“Stay with me,” he murmured as he gently unjoined them. “Stay right where you are.”
Theresa did better than that. She kissed him witless as he brought himself off, then snuggled in close when he’d tossed the handkerchief in the direction of the table. Not nearly the same as having consummated the act as a couple, but intimacy upon intimacy nonetheless.
The fire popped and crackled, Theresa dozed in Matthew’s arms, and as pleasure ebbed to mellow satisfaction, regret stole up on Matthew from within.
He and Matilda had attempted marital intimacies, but they’d been young, their situation burdened by her past, and that path had led nowhere happy. He’d been doomed, as Theresa had suggested. He grieved for that young man in a way he hadn’t allowed himself to previously—wholly and passionately.
He wasn’t doomed now, though. For the first time in his life, Matthew Belmont was in love. He raised Theresa’s hand to his lips and kissed her knuckles.
Against his shoulder, she stirred, then kissed the back of his hand. She raised beautiful, sleepy eyes to his, and Matthew braced himself to hear that his addresses would be welcome.
They’d gone about the courting business a bit backward, but the critical elements would all be addressed eventually.
“Shall we have one of those rousing arguments now?” she asked, smoothing her free hand over Matthew’s hair. “Thomas will be home any day, and I’m sorry, Matthew. I did not mean for this to happen. You must not think I’ve given you leave to pay me your addresses.”
She was to lead him on the hunt of his life, then. Fortunately, he was a mature fellow, fit, determined, and highly skilled at pursuing an elusive quarry.
“Tell yourself that if you must, my love, but without uttering a word, you’ve given me all the permission I need. Prepare to be courted.”
Chapter Eleven
“He has no scruples,” Theresa wailed, a mischaracterization worthy of Priscilla’s fictional excesses. “Alice, what am I do to with a man who has no scruples?”
Alice put her cards face down on the table. “You’re accusing Matthew Belmont, the king’s man, of having no scruples? The fellow who’s patiently teaching Priscilla to keep her heels down as she bounces around the riding arena again and again? The man who has escorted you to services twice and introduced you to half the gentry in the shire? That unscrupulous Matthew Belmont?”
Alice didn’t list Matthew’s worst transgression, which was to treat Theresa with unfailing courtesy, genial warmth, and occasional dashes of affection. Since their encounter in the library the previous week, he’d comported himself like a proper and entirely self-restrained suitor.
Damn him for that most of all. Theresa’s hand of cards was full of sixes and sevens, appropriately.
“He’s resorted to puppies, Alice. What man of honor involves puppies in a flirtation?” Not a courtship, never that, despite Matthew’s determination.
“A shrewd man of honor.” Alice tugged Theresa’s cards from her hand. “Shall I go with you? I know how to sit a horse, though it has been a long, long time.”
The offer was brave. Alice never even went to the stable if she could avoid it. She claimed horses made her sneeze, though Theresa suspected they brought to mind her riding accident.
“I can withstand a few wiggling puppies,” Theresa said, hoping it was true. “Priscilla wheedling for a dog of her own will be another matter altogether.”
Withstanding Matthew’s mannerly company was beyond her. When Thomas came home, Theresa might be sent packing back to Sutcliffe Keep, but until then, she’d take what time with Matthew she could have.
Alice shuffled the deck, the sound stropping against Theresa’s nerves.
“If we’re to return to Sutcliffe after the holidays, Theresa, then a puppy might be a good idea. Puppies grow into nice, big dogs with nice, big teeth. I’m rather fond of dogs, myself.”
Alice was fond of a life free of any and all risk. When had Theresa adopted the same outlook?
“Matthew has offered to teach me to shoot. Thomas probably won’t approve.” The list of items Thomas would not approve was growing long—longer, rather.
“I’m very sure the baroness is skilled with firearms,” Alice said, cutting the deck and shuffling again. “To hear the Linden housekeeper tell it, her ladyship all but ran this estate. Rabid animals, foundered horses, feral dogs who plague henhouses—they all require that somebody be handy with a gun.”
