Uneventful. The same word His Grace had used to convey the All’s Well to his duchess. And yet as Joseph greeted his wife, looped an arm over her shoulders, and escorted her into the house, matters were not entirely uneventful.
Joseph’s nose was greeted by the scent of cinnamon and fresh bread, the fragrance wafting through his blessedly cozy home. As Louisa led him through the ground floor, beeswax joined the olfactory bouquet, the scent coming from a pair of tall candles standing on either side of the main entrance and decorated with red ribbon.
The house was festooned with greens, even to the banisters on the presentation staircase in the front hallway. Wreaths hung in the windows, alternating with cloved oranges, while sprigs of mistletoe dangled in strategic locations.
“Husband, at the risk of boring you with sentiment, I have missed you.” She led him into the library as she spoke, which was even warmer than the rest of the house. Not stifling, but… snug.
As soon as the door was closed behind them, Louisa plastered herself to Joseph again. “I didn’t even let you get your coat off.”
His arms came around her, and the pleasure he felt just to hold her, safe and warm and content, was almost another event in itself. In his chest, something unknotted; in his mind, something eased. “I have missed you too, Wife. You are well?”
She pressed her nose against his throat. “I am well.”
Too late, the implications of the question sorted themselves out in Joseph’s tired brain. He resisted the urge to lock the library door. “And the girls?”
“Thriving. I told them they could come down to breakfast in the morning if they’re on their best behavior.”
“Of course.”
“There’s a tray for you on the sideboard.”
He did not want to let her go, not even to fill the gaping abyss that was his belly. He sneaked a kiss to her cheek and let her lead him by the hand across the room.
“I typically raid the larder, Louisa. I don’t expect you or the staff to wait up for me when I’m from home.”
She paused with him before the sideboard and started unbuttoning his coat. “I can read poetry for hours, Joseph, and were you not home by midnight, I would have sent to Morelands to get a pigeon to Westhaven.”
“What could your brother do?”
“He’s in Surrey. He could track you to your property and send word by pigeon that you fared well or were set upon by bandits.” She had his coat off, a literal weight falling from Joseph’s shoulders as she eased it away from him. “I gather you did not pause to call on him?”
“I did not.” Though getting on and off his property unseen had been an exercise to rekindle thoughts of slipping behind enemy lines in Spain. “Louisa…”
She started on his cravat, her hands quick and competent, and damned if it didn’t feel good to be rid of his neck cloth.
“Come eat.” She headed for the hearth, setting the tray on the low table and pitching a pair of pillows onto the raised hearthstones. “You’re limping, you know.”
He’d been trying not to.
“Cold weather is not my friend.” She turned back to retrieve a tea service from the sideboard, but Joseph caught her around the waist. “You really did not have to wait up for me.”
What he had meant to say, what he’d challenged himself to say, was simple and true: I love you.
This was his kind of loving, this pragmatic provision of comfort and company. There was nothing romantic about it, nothing grand or earthshaking, but it met a need more profound than Joseph could have conveyed in words.
Perhaps Louisa, with her turn of phrase and polyglot capability might have the right words, but all Joseph could do was hold his wife and make simple declarations.
“Thank you, Wife. Your hospitality is much appreciated.”
Soon enough, they’d have to have difficult discussions about threatening letters and decisions made years before in Spain, but not yet.
Louisa remained quiet in his embrace, her hand stroking absently over his chest. “I did not repair to my own bed in your absence.”
Neither did she make use of her own dressing gown, nor her own socks—which gave Joseph inordinate pleasure. He let her go and patted her quilted bottom. She fetched the tea service while Joseph managed to get himself situated before the roaring fire.
“Your leg is paining you. Shall I fetch some laudanum?” She set the tray down, saw to removing Joseph’s boots—bliss beyond imagining—then lifted the quilted warmer off the teapot.
“Is that warmer new?” Of course his leg was paining him, but less so for being in a cozy house—or something.
