A Lady of True Distinction

by Grace Burrowes

  Greta gave the key a cautious half twist.

  “A little more than that.”

  A full twist, and the barrel obligingly turned for a few tinny bars’ worth of nursery rhyme.

  “I can see it,” Greta said, rapt. “I can see it making the music!”

  Margaret came down the steps from the terrace. The child didn’t look up, but Thorne certainly did. The lady’s eyes were suspiciously shiny, and her posture had lost its starch. He rose while Greta remained crouched over the music box’s mechanism.

  “Aunt Margaret, come look. You can watch the barrel turn and the notes come out. The music box plays itself when you wind the spring.”

  The tune wound down, thank heavens.

  “Why don’t you show Adriana?” Margaret suggested. “She’s working on a puzzle in the nursery.”

  Greta popped to her feet, the music box mechanism in her hand. “This is the most wonderful present ever, Mr.-Hawthorne-Dorning. Thank you.”

  Her smile reminded him of somebody, though it was gone as quickly as it had appeared, then she was scampering toward the steps.

  “Greta!” Thorne called. “You’ll need this.” He held the key out to her.

  She rushed back, snatched the key, curtseyed. “Thank you. I shall show Adriana. And Fenny. I will show Ambers as well, and Cook and Mrs. Blevins.” She disappeared into the house, adding to her list.

  “Never has a broken toy brought one child so much pleasure,” Thorne said. “Greta has a unique view of life.”

  “I worry for her.” Margaret picked up the handkerchief and folded the edges over the pieces of wood and screws within. “She is very bright, very stubborn. She never forgets anything even when you wish she would, and as fanciful as she can be, she’s also astonishingly logical.”

  “You love her,” Thorne said. “You love them both.”

  “With my whole heart. What made you choose a music box?”

  Are we engaged? That question plucked at Thorne’s nerves as tautly as the pins of the music box cylinder plucked at its metal teeth.

  “The breeze is picking up,” Thorne said, “and you’ve come outside without your cloak. Shall we go inside?”

  “I suppose we ought. I smell rain, though it’s still some distance off.”

  Thorne couldn’t smell anything other than a spring day in the garden—and possible defeat of his courting aspirations. “I brought the music box because Adriana struck me as a child who’d enjoy lively stories and detailed illustrations, while Greta… Greta likes other predilections. She has an engineer’s instincts.”

  Margaret paused just outside the terrace door. “How could you possibly conclude that?”

  “She knew to seek the high vantage point when defending the Asian steppes. She figured out how to climb a piece of furniture that’s twice as tall as she is. She solves puzzles.”

  “While she creates mayhem,” Margaret said, moving away from the door. “My sitting room is off the music room.”

  She opened a set of French doors and led Thorne to a small square room with a slightly worn blue sofa, a somewhat scratched desk, and a rocking chair positioned near a parlor stove that backed up to a low hearth. Before the rocking chair was a footstool, and opposite sat a reading chair.

  Unique scents—cinnamon and honeysuckle, maybe a hint of cedar—gave the little sanctuary the air of a private retreat.

  “We will be undisturbed here,” Margaret said, closing the doors and setting the handkerchief on the blotter, “assuming Fenny can keep peace in the nursery. I have decided to accept your offer of marriage.”

  She might have been announcing the choice of vegetable on tomorrow night’s dinner menu, so prosaic was her tone.

  “Have you really?”

  What followed was interesting. Margaret swept a hearth that was already clean, straightened correspondence that was tidily stacked, retied a curtain sash that had been in a neat bow.

  “You are gathering your courage,” Thorne said. “I’m learning the signs. Don’t marry me unless you truly want to. I understand your speech about both of us being pragmatic, but I have long held you in esteem and look very much forward to being your husband. If you are not similarly enthusiastic about this union, then let’s forget I proposed, and I will go back to my shearing shed, there to…”

  Shear his way to utter oblivion, if such a thing were possible. If it were not, he’d start on the apple brandy Valerian had begun making several years ago. Wickedly potent stuff that went down as smoothly as a card sharp dealt a hand of piquet to a table full of college boys.