Theresa rose from the card table. She ought to change into her habit, for Matthew was soon to escort her and Priscilla to visit with the latest batch of puppies to grace his kennel.
Puppies, for God’s sake. She cracked a window, because the library was nearly stuffy, and all too soon she’d be shut up at Sutcliffe for months breathing coal fumes and reading, reading, embroidering, and reading…
And missing Matthew.
“Thomas seems to love his new wife very much,” Theresa observed. Out in the garden, the chrysanthemums alone were still in good form. Everything else had surrendered to the march of cold nights and crisp days. Today, however, a Martinmas summer was upon them.
Theresa knew better than to trust warm weather this late in the season. They’d wake up to sleet, or worse.
“Does your brother’s affection for his wife bother you?” Alice asked.
Matthew Belmont bothered Theresa, and yet, she longed to see him trotting up the drive on his handsome grey mare.
“I love Loris, or I love what I know of her. She welcomed me as if I were family and she’s very patient with Priscilla.”
“For mercy’s sake, you are family.” Alice rose and put the cards on the same shelf that held the chess set, the dueling pistols, and the cribbage board. “Go change. I’ll entertain your favorite scoundrel should he arrive ten minutes early.”
As it happened, Matthew was on time to the minute, according to the library clock. Priscilla was on her best behavior, the prospect of visiting puppies too delightful to risk jeopardizing the outing with the slightest infraction against good manners.
The puppies were puppies—silky soft, wiggly, warm, lovely little balls of canine curiosity.
Matthew Belmont with the puppies… Theresa had known her defenses would crumble, but her well-constructed battlements had fallen straight into a sea of tender sentiments.
“The mama’s name is Orbit,” Matthew said, passing Priscilla a puppy. “She likes to circle the pack in her quest to find the scent, and she’s often the first to sniff old Reynard out.”
“You could name the puppies after the planets,” Priscilla suggested. “This one could be Mercury.”
Mercury commenced licking Priscilla’s chin, which caused a prodigious outburst of giggling.
“He likes you,” Matthew said, stroking a gloved hand over the pup’s head. The little hound, predictably, became fascinated with Matthew’s glove, while the mama dog looked on, tail thumping gently against the whelping box.
Orbit’s tail had been doing that since she’d caught sight of Matthew.
The kennel was unlike the few Theresa had visited previously, in that the air was fresh and the light abundant. Every pen connected to a lengthy run, and a common area joined several runs apiece beyond that.
“Would you like to help my shepherd school one of the young collies?” Matthew asked.
“Can Mercury come with me?” Priscilla asked.
“Mercury is a little too young to leave his family,” Matthew said. “Perhaps another time. Mr. Riley is working with a promising youngster today by the name of Mortimer. He’s almost as friendly as Mercury.”
Priscilla set Mercury down next to his mama. “Is Mr. Riley friendly? You said Tut likes it best when I ask nicely, and dogs like us to be on our manners too, don’t you think?”
Matthew and Priscilla left the kennel, while Theresa lingered for a moment, kneeling beside the whelping box to pat Orbit.
“Look after your little ones,” she told the hound. “They are very dear and only yours for
a short time. Then you’ll be back among your pack, chasing after some feckless fox.”
The hound spared Theresa a limpid gaze, then went back to nuzzling the puppy, who was squirming his way in the direction of sustenance.
“I’d rather stay with you,” Theresa went on, “than subject myself to more of Matthew and Priscilla’s good cheer. Matthew talks to Priscilla, he doesn’t lecture her or tease her. I doubt I’ll be back.”
Tears threatened for no discernible reason. “I hate to cry. I thought I’d lost the knack, then I come to Linden, and I’m a watering pot.”
“You are entitled to your tears,” Matthew said, “though you are also entitled to the comfort of my embrace when you weep.”
“You shouldn’t sneak up on a pair of mothers having a nice chat,” Theresa said, rising. “Though I can hardly imagine how Orbit will part with six children at once. Perhaps exhaustion will aid with the separation.”
Matthew slipped his arms around Theresa’s waist. She didn’t return his embrace, but simply stood in the circle of his embrace, her forehead resting against his shoulder.
