“There’s a certain advantage to being the sole inhabitant of an entire wing of a mansion. In London I might wake up the neighbors.”
“If you can’t learn to express yourself more quietly we’ll have to move to a ship in the middle of the Thames.”
Although the conversation was a joking one, he spoke as though they would continue to live together, and not in the frozen wasteland of Northumberland. Diana’s heart expanded and she snuggled up against his side, tucking her head in his shoulder. They lay together in peaceful satiation for some time until she involuntarily shivered.
“The fire needs building up,” he said.
While he added wood to restore the blaze, she pulled on her robe again, without buttoning it, and retrieved the quilted chintz banyan she’d found in the same box.
“Try this on,” she said.
The loose knee-length garment suited him, the dark red background providing a masculine contrast to the extravagant floral pattern.
“I like it,” he said. “I wonder how it came to be in the attic. Or any of the other things, either.” He walked over to the bed and examined one of the bed curtains.
Diane joined him. “That cloth was made for export to England. Do you see how the flowers are tulips, roses, and daisies? Not the lotuses and oriental flowers you see in some of the patterns.”
Sebastian showed more interest in the recent history of the fabrics. “How long have these stuffs been here at Saxton? Is there any way of knowing?”
“Hedley says fifty years.”
“In my great-uncle’s time. I never knew him to be concerned with such things. I can’t imagine why he would have ordered so much. But having bought it, why was it never used?”
“Hedley says the late Lord Iverley was engaged to be married and intended to put the house in order.”
“Engaged? I don’t believe it. He loathed women.”
“Did he ever tell you why?”
Sebastian hunched his shoulders and put his hands in the pockets of his robe. His expression shuttered. “He said you couldn’t trust them.”
Diana wanted to probe, but instinct told her to draw back. Yet she couldn’t quite leave the subject alone. “He was unfortunate in his choice,” she said lightly. “According to Hedley she jilted him for a man of higher rank. She preferred the heir to a dukedom.”
Even as she said it she knew her mistake. Although Sebastian would only have to question the butler to get the same information, she’d give anything to take it back. He made no response but she could sense that Blakeney wasn’t far from his thoughts.
As usual, he used concern for her health as an excuse to change the subject. “You should go to bed. I’m going to read in the library for a while before I sleep.”
“Fetch your book and bring it here.” She put her arms around his neck. “You could read me to sleep,” she whispered. “If you chose something interesting enough perhaps you’ll keep me awake.”
He politely but firmly withdrew from her embrace. “You need your sleep.”
Two hours later she lay awake in the dark. Physically she felt splendid, couldn’t imagine ever feeling unwell again for the rest of her life. Her teeming brain nagged her, asking if she’d ever make her husband see her as more than a representative of a despised sex whose bed he liked to share. She’d come to Saxton with the goal of finding a way to cohabit in a civil manner as their fortunes merged and their children were born. But her heart wasn’t content with such modest aspirations.
That Sebastian could be a good lover she no longer doubted. Now he needed to learn to be a good husband. She wasn’t sure he possessed the same natural talent, or an equal drive for self-improvement.
Drifting on the edge of sleep, she felt a little better when he slid into bed and flung a heavy arm about her waist from behind. A soft kiss on her neck was gentle and undemanding but his naked body didn’t disguise his wishes. With a happy sigh she turned over and welcomed him.
Chapter 29
The small dining room at breakfast time was now the only reliably woman-free place in the house. Diana took her morning meal in bed and waiting at table remained a footman’s job. Otherwise Saxton was infested with female servants, dusting, scrubbing, polishing, and doing whatever else was needed to bring the place to the degree of cleanliness deemed necessary by his wife.
At first Sebastian protested when she hired two maids, but she silenced him with the information that they were the daughters of one of the dead miners. Then another half dozen appeared.
“We don’t have enough staff in this huge house and it’s hard to find menservants. They earn more in the mines.” She was good at undercutting his arguments. “I think it our duty to offer employment to women so they don’t have to work underground.”
Diana had been shocked to learn that the collieries employed women as well as men for the dangerous and backbreaking labor. She’d lost her temper when she discovered children as young as four years old were put to work alongside the coal miners, crawling through tunnels too low and narrow for adults.
Sebastian agreed with her concerns; he’d already instituted measures to improve working conditions at the Saxton mine. The recently passed factory act ruled that no children under nine were to be employed in cotton mills and older children were limited to twelve-hour days. Though the law didn’t apply to mines, he felt it was the least he could do to voluntarily follow the same restrictions. He also liked Diana’s proposal to start a school for the younger children, and allow the older ones a few hours off each day for education.
But while the employment of maidservants might be good policy in the wider sense, he found their presence in the house unsettling. Since early childhood he’d never lived among women.
Diana’s French maid he didn’t mind. She always excused herself whenever he appeared and her approving glances told him why. The French had a reputation for enthusiasm when it came to the amatory arts, a well-deserved one if the contents of Tarquin’s library were anything to go by. The Frenchwoman—Chantal he believed was her name—knew exactly what he and her mistress got up to as soon as they were alone.
