What did you do to provoke her into keeping such a thing from you? Are you having a spat, because if so, the best way to get past it is behind a closed door, fresh linens on the bed, and not a stitch of clothing between you.”
Just as Percival would have spurred his horse to the canter in lieu of backhanding his brother, a coaching inn came into view.
Of course, they would have to stop. The coachy would want to water the horses and give them a chance to blow, the footmen would cadge a pint, the nursery maids would need the foot-bricks reheated, and the older children would need a trip to the jakes.
And Esther… Esther who’d been trapped in the coach all morning with their children? Percival turned his horse for the coaching yard and wished to Almighty God he knew what his wife needed.
***
“Look! Look right there!”
Maggie’s head was forcibly shifted between her mother’s hands, so she had to stare out the window of the coach.
“That’s him! I knew it! That’s your father, Magdalene! He’s very handsome, isn’t he?”
“Yes, Mama.” Even at five years old, Maggie knew not to disagree with Mama. This so-called papa was all wrong though. He looked more serious than handsome. His horse was brown, not white. And he wasn’t wearing a handsome wig like Mama’s gentlemen friends did. Most telling of all, this papa fellow completely ignored his daughter when she was sitting in a closed carriage not ten yards away.
Her papa, her real papa, would never ignore her like this. He’d smile at her and have treats in his pocket for her and buy her a pony. He’d read stories to her and tell her she was pretty. He would not let Mama slap her so much—Mama was a great one for slapping. Mama slapped the maids, the potboy, her little dog.
Slapping wasn’t so bad, not as bad as the yelling and breaking things, and the weeping that happened when Mama had a row with a gentleman friend.
A little part of Maggie wished the fellow on the wrong-colored horse was her papa—provided he didn’t like slapping. Miss Anglethorpe said there were men who didn’t.
Maggie knew there were also men who did.
This man must have caught sight of Maggie gaping at him from the carriage window, because he paused in the middle of his conversation with some other gentleman on horseback, raised his hat to Maggie, and winked at her.
At her.
Maggie’s knuckles went to her mouth in astonishment. She’d raised her hand to wave at him, when her mother yanked her away from the window.
“He mustn’t see you—yet. Not until the moment is right. The situation requires delicate handling if Lord Percival is to do his duty by you.”
As the carriage rolled away, Maggie sat on her hand rather than reach out the window and wave to the man. When she got home, though, when Miss Anglethorpe had taken her medicine and gone to sleep, and Mama was off with the gentlemen, Maggie would creep from her bed to the mirror in the hall.
She was going to learn to wink. She would practice until she got it right.
Just like her… like that man.
***
“Please, let this child fall into a peaceful slumber and wake up healthy and happy in the morning.”
Esther murmured her prayer quietly, because Valentine was not yet truly fussing. He was whimpering and fretting, sufficiently displeased with the remove to Town to be waking several times a night. The ties on Esther’s nightgown gave easily, and she put the child to her breast without having to think about it.
He latched on with the desperate purpose of a hungry infant, while Esther closed her eyes and wondered why even this—a mother’s most fundamental nurturing of her baby—should provoke a sensation of despair so intense as to be physical.
While Valentine slurped and nursed, Esther examined the feeling suffusing her body. Despair was the prominent note, followed up by… desolation. A sense of being utterly isolated, though she was intimately connected to another human being.
“Esther?”
How long had Percival been standing in the shadows just inside the playroom door?
“You’re home early.”
She wasn’t accusing him of anything—though it might have sounded like it.
“Wales overimbibed, and the footmen took him to his chambers, so the rest of us were free to leave.” Percival crossed the room and threw himself into the other chair. He drew off his wig in a gesture redolent of weariness, and hung the thing over the top of the hearth stand like a dead pelt. “Have I mentioned lately that I hate court?”
He hated the pomp and powder, which was not the same thing.
“You enjoy the politics.”
He also enjoyed watching Esther nurse their children. She’d thought that endearing, once upon a time.
Valentine having finished with the first breast, Esther put him to the second. Before she could tend to her clothes, Percival leaned over and twitched her shawl higher on her shoulders, covering up her damp nipple. He excelled at such casual intimacies, thought nothing of them, in fact. He touched her as if she thought nothing of them either.
Esther allowed it, though all that despair and desolation had been crowded back by a healthy tot of resentment borne on a rising tide of fatigue and a strong undercurrent of anger.
“I do enjoy politics,” he said, sitting back and stretching out his legs toward the fire. “I’ve been approached about running for a seat in the Commons.”
“I suppose that makes sense.” Belatedly, Esther realized Percival was asking her opinion. She mustered her focus to consider the matter, despite her bad mood, because he was her husband, and he was a good husband. “We would have to be in Town more, and the stewards and tenants are looking to you for direction at Morelands.”
“Yes.”
He stared at the fire, which meant Esther had time to study him.
