The second butterfly danced a few inches from the end of Noah’s nose, then joined its mate, darting out the window.
Noah thought uncomfortably of young Corbett’s punishing grip on Thea’s arm.
“The trouble with you, James, is that you are decent and you can’t imagine a female scheming to get her hands on your title.”
Noah muttered this, knowing Thea had in no wise schemed to get her hands on anybody’s title. Marriage had made him daft, or the heat had addled his wits.
“Cut line,” James said, taking a sip from Noah’s glass. “To you, I’m a mere baron, but to some, there is no such thing as a mere title of any degree. You’re not thinking this through—which would be gratifying to behold were there not a lady involved. You won’t set Thea aside or you’d be at the solicitors, not wasting my best brandy. You know little about her, but you might like her, might find there’s much to respect about her, and a lapse in her past means little.”
Had it been a lapse or a torrid affair? A recent torrid affair?
Something else entirely?
“You want me to give her a chance,” Noah said, the very conclusion he’d been avoiding for the entire ride into Town. Their marriage deserved a chance.
Thea deserved a chance.
“A little forbearance could only benefit you when you’re hell-bent on getting her with child,” James pointed out. “Have you ever tried to swive a woman you hate?”
“Interesting question, and I see your point. Why not swive a woman I’m vaguely disappointed in? It wouldn’t be the first time.”
The price Noah paid for limiting himself to mercenary unions was a touch of disappointment with the arrangement, and with himself. Perhaps he simply excelled at being disappointed.
The Duke of Disappointment, as it were.
“You are afraid,” James said as another soft, sweet breeze wafted through the room. “Not afraid that Thea’s worse than you fear, but that she’s much better than you think now, and you don’t want to be proven even happily wrong.”
James was noted for his cogent speeches in the Lords, the plaguey bastard.
“Isn’t that my contretemps in a nutshell?” Noah asked, crossing the room to close the window. “I can’t laugh off a lack of chastity in my duchess, not when it was concealed until only by risking my own reputation could I undo my mistake. Now I’m to befriend the woman who treated me thus, James? I wouldn’t know where or how to start.”
Just as Thea hadn’t known how or where to start with a disclosure of her past.
Damn and blast.
Noah’s journey home passed in the same preoccupied blur as had the earlier trip in from Kent.
James, damn his practical half-Dutch, sister-stealing hide, had a point: if Noah did not befriend his bride, he would make it that much more likely Thea eventually became his enemy.
Noah did not need enemies on any front; no man with a modicum of sense did.
James was a canny bastard too. He listened in the clubs, he read the papers, not merely the business pages, and—peculiar notion—he apparently talked with his wife. Noah was not about to put his children in the middle of the domestic battles he himself had grown up with, and James had likely seen this.
Becoming friends with Thea was the logical course, except friendship with a woman was something Noah hadn’t experienced—not with a sister, not with a mistress, not with a friend’s wife, or with a neighbor. The undertaking would be awkward, at best.
Assuming Noah’s new wife was interested in having him for a friend.
Six
Absence was not making Thea’s heart grow fonder. Her spanking new spouse of one entire day had departed after luncheon, saying he had to run into Town on business, and would finish the afternoon on the third floor with his botanist.
The presuming man had kissed her cheek, lingeringly, and promised to see her at supper.
“He’s likely off to one of his lightskirts,” she muttered, putting aside the menus the housekeeper had obligingly left for her review. “He likes his spices, according to Mrs. Hurley. Spices, hah.”
Araminthea, you are being ridiculous. In her head, she endured her late father’s most dire accusation, one typically followed by a cold silence so profound no self-respecting earl’s daughter would remain in the same room with it.
Thea was not ridiculous; she was frightened.
She had married into a family of scoundrels, and had she a male relation worth the name, this information would have been made known to her before she took the awful leap of matrimony. The leap into Noah Winters’s bed, assuming he still wanted her there when he returned from meeting with his solicitors and his mistress.
Mistresses.
Thea had known marriage to Anselm might result in some awkwardness—a lot of awkwardness—after the wedding night, but she hadn’t anticipated jealousy would complicate the emotional waters.
She tapped on a closed door, having no idea where on the vast third floor her spouse might be.
“Willkommen!”
Thea opened the door and peered around. “Mr. Erikson. What an interesting room.”
He smiled, pushing his glasses up his nose and gesturing broadly. “Come in please, and we keep the warm with us for my little darlings.”
“It is warm in here.” Thea closed the door behind her, assailed by the scents of rich earth, damp, and green growing things. “This is a conservatory?”
The ceiling and two walls were glass, though some of the top panes were angled out to create the slightest breeze.
“This is my laboratory, I think you would say.” Erikson untied a leather apron, his hands dirt stained. “I’m working on some crosses for His Grace, and up here, we have much light. Would you like tea, Duchess?”