Which was ultimately the reason he tolerated the feminine invasion. He was beginning to fear he couldn’t live without its leader. He wanted Diana just about every moment of every day and night. The nights presented no difficulty. Her amorous eagerness equaled his own. Retiring early to the Rajah’s Court, as he now dubbed her bedchamber, he gave free reign to his passion. She welcomed every manifestation of his developing erotic fantasies with fervor.
But those same erotic fantasies didn’t vanish with the coming of day. As the comfort and color of the Rajah’s Court extended, room by room, into the rest of the house, so did his desires. He’d retreated to the masculine sanity of the library yesterday and found curtains at the windows and a huge multi-hued carpet covering much of the floor. While he appreciated the added warmth, what he mostly wanted to do was summon his wife, strip her naked, and roll around on the rug with her.
That was not what libraries were for. And it wasn’t what days were for, either, he had to keep reminding himself. He found every excuse to leave the house and as a result the industrial and agricultural affairs of the Iverley estates received more attention from their owner than at any time in history. It was the only way to keep his thoughts rational. Even now, for God’s sake, as he replenished his energies with roast beef, he couldn’t stop thinking about what he’d been doing two hours earlier. Her scent haunted him as though imprinted on his skin. He tested the hypothesis by taking a deep sniff at his wrist.
“Good morning, my lord.”
He almost choked on a mouthful and dropped his arm to his side. Diana stood at the doorway. The tousled nymph of the dawn—warm, naked, dreamy-eyed—had given way to the Olympian goddess, dressed for Bond Street and polished to a high gloss.
“I’ll have some of that ham, please, George,” she said briskly, “and a couple of muffins.”
She showed no inclination for break
fast chatter but set about slathering her muffins with butter and honey.
“You were hungry this morning,” Sebastian finally remarked, after watching her put away a large plate of food with quiet efficiency.
“Famished.”
“And not sick?” He looked over at the fireplace where sulfurous Saxton coal emitted heat and fumes.
“I haven’t felt ill for several days, even in rooms where there’s a coal fire. Dr. Harrison says it’s normal for the nausea to end after about three months.”
“You don’t usually eat so much, do you?”
“Not in recent weeks. My appetite seems to have returned with a vengeance. Of course,” she continued with a smoldering glance that belied her dispassionate tone, “I’ve been getting a great deal of exercise lately.”
“Is that so?”
“Exercise is good for the health.”
“So I’ve always heard.”
“Even at night I maintain my exertions.”
He kept his expression grave. “That’s very commendable.”
“So it’s not surprising I should need added sustenance to keep up my strength.”
“I have no argument with your logic.” He leaned across the table with concern. “Now you’ve enjoyed a restorative breakfast, might I suggest a little rest.” He glanced over at George whose stolid demeanor gave no indication that he understood Sebastian’s present intentions.
Apparently neither did Diana, or so she pretended. “I only just got out of bed. I have all sorts of plans for today.”
“In your delicate condition you can’t be too careful. As your husband it’s my duty to make sure you spend enough time in bed.”
“I could do with a short nap,” she said after a moment of exaggerated consideration, “but I think I should take a little exercise first.”
Her smile went straight to his groin. Sebastian stood and offered her his arm. “Allow me to accompany you.”
“That was delicious,” she said half an hour later, collapsing with her head on his chest, her knees hugging his hips. They were still joined.
“Invigorating,” he said, reaching to draw the covers over them. “Now rest.”
The first time she’d climbed on top and indicated she wanted to make love that way, he’d been a little shocked. It seemed against the natural order of things. Once he discovered the benefits of the variant he became quickly reconciled to the supine position. And to a number of others, all highly enjoyable. But this might be his favorite, because he loved feeling her weight and her warmth envelope him as they rested afterward.
She raised her head and rubbed her nose against his. “Did you know you have beautiful eyes?” she asked.
“Me? You’re the one with the eyes. Southern noon sky blue. Mine are Northumberland morning gray.”
“That’s quite lyrical.”
He allowed himself a grunt. “Pray, don’t accuse me of committing poetry.”
“Your eyes aren’t gray but silver, like a full moon. I’m glad you wear spectacles because the other ladies can’t tell how handsome you are.” “You’re teasing me.”
“Not at all. You’re quite enticing enough with them. Lady Georgina Harville is mad for you.”
He gave a snort of laughter. “If she is, which I doubt, it’s unreciprocated. I only ever said a word to her to make you jealous.”
“I don’t think you should bring that up,” she said huffily and rolled onto her back, leaving him chilled, despite a thick down-filled quilt.
He wanted to ask her if she regretted the eventual outcome of his deception. The fact he’d forced her into marriage was ever-present at the back of his mind. He was content, but was Diana? He wanted to ask her how she felt but couldn’t think how to frame his question in a way that didn’t sound weak and pleading.
He laid his palm over the slight but perceptible protrusion of her belly, proof of the accident that had brought them to this point. To this moment in a bed in huge, gray, frigid Saxton Iverley. An outcome he could never have predicted in a hundred years.
