There is the obvious: Perry has been a godsend, thank you.
But also, perhaps more accurately: Perry? Willow, how could you?
(I hope you’ll consider this in the good humor in which it is intended.)
Of course, Perry is a godsend. There has been more of every kind of household chore since Stoker came to Belgrave Square, and I haven’t had the time or energy to train someone new. My travel guides and my investigation would have fallen so far behind if Perry had not arrived. Her constant chatter and general enthusiasm will be a boundless reminder that patience is a virtue. Would that we all were as guileless as Perry.
But of course you knew that, which is why she’s come. Thank you. Truly.
Perry has mentioned your regret that Cassin himself was not able to race to London to look in on Stoker. Please put this concern out of your mind. Stoker is comfortable and recovering nicely. Surprisingly, it has been far easier than expected for me to accommodate his care.
If anything, I wish for your presence—this is not a cry for help, merely wishful thinking—as I find Stoker’s time here to be marked with . . . oh, how can I say this?
I find Stoker’s time here to be marked with . . . philosophical questions and behavioral challenges I could not have anticipated.
(And now that I have your full attention.)
I run the risk of misleading you or misrepresenting the situation when I allude to this, but before you galloped away to fall in love with your husband and his castle, you and I did speak freely about such things.
“What things?” (I can hear you speaking to this letter.)
Indeed. Plainly put, I have one or two questions about marriage and, in particular, so-called “marital relations.” Ahem. I dare not commit these to paper in specific terms but in general, (and here is the real point of this letter, I suppose):
Would you say, as a happy wife, that relations with your husband feel like a . . . sort of . . . trade-off for “things”? And by “things,” I suppose I mean tangible gifts or for preferential allowances that you would like? That is, is . . . congress among the two of you always a matter of his bed in exchange for . . . oh, let’s say, a new piece of art or having your way in some conflict?
Or, in contrast, would you say marital relations are more of a joint effort that ushers in, well, joint contentment, with no sought-after prize for your participation?
It is my great hope that you can consider this question without jumping to conclusions. Stoker is very ill and determined to recover both his health and his brig with no distractions, marital or otherwise. I am committed to unmasking my uncle’s smuggling plot, whatever it is, and to my travel guides. Our “arrangement,” which is the only one of the “Brides of Belgravia” unions to align with your original vision, is unchanged.
This is an idle question that has simply come up, and Stoker feels one way, and I know very little on the topic, but had always been led to believe the other. Let’s call it a debate that I am bullishly motivated to win. (You know me.)
Please do not share this with Tessa as she will never believe my question to be theoretical, and I cannot tolerate her gushing and romanticizing. As I’ve mentioned, Stoker is a very sick man, and I . . .
Here Sabine paused, raising her pen. She looked over her shoulder at the open door to her study, auditioning denials in her head.
Stoker is a very sick man . . . and I hardly know him.
Stoker is a very sick man . . . and I remain averse to all men in the wake of Sir Dryden’s abuse.
Stoker is a very sick man . . . and I believe him to be planning his immediate departure upon recovery.
Finally, she settled on:
Stoker is a very sick man . . . and I am very busy.
Fondly,
Sabine
Before she could change her mind, she sealed the letter with wax and sent it upstairs to be posted.
Returning to her desk, she tried to focus on pinning notes to the wall mural she’d drawn to display all the evidence amassed on Sir Dryden. Every few minutes she would pause to listen for Harley. She’d summoned the footman to sit with Stoker as he took his supper, cowardly, no doubt. Perry had offered, but Sabine had meant what she said. She would manage his care. Although simply not . . . today. And perhaps not tomorrow.
Sabine was not ashamed or abashed about the kiss so much as . . . uncertain about how to proceed. And nervous, perhaps? Just a touch. She felt a little like she’d drawn a beautiful map to a magical location, and now it was in the hands of a traveler. She could, theoretically, ask this traveler how he enjoyed the map, but she was afraid. What if it had not been useful? What if there were wrong turns? What if he had been confused by the route? Worst of all, did he make the journey but hate the destination? Did he wish he’d never left home?