He looked… not old exactly, but mature. The last vestiges of the handsome young officer had been displaced by a gravity that wasn’t at all unattractive. He was barely thirty, though she’d found a gray hair on him their first morning in Town.
She had said nothing about that.
“What are you thinking, Percival? Valentine and I will keep your confidences.”
His smile was a mere sketch of what he was capable of when intent upon charming, but it had been real. “We would have to entertain. You would have to go out and about. Tony can take on the duties at Morelands—he’s better suited to cajolery and flattery than I’ll ever be—and it isn’t as if the succession has been neglected.”
At that last observation, Percival ran a finger over Valentine’s cheek. The child released the breast on a sigh of great proportions for such a small fellow.
“He’s done carousing,” Percival said, reaching for the baby. “Ready to sleep off a surfeit of motherly love.”
Esther let him have the baby and was grateful for the assistance. Percival—veteran of many postprandial interludes with his sons—put a handkerchief on his shoulder, tucked Valentine against his chest, and patted the small back gently.
“You’re not enjoying this remove to Town, are you, Esther?”
The question was unexpected, awkward, and brave. “The children are not settling in well. Babies like their routine, and Bart and Gayle were used to rambling in any direction at Morelands. Here, we must arrange outings to the park. Then too, the servants haven’t sorted themselves out yet.”
Percival sighed, sounding much like his young son, but nowhere near as content. “I suppose it’s human nature for them to feud.
I wasn’t asking about the children or the servants, though. I was asking you, Esther. You’re not happy here.”
With the part of her that loved him, Esther knew he wasn’t accusing her of anything. “I wasn’t happy at Morelands.”
For a long moment, the only sound was the hissing and popping of the fire. Percival had ordered that wood be burned in the nursery, claiming it was healthier for small lungs than the constant stink of coal smoke.
Valentine burped. A single, stentorian eruction followed by another contented-baby sigh.
“Your son enjoys healthy digestion, madam.” She expected Percival to hand the baby back to her, but he kept the child tucked against his shoulder. “And as to that, I don’t see how you could have been happy at Morelands. I doubt if anybody is happy at Morelands, save the livestock and the pantry mouser.”
Percival had not been happy at Morelands. The realization struck Esther along with a pang of guilt. She was tired, lonely, and out of sorts, and her husband—in the same sorry condition himself—was offering her understanding. When he could have fallen exhausted into bed, he’d sought her out and extended this marital olive branch.
Another silence ensued, this one more thoughtful.
“We should go to bed, Percival. You don’t often get in at a decent hour, and you need your rest too.”
She was dodging behind the mundane realities, but her husband did not accommodate her.
“Esther, I am worried about you. Organizing this trip seems to have overtaxed you, and you fainted again yesterday morning. A moment earlier, and you would have fallen to this very carpet here with Valentine in your arms.”
Esther closed her eyes against this unforeseen assault. She knew how to handle blustering and shouting. Percival’s rages against this or that governmental excess or insult to the Crown were mere display, and his frustrations at Morelands resolved themselves with regular applications of hard work.
But this… concern devastated her. “You must not trifle over female vapors. I will recover my strength directly. If you want to stand for a seat, we can entertain, attend all the necessary functions, and flit about Town from now until Michaelmas.”
Percival rose and crossed into the next room, Valentine in his arms. When he returned to the playroom, having cleared the field of noncombatants, he resumed his seat and advanced his forces again.
“I think you should consult a midwife, Esther, if not a physician.”
She did not want a doctor or a midwife. She did not even want a nap. What Esther wanted, just then, was her husband’s embrace. The impulse was surprising, but it did not fade as it ought. “I am not sickening, Percival, and as far as I know, I am not carrying.”
He should know that too. They slept together and shared a bedroom. Some husbands might not notice a wife’s bodily cycles, but Percival was in nowise some husbands. Reconnaissance came to him as easily as command.
“You’ll think about it? A little bleeding can rebalance the humors.”
He wasn’t wrong, and yet Esther had parted with enough blood in her various lying-ins to feel rather possessive about the quantity yet flowing in her veins. “I’ll think about it.”
“That’s all I ask.”
And then, just when she thought the skirmish had played itself out, he took her prisoner. Scooped her up against his chest and carried her from the room, the spoils of an altercation Esther hadn’t seen coming and certainly hadn’t won.
***
An officer could raise his voice when the situation warranted, could swear a bloody streak, drink himself into oblivion, and order some miscreant flogged for serious transgressions.
A husband and father had no such outlets, not with children sleeping in the next room and a wife who looked so lovely and sad nursing her infant that Percival wanted to tear his hair in panic.
In his arms, Esther felt light as a wraith, and her very docility scared him worse than the French, the Indians, or the wild creatures of the Canadian forest ever had. She offered not even a “Percival Windham, put me down,” across the length of the entire house—and with such a precious burden, he did not hurry.