“Pride helps you let them go,” he said. “Not the arrogant sort that refuses to acknowledge pain, but the pride you take in your offspring, to see them going forth, taking their places in a greater world. You’ve prepared them as best you can, you’re there to catch them if they fall, and they’ll make their way to destinations you could not have foreseen, all with their own style.”
Theresa eased away. “A fine theory, Mr. Belmont.”
He picked up another puppy who’d been about to spill out of the box and placed it next to Mercury.
“When will you stop punishing yourself for running amok in your youth?”
“I’ve been thinking about that.” Theresa had also been thinking about Matthew Belmont, and about Priscilla. “One doesn’t wake up one morning and decide the past no longer matters.”
Matthew looked away, to the puppies snuggling so contentedly beside their mother. She was a handsome, sizeable hound, and apparently a conscientious parent.
“One doesn’t,” he said. “Though one can learn from the past and move on from it. Am I given any credit for not offering Priscilla a puppy?”
An attempt to change the subject. Theresa was not inclined to let him off that easily.
“I asked my grandfather for a puppy. I would have been younger than Priscilla is now, and Thomas would have adored having something of his own. I knew the twins would inherit all of Sutcliffe one day, and I wanted Thomas to have something none of his elders could claim. The Sutcliffe kennels were extensive, and surely, I thought, Grandpapa could spare a single small hound?”
Had Matthew tried to put his arms around her then, she might have smacked him.
“Your grandfather denied your request.”
“He regularly had the runts drowned, said he was sparing them a worse end among the pack. He wouldn’t even spare me a runt to give to my brother.”
Orbit rose, circled, and re-established herself among her offspring, but she spared a moment to lick Matthew’s glove first.
Matthew patted the hound. “So now you’re steeling yourself to offer that same brother your only begotten daughter. Why would you cast your daughter into the hands of a man who neither knows her nor loves her, when an upbringing under similar circumstances still has the power to hurt you?”
No wonder he was the magistrate, with insight like that. The battle-readiness coursing through Theresa confirmed that Matthew’s questions deserved answers.
“Might I suggest,” Matthew went on, “that if we’re to have a rousing disagreement, which I am more than willing to have, that we do so outside the hearing of the hounds?”
He offered Orbit a final caress to her ears, then gestured toward the open door to the kennel.
Wise of him, not to expect Theresa to take his arm.
“You sent your boys to your brother,” Theresa said. His nearly grown boys, all together or nearly so.
“Remington went up to university this year, Christopher began his studies last year. My brother’s estate is close to Oxford, and his two boys have excellent tutors, among whom their father numbers. Richard and I were often cross with each other, and just because I—he was better off among his brothers and cousins. Your brother can offer Priscilla advantages. I do take your point.”
Matthew had, in fact, taken Theresa’s heart.
“Do you know why I’m attracted to you?” she asked as they emerged into the pleasant sunshine.
“Allow me a moment, madam, to rejoice in the admission itself. You are attracted to me. I’m most comfortable among my hounds and horses, my latest accomplishment was identifying which small boy stole Mrs. Magillacuddy’s only lace-trimmed petticoat to use as a sail on his raft, and I can eat more than even Nicholas Haddonfield and still have room for dessert. For some reason, you are attracted to me. I own I am pleased to hear it.”
He was shy too, but Theresa kept that item off the present list.
“You are honest,” she said instead, “with yourself, with others, with me, and yet, you are also kind. I have never met a man so lacking in insecurities. I don’t know what to do with you, and when you say things to me that Alice has hinted at for years, I can hear them. I don’t want to hear them, but I listen to you because you listen to me. I am so thoroughly vexed with you and utterly besotted—”
He stepped closer, though out in the pasture, Priscilla and a tall young man were working with a black and white collie, and over in the stable yard, Spiker was mending harness.
“Vexed and besotted,” Matthew said. “An apt description of my own state, though I’m mostly vexed on your behalf. I cannot abide injustice, and your situation provokes me to cursing.”
