by Sahara Kelly
Rosaline understood. James would not be a party to any surreptitious sailings in the near future.
She was thankful that their larder was slowly filling, since the meal on this night was one of fresh foods, prepared with a great deal of care by the kitchen staff. She made a note to herself to pop downstairs and thank them before retiring.
Engaged in housewifely thoughts, she almost missed the fact that everyone was now watching her.
“Sorry.” She stood. “My mind was elsewhere. Shall we invite the gentlemen to forgo their port and join us?”
“Please do, “ begged James. “I’m not fond of port.”
“And since our numbers are reduced, I second the notion,” added Letitia. “I want to hear how Richard and Kitty were faring when you left them, Edward, if you please?”
“Of course.” Edmund stood as well. “Might as well get all the details covered at once.”
Matching words to deeds, Rosaline led them to the small parlor, where a bright fire burned and convenient side tables would allow for cups and saucers later, if tea was desired.
It was odd to see only three Ridlington ladies, and Edmund. Simon had stopped in briefly to welcome his brother home, but had another engagement in the evening and was unable to attend this dinner, to his regret.
So Letitia, Hecate and Rosaline sat and listened to Edmund and James as they related more of their London business.
“I was as surprised as I imagine you must have been, Rosaline, when I learned of this whole ship business.” James stood at the mantelpiece. “Who would have believed it?”
“Not I,” she agreed. “It took my breath away.”
“Interesting, though,” said Edmund thoughtfully. “Makes one wonder what your late husband was doing with a small packet ship.”
“In all fairness to Lord Henry, he probably didn’t sail it himself.” James considered the point. “He was a partner, holding the license. So he stood to make a profit from any voyages, but as to crew, destination…things like that? I doubt he was involved.”
“True,” agreed Rosaline. “He had bigger ships to command. And I’m assuming that a large naval ship of the line, with lots of guns, would be of more interest than a small sailing boat.”
“To some, yes.” Edmund glanced at her. “But truthfully? They can be as much fun to sail, and sometimes more of a challenge.”
“Ah.” Rosaline attempted to look wise, as she digested something that made absolutely no sense at all to her. “Well, be that as it may, we’re glad your voyage back here was uneventful. And you say you anchored here? Off the beach?”
Two nods greeted her question.
“We did,” said James. “Damn near scared the daylights out of me as well.”
“Oh ye of little faith,” sighed Edward. “Our two lads—the ones who crewed for us in exchange for a passage down here—took more than enough soundings. They were most competent. Unlike the other crew member who seemed convinced we were about to end up at the bottom of the ocean.” He grinned. “Which, at that point, was barely nine feet below us. And you can swim, James. You told me so.”
“Wet is wet.” James pouted. “I did not want to get wet.”
“So you had a little rowboat to come ashore?” Letitia laughed at James’s comment.
“We did.” Edmund smiled at her. “It’s a damn fine anchorage as a matter of fact. Sheltered by the curve of the bay, and the bottom drops off sharply, which allowed us to come in a lot nearer than I’d imagined.”
“I’ll look forward to seeing it. The ship.” Rosaline caught herself up. “Oh, I do beg your pardon. It’s a she, isn’t it? Ships are referred to as she.”
“They are? Why?” asked Hecate.
“Good question,” added Letitia. “Anybody know why?”
James answered that one. “I think you’ll find the tradition goes back to ancient times.” He smiled at her. “Goddesses were to be worshipped and honored, and naming a ship after one guaranteed her blessings.”
“You’re right,” endorsed Edmund with approval. “And after goddesses came queens or the wives of rulers, and now most vessels bear a woman’s name.”
Rosaline looked at her husband with interest. “So, my dear. Is the ship already named or do we get to choose one?”
“Er…”
“I’d be careful if I were you,” grinned James. “You’re heading for tricky waters, old fellow.”
“Don’t I know it.”
“Well?” Rosaline quirked an eyebrow.
