This was just another morning, after all.
His wife, however, was not just another lady in a faded habit perched on a horse for display. Thea rode with the natural seat of one who’d taken to the saddle early and often, and she delighted in her mare, the both of them game for any log, ditch, stream, or bank Noah led them over.
Who would have thought?
“You are a hoyden,” he concluded. “The pair of you are hoydens, and what am I to do with you? Troubadour and I will never hack out in peace again.”
“Troubadour has been a perfect gentleman,” Thea said, her smile careless and quietly stunning as she patted her mare. “I cannot thank you enough for Della, Your Grace. She is perfect, and had I chosen a gift myself, I could not have picked out anything lovelier or more appreciated. I humbly and sincerely thank you.”
Damn. Noah did not want Thea’s thanks, he wanted her, and her smiles and pats and teasing.
Which would not do. “Race you to the end of the field.”
He waited one gentlemanly heartbeat for Thea to tap her heel against the mare’s side, then let True bound after them, holding back until the last minute so the finish was honestly in question.
“You let me win!” she accused breathlessly. “I know your scheme, Anselm. You’re bent on destroying my coiffure, and it’s not very subtle of you.”
Her braid had indeed come free of its pins to hang in a shiny sable rope over her shoulder.
“We’ll not be racing anymore with you in such disarray,” Noah said. “Besides, the horses have to walk out, and our outdoor staff requires introductions forthwith.” He turned his big gelding to amble along beside her mare. “What do you think of this little holding?”
“Little?” Thea blew a strand of hair off her forehead. “Wellspring must be several thousand acres, with the tenant farms, the home farms, and the woods.”
Noah gave his horse, who was still puffing, a loose rein. True had endured months of Town life prior to this remove to Kent and was in want of conditioning.
“Wellspring is small,” Noah said, “but I like it. My mother was fond of this place too, and I have good memories of summers spent here as a boy. By mutual consent, my parents never opened this estate for house parties or shooting parties or the like.”
A shadow crossed Thea’s face as she took up the reins. “A refuge, then. We all need a place of refuge.”
She had needed a place of refuge, else she might not be married to Noah—lowering thought.
“We can change before you review the troops,” he said, “or we can greet them in riding attire. They’ll be assembled outside.”
“How many?”
What did that matter? “Two dozen or so, I should think. It’s summer, so more people are about than in winter.”
“We’ll stay here for haying?”
“That depends.” True minced around a puddle, an affectation he’d never indulge in on the streets of London. “The duration of our stay here depends on when your courses start.”
Thea fussed with her skirts, adjusted her whip, petted the mare, and glanced off toward the stables in the distance.
“Well?” Noah prompted, for they’d soon have grooms hanging on their every word.
“This is the tenth,” she said very softly. “Likely by the twenty-second.”
The timing could be worse. Three weeks instead of two. Thea could have been one of those vexing women who pretended not to know, or not to be able to predict her cycles, one of those women who sought the title Duchess of Anselm and were never invited to Noah’s bed.
“Then, yes.” Noah nudged his horse around a turn in the lane. “We will be here through haying, likely through the end of the month, and possibly longer.”
Though when they left, they’d be man and wife in every possible sense.
“When will Nonie join us?” Thea asked.
“Lady Nonie will remain in Town for at least the rest of the month,” Noah said slowly, “possibly longer.”
Gone were her soft smiles and blushes, and her expression became mulish. “The entire reason I consented to marry you was for the sake of my sister, to keep her safe, and spend—”
Noah shortened his reins, curb and snaffle both. “The entire reason, Thea?”
Her chin came up, predictably. He knew that for the battle flag it was, and they’d been married less than a day.
“Entire,” she said, very pleasantly. “I was content not to marry, but Nonie’s circumstances demanded attention.”
“You were content to be preyed on by the likes of Corbett?” Noah’s question was unkind, but Thea was being prodigiously stubborn. Every couple adjusting to married life deserved some time to themselves.
“I’d rather have been left alone,” she muttered.
Thea eased her mare up into a rocking canter, and Noah let her lead him over the lanes back to the stables. They still weren’t speaking as he helped her off her mare, but rather than give up the fight, he stood beside the mare, his hands on Thea’s waist, holding her immobile for long moments in the stable yard, looking down at her until she took his point.
For better or for worse, she was not alone now.
Thea lifted her chin and without benefit of her husband’s escort, swished off in the direction of the gardens.
* * *
The duke had held Thea so closely through the night.
He’d been companionable over breakfast.
He’d given her that gorgeous mare for her very own.
And Thea had foolishly, foolishly hoped her taciturn, sardonic husband had been showing a well-hidden tendency toward forgiveness.
She’d known a gathering sense of relief as Anselm had toured his land with her, acting like any new husband might. They’d conversed, they’d even laughed, and then like waking from a pleasant dream to a harsh reality, the pretense of civility had been abruptly dropped.
Thea was hurt, but she couldn’t fault Anselm. The error had been hers, to think this gentleman who was her husband could ever be her friend. He’d told her he wasn’t nice.