“I embroidered it for my trousseau. Eve and Jenny do better fine work, but it’s the first thing I made I liked well enough to want for my own household.”
She seemed pleased that he’d noticed, but it was the only warmer he’d ever beheld that bore the medieval image of the unicorn and the maiden. “I like it too. It’s original.”
“Odd, you mean.” She reached forward to pour him some tea, her dark braid falling over her shoulder.
“Lovely, I mean.” He tucked her braid back over her shoulder. “Unique, unusual, the only one I’ll ever find of its kind.”
“Have a sandwich.”
He took the sandwich and the next two sandwiches, eating in a contented silence while Louisa plied him with tea and absently stroked her hand down his thigh.
When he’d eaten his fill, completing the meal with grapes—no doubt procured from Morelands and fed to him by his wife, one by one—he realized Louisa had been waiting for him to finish eating.
“Are we expected to call at Morelands over the holidays?” He wrapped his arm around his wife as he posed his prosaic question, a peaceful lassitude stealing over him.
“We can. I’ve yet to take the girls there, though they did very well at Sophie’s. Sindal said to tell you you’ve an ally in him. I expect Hazelton will make the same proffer.”
“I have an ally in you, I hope.” Hoped it desperately, in fact.
Something curious flickered through Louisa’s pretty green eyes. “Never doubt that.” She laid her head on his shoulder, and left to his own devices, Joseph might have fallen asleep right there on the hearth. “The girls are giving you a cane for Christmas.”
He needed a cane. A cane would make heaving himself to his feet from cozy hearths a less undignified proposition. “I have not found them ponies, though I suppose the thing is easily accomplished.”
They fell silent, while behind them, a log fell amid a shower of sparks.
“Husband, will you come up to bed with me now?”
He blinked, wondering what all her question might entail. He could dodge and spend time making journal entries to update the Surrey ledger. He could tell her he was tired—he had been tired, very tired, when he’d climbed off his horse. Or he could struggle to his feet, get his wife into bed, and consummate their marriage vows.
“Will I come to bed?” He nuzzled her hair, which smelled of flowers, freshly baked bread, and cloves. “Gladly—provided I can find the way to my feet.”
She boosted him smartly to a standing position, and before he knew it, Joseph was beside their bed, the door locked, and his wife unbuttoning his shirt.
***
“This thou perceivest, which makes thy love more strong / To love that well which thou must leave ere long.”
His Grace looked up from the Bard’s melancholy if tender sentiments to find that the duchess was not exactly riveted by a recitation of her favorite sonnet. She was instead frowning balefully at a small stack of little red books sitting on the table, each volume the same as the other.
“They seem such innocuous little things.” His Grace set Shakespeare aside while he made this observation and crossed to the half-dozen decanters sitting on the windowsill beneath a fragrant green wreath. “Just another book of verse among many books of verse.”
Her Grace held up a crystal glass and allowed the duke to refresh her drink. “Some of t
hose poems are brilliant.” She sounded sad, which tore at his heart.
“If Westhaven’s note means what I think it does, we might very nearly have the lot of them, Esther. I should have known Victor would set the entire family to the task.”
Her Grace took a sip of her drink, her nightcap a concession to the deepening grip of winter on the countryside. “And then nobody will ever expose our daughter’s folly—or her genius.”
Hence, the sadness.
“You blame yourself. Madam, I tell you Louisa’s odd starts cannot be the result of her getting hold of a few old letters from that Lady Mary Whomever Montagu. Victor’s goading had a great deal to do with it, and the teasing from the others.”
“Louisa read that entire book about traveling around Constantinople, Percy, and those wretched, damned poems. I should not have lent her the book.”
Her Grace never swore. That she’d give vent to her feelings now was a measure of her despair as a mother—and perhaps a function of having made a substantial inroad on the contents of the decanter, albeit abetted by her husband.
