After they’d all eaten some of the cake, and the conversation died down, Bromley glanced at his wife and stood. “Well, I suppose we must be getting back.”
“You're going all the way to Bath?” Kitty asked. “You traveled early this morning just for our wedding breakfast?” Her eyes widened at such devotion on their part.
“Yes, we could not miss it,” Teresa said. “But I think it's time for the newlyweds to enjoy the rest of their married life together.”
Kitty raised an eyebrow. “We are not all that newly married, you know.” Teresa merely grinned.
Carter gave Lucretia a sidelong glance. “And I suppose I shall be getting back as well. Miss Dutton, if you are not far, I shall be happy to accompany you to your home.”
She smiled and stood. “I should like that very much. It is not far.” He held out his arm, and after bidding Kitty and Phineas goodbye, they left.
It was just the two of them.
28
“What would you like to do now, my lady?”
The happiness that expanded inside Kitty somehow swept away some of her shyness. “I would like to invite you—”
Phineas’s head came up, his eyes wide. The eager look coaxed a bubble of laughter from Kitty. She sent him a teasing look. “I would like to invite you to go for a ride, Lord Hayworth.”
“A ride.” Phineas’s shoulders slumped comically. “A ride … Very well, Lady Hayworth”—he took a deep breath and gave a sweeping bow—“a ride it is.”
Kitty went to change into her last of the new riding habits and hurried down to the front entrance where Phineas was waiting.
“Very fetching hat, my lady,” he said, a gleam in his eyes that spoke to his admiration.
“Someone with exquisite taste chose it for me,” Kitty answered. She welcomed his regard as she brushed past him to the stairs leading outside.
In the stables, the newly hired groom, who possessed a decidedly paternal air, had their mounts saddled, and soon Kitty and Phineas were leading their horses down the path. Light flakes fell from the gray, cloudless sky. Phineas gestured to the meadow on the right, covered with a thin blanket of snow. “Let us go this way. We will see the tenants in three days’ time for the Christmas boxes, and there’s a part of the property on the east side I would like to show you.”
Kitty followed him over the meadow, veering off in a direction they had not yet taken. Her horse picked over the ground carefully. Phineas looked behind him and reined in so she could keep up. “Do not mind the hill. Fawn can handle it, and so can you.”
“I begin to believe I can,” she replied. “Where are you taking me? This is off the path.”
“It is. It can be slippery with mud as well, although it will be too cold for that today. It requires just a bit more skill in riding because of the incline, which is why I held off until now.”
Despite the hill, Kitty was gloriously at ease in the saddle, and she breathed in the frosty air, surveying the line of Scots pine trees as they neared the top. “This is magnificent.”
“I am pleased you think so.” She could hear the grin in Phineas’s voice and knew just what expression he held before she turned her regard to him. The grin was arrested on his face when she turned. “You look enchanting with a bit of color in your cheeks.”
She faced forward again, raising her eyes to the heavens. “I do not need any more color in my cheeks, or anywhere else for that matter. I am much too chromatic as it is.” She smiled, glancing again at Phineas. “This hair of mine, which Mary likes to say is the root of my temper—never mind that Erasmus’s temper is much worse—is my bane.”
“No,” Phineas countered, resolute. “I wouldn’t change a thing. You are magnificent.”
At his words, a swell of warmth ran through Kitty, even as they cleared the top of the hill. Her lips still turned upwards, she peered down the slope, her gaze now caught on the charming structure nestled in the lone oak tree among the pines.
Phineas held his breath. It wasn’t so very earth-shattering, showing Kitty a tree-house he had discovered right after he had inherited the property. He had never been invited to Giddenhall as a boy, so the house should mean very little to him. However, he found the steps to be charming that led from the downward incline to the large tree holding the house. In a fit of whimsy, he’d had the treehouse refurbished, although he could ill spare the expense at the time. He could already imagine showing it to his child for the first time, as soon as he or she was old enough to climb stairs.
“It’s lovely.” There was delight in Kitty’s voice. “Sam didn’t speak of it. I am surprised.”
“Sam didn’t see it. I asked the gardener to wait until his next visit to show it to him, so I could show it to you first.”
“Where did it come from? Did your mother have any brothers?”
Phineas shook his head. “It must pre-date my grandmother. I cannot think of any other explanation, as she would not have authorized such a fanciful thing.”
“It is fanciful. Wonderfully fanciful. I can picture…” Kitty looked up to the top of the tree, which was not much higher than where they were at the summit of the hill.
“What is it?” Phineas prodded.
“I can picture our children playing here.” She darted a glance at him but did not remove her gaze at once. Phineas thought his heart had reached its point of fullness and could not hold any more when she looked forward again. “And I love these little steps. Much safer than a ladder. You will take them here? Our children?”