Why hadn’t she listened?
While her heart was fracturing along a thousand old lines of pain and disappointment, Anselm was doing the pretty before his outdoor staff.
“And this little fellow”—Noah nodded at a lanky blond man wearing wire-rimmed glasses—“is my botanist, Benjamin Erikson, whom we must commend for tearing himself away from his workbench long enough to greet you.”
“Your Grace.” Erikson bowed over Thea’s hand. “I am charmed.” Brown eyes twinkled at her, and he held her hand a moment too long.
“Having met Erikson,” Anselm said repressively, “we have concluded the reviewing of the troops, and a proper breakfast awaits us inside. Erikson, if you’ve some time, I’d like to meet with you later this morning.”
“I’ll be propagating,” Erikson said. “Best not bother me until this afternoon.”
At least somebody was propagating, for Thea wasn’t sure she ever would.
“Be about your botany. I’ll find you. Duchess?”
Anselm winged his elbow, and Thea obediently accompanied him to the house.
“Gardeners are to be drab little men in shabby coats whose eyes light up only when they can present a perfect red rose to a blushing young lady,” Thea said. “Erikson is not a gardener.”
“No, he’s a botanist, but he’d better not be offering any roses to you, Thea.”
She paused on the front steps and untangled her arm from the duke’s. Perhaps a proper duchess would hold her fire until she was private with her husband. Thea would work on that skill—later.
“I understand you are furious with me, Your Grace, and disappointed and entitled to exact revenge in all manner of small and nasty ways. I accept this, as long as you provide a safe home for my sister, but please do not attribute to me a cavalier disregard for fidelity because of actions occurring before we even met. I am your wife, and I will not shame you, or myself, by flirting with your help.”
They processed in silence toward their chambers, but as Anselm ushered Thea inside her sitting room, he stood for a moment by the door.
“I am furious,” he said, “and disappointed, but not as much at you as I am with myself.”
A ducal olive branch, the only variety of the species that came with thorns.
“Can you explain yourself, Your Grace?” Thea regarded him levelly, which was an effort when his blue, blue eyes had gone more bleak than usual.
“I should have seen you coming,” Anselm said. “In this family, my job is to see disaster on the horizon and steer us clear of it.”
This disclosure was supposed to help their marital situation? “I am a disaster now, though still not quite a tragedy?”
“You are my wife.”
Anselm left, closing the door silently behind him. Thea heard him moving about his adjoining chambers as she changed out of her riding attire and restored order to her hair. As she put herself to rights, she reflected on her husband, and how she had spent weeks in his company, weeks observing him, really, and still she knew him not at all.
* * *
“You married yesterday.” James Heckendorn, Baron Deardorff, handed Noah a drink. James, as always, was the picture of blond, blue-eyed gentlemanly decorum, while Noah’s hair was probably sticking out in all directions. “And yet you present yourself in my library today, two hot hours in the saddle away from your bride?”
“An hour and a half.” Noah took the drink and passed it under his nose.
James poured half a finger into his own glass, probably for the sake of appearances. “To marital bliss.” He lifted his glass.
Noah lifted his glass as well, a duke being incapable of wholly discarding his manners. “You’re sincere.”
“I am married to your sister,” James observed. “Patience will come directly here to seek me when she returns from her shopping, towing your sister-in-law with her, so, no, when I toast marital bliss, I am not being the least facetious.”
“You and Patience are getting on well enough?” Noah knew they were, for Patience was the most misnamed creature on earth. If she were unhappy, her brother would have long learned of it.
“I think you’re at last to be an uncle,” James said, studying his drink. “She hasn’t said, but the signs are there.”
“Signs?”
“You know.” James’s smile was bashful. “A tenderness about the…” He gestured to his chest. “It’s been some weeks since Patience was indisposed, she naps at odd times, and has declined bacon at breakfast.”
“She is either breeding or ill.” Patience adored a crisp slice of bacon. “Congratulations, I suppose. Your mother will no doubt be pleased.”
“I am pleased,” James said with quiet ferocity. “You marry, congratulating yourself on a good, solid match, and then you hum along for a few years, and before you know it, the good, solid match has turned into something altogether more. I married Patience thinking we’d suit, but I want to give her children because she’s the best mother my children could have.”
“Impending fatherhood is making a thespian of you.” Noah set down his mostly full glass. “Matrimony has made a fool of me.”
“It’s only been a day since the wedding, Anselm. How could you bugger up an institution that’s been around for thousands of years in only a day?”
“You assume I’m the party at fault?”
“I do,” James said without a hint of hesitation. “You’re the party who rode to my doorstep in the heat of summer, leaving your new bride out in Kent to fritter away the day.”
Noah paced to the window, turning his back on James and his confounded fraternal smile. “My new bride came to me in less than perfect condition.”
“She’s not a twit who just put up her hair, Anselm. Of course she won’t be without a few quirks.”
“It wasn’t a quirk she chose to give to some other man, James.” Though Noah didn’t think Thea had given away her heart, if that mattered.