“Lady Mary’s poems are lovely, some of them.” Naughty and lovely. His Grace took a sip of his drink, which was fine libation indeed. “Louisa’s brothers have much to answer for, expecting her to do translations for them and half their forms at university. Young men are a blight on civilization.”
“You were a young man once.” She sent him a look of such limpid approval, His Grace made a mental note to break out the cognac more frequently, and bedamned to the dolorous old Bard.
“And you, my dear, still resemble the lissome girl who had the good sense to snabble herself an arrogant young officer much in need of a wife.”
They shared a moment of quiet reminiscence, while an eight-day clock on the landing sounded the hour.
“We should retire, Percival. Christmas will be upon us, and there is yet much to do. The boys will be joining us, and then comes the open house on Christmas Eve, for which a great deal of baking is to be done tomorrow.”
“The house is looking quite festive, my dear. One couldn’t ask for a more welcoming domicile. Will you call on Louisa tomorrow?”
Her Grace contemplated her glass. “I’m waiting for Louisa to call here first. She and Joseph have some things to sort out.”
Her gaze strayed to the damned books, which His Grace would have loved to have tossed into the fire, though that would not serve. Victor had been very clear that each volume was to be returned to its author. For several years, His Grace hadn’t known quite how to accomplish such a thing without embarrassing his daughter terribly.
Westhaven had apparently solved that dilemma. If they could get their hands on a few more books, then Louisa’s little difficulty might finally be surmounted—and without casting a ruinous shadow over her new marriage.
***
Now that the moment was upon her, Louisa felt a curious hesitance, and Joseph, ever observant, must have sensed her faltering resolve.
“Louisa?” He stood by the bed, gazing down at her, his face wreathed in fatigue and something grave and intimate Louisa could not bring herself to look upon. She fell back on the bed and drew her hand across her brow.
“Have you the headache, Wife?” He stayed right where he was, standing by the bed.
She shook her head, when what she wanted to do, what she ought to do, was undress her husband.
“‘Why dost thou shade thy lovely face?’”
Her head came up. “Who is that?”
“Old John Wilmot, Earl of Richmond in Charles II’s day. Why don’t you warm up the sheets while I wash off?”
Of course he would toss out a line of poetry then turn to the practical. Louisa accepted the suggestion though, because she was fresh out of suggestions herself. In a very few minutes, their marriage would become irreversible fact, and doubts assailed her.
What if she was no good at this, this… this? What if Joseph’s first wife had been his exact mate regarding the marital intimacies, a precedent Louisa could never compete with? What if Louisa could not give her husband sons, which was, after all, the point of the instant proceedings?
She realized Joseph had filled the copper warmer with coals and was holding it out to her by its long handle.
Louisa rose from the bed and took it. “My thanks.”
“They’ve more snow west of here,” Joseph remarked as he finished unbuttoning his shirt. “Though it didn’t feel any colder.”
Louisa pulled back the covers and ran the warmer over the sheets. “And the roads?”
“Passable. Sonnet is not fussy about the footing.” His sleeve buttons came next, and those he deposited in a tray on the clothespress. “Should I get the girls ponies, do you think?”
“I’d wait for spring. We can take the children up before us if we get some mild days. A puppy will do for now.”
He whipped off his shirt and paused in the act of pushing his breeches down over his hips. “A damned dog. They make noise, they stink, and they track all manner of dirt into the house. You are suggesting we procure a dog?”
“Possibly two if the girls can’t share well.”
“They share me well enough.” Wearing not one stitch, Joseph ambled over to the fireplace and picked up an ewer Louisa had left to warm next to the fire. In defense of her nerves, Louisa went behind the privacy screen and used the tooth powder.
God in heaven, her husband was a beautiful specimen. Even the limp seemed somehow virile on him.
Louisa heard the sound of a rag being sopped in a basin.
“I can ask your father if he knows of any recent litters in the area. Is tomorrow too soon to call on your parents?”
Tomorrow. Tomorrow Louisa’s marriage would have been well and truly consummated. How was she supposed to focus on socializing when that reality filled her entire awareness?