“Of course,” he said. The tree house was made of polished cut wood, and it possessed a thatch roof and even a terrace that curled around the house. He was entirely pleased with it. “I would like nothing better.”
They stayed seated on horseback at the summit rather than go over the ridge, as the trees were thicker on the other side. Despite the view, the chill soon had them turning their mounts toward home. And by the time they left the horses with the groom in the stable, the snow had begun falling in thicker flakes.
“Brr.” Kitty clapped her hands together. “I’m chilled through. I must change out of my habit into something warm and dry.”
“I will do the same.” Phineas put his arm around Kitty, guiding her over the parts of the path he feared might have ice. “And then what shall we do?” He tried to keep his question innocent, but a corner of his mouth crept up into a grin.
“Oh…” Kitty’s tone was light and playful. “Perhaps, I shall invite you”—her mouth puckered out with the last word as she darted a glance at him—“to take tea with me, husband.”
He laughed. The teasing was an unexpected gift his wife had bestowed upon him. He could not have imagined such a thing possible when he’d pictured having a wife, and it made his light frustration at their slow progress easier to bear. “So, it is ‘husband’ now? I like it. Very well, wife. We will take tea.”
Phineas and Kitty agreed to meet in the library, where the muted wood tones and small pane-glass windows created a perfectly cozy setting for tea between husband and wife. The fire crackled, and the railings near the bookshelves were draped with greenery. Pine boughs scented the air.
“Come and sit with me in this chair.” He gestured to a small settee with armrests that held two people if they were willing to sit very close. Kitty sank down next to him, and he felt the warmth of her thigh next to his.
“Phineas,” she said with a sigh. “I am so pleased with our wedding breakfast. Thank you for remembering my request and for fulfilling it in such a magnificent way.”
The footman brought the hot water, and Kitty reached for the canister of tea that she had brought with her from the drawing room cabinet. The footman left after setting down the tea tray. “And thank you for showing me the tree-house that will one day be in use again, I have no doubt.”
“With Samuel making full use of it in the meantime.” This earned Phineas a grateful smile. Kitty mixed in the tea leaves and stirred the tea, allowing it to steep. He watched her dainty han
ds preparing his cup the way he liked it, and he put his hand around her shoulders, careful not to jar her in her ministrations.
He leaned in and whispered into her ear. “I love you.”
Kitty wore no bonnet, and her hair was pulled away from her alluring face. His only sign that she had heard him was a slight lift of her cheeks and a mild trembling of her hand as she stirred his tea. She handed him the cup, and they drank in silence, but he could see the pleasure his words had given her in the way her eyes smiled at him above her cup. One sip of the hot beverage. Two sips … three.
She set her cup down and tapped her finger on her chin as if struck by a thought. “Hm.”
Phineas felt a slight tremor run through her, and although she was smiling, he felt something between them shift. He set his saucer down next to hers and waited.
Kitty kept her face trained forward, but he could see her catch her lip between her teeth and a tiny crease form between her brows. “Now that we have had tea, we shall have to think of something else to do.”
Phineas cleared his throat. “Very true.” He could not remove his gaze from her face as he waited for her next words. He could not breathe.
“I suppose it will be dinner soon enough, and I should like to choose my dress.” She risked a shy glance at him, her face lit with that color she found so detestable, but of which he could not get enough. “To be very sure that my dress has met with your approval, I believe I will invite you to help me choose it—if …” Her expression took on a slightly panicked look. “If you should wish it.”
Phineas took her hand carefully in his and turned in his seat. “I find myself…” He stopped and leaned forward to kiss her softly on the lips, then pulled back a hair’s breadth to murmur, “for the first time in my twenty-eight years…” He leaned forward again, capturing her lips with more insistence, his restraint cracking as she met his kisses eagerly “…Most interested in what gown my lady will wear to dinner.”
Kitty’s face was very near his, but he could still see her smile. She leaned in and kissed him back, before whispering, “Then, I believe, we should waste no time in choosing one.”
Epilogue
Phineas stopped at the row of tenant houses, where the roof on the last house had been completed. He knew Carter had come into town again, and he found him speaking with the steward over the transfer of funds to begin draining the east meadow to make it more profitable. There was enough room on the south lawn for their flock of sheep, and the east meadow could be turned into crops by implementing a new drainage system.
“Carter, you are back again, are you?” Phineas came forward and shook his hand, a habit they had only recently begun since Carter’s courtship of Miss Dutton threw them more frequently into company. Lucretia and Kitty had become fast friends, and Mrs. Dutton had all but washed her hands of her daughter, whom she declared “an ungrateful minx who was all too like her father” before turning her attention to the more promising future of her married daughters and their increasing families.