James took up the place beside Noah at the window. “Despite old wives’ tales, there’s no real way to tell. Patience didn’t bleed, but I refuse to believe she wasn’t pure.”
Not what a brother wanted to hear.
“Wise of you.” Outside the window, two common blue butterflies went flitting around a hedge of honeysuckle. No sooner would both light beside each other, than one would flutter to a different flower. “I wouldn’t want to have to beat you senseless, and Thea would not understand why I came home sporting bruised knuckles. My duchess made sure I knew of her amatory experience when it was too late to seek an annulment.”
“It’s never too late to seek an annulment. Old Kimball set his second wife aside after three years.”
“Because she was barren, and he the last of his line, and they did not suit,” Noah said. “But the man’s a laughingstock, while his barren wife is up to, what, three little darlings with her subsequent spouse?”
Noah aspired to be the first Winters male who was not, at any point, a laughingstock. A humble ambition, but dear to him.
“You are castigating yourself because you consider your wife to be used goods,” James decided. “This is like you, Noah, but where’s the point?”
“That’s just it.” The butterflies abandoned their honeysuckle and flew off toward the roses. “There is no point. Unless I want to make a complete fool of myself, I will keep my mouth shut and content myself with my used goods. I will get sons on her, I will parade her about as my duchess, and I will show her every public courtesy.”
“Because,” James said, “you are a damned saint who never put a foot wrong, never poached on another’s preserves, never misstepped, and couldn’t find a way to undo it in time to prevent harm to another—you alone of all grown men?”
Noah felt an urge to shoot at butterflies, for this very point had intruded on his ride before he’d trotted past the foot of the Wellspring driveway.
“James, you are tiresomely unsympathetic. I hardly recall why I permitted you to marry my beloved sister, and I fear for the happiness of my unborn niece or nephew.”
Noah also feared a little for Thea’s happiness, though he could not have said why such a wayward sympathy should plague him. His own happiness had long ago surrendered to duty, and to satisfaction in an obligation competently executed.
“Allow me to be practical as well as unsympathetic,” James said, opening the window. “My wife has developed an opinion regarding the suitability of your bride.”
The breeze that came in was warm and fragrant—like Thea, damn it.
“You allow this folly of freely expressed uxorial opinions?”
“Give it a few years.” James patted his arm. “We’ll see who is permitted to hold opinions in your household, Anselm. But as to Patience’s views on your bride, she liked Lady Thea very much, and said you’d chosen far more appropriately than she expected you to.”
Allowing a friend to marry one’s sister had distinct disadvantages. “Of course she liked Thea—Thea has been a companion. Thea knows better than any woman how to be agreeable.”
Though she could take Noah to task on the steps of his own home, which had pleased him marvelously.
“Do you know to whom your Thea was a companion before taking the post with Endmon’s tender flower?”
“I do not.” Noah set his drink back on the sideboard, while James was roundabouting toward some point which would be as uncomfortable as it was insightful.
“Thea’s first post was with Joanna Newcomer, dowager Viscountess Bransom.”
“Holy God. Old Besom herself. Papa used to threaten to sell me to her when I was lad, or leave me on her cook’s doorstep.”
“Lady Thea’s second post was with Annabelle Handley, Lady Bransom’s boon companion.”
“Besom and Bosom, according to Meech. A difficult pair, but what’s your point?”
“The difficult pair each left Lady The
a a small bequest and glowing references, as I’m sure you’re aware.”
“My solicitor is certainly aware.” The butterflies came dancing in the window, as if a baron’s private residence should remain open for their inspection. “What is your point, James?”
“I know of these little windfalls because Lady Thea put them in trust for Antoinette and told me I must send the bills for the shopping expeditions to her solicitor, who would pay for them out of those funds.”
Those bills would, of course, be sent to Noah, now that he knew about them.
“So Thea set the money aside for her sister. Decent of her.” Noah had yet to see to Lady Nonie’s settlements, but he would. Soon.
James wasn’t quite as tall as Noah, but he was lanky and fit, with a humming energy that matched Patience’s vivacious nature.
“You feel cheated,” James said, sauntering closer, “because your wife was honest enough to admit you weren’t her very first. Never mind she isn’t your first, or your hundred and first, likely. You will have your tantrums and pouts, as anybody who’s studied the Winters male line will attest.”
A low, telling blow.
“We’re dramatic fellows,” Noah allowed, “or the previous generation was. I am not storming about, threatening legal action, casting Thea into the street.” Though part of him wanted to—the part that wasn’t wondering which bounder had sampled Thea’s charms and then left a gently bred lady to fend entirely for herself.
“Your pride will not allow you the typical Winters histrionics,” James countered as a butterfly landed on his shoulder, opened and closed its wings twice, then flitted off toward the window. “But for one minute, Anselm, think about her pride. She didn’t have to say a thing, didn’t have to tell you, didn’t have to let on your suspicions—if your lust-clouded brain had any—were based in fact. And for God’s sake, man, she was an earl’s daughter in service, a lamb to slaughter, considered fair game by most, and completely without protection. But she took the risk of telling you, because for all that, she is decent.”
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