“Do you think I’m getting too fleshy?” She swallowed. “I’m afraid of what will happen now I’ve regained my appetite. Chantal has warned me that expectant ladies can end up very stout if they don’t take care.”
“I find your concern with your figure ridiculous. If there were to be a little more of you I could only rejoice.”
“Thank you, my lord. That’s very gallant. You are becoming quite a smooth-tongued flattering scoundrel.” Her smaller hand covered his. “Do you feel it?” she asked. “I haven’t felt it move yet but I should soon.”
The thought of the child always disquieted him. Without being obvious about it, he turned onto his side so that he could remove his hand from the swelling lump. Thus far he’d managed to avoid much conversation about it. His wife’s health in pregnancy had his full attention; the perils of childbirth and the unexplored territory of fatherhood were too alarming to contemplate.
“Do you think it will be a boy or a girl?”
This was a subject he’d definitely rather not discuss.
“Chantal thinks it’s a girl because my left nipple is redder.”
“Really?” he asked, perking up. He was ever happy for an excuse to examine his wife’s breasts. “I can’t see any difference but I’m sure I could make it so.” He lowered his mouth to the jaunty pink point, then stopped. “Maybe I should encourage the right side if that will make it a boy.”
“Do you hope for a boy then? I suppose all men wish for an heir.”
“The viscountcy, the estate, and so forth,” he said, though he didn’t mean a word of it. His preference would be for a male child only because the notion was marginally less terrifying. A small boy was familiar; he’d been one himself. But a girl?
When he thought of girl children he heard giggles, specifically the giggles of Amanda Vanderlin and her sisters.
Sebastian had taken to lovemaking like a duck to water.
Diana could only hope that when the time came he would apply the same enthusiasm to the outcome of the activity. In contemplating her impending motherhood she thought of her own happy childhood and her parents, always loving and indulgent despite their respective eccentricities. Sebastian as far as she could tell had enjoyed nothing of the kind, either before or after the disappearance of his mother. Any attempt to discuss the future addition to the Iverley family aroused his best avoidance tactics and more often than not led to his departure from the room.
In fact the same applied to most conversation that bordered on the personal. Intimacy, he made it plain, was a physical not a mental state.
With some difficulty, she held to her resolution not to press him and was rewarded over the course of several weeks. He smiled frequently, laughed on occasion, and even made jokes, usually in bed in the relaxed aftermath of mutual satisfaction. When, she wondered, would it occur to her clever husband that he was happy, even in the gloomy house where he’d passed his unsatisfactory youth?
The physical gloom at least she could dispel. To her fascination, it emerged that the trove in the attics contained much that was needed to furnish the house according to the original plans discovered in the estate muniments room. The materials imported from the east which she’d first stumbled upon were a mere fraction of the riches, and intended mostly for the bedrooms. Crate after crate was unpacked to reveal wall-coverings of silk, leather, and tapestry; giant carpets from the Wilton and Aubusson factories which fit the massive rooms so well they must have been woven specially; bales and bales of costly cloth for curtains and upholstery; chairs and sofas, and tables of every kind and size.
It was going to take her weeks to sort it all out and months to find craftsmen to install what she found and to execute the elaborate gilt and plasterwork the original architect had designed.
She worked without the participation of her husband, who spent his days outside the house or buried in the estate office with his steward, not always even home in time to dine with her. Bedtime, ho
wever, he never missed, and most of their conversations were conducted in the old-fashioned bed which now boasted a new, softer mattress.
“I’ve decided the crimson silk must have been meant for the large dining room,” she told him one night. “It complements the chair coverings in there. I wonder why that was the one fully furnished room.”
“I suppose the table was too big to get upstairs to the attic,” Sebastian said idly. He was fussing with the blankets to make sure she was warm enough, then dropped a light kiss, first on her nose then her lips. She relished such casual gestures of affection, separated from passion. She couldn’t tell if he was aware of making them.
“It’s a wonderful room,” she said, nuzzling his arm. “When it’s finished we must give a dinner to celebrate.”
His response was predictably skeptical. “Whom would we invite?”
“The local gentry, of course. I haven’t met anyone yet, but I imagine once the weather improves some of them will call.”
“They never have before. My uncle didn’t hold much with company.”
“But you must be acquainted with the principal families in the neighborhood. You must have known the young men, at least, as you grew up.”
“No.”
She shouldn’t have been surprised. When he wasn’t away at school, Sebastian’s life at Saxton seemed to have been almost totally isolated from the kind of country sociability she knew in Shropshire. Not that he’d ever told her directly; almost everything she knew about his youth had been deduced from the meager morsels of information he dropped from time to time.
“We sometimes went to meetings of the Literary and Philosophical Society,” he said, a rare instance of volunteering information. “I remember going to see the wombat and the platypus.”
“What are they?”
“Strange creatures from the Antipodes. John Hunter sent specimens to Newcastle when he was Governor of New South Wales.”
“What else?” She was hungry for further confidences.
The Dangerous Viscount Page 25