“Does Miss Dutton know you are in Castle Combe?” he asked when the steward stepped away to intercept the men carrying a load of building materials.
“I stopped to see her first before coming here.” Carter looked down at his shoes, then over the meadow, striving for nonchalance.
“And has her father accepted your suit?” Phineas met his gaze, pleased to be on the other side of the duress of having to secure a wife, whether by arrangement or begging.
Carter looked up in surprise. “How did you—”
“I didn’t.” Phineas laughed and clapped Carter on the shoulder. “But I suspected, and you just confirmed it. Kitty thought Lucretia was in high hopes of just such a happy resolution.”
“Ah, so the women talked about it?” Carter did not look put out by the knowledge.
“The women always talk about it,” Phineas confirmed, glad for once to lean on his own wisdom gleaned from marriage. “I wish you happy.”
Carter, a discreet man, attempted to mask his joy but was unsuccessful. They soon split ways. Phineas was in a hurry to get to the house, because he only had a few hours with Kitty before Sam arrived from his first term at Harrow. She had secured permission from Erasmus for their brother to come directly to Giddenhall and stay for Christmas before sending him to Erasmus’s house for Twelfth Night.
Phineas entered the hall and spotted a footman. “Have you seen my wife?” The footman shook his head, and Phineas took the stairs. He thought he knew where she might be—where she spent most of her time these days. He opened the door softly and spotted the vision of his wife sitting on the window seat, as the low winter sun illuminated her face. She turned, her hand on her belly.
“I knew I would find you in the nursery,” Phineas said, softly. He walked over and kissed his wife’s swollen middle before taking her face in his hands and kissing her lips.
“Where else?” she asked, looking up at him. He pulled her to her feet.
“You looked melancholy.” Phineas scrunched his brows in concern. “Your pains have not begun?”
“No, dearest. Not melancholy—and no pains. I was just attempting to remember where I had placed the worsted wool, for I had thought to make a rug for the treehouse. Would that not be charming?” Kitty placed her hands on his chest and smiled up at him. “And Baby would not dare make an entrance before we’ve celebrated Christmas.”
Phineas caught her hand and kissed it. “Carter has spoken to Mr. Dutton, you know.”
“I know.” Kitty laughed when she saw Phineas’s surprised expression. “Lucretia left here not fifteen minutes before you arrived. They will make a happy couple, I believe.”
“And I had something to do with it.” Phineas said with a knowing grin.
“Oh…” Kitty poked his chest with her finger, laughing. “Only a very little bit. Not nearly as much as he had to do with your marriage.”
“Mine? I won my own wife fair and square.” Phineas thought the better of his wife being on her feet, and he sat and pulled Kitty on to his lap.
“You did, hm?” Kitty smiled primly. “You would not even be aware of my existence were it not for Carter.”
“And you would not have a love match were it not for me,” Phineas insisted, a mischievous glint in his eyes. “For it to be a love match, a wife needs to be loved.”
“And a husband, as well,” Kitty answered pertly, kissing his nose.
“You are not quite so disinclined to be Lady Hayworth as you once were,” Phineas teased, certain of her response, yet wanting to hear it. Her answer, therefore, caught him by surprise.
“Oh, I suppose not as disinclined as I once was, although it is not so very important to me after all.” Kitty shrugged a shoulder, biting the corner of her lip to keep it from creeping up.
“Not so very imp— Kitty.” Phineas turned her on his lap to look at her more squarely, and Kitty was hard-pressed to hold in her giggles.
“I care very little about being Lady Hayworth, to own the truth,” Kitty insisted. She met his gaze and held it, and her smile softened. “But I am quite inclined to be Phineas’s wife.”
And since his wife was perfectly positioned for Phineas to demonstrate how equally inclined he was to be Kitty’s husband, he tucked her legs up on the window seat, pulling her toward him in his arms. And he showed her.
About the Author
Jennie Goutet is an American-born Anglophile, who lives with her French husband and their three children in a small town outside Paris. Her imagination resides in Regency England, where her Regency romances are set. You can learn more about Jennie and her books on her author website jenniegoutet.com.
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Seasons of Change Books
The Road Through Rushbury by Martha Keyes
A Forgiving Heart by Kasey Stockton
The Last Eligible Bachelor by Ashtyn Newbold
A Well-Trained Lady by Jess Heileman
The Cottage by Coniston by Deborah M. Hathaway
A Haunting at Havenwood by Sally Britton
His Disinclined Bride (Seasons of Change Book 7) Page 25