Sabine was also terrified that she’d somehow injured Stoker during their passionate . . . passionate—whatever it was. Passionate moment. Passionate interlude. It had been so much more than a kiss.
Her skin tingled at the memory of his hands in her hair and down her back and up the snug side of her bodice. Her stomach flipped when she thought of the noises he made, desire and satisfaction at once, exactly as she felt. And his chest. Bare and muscled and furred with hair, exposed to her searching hands. The tattoo had only been the beginning.
The memories mingled with her nerves and she kept away. Surely, he would call for her if she’d harmed him. He would tell Harley. He would send word that he needed the doctor.
Sabine shook her head, trying to return her focus to the evidence mural, when Perry bustled into the room with a tea tray, Bridget trailing behind her.
“Oh, Perry, you needn’t bring refreshment this time of night,” Sabine said. “I know you’re exhausted after your journey. Let us both stop for today and go to bed. Did you find your old room in the servants’ hall?”
“Oh yes, miss, just like I left it. But where do you sleep? Now that Mr. Stoker is—” and now she lowered her voice to a whisper “—in your bed?” Her face suggested an ogre in their midst.
“Oh, I’ve taken a guest room on the second floor. The Boyds have been so generous about Stoker’s convalescence. And he’s not so very bad. His condition is not contagious.”
“Well,” said Perry, pouring the tea, “he’s not contagious in any way that we know about.”
Sabine hid a smile. “Perry?”
“Yes, miss?” Perry shooed the dog off a chair and pushed it toward the tea service.
“Back in Yorkshire, at the castle . . .”
“We prefer to call it by its proper name,” corrected Perry, “which is Caldera. And there are certainly no dogs inside the castle.”
“Oh yes, I remember this from my visit,” said Sabine with a smirk, feeding Bridget a biscuit from the tray. She started again, “At Caldera, does your work as Lady Willow’s personal maid require you to maintain a separate bedroom for Lady Willow? Or do the earl and countess share one bedroom?”
“Oh, they share the most beautifully appointed master suite you’ve ever seen,” reported Perry reverently. “With a stained-glass window and chandelier and a canopied bed the size of a barge.”
“Right,” said Sabine. “And Lady Willow sleeps in this room . . . every night?”
“Oh yes, every night,” assured Perry. “And myself and lordship’s valet? We are only permitted to enter when they ring for us or when they are out. They make their own fire and dress for bed themselves. They are very private and it is part of my job to protect their privacy from the upstairs maids and footmen. Well, mine and Marcus’s. That’s his lordship’s valet.” Perry rolled her eyes and repeated her colleague’s name with a haughty affection. “Marcus.”
“Oh yes, of course,” mused Sabine. “It sounds . . . exclusive.”
“Well,” sniffed Perry, making her way to the door, “they are an earl and countess, aren’t they?”
“Indeed they are, but Perry?” called Sabine, and the maid turned back. “Thank you. For coming all this
way. I know life in the city is not your preference, and your work for Lady Willow at Caldera has great value. I’m grateful that you’ve consented to lend your time and talents back at Belgrave Square.”
The maid beamed. “You’re quite welcome, Miss Sabine. How could I not come, when Lady Willow explained how gravely ill Mr. Stoker was, and you here all alone, not able to abide his company.”
“Yes,” said Sabine, clearing her throat. “As I’ve said, he’s not so terrible.”
The maid paused. “Not so terribly sick or not so terrible?” She scrunched her face into an angry scowl and raised her hands like claws.
Sabine bit her lip and then said, “Neither.”
The maid went away, looking unconvinced, and Sabine slipped upstairs to her own bed an hour later.
Despite Stoker’s distinction of “non-terrible,” Sabine managed to avoid his presence for the next four days. Perry’s household contributions allowed more freedom to Harley, and he managed the meals that she had formerly overseen.
It felt cowardly to stay away, not to mention duplicitous—she veritably sprinted past his half-open bedroom door when she came and went—and for all practical purposes her dog was lost to her. Bridget had taken up full-time residence in Stoker’s bed, and Sabine dare not retrieve her. But she was not yet ready to face him.