  Margaret took him by the wrist and led him to the reading chair. She perched on the hassock. “Please sit. The problem is Charles.”

  “You love him still. I know. That’s a testament to your—”

  She shook her head. “He was not well.” She tapped her chest. “Here. His heart was weakened by childhood illnesses, and though he looked hale and happy, he tired easily and was prone to palpitations and sweats.”

  Well, damn. A beloved deceased husband would likely always hold a place in his wife’s heart. A beloved husband tragically struck down by illness, heroically facing his demise one brave smile at a time… Thorne could not compete with that. As a gentleman, he should not want to displace such a love.

  “I’m sorry. I hadn’t known he was ill.”

  “Bancroft put it about that Charles had eaten tainted meat, lest somebody conclude the ailment ran in the family. If anybody wondered why only one person in an entire household would succumb to food poisoning, they never raised the question.”

  “And you were too bowed down with grief to argue with him.”

  “I was sad, of course,” Margaret said. “Very sad, but Charles told me when he proposed that his health was compromised. His death was a loss, though for him I think it was also a relief. I was not with him when he died. I do regret that, but he’d warned me that his ailment was unpredictable. He’d be fine for weeks and then bedridden for no apparent reason. Changes in weather affected him some years, not others. He’d spend all summer reading in a hammock, then be fit enough to dance a minuet with me at the autumn assembly. I could make very little sense of his illness, but I believed him when he said ours was likely to be a short, happy marriage.”

  “You were very brave to take him for your husband.”

  Margaret rose and went to the desk, opening a drawer. She withdrew a handkerchief and passed it to him. “To replace the one Greta has commandeered. I was not brave.”

  Thorne wanted to pull her into his lap, the better to have this difficult conversation, but just as he’d resisted the temptation to cosset a distraught Greta, he merely watched as Margaret squeezed the sachets dangling from the curtain rod and straightened the carpet fringe with the toe of her boot.

  “You were as brave as any soldier. You went into the marriage knowing heartache would follow.”

  “I had my reasons, Hawthorne. I had to do something. My aunt was in poor health, my inheritance would be modest, and I was not a convivial young woman to attract suitors on the strength of my charm.”

  “You attracted me. You still attract me.” More than ever.

  “You were off at university, while I… I love our corner of Dorset, you see. I know every hedge and stream, every fairy mound and field. I never want to leave it, while an earl’s son is most likely to find his fortune in the military, the church, or diplomacy. Had you proposed, I might have turned you down.”

  Or you might have accepted me, damn the luck.

  He took her hand in his. “I didn’t propose, and you married your dear Charles. Now you are to marry me, though you still appear to have reservations.”

  She folded back down to the hassock, keeping his hand in hers. “You should have reservations, too, but you are too gentlemanly to mention them. Marriage to Charles was far from perfect, which is the point of my ramblings. He was increasingly weak, unable to leave the house, exhausted simply by the effort required to dress. Some days, he had to be carri
ed up the steps, or his heart would start pounding before the first landing. After the first year…”

  She brought Thorne’s knuckles to her lips. “I was more nurse than wife,” she went on. “I will make demands on you, Hawthorne. I will expect… fidelity. Certain attentions. A wife’s due. You’ve said you enjoy intimate relations. You are to enjoy them with me, do you understand?”

  What on earth was she trying to say? “I understand that our marriage will be physically intimate. I look forward to that.” Even talk of such intimacies in this private parlor tempted Thorne’s imagination in wayward directions.

  “Not simply intimate, Hawthorne—this conversation is intimate. I want a husband with whom I can be enthusiastic. I want a husband who will bring passion and energy to bed with him. I want… I want lustiness and joy. Creaking bed ropes. Breathless kisses. Sweat.”

  Margaret sat hunched in on herself, but her eyes blazed with determination, and her grip on Thorne’s hand was fierce. Such a bundle of contradictions and so very, very dear.