“It is your prerogative to name her, Rosaline. Although I’d like to be the one to suggest we give her a name that befits her status.” Edmund met her gaze.
“And that would be…” she held her breath.
“The Rose of Ridlington.”
Edmund spoke the words with such pride that Rosaline could do nothing else but nod and reach out to rest her hand on his arm. “Perfect, Edmund. Just perfect. I agree.”
“Then here’s to the Rose of Ridlington. Long may she sail the seas.” James raised his teacup and everyone joined him in the impromptu toast.
Rosaline clinked her cup and smiled, but inside she prayed that the ship would safely make the only trip she would care about.
The one she knew her husband had decided to captain.
Chapter Twelve
“You’ve decided, haven’t you?” Rosaline slipped into her robe as her husband opened the connecting doors between their bedrooms.
“How did you know?”
“I had a feeling. When you named the boat and toasted to its future success. You looked…eager is the best way I can describe it.”
He came to her and slid his arms around her waist without a second thought. “I suppose I am in a way.” He leaned his head back a little to survey her face. “Will you always know what I’m thinking? What my decisions are?”
“I don’t know. Perhaps.”
“It’s a little uncanny, someone knowing me that well.”
“And yet sometimes I don’t feel I know you at all.” She smiled softly at him. “Here you are, Baron Ridlington, managing to avert a disaster in the making from behind your desk, bringing the estate back to life, and yet eager to get on board a boat and take off on an adventure that is risky, to say the least.”
“It’s the sea, my dear. They say sailors have salt water in their veins. I think a little may have leached into mine.”
“The life still calls to you, doesn’t it?” She rested her head on his chest, listing to the solid beating of his heart through his nightshirt.
“If I’m honest, I think it always will. It was my escape, you see. All those years ago, it was the one place that offered me a chance to live. To grow up to be my own man and not a shadow of my father. It gave me a family, Rosaline. Structure, discipline, knowledge—and eventually confidence in my own abilities. None of which I’d have learned had I stayed.”
She sighed. “I understand. But you must also realize that since I’m not inclined to the maritime life, the thought of you aboard ship makes me apprehensive.”
“Does it?” He squeezed her a little. “I’m sorry to hear it.”
“I wouldn’t have you stop, Edmund. Don’t mistake me. I would never take that part of your life away.”
“Hush.” He bent down, sweeping her feet off the floor with an arm behind her knees, and carried her to the bed. “There’s nothing to take away. My life is here now, at Ridlington. Putting it back together as you said.” He helped her remove her robe. “And making sure my wife is well served and content.”
She watched his hands as they deftly untied the ribbon at the top of her nightgown and spread the fabric wide.
So strong. A man’s hands, but tender as they cradled the soft flesh of her breasts.
“Your wife is well served, my Lord,” she whispered.
He slipped from his clothing and was over her before the sound of her voice faded from the room.
“And content?”
Easing herself comfortably beneath him,
she indulged in one of her favorite pastimes—running her hands over his flesh. “Yes, my Lord. Very content indeed.” She parted her thighs, loving how he settled between them so naturally.
The thick length of his cock rested against her, and the heat of it tumbled her into the wanton sensation of her body liquefying in readiness.
He kissed her, light fleeting touches of his lips to hers.
“Edmund,” she whispered, tensing beneath him.
“Yes,” he answered, sliding downward. “Yes, Rosaline.” Strong hands pressed her thighs even further apart as he settled himself.
His mouth found her and her lungs seized at the first kiss, so intimate that it drove everything out of her head. His tongue probed sensitive places, teasing, licking, stroking wetly over flesh that sizzled at every touch.
She gasped and moaned and writhed as he drove her higher, the soft caress of his hair on her inner thighs a counterpoint to the rough night stubble of his beard where it grazed tender skin.
“Edmund…” She groaned his name as she clutched at his head, but whether to pull him away or push him closer, she had no idea. “I can’t…”
At that, he lifted his face from her and nuzzled his way back up over the curves now damp with the sweat his sensual assault had created.
