When Rachel discovered a guitar in a corner of the room, she inquired whose instrument it was.
“Why the duke’s,” Mrs. Needham replied. “Not that he has used it for a long time, but he used to like to sit in the oriel and play it.”
Rachel, accompanied by Maxi, went up to the attic, a treasure trove of retired furnishings and outmoded clothing. Eventually, she located the furniture and table linen that had been in the dining parlour.
Then she rummaged through the trunks of clothing. From one, she pulled out a voluminous black cloak and a heavily veiled black hat. It would have been perfect for one of the theatricals that had been staged at Wingate Hall before her mother’s death. Rachel took them down to her room, certain that she would find some use for them.
Two nights later, Rachel was suffering through what she hoped would be her last dinner for a long time in the state dining room. Her project to recreate a more intimate dining parlour was nearly completed, and she hoped to introduce Jerome to it tomorrow night. If only he would be as happy with it when he saw it as she was.
Her husband seemed more preoccupied than usual tonight.
And grumpier. What on earth was wrong with him? None of her attempts to converse with him prospered, and by the time dessert was served, she gave up trying.
As Paul, one of the footmen, was spooning strawberry sauce over a custard he had just served the duke, he dropped a spoonful of it on the snowy white cloth.
“Must you make such a mess,” Jerome snapped at him.
Rachel had not heard her husband speak like that to a servant before. Apparently, from the shocked, stricken expressions of the footmen, they had not either. Paul looked as though he wanted to burst into tears as he stammered his apologies.
Feeling sorry for him, Rachel said soothingly, “It is all right, Paul. It was an accident, and we all have them. Do not worry about it.”
He flashed her a grateful look.
Rachel waited until she and her husband left the dining room to tell Jerome, “You should not have snapped at Paul like that.”
He glared at her. “You think I do not know that?” Self-disgust permeated his voice. He turned away from her. “I must get back to work now.”
Rachel yearned to help him as she had helped her father with Wingate Hall, but Jerome had rejected her offers to do so. He seemed intent on shutting her out of his life.
Before she got into bed that night, she went to the connecting door and turned the key. Not that Jerome would discover the door was locked against him, but in her anger at him, it made her feel better to know she had done so.
Jerome lay awake in his big bed, lusting for his wife in the room next to his. He had been avoiding her in his determination to protect his heart from the inevitable disillusionment and pain that such a beautiful woman would cause him.
While his brain told him his course was wise, his body told him that he was a damned fool. And it was becoming more and more difficult not to succumb to his hunger for Rachel.
Damn, but he wanted her as he had never wanted another woman, and he hated himself for his weakness.
Dinner with her had become pure torture as he was forced to make polite, stilted conversation in the presence of a half-dozen servants in that god-awful dining room that he had always hated, when all he wanted to do was carry her off to his bed.
Jerome ached to bury himself in Rachel’s soft, passionate depths. It had been five days since he had done so, and his body acted like it had been five years. It was making him increasingly short-tempered and irritable. The way he had snapped at that poor footman at dinner tonight had been inexcusable. Jerome had never spoken that way to a servant before in his life. He had not needed Rachel to tell him he should not have and, when she did, he had snapped at her, too.
Finally, after tossing and turning for an hour in a fruitless quest for sleep, he conceded defeat. Getting up, he went to the connecting door to his wife’s chamber.
And found it locked against him.
Chapter 23
For a moment, Jerome could not believe that Rachel would have locked him out of her bedchamber. This was his house, for God’s sakes! She was his wife!
He tried the door again. It was indisputably barred to him. Furious, he stormed into the hall and tried that door to her room. It opened easily. As it did, it occurred to him that perhaps the connecting door had been locked by accident.
He stepped into Rachel’s room. She was sitting up in bed, reading a book by the light of the candelabra.
Jerome’s breath caught as she looked up at him. Her violet eyes were wide with surprise; her lips, slightly parted. Her ebony hair, brushed to a high gloss, fell in long, shimmering waves over her breasts. She was wearing that wisp of pink silk and lace that had driven him crazy the first time he had seen her in it.
And it was doing so again.
If he had any sense, he would return to his own room, but he wanted her too much. It had been thus since he had first laid eyes on her.
Shutting the door behind him, Jerome desperately fought the wave of desire that threatened to overpower him. As he walked toward her bed, he tried to give her the benefit of the doubt. He said, “I believe the door between our rooms has been accidentally locked.”
“It was not accidental.” Rachel was staring at him with an odd, startled expression. “Do you often wander the halls at night like that, Your Grace?”
He glanced down. He had been so angry when he discovered the door locked against him that he had burst out of his room, forgetting that he was stark naked.
He felt hot colour suffusing his face. “Only when my wife locks me out of her room. Would you mind telling me why?” It sure as hell couldn’t have been because he didn’t please her in bed, he thought, remembering her passionate response when he made love to her.
She shrugged. “I cannot see why you would care when you banished me from your room. I was merely locking you out of my bedchamber as you are locking me out of your life.”