  “Passion is mine to give in abundance,” Thorne said, rising. “Passion for you.” He drew her to her feet, smoothed her hair back from her cheek, and took her in his arms.

  After all her brave and unnecessary talk, he’d apparently surprised her by taking action. She started slightly as Thorne wrapped her in an embrace.

  “I could lift your skirts right now, Margaret Summerfield.” He kissed her while that possibility sent mischief coursing through him. “Sit you on a corner of the desk and be inside you in two minutes. I could loosen your bodice and within one minute be adoring your breasts with my mouth and hands.”

  He permitted himself only a glancing caress to those breasts. “I could kiss you in shockingly intimate ways. Endure the same pleasure from you…” He fused his mouth to hers rather than expound on that luscious fantasy.

  Margaret twined her arms around him and kissed him back with a voraciousness that nearly had him undoing his falls. She pressed near and pulled him closer, all the while deepening the kiss. Her hands were everywhere—his arms and chest, his backside, his falls…

  Ye cavorting gods of procreation. Ye heavenly choruses of matrimonial joy. “Margaret.” A warning, a plea for restraint.

  She pulled him under again.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Margaret went a little mad—more than a little. She flung her desire at Hawthorne the same way she used to charge up a hillside on the first beautiful day of spring, determined to reach the summit and drink in all the splendor of nature’s glories.

  Hawthorne was not Charles. A small, stubborn voice in Margaret’s head tried to be sad about that, but the sentiment simply wouldn’t wash. Hawthorne was a healthy, vigorous specimen in the prime of life, one who delighted in physical activity, and—apparently—in kissing.

  Kissing her.

  “I was half a wife,” Margaret said, drawing back to rest her cheek against Hawthorne’s chest. He could not know what joy his steadily thumping heart brought her, could not fathom how many times she’d heard Charles’s heartbeat pattering a rapid, thready rhythm after the tamest of couplings.

  “You were wholly devoted to your spouse,” Hawthorne replied.

  “I would kiss his cheek, but never ask for… for intimacies. When he made overtures, I was always worried that the exertion would cost him his life. I restrained desire, anger, sadness, even joy. His illness was like a fractious child who finally succumbs to sleep. Wake the child, and the whole household can be thrown back into an uproar.”

  For once, Margaret was glad to be indoors, glad to be where no prying eyes could see her in the arms of a man who delighted in a yeoman’s exertions, a fellow who could pluck Greta from the furniture and casually carry her on his hip.

  “I have another request,” she said, stepping back enough to see Hawthorne’s eyes.

  “If it’s anything like the first, I am a temple of masculine anticipation.” He tucked a lock of Margaret’s hair back into her chignon, and even that casual gesture made her hungry for more of his touch.

  I have been asleep. The notion dropped into her head, whole and true, much as she had risen on summer mornings long ago, inexplicably certain that she’d find the feverfew at the edge of the village common in full bloom.

  “You will think me forward.”

  “Margaret, I think you wonderful.”

  “I think you are wonderful too, Hawthorne Dorning.”

  They beamed at each other, and a glimmer of the girl Margaret had once been, full of joy and confidence, trickled through her.

  “I want to be married by special license, please.”

  Hawthorne drew her close, his arms loosely around her shoulders. Oh, the scent of him… clean, masculine. A bit of horse and leather, a hint of meadows and tannin. All dancing beneath good old English lavender. She would change the sachets in this office to lavender before the day was through.

  “You needn’t wait to avail yourself of my charms, you know.” He whispered this, his breath tickling her ear. “I can be persuaded to anticipate the vows. Shower me with kisses and flattery, make a few bold promises. I estimate that if you exert yourself to the utmost, my inherent shyness will crumble in at most four or five… seconds.”

  He was about as shy as a barnyard rooster.

  “I want a special license, Hawthorne, so this marriage is a fait accompli before Bancroft returns from London.” Before anybody could summon him back from London.

  Hawthorne kissed her brow, a thoughtful sort of kiss rather than flirtatious. “And here I had hoped the prospect of my creaking bed ropes alone inspired your enthusiasm. Has Bancroft threatened to take the girls from you, Margaret?”

