Percival lifted his chin, while in his breeches, something else did not lift at all. “Coin is not a cheering topic, Esther. After dinner, I tried to bring up the need for improvements on the home farm and the tenant farms. Peter stared at his cards as if whist were some arcane Eastern invention. Tony took up a post by the sideboard, and His Grace started lecturing me on my shortcomings.”
Though that lecture hadn’t been half so objectionable as a single remark earlier in the week regarding a dead wife.
“Shall I approach His Grace?” Esther asked. She drew Percival’s cravat from around his neck, draped it over his shoulder, and started on his shirt buttons.
She sounded quite serious. “You?”
“We are operating on the same allowance you were allotted upon our marriage, Husband, and yet we are also now blessed with four children.”
Children did not eat much. Their clothes were small and passed down from one to another, and the boys were too young to need tutors. Still, there were aspects of raising a family that loomed as terra incognita to Percival, and his wife was tired. He took Esther’s hands in his, finding her fingers cool. “Esther, have you need of more coin?”
As he asked the question, he realized she was wearing a robe she’d had when they’d wed, more than five years previously. Then it had been a rich emerald velvet, now the elbows had gone shiny with wear.
“I have no need of coin beyond the pin money established in my settlements, but two nursery maids for four little boys is rather a strain.”
A strain. He dimly perceived she might be telling him that strain devolved to her, and his father’s crude barb came back to him. Because the topic was difficult, Percival took his wife in his arms, the better to read her reactions.
“What sort of strain?” Esther bore the scent of roses—she’d always borne the scent of roses—and that alone made some of his fatigue fall away.
“Valentine does not yet sleep through the night. Victor is also prone to wakefulness. Somebody is always cutting a new tooth or scraping an elbow. Winter is coming, and with it, illness is a given. Boys destroy clothes hourly—this is their God-given right, of course—and the house staff cannot be bothered sewing clothes for the children of a younger son. Boys also need toys, books, games, things to edify and distract. They need linens—Victor abhors sleeping in a crib when Bart and Gayle have their own beds, but I haven’t the nerve to ask for another bedroom for Bart and Gayle. Bart wants a pony, but you well know what it will mean if you procure one for him.”
She paused. He kissed her cheek. Perhaps her monthly approached, though it had been a rare visitor in their marriage. “Bart will share with his brothers?”
“He will not share, meaning Gayle must have a pony too, and somebody must teach the children to ride. Each boy must have proper attire, we must have pony saddles made or purchased, a groom must be detailed to care for their mounts and ride out with them, and there is no money for any of it.”
Must, must, must. He knew better. He knew better than to launch into an explanation of how to solve those petty annoyances that loomed so large in her weary mind, and yet, he spoke anyway.
“I spent several years in His Majesty’s cavalry. I can teach the boys to ride, I can instruct them on grooming, saddling up, and so forth. I’ll speak to the housekeeper about making a room available for Bart and Gayle. We’ve space enough.” Endless leaking corridors of space, in fact.
Esther dropped her forehead to his shoulder. This was not a gesture of relief or thanks. In fact, it dawned on Percival that she was standing in his embrace, meek and obliging, but her arms were not around her husband. They remained at her sides.
“You can speak to the housekeeper all you like, Percival. Nothing will change.”
A frisson of alarm snaked down from Percival’s throat to his vitals. The resignation in his wife’s tone was complete. She’d given up on this issue, and Esther Himmelfarb Windham was not a woman to give up, ever.
“Why does nothing change? Does she expect the boys to be crammed four to a room until they’re off to university?”
He hadn’t meant to speak sharply, God help him. He’d meant to tease.
Esther moved off, toward the enormous bed in which they’d made four noisy, boisterous children. Well, three—Bart’s conception had been a rustic antenuptial interlude that would forever give Percival pleasant associations with alfresco meals.