On the second day after the kiss, they received a letter, at long last, from Joseph Chance, Stoker’s second partner in business. In short, the letter apologized profusely but claimed Joseph could not possibly travel to London due to the impending birth of his and Tessa’s third child.
Sabine added the letter—which had been addressed to them both—to the other mail on Stoker’s meal tray and allowed Harley to deliver it with his supper.
On the fourth day Sabine lit on an intriguing lead in the investigation of Sir Dryden, and she was out of the house, first to snoop around the laboratories of the new Royal Polytechnic Institution in Regent Street, then to observe a charcoal kiln in Hampstead.
If Sabine missed sharing meals with Stoker, checking on his condition, and discussing her investigation, especially these two new leads, she did not miss it so much that she was prepared to actually face him. She simply wasn’t yet ready. She continued to mull over every ramification and possibility in her mind. And she still blushed at the memory of what they’d done. She would take it up with him personally very soon. Not yet, but soon.
On the fifth day after the kiss, the day she vowed she would, absolutely, without a doubt, return to Stoker’s room, Mary Boyd sent a note asking Sabine to make time for tea in her attic workshop.
The note surprised and worried Sabine, because a formal invitation from the Boyds was very rare. Sabine came and went from the Boyds’ house as she pleased, and the middle-aged couple—both of them busy artisans in their own right—did the same. They shared an evening meal four or five nights a week, but with no expectations, and Sabine could never remember making time in the middle of the day for tea, certainly not since Tessa and Willow had moved away.
Sabine allowed Perry to dress her carefully. She’d grown perhaps too familiar and casual around the Boyds. It showed lack of respect and ingratitude, especially in a home as stylish and well-appointed as Belgrave Square. Sabine rehearsed excuses or alternatives she might offer if, for some reason, Mary announced that she and Arthur had grown weary of housing a half-dead sea captain in their cellar apartment or (her greater fear) that they could no longer spare Harley the footman to assist in his care.
The date of Stoker’s arrival—some three weeks ago—weighed heavy on her mind. Was this reasonable? How long could a recuperating husband lodge in the borrowed cellar bedroom of his estranged wife? The circumstances were simply so odd. No hosts could be more generous than the Boyds, and Sabine did not wish to take advantage.
Not yet, Sabine thought, watching in the mirror as Perry piled her hair ever higher on top of her head. Not yet, not yet, not yet. The words spun in the back of her mind.
Despite Sabine’s avoidance, despite the imposition he might pose to an already generous family, she could not stop thinking it.
Not yet.
He’s not well enough. I’ve not finished collaborating with him yet. I need more time. I need—
Not. Yet.
“Thank you so much, my dear, for coming,” called Mary as Sabine climbed the winding stairwell to the attic studio.
“I don’t know why we don’t do this more often,” said Sabine, looking around the cluttered workshop of furniture, mirrors, and art. She went on, “I so rarely make time for a proper afternoon tea these days. What a treat to indulge.”
“Well, I’m not sure it’s proper, not in the clutter of the attic,” said Mary, stepping back to squint at the curved leg of an upturned chair. “But the topic at hand warrants informality. The parlor would never do. Too stuffy.”
Sabine stopped ambling, unprepared for the woman’s bluntness. “Oh dear,” she said, recovering, “that bad, is it?”
“Oh no, ’tis not bad at all,” cooed Mary, returning to the chair leg and massaging it with a cloth. “Forgive me if I’m distracted. I can’t seem to get this stain exactly right.”
“It’s beautiful.”
“It’s too red.”
The woman wet the cloth with fresh stain from an open pot and applied it to the shiny wood, rubbing firm, circular strokes. Sabine fixed what she hoped was a pleasant smile on her face and watched in miserable, impatient silence.
After what felt like an eternity, Mary Boyd said, “I’ve a letter here from Willow.” She nodded to an open envelope on the workbench behind her.
“Willow?” repeated Sabine. She stared at the letter, immediately recognizing the regal stationery of her friend’s Yorkshire castle. “Is she . . . well?”