She was wet, her sex throbbing and chilled by his absence.
“I want you, Edmund. Please…now…”
Her husband obliged, taking his weight on his hands as she bent her legs at the knee and opened herself fully to him.
“Oh God.”
He took her, sliding inside with one powerful thrust, filling her, stretching her a little as she knew he would. It was always thus; her body awaited him with a choking need that only he could assuage.
She shattered at that first intrusion, his consequent movements simply accelerating her spasms, making her gasp and cry out and reach for his back to keep herself from splintering into fragments of exquisite pleasure.
His guttural groan mingled with her whimpers as he exploded, flooding her with burning heat, his muscles rigid as iron beneath her fingertips.
She eased, body loosening, and still he pumped himself, sending shivers of residual pleasure through her loins.
Such ecstasy. She marveled at it, each and every time with this man. It seemed to improve, to get better, longer, more intense between them. Her mind wandered through universes as he subsided, limp, crushing her in the most wonderful way, and letting his rapid heartbeat thunder against her chest as he caught his breath.
Finally, with a light kiss to her shoulder, he slid to one side on a grunt of contentment. “You are always a delight, my wife.”
“I please you, then?”
He turned his head and smiled tiredly. “We please each other, I think. A good arrangement.” He moved to his side and tucked her against him in their preferred sleeping position.
She thought about what he’d said. And agreed. “Yes, it is. A very good arrangement.”
A snore greeted her response.
Rosaline sighed. She had realized, at the peak of her release, that there were words trembling on her lips that she dare not utter. For if she did, their effect might change everything between them forever.
And it was, as he said, a very good arrangement.
Why risk it by saying three short words?
*~~*~~*
Pushing the morning’s paperwork away, Edmund groaned and stretched his shoulders. Surely years before the mast had toughened him enough to survive a few months hunched over his desk. But there was always that sore spot between his shoulder blades after he’d spent a couple of hours going through figures for an assortment of estate businesses.
On this day it was the anticipated figures for crop yields, still very preliminary, but if God granted them a good growing season, then possibly—just possibly—they might see a positive return and an increase in home grown produce.
A happy thought indeed.
He rose and stretched once more, thinking of his wife and how thrilled she would be with his news. Thus encouraged, he determined to waste not a moment more and find her, hoping to bring that warm smile to her face.
It seemed that watching her lips curve up in delight was becoming one of his chief pleasures these days. How strange that was.
He inquired as to her whereabouts, and learned that she had left the house for the kitchen gardens. So he took himself off, following her trail, into the morning sunshine.
Clouds danced along the horizon, and a sharp breeze ruffled his hair. But the tang of the ocean was a welcome seasoning and his spirits lifted even more as he walked out of the Chase and into the spring air.
The kitchen gardens showed signs of the work Rosaline had encouraged. Much had been accomplished, especially after she’d coaxed Letitia and Hecate into lending some help. Kitty, bless her, had shuddered and politely offered to do something else. The sun, she’d announced, was her enemy. Not to mention what damage soil might do to her delicate hands.
They were a motley family, to be sure.
Passing the weed-free beds with their tiny shoots starting to show, Edmund walked on, still seeing no sign of his wife.
Finally, he reached the henhouse. The roof had been temporarily restored, and the Baron could hear the soft crowing and clucking of the Ridlington chickens. It was an unusual and delightful sound…indicating that eggs no longer need be purchased, and soon there would be fresh chicken on their dinner table.
Since that particular thought felt rather inappropriate for this particular moment—after all, if he was going in to the henhouse, he shouldn’t be thinking of executing its occupants—he merely continued on, hoping Rosaline was within.
And she was.
Seated on a packing crate of some sort, she held a large chicken in her lap and stroked it, murmuring to it.
Walking softly, Edmund listened, and suddenly realized she was reciting poetry. Wordsworth, if he wasn’t mistaken.