“The housekeeper took orders only from Her Grace. For the past year, Mrs. Helstead has maintained that she’ll answer only to His Grace or Almighty God. Lady Arabella is the logical intercessor, but Peter’s wife is too preoccupied with her own concerns to intervene, and I haven’t wanted to trouble His Grace without your permission.”
Percival shrugged out of his shirt and shucked his breeches. On the bed, his darling wife wasn’t even watching, which was fortunate, because nothing noteworthy had been revealed.
Surely, her monthly was looming. Had to be, though he would not dare ask her.
“Speak to His Grace, Wife. He dotes on the boys.” And who wouldn’t? A more charming, dear band of rapscallions had never graced any man’s nursery.
On the bed, Esther heaved up a sigh like a dying queen reclining on her funeral barge. He hated this, hated decoding every nod and nuance. “What?”
“I will speak to His Grace, but he will forget, Percival. He will agree to see to the matter, and then lose sight of it all together.” The bed creaked on its ropes as she sat up and punched the pillows into her preferred contour. “He’s failing. His energy, his memory, his will. When Her Grace died, she took a part of him with her, maybe the best part.”
And what was that supposed to mean?
Percival tended to his ablutions, torn between the impulse to state his own list of woes and worries, and the desire to kiss his wife’s miseries into oblivion.
Though where would that lead? They’d never resumed relations after a birth without Esther finding herself again in an interesting condition within a few months. At least one thing was clear: if he wanted to keep a mistress—and he was not at all sure that course held appeal—he’d have to find a way to scare up more coin first.
From the bed, Esther’s voice was a sleepy murmur. “The boys said to tell you they missed you.”
Why would his sons miss him? He stopped by the nursery every morning before he rode out. There, he listened to Bart and Gayle’s mighty plans for the day, dandled Victor for long enough to make the boy giggle and laugh, and cuddled Valentine for at least a moment—providing the dear little fellow was not in need of a change of nappies.
Sometimes, Percival even stayed for a few moments because… just because.
“Do you know whom I missed today, madam?” He tossed the flannel in the general direction of the privacy screen and climbed onto the bed naked. “I missed my wife.”
She was on her side, facing away, so he couldn’t measure her reaction to this announcement.
“I missed the mother of my children, and I missed the boys too. What say we plan a picnic before the weather turns up nasty again? This mild spell cannot last. We’ll bury a few Vikings at sea—”
He stopped mid-crawl toward his wife and subsided against the mattress.
Bloody, bedamned hell. Today was Thursday. Thursday was their day to spend time with the children en famille, though lately Percival had been absent at those gatherings more than he’d attended them. The dead leaf in Esther’s hair took on particular significance.
“Esther? I’m sorry. I hadn’t meant to dine with Arbuthnot, but the man is a font of information, and if I can get the high meadow drained, it’s excellent pasture. We need more pasture… I am sorry, though. I’ll tell the boys tomorrow morning.”
He rolled over and slipped an arm around her waist. Was she losing flesh, or had he just forgotten what she felt like when she wasn’t carrying?
“Esther?”
She twitched. In sleep, his composed, poised wife twitched a fair amount. She also sometimes talked in her sleep, little nonsense phrases that always made him smile. He kissed her cheek and rolled onto his back.
“I miss my wife.” Lying naked in the same bed with her, Percival missed his wife with an ache that was only partly sexual.
He considered pleasuring himself and discarded the notion. The flesh was willing—the flesh was perpetually willing—but the spirit was weary and bewildered. He’d blundered today, as a husband and a father. He’d blundered as a son, too, in his father’s estimation, and very likely he was blundering as a brother in some manner he’d yet to perceive.
Beside him, Esther’s feet twitched. She’d told him once she often dreamed of their courtship, a brief, passionate, fraught undertaking that now seemed as distant as Canada.
Percival rolled away from his wife and let her dream in peace.
***
Esther felt a wall rising in the middle of the Windham family, for all they appeared to be placidly consuming a hearty English breakfast.