“Oh yes, quite well, but she’s very worried, I’m afraid—about you. Will you sit?” Mary gestured to a sofa and Sabine wound her way through stacks of furniture and lowered herself into the seat.
“Worried about me?” There was a tea trolley beside the sofa, and Sabine began to pour. “She’s sent Perry to look after me.”
“Yes,” said Mary, “Perry. How lucky for us all.” She looked up from the chair to wink at Sabine.
Sabine made a sheepish face and extended a cup of tea to the older woman.
“Lovely, I’d nearly forgotten about the tea. Thank you.” She took a sip. “Tell me, Sabine, how is Mr. Stoker getting on? Harley has assured us he will not die in our cellar, thank God. But that is all we know.” She settled the cup and saucer on her knee.
“He is doing quite well, thank you. My own work has kept me busy these past few days, but when last I spoke to the doctor, he gave a very encouraging report. I . . . I cannot tell you how grateful I am for Harley’s assistance. And that you’ve allowed us to make over my bedroom as his sick ward.”
“He is your husband, Sabine, and Arthur and I said when we invited you girls here that this would be your home just as it is ours. That makes it his home, as well.”
Sabine looked into her teacup, overwhelmed by the four years of boundless generosity from the Boyds. “Thank you, Mary. You and Arthur are the very souls of kindness.”
“You girls are like the daughters I never had—which brings me to the reason I have called you here.” Mary wiped her hands and set aside her cloth, taking up Willow’s open letter. She narrowed her eyes at Sabine.
Sabine’s heart had begun to pound.
Mary gazed down at the letter. “Willow is very worried about you, which, in turn, makes me worry. Do we need to be worried, dear?”
“Worried about . . . ?”
“Right,” said Mary, taking up her tea. “Do you mind if I speak frankly, dear?”
“I prefer it,” said Sabine.
“Willow says here that there is some . . . confusion among you and Mr. Stoker about . . . the marriage bed.”
“Oh God,” said Sabine, dropping her teacup on the saucer with a clatter.
“Indeed,” said M
ary, not looking away. “I would not normally insert myself into a quandary like this—these matters do tend to work themselves out—but Willow could not be here and she believes you have no one else to talk to.”
Sabine considered taking up the open pot of furniture stain and drinking it.
“The confusion is . . . not all that troubling,” Sabine said, unable to look up. She stared into her lap, seeing nothing, feeling nothing but a full-body blush, inside and out. Even her hair, she was certain, had turned pink.
“Can you tell me if Mr. Stoker is well enough to . . . engage with you in some manner, Sabine? Obviously, this is something I cannot ask Harley.”
“Oh God,” breathed Sabine. “Please do not ask Harley.”
“Of course not. I am asking you, and honestly, I’m surprised by your shyness. You were always the boldest of the three brides, weren’t you?”
“I know I’m being . . . silly. Forgive me. I’ve—that is, when I took him in, I never expected to enjoy his company quite so much. And after that, I never expected to . . . to—”
She looked up and shook her head. She wasn’t sure how to say the rest.
Mary Boyd reached again for her tea. “Ah, so the answer is yes. He is well enough in some way. Lovely.” She took a sip and glanced again at the letter.
“I’ve no wish to interrogate you or embarrass you, Sabine,” Mary went on, “but I share Willow’s concern for your—oh, let’s continue on with the notion of confusion. This is yet another area of life kept shrouded in mystery and shame for females, isn’t it? It’s not as if you can locate a book on the topic and research the answers, can you? You must rely on other women to speak plain truth. In the absence of Willow or Tessa or your own mother—here I am. I am an old woman, but I have been married for many happy years, and I try very hard to speak plain truth whenever I can.”
Sabine nodded. “Thank you.”
“Now, lucky for us,” said Mary, waving Willow’s letter, “there doesn’t seem to be a mechanical question per se—although I can happily answer those, too, should the need arise.” She glanced at Sabine.
Sabine, finally recovering some of her signature cheek, raised one eyebrow.
You May Kiss the Duke Page 12