Spiker gathered up his harness and took it into the stable.
“I love it when you curse,” Theresa said. “I love that we can have a difference of opinion and yet remain in charity with each other.”
She loved Matthew Belmont, which was both glorious and sad. Thomas would never bless such a union, and Matthew’s reputation would suffer if they married, and yet, to love, to trust, to give her heart into another’s keeping…
Had these gifts befallen her as a younger woman, then much misery could have been averted.
“I am not in charity with you,” Matthew said, standing nose to nose with Theresa. “I am in love with you. How love and a renewed propensity for foul language relate, I cannot say. If you don’t decamp for the pasture this instant, I will soon be kissing you, though I cannot explain how that will aid matters either.”
He was magnificent when he was in a temper—or in love.
Theresa slid a hand around Matthew’s lean waist. “Enough saying and explaining. Allow me a moment to savor your declaration, and to kiss you for it.”
She was just about to press her lips to his, intent on expressing all the warm, wild, wonderful feelings that defied words, when the report of a gun exploded at close range.
* * *
“Uncle says we’re to return to Belmont House for the Christmas holidays,” Christopher said. “Be good to see home again.”
“Be good to have some of Mrs. Dellingham’s plum pudding,” Remington replied. Because Uncle Axel had influence at the college, Christopher and Rem shared a room. Richard was at Candlewick, studying like a fiend so he could start university earlier than most, and all five cousins could matriculate together for one year.
“Mrs. D is still in Brighton,” Christopher said, setting aside old Virgil. “I worry that Papa is starving.”
Rem had inherited Papa’s gift for sketching, or at least learned it from him. He was sketching a still life now, a boot, a riding crop, an old-fashioned hunting horn, and a long whip, such as the whippers-in used to keep an unruly pack together.
“Papa was starving before we came up here. Tell me about Priscilla’s mama. Papa always writes the good stuff to you, and you never share it because you’re an idiot.”
Christopher kick
ed Rem’s feet off the corner of the table that doubled as a desk, chair, clothes press, dining table, and work bench.
“Have some respect for your elders, Rem. Papa wasn’t starving.”
Rem blew on his sketching paper and brushed graceful fingers over the image taking shape.
“Who is Papa’s best friend?” Rem asked, pencil resuming its steady scratching. “Nick Haddonfield is quitting his post at Linden if he hasn’t already. Beckman barely speaks unless it’s to argue with his brother. The baron is new to the neighborhood and enthralled with his new baroness. The vicar has ten children and doesn’t ride to hounds to speak of. Uncle Emmanuel rides to hounds and tells the same tiresome jokes on every outing. Papa was starving.”
“Everybody loves Papa,” Christopher said, though Rem, as usual, had a valid point. Richard was all storms and brilliant sunshine. His laughter was contagious, his bleak moods—much in evidence of late—could suffocate the entire shire. His emotions fluctuated more rapidly than Scottish weather in spring. Richard took after Mama, of that Christopher was certain.
Rem was more like Papa. A quiet, steady fellow who missed nothing and was not to be underestimated.
“Everybody loves Papa,” Rem said, “but Papa loves only his family, and we’re here and he’s there. Nick writes that Papa has taken Miss Jennings to church twice now, and that Miss Priscilla and Tut are getting on famously.”
“You rode Tut, before Richard stole him,” Christopher said. Rem had stolen Tut from Christopher first, of course, stealing being more dashing than simply outgrowing one’s pony. “Nick is spying for you?”
“Spying for us, and I didn’t even have to ask it of him. Richard doesn’t want to go home for Christmas. He’s afraid Papa won’t let him come back to Oxfordshire with us.”
“Richard is an ass. Papa wouldn’t do that, not if he’s intent on courting Miss Jennings.”
Richard had been a merry boy, but at his present age, he was no recommendation for the Belmont menfolk generally. Of the three brothers, he alone seemed to share Papa’s knack for pondering a conundrum until a solution emerged. Lately, Richard had been a puzzle, with his endless dark moods and ferocious determination to arrive at university knowing more than the professors.
Matthew Page 15