“Is that what you think I am doing?” he asked in surprise. In his desperate effort to curb his desire for her, he had not thought what his behaviour must seem like to her. And now that he did, he felt like a scoundrel. “I am sorry, my sweet,” he said, his voice husky with regret and restrained passion.
He reached out to stroke her cheek comfortingly. As his fingertips touched her satin skin, longing for her blazed through him like wildfire, incinerating his doubts, his distrust, his fears. Nothing mattered except that he have her again.
He plucked the book from her hand and laid it on the table beside the candelabra. “I have something better than a book to make you sleep.”
“Is it an herbal?”
Jerome laughed huskily. ‘No, it is better than that.” He buried his fingers in the shimmering ebony silk of her hair, and his lips claimed hers. She stiffened and tried to push him away, but he would not let her Instead his kiss became coaxing, teasing, enticing, and after a moment, his seductive ardour overcame her resistance. She relaxed against him, her tongue mating with his. He breathed deeply of her lavender and roses scent.
His hands fell away from her hair to slip the slender straps of her nightgown off her shoulders and draw it down around her waist. She was so lost in their kiss that she did not seem to notice.
His hand cupped the fullness of her breast. His thumb lightly rubbed its peak that hardened instantly beneath his touch. He felt her body’s quivering response to him, and it made him wild. He had to fight to retain his control.
He finally raised his mouth from her lips so he could join her beneath the covers. Pulling her down on the pillow beside him, he noticed a single tear trickling down her cheek.
“What is this?” He touched it gently, absorbing the moisture with his finger.
“I do not understand you; you act as though you do not want me,” she said in a small, desolate voice that told him how much he had hurt her. “Then you come to me like this.”
“Oh I want you, my sweet temptati
on. I want you too damned much. You are driving me mad.” Silently, he cursed himself for what he had just given away.
Then he saw the sudden glow of relief and happiness in her remarkable violet eyes, and his anger dissipated in its warmth.
“I want you, too,” she confessed shyly.
He pulled her into his strong embrace. God, but he loved the feel of her body against his own.
He wanted to make long, slow, tender love to her, but the intense need building in his body defeated him. When his fingers discovered the abundant, welcoming moisture that already bathed her, he could wait no longer.
“I am sorry but I must have you now.” His voice was urgent and strained. He eased himself into her. A moan of pleasure escaped him as he felt the warm, tight embrace of her womanhood.
He struggled to go slowly, to stoke her pleasure before he surrendered to his own, but his body, so starved for her, spiralled out of control, and he climaxed with shuddering force.
Jerome held her tightly against him. Her earlier words echoed in his mind. You act as though you do not want me. Then you come to me like this.
She deserved so much better than what he had just given her, he thought in self-loathing. Determined to make their lovemaking as good for her as it had been for him, he did what he had intended to do initially, before his own need had consumed him. He lavished kisses and caresses on her as he brought her to ecstasy time and again before he once more buried himself in her velvet depths.
They moved together in the rhythm of love until she gave a muffled little shriek and her body convulsed around his, sending him over the edge with a force that left him gasping for breath.
Afterward he lay joined with her, so contented that he could not bear to break their union. He told himself that he should return to his own bed, but he did not possess the strength of will to do so.
Rachel was awakened the next morning by her husband carefully trying to extricate his limbs that were entwined with hers. She forced one eye open.
Jerome looked chagrined. “I was trying not to wake you.”
“Where are you going?”
“To see a tenant,” he said noncommittally as he turned away from her and dropped his legs over the edge of the bed.
“Take me with you.”
“No. Go back to sleep. You did not get all that much last night.”
That was the truth. He had made love to her again and again, like a man perishing of drought who had suddenly found a pure, sweet spring from which to drink and could not stop.
Yet now, after the ecstasy of the night they had spent in each other’s arms, he was withdrawing from her again, just as he had that day he had her moved into this bedchamber, and that made Rachel furious. She was not going to let him do that to her again.
She pushed herself into a sitting position, forgetting that she was naked. “Like it or not, Jerome, I am your wife, and I will not be treated like a... a convenient!”
He turned and stared at her, clearly taken aback by her anger. “What the hell are you talking about?”
“You ignore me for days. Then you suddenly invade my bedroom in the middle of the night, make love to me, and now you are going to walk out again, refusing to let me go with you.”
She flounced out of bed. “No doubt, you are intending to ignore me again for days on end!”
He gave her a wide, lascivious grin that deepened his eyes to the most glorious blue and sent heat pulsating through her. “Not if you walk around like that.”
Her face flamed as she realized that she was naked. She grabbed for her rose dressing sacque. “I will not have you ignore me. I am your wife, but you make me feel like an unwanted and unwelcome intruder here. Do you think I have no feelings?”
Jerome looked abashed. “Rachel, I am not going for a pleasure ride. If I were, I would happily take you with me. I have business on the estate that requires my attention.”
“Not very pleasant business from your expression,” she observed.
“No,” he admitted. “And that is why I cannot take you with me.”