His Grace commandeered the head of the table, of course. Esther tried to picture quiet, soft-spoken Peter in that location and couldn’t. Opposite His Grace, at the foot, the chair remained empty, though as the senior lady of rank and next duchess, the position belonged to Peter’s wife, Lady Arabella.
Peter sat at his father’s right hand, Arabella next to her husband, and Esther below Arabella. Across the table, Percival hid behind a newspaper on the duke’s left, Tony inhaled beefsteak and kippers next to his brother, and across from Esther, Tony’s wife, Gladys, took dainty nibbles of her eggs.
Had Esther wanted to, there was no way she could have nudged her husband’s foot under the table, casually touched his hand, or murmured an aside to him. When had they decided to sit as far apart from each other as possible? When had she decided to sit on the side of the invalided heir?
“You’ll be going up to London, Pembroke.” His Grace glowered at a buttered toast point while the rest of the table exchanged glances at this news. “I’ve been asked to sit on a commission to study the provisioning of the army overseas. Damned lot of nonsense, but one doesn’t refuse such a request.”
He bit off a corner of the toast while a pained silence spread. Peter hadn’t been off the property even to go to services for at least two years. A trip to the stables left him exhausted, and if he missed an afternoon nap, he had to absent himself from dinner.
Esther lifted the teapot. “More tea, Your Grace?”
“I don’t want any damned tea. If you bothered to familiarize yourself with the indignities of old age, you’d never offer such a thing.”
Gladys shot Esther a sympathetic look. Percival slowly, deliberately, folded his newspaper down and stared at his father.
Please, Percival, I beg you do not—
“I’ll thank you not to rebuke my lady wife for a proper display of table manners, sir.”
Lady Arabella laid her hand on Peter’s sleeve; Tony paused in the demolition of his breakfast.
“Perhaps I might serve on this committee?” Tony suggested. “Been to Canada, after all, and it’s not as if I’m needed here.”
“You?” Tony might have been old Thomas the footman for all the incredulity in the Duke’s tone. “It’s time you took a damned wife and stopped frolicking about under every skirt to catch your eye.”
This time the sympathetic look went from Esther to Gladys.
“Tony and I will both go,” Percival said, passing his newspaper to Peter and rising. “Scout the terrain, get a sense of what’s afoot. Pembroke can come up to Town when the decisions are to be made, and of course, we’ll keep you informed, Your Grace. Ladies, I bid you good day. I’m off to wish my offspring a pleasant morning.”
For just a moment, bewilderment clouded the duke’s faded blue eyes. Before anyone else could speak, though, he rallied. “Daily reports, if you please, and don’t stint on the details. I know not which is worse: the Whigs, the colonials, Wales’s ridiculous flights, or the dear king’s poor health. Madam”—he turned his glower on Esther—“you will stop hoarding that teapot. A man needs to wash down his breakfast, such as it is.”
Esther passed the teapot to Arabella, and nobody looked at anybody. The king had recovered from his difficult spell more than a year ago, while Esther feared the duke’s was only beginning.
Percival squeezed his father’s shoulder. “We’ll keep you informed regarding all of it.” He bowed and withdrew, while Esther tried to puzzle out what expression had been on her husband’s face during that last exchange.
Compassion for the old duke, whose confusion was becoming daily more evident, had been the predominant sentiment. Percival was pragmatic, also capable of clear-eyed understanding. That he neither judged his father nor ridiculed him warmed Esther’s heart.
Good sons turned into good fathers.
Another emotion had lurked behind the compassion, though. Esther pushed her eggs around rather than watch as Tony tucked into yet another portion of rare steak.
Percival had been relieved at the prospect of leaving Kent and biding in London with his brother over the coming winter. Esther was not relieved, not relieved at all to think of her husband decamping for the vice and venery of the capital, while she remained behind to deal with teething babies and ailing lords.
Two
“Why is it,” Percival asked his five-year-old son, “every woman I behold these days seems exhausted?”