“Rosaline?”
She looked up. “Hallo.”
“Why are you reciting Tintern Abbey to a chicken?”
“She likes it.” An odd sound, a mix of a cluck and a coo, emerged from the chicken. “See?” Rosaline smiled. “She’s also very intelligent.”
“Is that so?” He knew his tone was skeptical, but…Wordsworth? For a chicken? “It’s a she, then?” His questions tumbled over themselves.
His wife’s eyebrow rose. “I will give you the benefit of the doubt, Edmund, and assume that your years aboard ship prevented you from learning the difference between a male and a female chicken.”
“Thank you.” He’d just been chastised, but wasn’t quite sure how.
She sighed and stood, the chicken cradled in her arms. “Mr. Brummell is over there.” Nodding, she indicated the outside of the henhouse, where a proud rooster lifted his head and raised one leg from the ground, posing for a few moments as if knowing he was being admired.
“Mr. Brummell?”
“Of course. I had thought Peacock might suit, since he is as proud as one, but Hecate insisted that Mr. Brummell was perfect.” Rosaline chuckled. “And of course she was right.”
“So who’s this one, then?” Edmund pointed at the hen.
“She’s Henrietta, naturally. Here. Take her while I see if we have any eggs.”
Edmund blinked as a large chicken was thrust into his arms. “Er…”
“Sit down if you’d like. She’s more comfortable on laps.”
At a loss, Edmund sat. The chicken fussed and looked at him over what was probably her shoulder, but he was also a bit vague on chicken anatomy, unless it was covered with onions and gravy. He could tell a wing from a thigh from a breast, but that was about his limit.
Burying that ignoble thought, he glanced at Rosalind. “She seems to be a bit fidgety.” God, don’t let her read my mind or shit on my breeches.
“Recite something. That’ll calm her down.” Rosaline disappeared behind a wooden partition.
Edmund thoug
ht for a moment, then cleared his throat. “I wander’d lonely as a cloud that floats on high…”
“She knows that one.” The comment was brief. “Try something else.”
Henrietta clucked in agreement.
“Demanding women,” Edmund muttered beneath his breath.
That earned him another sharp eyed glance from his lapful of feathers.
“Very well. How about…Oh! Dream of joy! Is this indeed the light-house top I see? Is this the hill? Is this the kirk? Is this mine own countree?”
“Aha. Excellent choice. See how she’s settled down?”
And indeed, as Edmund continued to butcher Coleridge’s Ancient Mariner by getting all the verses in the wrong order and dragging as much as he could from the depths of his memory, Henrietta appeared to enjoy a morning snooze on his knees.
As he reached the last lines, Rosaline emerged from the coop, bearing three eggs in one hand and a little ball of yellow fluff in the other.
The sun was behind her, highlighting the strands of hair that had loosened in the breeze and to Edmund in that instant she resembled a Goddess of plenty. Taking a breath, he spoke his favorite lines with all the reverence she deserved.
“Oh let me be awake, my God! Or let me sleep alway.”
Silence fell between them, something almost tangible and yet fragile. His gaze stayed on her face, watching as the color rose in her cheeks. The simple fichu lifted as she drew in a breath.
“That is so lovely.”
“So are you.”
Her lids fell as she looked away. “Thank you, Edmund. You are kind to say so.” Then she lifted her head. “Of course, I do realize that it’s because I’m holding tomorrow’s breakfast.” She grinned. “And this little darling.” She raised the hand holding the tiny bundle of yellow feathers
“A chick, I believe.” He grinned back. “Lest you think me completely ignorant of fowl.”
“It is, indeed.“ The ball of fluff cheeped and Henrietta’s head shot up. She immediately clucked a protest, rose up on her legs, stuck sharp claws into Edmund’s knees and fluttered away to the ground, heading for her noisy child.
“Ow.” Edmund grimaced as he saw the small holes in his breeches.