“Tomorrow will suit. The girls are looking forward to meeting Their Graces.”
More wet, splashing sounds. Louisa peeked around the screen to see Joseph, one foot up on the hearth, running a flannel over his chest. His wet skin gleamed golden in the firelight, and the line of his naked back and flank…
Louisa hadn’t known a man could be poetry. Oh, she’d seen the Elgin marbles, she’d seen her brothers as adolescents, but Joseph…
“The sheets will get cold, Wife. Get you to bed.”
The sheets were going to spontaneously combust if Louisa deposited herself thereon, but whether from anticipation or mortification, she could not have said.
On the strength of sheer self-discipline, she crossed to the bed. “You are very matter-of-fact about your exposed person, Joseph Carrington.”
He shrugged muscled shoulders—more poetry. “I don’t believe I married a missish woman—and somebody has purloined my dressing gown.”
Louisa tried to keep her gaze focused on her husband’s chin. “You have others.”
“That one is my favorite… Now. I might like it even more did you let me remove it from your person.”
As he prowled over to her where she stood near the bed, she could not help but notice he was becoming aroused.
“Louisa, we need not be intimate tonight, but I see no point in further delay.”
“Of course we shall be intimate.” The words did not come out sounding precisely calm or inviting. She’d squeaked them, in truth.
He considered her, his mouth kicking up on one corner. “Into bed, then.” He patted her bottom. “I’m for the tooth powder.”
He was being matter-of-fact, but also, Louisa suspected, considerate. She unbelted the sash of his dressing gown, hung the robe on the bedpost, climbed under the covers, and listened to her husband brushing his teeth.
This was a sound she’d become familiar with, just as she’d learn the sight of him shaving each morning. Just as she’d see, time after time, Joseph moving around the room naked, blowing out the candles and banking the fire.
“You scented my wash water, Louisa. Do you know how long it’s been since anybody h
eated or scented my wash water?” He lifted the covers and joined her in the bed. “I begin to suspect that marriage to you will have a salubrious effect on my physical well-being.”
He kept moving, not reclining on his side of the bed but shifting and rocking the mattress as he maneuvered himself to Louisa’s side. “Hello, Husband.”
She was on her back. He was plastered against the length of her, a particular part of him prodding her hip.
“Greetings, Wife, and as much as I admire the embroidery on your nightgown, I will wish that article of clothing farewell without a pang—at your earliest convenience.”
She covered her face with both hands. “Must you sound so merry?”
“A merry season is upon us.” He peeled her hands away and kissed her nose. “‘Oh why does that eclipsing hand of thine deny the sunshine of the Sun’s enlivening eye?’”
“You have that Wilmot fellow on the brain.”
“No, I do not. I have something else entirely—someone else—on my brain.” He spoke gently, but there was happiness for him in what he contemplated. Louisa could hear it in his voice.
“Joseph, there are things we must discuss.”
He untied the top bow of her nightgown. “We can discuss them naked.” A second bow came free. “We can discuss them tomorrow.” A third, a fourth. “We can discuss them naked tomorrow, but, Louisa, you are my lawfully wedded wife, and the time has come for me to pleasure you to the utmost, which I am enthusiastically willing to do.”
Those were not lines penned by any long-dead earl. More of Louisa’s bows came undone, until there were no more bows to undo. Joseph pulled the covers up around her shoulders and slid a hand across her bare belly. “I did not feel the cold in Surrey, Louisa, not as long as I thought of what these moments with you might hold.”
God in heaven. “Joseph, what am I supposed to do?”
He shifted back to regard her, his dark brows drawing down. “You do whatever you please, with one exception.” He kissed her collarbone, a sweet little tasting that might have involved the tip of his tongue. “You do not think your way through this, Louisa Carrington. A plague on me if you’re able to cling to ratiocination at such a time. You put your prodigious mind with all its thoughts, languages, ciphering, and blasphemy aside, and let the damned thing rest while I love you.”
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