Bart grinned up at his father and capered away. “Because they have to chase me!”
For a ducal heir, that answer would serve nicely for at least the next thirty years. Percival caught the nursery maid’s eye. “Go have a cup of tea, miss. I’ll tarry a moment here.”
She bobbed her thanks, paused in the next room to speak with the nurse supervising the babies, and closed the nursery-suite door with a soft click of the latch. Percival did likewise with the door dividing the playroom from the babies’ room, wanting privacy with his older sons and some defense against the olfactory assault of Valentine’s predictably dirty nappies.
“I swear that child should be turned loose on any colonial upstarts. He’d soon put them to rout.”
Gayle glanced up from the rug. “He’s a baby, Papa. Nobody is scared of him.”
“Such a literalist. Some day you’ll learn about infantile tyrants. What are you reading?”
Gayle, being a man of few words, held up a book. Bart, by contrast, was garrulous enough for two boys.
“Shall I read to you?”
Bart came thundering back. “Read to me too!”
Percival glanced out the window. The morning was yet another late reprise of the mildness of summer, but to the south, in the direction of the Channel, a bank of thick, gray clouds was piling up on the horizon.
“I have to ride into the village today and meet with the aldermen, then stop by the vicarage and be regaled about the sorry state of the roof over the choir. When that task is complete, I’m expected to call on Rothgreb and catch him up on the Town gossip, which will be interesting, because I haven’t any. My afternoon will commence with an inspection of—”
Two little faces regarded him with impatient consternation.
“Right.” Percival folded himself down onto the rug, crossed his legs, and tucked a child close on each side. “First things first.”
He embarked on a tale about a princess—didn’t all fairy tales involve princesses?—and the brave hero who had to do great deeds to win her hand.
“Except,” Percival summarized, “the blighted woman fell into an enchanted sleep.”
“Then what happened?” Bart asked, budging closer.
“He…” According to the story, the fellow swived her silly—“got her with child,” rather—which was what any brave hero would do after a rousing adventure. “He
kissed her.”
“Mama fell asleep.”
That from Gayle, who wasn’t the budging sort. The little fellow’s brows were drawn down, the same sign his mother evidenced when she was anxious.
“Keeping up with you lot would have anybody stealing naps,” Percival said.
“Not a nap.” Gayle sprang to his feet and went to the middle of the carpet like an actor assuming center stage. “She faded.”
He collapsed to the rug with a dramatic thump, lying unmoving, with his eyes closed for a few instants before scrambling to his feet. “Old Thomas says the ladies do that when they’re breeding. Bart wondered if we should bury her at sea.”
“I did not. I said if she died, then we should bury her. She wasn’t dead. She woke right up.”
Gayle put his hands on his skinny hips. “You did too, and then she took a nap right there on the ship.”
The ship being the picnic blanket, Percival supposed. “You saw her fall like that, both of you?”
Two solemn nods, which suggested this development was of more import to them than their inchoate argument. Percival set the book aside and held out one arm to Gayle while wrapping the other around Bart.
“Old Thomas is right.” He tucked both boys close, as much for his own comfort as theirs. “Ladies sometimes fall asleep like that when they’re peckish or their stays are too snug or they’re breeding.” Though Esther wore jumps, not stays, and never laced them too tightly.
“Mama breeds a lot,” Bart observed.
“Your mother has fulfilled her obligation to the succession admirably.”
“That means she does,” Gayle translated. “She napped a lot too, when I wanted to fly my birds.”
“Your birds are stupid,” Bart observed.
Percival squeezed the ducal heir tightly and kissed the top of his head. “Rotten boy. Your little brothers will gang up on you if you keep that up. They’ll leave Valentine’s nappies under your bed.”
Gayle smiled a diabolically innocent smile at this suggestion.
“Your mother likely needed to catch up on her rest, and she knew you two could be counted on to protect her while she did. I’m sorry I wasn’t there to join you.”
Duke and His Duchess Page 2