He deposited her beside their bed then divested her of her robe. “To bed, madam, and you will sleep in tomorrow. If you are fatigued, and you refuse to consult medical authority, then you will submit to my authority when I tell you to rest.”
His authority was nonexistent with her. He’d known that before they married and had delighted in her independence. A man in love was a fool.
While he tried to glower at her—please God, let his glowers be more effective with the children than they were with his wife—she met his gaze. He knew that look, knew that obdurate, mulish expression, and felt a predictable response to the challenge it portended. His blood quickened in anticipation of a great row—maybe their most rousing argument so far—when Esther slowly, deliberately, crossed her arms and inched her nightgown up over her head.
Sweet suffering Christ. Like a damned upstart colonial, she was launching a sneak attack.
“I’ve missed you, Percival. Perhaps you’d like to get into this bed with me.”
She flung the words at him like a gauntlet, an accusation of intentional neglect that was not at all fair. Then the infernal woman plastered herself—her entire naked, warm, lithe self—against him and took his mouth in a kiss.
“Esther…”
Holy God, she felt wonderful. His hand, sliding down the elegant turn of her flank, gloried in the absence of flannel and propriety. Could a man’s hands be hungry? For his surely were—for the feel of her, for the exact contours and shifts of her muscle and bone beneath his palms. Her nudity, so rare in recent months, topped any argument his reason might have put forth about their mutual need for rest, or a man not pestering his wife beyond the necessary.
This was necessary. It was necessary that Percival fling his clothes away between kisses; it was necessary that he heave his wife onto the bed like he hadn’t since the early weeks of their marriage. It was as necessary as his next breath that he climb over her and trap her body beneath his, the better to plunder her mouth with his own.
And then—because he was not just a husband and father, but also a man still in love, it was necessary that he try to exercise some damned restraint.
“I should find a sheath, Esther.” Though the sheaths were clear across the room, secreted somewhere in the wardrobe—halfway to Canada, according to the compass needle pointing directly at Percival’s wife.
She got her mouth on him again, sank her teeth into his jawbone, not enough to hurt, but enough to distract. “Sheaths break. Love me.” To emphasize her words, she traced his lower lip with her tongue, dipping inside his mouth then feinting back.
“Esther, I am concerned for—” Worried sick, he was. Somewhere beneath the tempest of passion she was evoking, he was worried for her, for their marriage, for his family. Nigh distraught with it.
His cock, however, was distraught in an entirely different and—just at that moment—more convincing manner.
“Love me.”
“I do. I do love you, dammit, but for the love of God, if you don’t stop—” He went on the offensive, covering her mouth with his own, trapping her hands beneath his against the pillow.
She went still, breasts heaving beneath him, a tease and retreat of puckered nipples against his chest. By the narrowing of her eyes, he realized she understood what even her breathing did to him.
“I love you,” he said again, more softly. A plea this time. “Let me love you.”
She closed her eyes, as much surrender as he would get from her in a duel he neither understood nor welcomed. When he kissed her cheek, the grip of her fingers in his shifted, became a joining of hands rather than a prelude to whatever sexual hostilities she had in mind when she’d challenged him with her nudity.
“I love you, Esther. I will always love you.”
How to love her was becoming both increasingly obscure and increasingly more important.
Joining with her, though, remained within his gift, thank God. For a small eternity, he kissed her. He reacquainted himself with the texture of each of her features, used his lips and his nose—Esther had once admitted to an affection for his nose—to map her face. He used the tip of his tongue to trace her lips, then paused to rest his chin, then his cheek, against her hair.
He loved her hair, loved the golden abundance of it spilling over her shoulders before she trussed it up in thick, shiny braids.
When she began small, restless movements of her hips, he settled between her legs and by lazy, comforting increments, threaded himself into her body.
How had he forgotten this? How had he lost the memory of that first, beautiful, soft sigh near his ear when he pushed himself inside her?
Before they’d found a rhythm, before he’d given her a hint of satisfaction, he damned near spent, so startling was the depth of pleasure he found in his wife’s body. She flung herself against his thrusts, strained against him, and made a solid bid to wrestle Percival’s control from his grasp. While Percival held the balance between a ferocious determination to please his wife and the equally ferocious effects of sexual deprivation, he dimly perceived that something besides desire had Esther in its grip.
The first shudder went through her; then she bucked against him, signaling that he could follow her into pleasure. He thrust hard, then harder as she clung and moaned, then harder still.
His last thought—a desperate flight of imagination surely—was that Esther’s passion was real, but as she shook and keened and beneath him, she was wrestling not only with desire but also with despair.
Three
“Esther, this remove to Town has you looking peaked and wan. Percival must be beside himself.”
Gladys had sent word that another day cooped up at Morelands would give her a megrim, and Tony, apparently having a full complement of prudence and a mortal fear of his wife’s megrims, had collected his family from the country accordingly.
Duke and His Duchess Page 4