“Please, Jerome, do not shut me out of your life as you are doing. Let me go with you. I promise I will wait well out of earshot while you conduct your business if that is what you wish, but I want to be with you.”
Rachel could see from the set of his face that he still meant to refuse her. “Can you not understand, I am your wife, and I want to be part of your life. Is that too much to ask? I want you to discuss your problems and worries with me. I want to see Royal Elms through your eyes. I want to share your life with you.”
He stared wonderingly at her for a long moment as though she were speaking a language he could not entirely comprehend. Then, his sudden, brilliant smile sent her heart skittering. He held out his hand to her, “Come with me.”
With a surge of joy and relief, her fingers closed around his. He drew her into his arms and kissed her long and hard.
Later, as Rachel and Jerome rode past well-tended fields and tenants’ cottages in excellent repair, she noticed that he was constantly vigilant, just as her late father had been at Wingate Hall, to the smallest sign of disorder or neglect.
“You should be very proud of Royal Elms. It bespeaks a dedicated owner.”
“I am proud of it,” he admitted.
“How did it get its name?”
“King Henry the Eighth once had a hunting box nestled in a grove of majestic elms here. Later he sold it to one of my ducal ancestors. The structure is long gone, but several of the elms are still standing.”
Rachel asked Jerome about his farming techniques. After answering several of her questions, he broke into a delighted laugh. It was the first time since his return to Royal Elms that she had heard him laugh like that, and the joyous sound lifted her own spirits.
“I have never met another woman who could discuss farming so knowledgeably as you.”
“You forget that I managed Wingate Hall.”
“And very well from what I heard.”
She sat straighter in the saddle, buoyed by his unsolicited compliment. They rode in companionable silence until they reached a tenant farm that contrasted sharply with its neighbours. The buildings were in need of paint and repair, and the fields looked neglected.
Rachel frowned. “What happened here?”
Jerome sighed. “I see you appreciate the problem. The tenant is a hard worker and a good man, which is why I have been patient with him for as long as I have. He cannot manage so that he puts aside enough money for seed and stock the following season. Even when crops were excellent, he fell into arrears on his rent. The poor harvests the past two years have compounded his problems until there is no hope for him. I should have stepped in well before now. It would have been kinder if I had.”
As they rode up to the cottage, Rachel noted its deteriorating condition. A tall, stoop-shouldered man came out to greet them with fear in his eyes. His long, narrow face reminded Rachel of a mournful hound’s.
Jerome said, “David, I suspect you know why I have come.”
To Rachel’s dismay, the sympathy and concern for the man that her husband had revealed to her moments earlier was now hidden behind his ducal reserve.
David nodded miserably. “Me hopes to catch up on me arrears this autumn if the harvest is bountiful.”
“But you know that you have no hope of that. You did not plant enough, and your stock is all gone. Everything is in such a bad case that I cannot let it go on like this any longer.”
Jerome spoke with a stiffness that made him sound remote and unsympathetic, although his wife knew that was not true. His tone stemmed from his distaste for what he was doing. Yet, to David, he must surely sound utterly uncaring.
Jerome said, “I must take the farm back into my own hands.”
The despair in David’s eyes was so intense that it made Rachel want to cry.
“What is me and me family to do, yer Grace?” the man asked bitterly. “Where’s us to go?”
The question se
emed to surprise Jerome. “Why nowhere. You will stay here and take care of the farm for me. I will pay you wages for managing it for me.”
Rachel wanted to hug her husband for his wisdom. David stared at the duke in confusion. If only Jerome had been more relaxed and affable with the man, Rachel was certain he would have been terribly relieved and grateful. But her husband’s manner prevented David from appreciating what a wise and generous solution he had just been given to his shortcomings.
As Rachel and Jerome rode away, he said, “If it is David’s farm, it is his responsibility. If he works for me, it is mine. I will have his stock replaced and his buildings repaired and refurbished. Next spring I will see that he has plenty of seed and manure.”
Rachel beamed her approval at her husband. “That was the perfect solution.” She knew that behind his reserve and arrogance, he cared deeply for his people’s welfare. She discerned that he did not want to be so aloof. He simply did not know how to be any other way unless he was with one of the few souls, such as Ferris, that he liked and trusted.
She intended to try to remedy this.
In his estate office, Jerome read a dull report from an export business that he owned, but his mind kept drifting back to Rachel’s glowing smile of approval for his solution to David’s problems. Her praise had made him feel eight feet tall.
Honest compliments had been few and far between in Jerome’s life. His father had never praised him for succeeding, only criticized him for not measuring up to impossible standards. Jerome had long ago learned to discount the false compliments of the toadeaters. Better none at all than the insincere mouthings of those wanting only to better themselves in his opinion.
But Rachel’s praise had been genuine. So had her interest in Royal Elms.
Most of all today, Jerome had enjoyed being with his wife, seeing her lovely face, hearing her warm honey voice, sharing the way he felt about Royal Elms with her.
Midnight Bride Page 22