  “Not overtly, not yet. He mentions that Summerfield House is larger and more commodious. He suggests that one day the consequence of a wealthy uncle will be a greater advantage to them than that of a widowed aunt. He’d probably settle for their money and Summerton, but I am their guardian, so ideally, he’ll need control of me as well.”

  Hawthorne stepped back. “And to have control of you, he needs the girls.”

  The light of passion in his eyes had cooled, which was for the best.

  “I admire your devotion to a pair of helpless children,” he said, sitting on the arm of her reading chair. “I promise you that their welfare will concern me every bit as much as it concerns you, but as long as we’re being pragmatic, Margaret, can we clarify one more thing?”

  Pragmatic had been Margaret’s word to describe both herself and Hawthorne, though she regretted it now. Thorne was pragmatic, also apparently romantic. Margaret, by contrast, was ruthless where the children were concerned.

  “We can clarify as much as you like,” she said, “though perhaps we should continue this discussion on the terrace?”

  Thorne took her hand and drew her closer so she perched upon his thigh. “I do hope a little friendly kissing in front of the children figures in your version of holy matrimony.”

  “It… does.”

  “Good.” He pressed his lips to her knuckles, a brisk, affectionate smack. “I need your recipes for scents and tisanes, Margaret. My family needs them. Casriel is growing impatient, and he’s like a Congreve rocket with a ten-yard fuse. For the longest time, he merely mutters and grumbles, until you think that’s all he’ll ever do. Then the last two inches of that fuse burns down, and the results are loud, far-ranging, and unpredictable. He’s the most mannerly of men until he reaches the limits of his patience.”

  “Like Greta. She has ten calm days together, and I think my dear little girl is finding some reserves of self-control. Then the cat goes missing—off to the barn for his frolics—or Adriana rearranges the toy chest without discussing it first with Greta. Pandemonium ensues.”

  Margaret yielded to the temptation to rest her head on Thorne’s shoulder, for even the memory of Greta in high dudgeon was daunting.

  “If I cannot convince Casriel that selling botanical products will be profitable,” Hawthorne said, “p
andemonium might well ensue. At least two of my brothers, possibly three, are depending on me to put Casriel’s idea into action, and I cannot do that successfully if all we’re peddling are the same sachets and scents already on offer. You mentioned a cure for baldness, for example.”

  Margaret pushed away, because she could not think when Thorne was stroking his thumb over her wrist.

  “Not a cure, a treatment. Not one I’ve ever concocted.” Though she knew two different recipes that claimed over a course of months to restore hair growth to the male scalp. Hannah swore by them, while Margaret suspected simply massaging the scalp vigorously three times a day for months brought about the intended result.

  “Then we need a salve for saddle soreness, a patent remedy for those who overimbibe, a powder that restores manly vigor, something unique, effective, and available only to us because of the enormous collection the late earl amassed—”

  Margaret held up a hand. “I cannot dabble in medications, Thorne. The herbalist’s art has been denied me in that regard.” Of all the deceptions and half-lies Margaret was prepared to weave, this truth stood on the solid ground of fact. “I have studied those remedies, true, but I haven’t the gift of applying what I know. Hannah might be better able to help you in that regard. With scents, I am on much firmer footing.”

  Even Bancroft couldn’t object to Margaret parting with a few recipes for shaving soap or hair pomade.

  Thorne regarded her for a moment, his gaze putting her in mind of Greta. The child could leap over a dozen pieces of information to land on a conclusion that made perfect sense, but only after the course of her logic could be traced.

  “Then we start with scents,” he said. “The most luscious, precious, intriguing scents you can concoct using what Dorning Hall has to offer. Papa collected from all over the world, and he kept meticulous notes about what grows where on the property and the conditions each plant prefers. Casriel reduced the size of the conservatory, though, so Papa’s careful system has grown ragged in some instances.”

  “I would love to help reorganize the conservatory, but what about that special license, Thorne?” This mattered, more than he could know.