What duch—Oh.
“Tea would be lovely.” Thea came a little farther into the room and sniffed at a peculiar white flower growing on a shiny green vine. “That smells like biscuits.”
“The vanilla orchid,” Erikson said, stoking up a small potbellied stove. “More accurate to say the biscuits smell like the flower.”
“I’ve never seen one before,” Thea marveled, taking another whiff. “And what’s this?”
Before the kettle was even whistling, Erikson was introducing her to each and every plant, explaining its properties and the challenges of cultivating it.
“Anselm wants to make vanilla?” she asked.
“The vanilla orchid is native to Mexico,” Erikson said. “It can be grown elsewhere, but one must know how to pollinate the flowers by hand to create the fruit. I suspect there are bees native to Mexico, or small birds and butterflies equipped to do the job naturally.”
The vanilla scent was delicious, both soothing and sweet. “Interesting. What else are you working on?”
Erickson showed Thea spices, medicinal plants from lands faraway, and a few that were just plain pretty or intoxicatingly fragrant. For others, Erikson could show her only sketches of the blooms.
“Not only you fine lords and ladies go to the ball,” he said. “My beauties also like to put on pretty gowns, though one can’t wear the finery always.”
“Has my husband traveled to all these far-off places”—Thea ran a finger down a soft white petal—“searching for such beauties?”
“Anselm has traveled.” Erikson passed her a plain cup of tea in a chipped white mug. “I travel more. I meet Anselm in America, when he came there for some silly lawsuit. All lawsuits are silly, though, no matter in which country.”
“Anselm traveled in America?” How had Thea not known this?
Erikson downed his tea at a swallow. “As I did, looking for the plants. The natives in all lands know their plants and the magic in them. The Indians know their plants, and I studied with them. You need sugar?”
Thea held out her cup until two lumps had been deposited therein. Erikson was charming, if lacking in polish or perfect English. She suspected his English could be perfect though, because he forgot to jumble up his word order when he waxed p
oetic about his beauties.
“Erikson.” Anselm’s voice sounded pleasantly from the doorway, though the draft he brought with him was cool. “You are to cultivate my flowers, not my duchess.”
“All beauties benefit from cultivation.” Erikson saluted Thea with a white quill pen. “Close the door, Duke. You let out the warmness, and you’ll give my babies a chill.”
“He’s not right in the head.” Anselm ambled into the room and took up a perch on a stool. He did, however, close the door behind him first. “The poor man thinks plants are people, or something like it.”
“I think they are alive and created by the same God as your arrogant self.” Erikson poured a third cup of tea, added sugar, and passed it to Anselm. “You claim no little worth by association with our Maker, so my plants must surely have His constant regard as well, for they don’t get up to naughty tricks like people do and He made them first.”
“I come here for sermons,” Anselm said to Thea. “These plants are very pious, you see, benefiting from Erikson’s sanctimony, or blasphemy, depending on your church.”
“It was a garden from which we fell,” Erikson began.
Anselm held up a hand. “Any luck with the witch hazel?”
Erikson was deftly deflected into an assessment of the conditions that might allow a North American medicinal plant to be grown locally.
Anselm set his teacup down when the botany lecture concluded. “Dear Wife, this has to be boring for you, and we’re keeping Erikson from his assignations with his flowers. Let’s have a proper tea in a proper location, shall we?”
“Of course.” Thea rose, happy to comply with His Grace’s request, however much it bore the scent of an order. “Thank you very much for the education and the tea, Mr. Erikson.”
“You must come visit us anytime.” Erikson smiled genially, reminding Thea that behind his glasses, his lectures, and his questionable accent, Erikson was a very handsome man.
“What do you think of our Benjamin Botanist?” Anselm asked as they gained the corridor.
Our Benjamin. They were to be civil, then. “He’s possessed of a large and active brain,” Thea said, “and he’s happiest when among his beauties.”
“You don’t find him eccentric?”
Anselm was walking along beside her, but Thea had the sense he was matching his steps to her slower pace out of discipline, and they couldn’t be off the third floor soon enough to suit him.
“I think he’s passionate about his science,” she replied, “and if you’re bent on commercial horticulture, he’s a brilliant find. He said you met in America?”
“I was stuck there for nigh a year and a half while I sorted out some breach of contract and trade problems with people I thought were our business partners. It about drove me to Bedlam, to be separated from home and family like that, but one can’t trust a solicitor to deal effectively with a problem when one is nowhere in evidence to supervise.”
One probably could, but His Grace, the Duke of Anselm, would not.
“Eighteen months to settle a lawsuit must be an achievement,” Thea observed as they descended to the next floor. “Where are we going?”
“You didn’t tour the house today?”
“I was shown the public rooms and the working areas on the ground floor. You have a marvelous kitchen.”
“Cook has a marvelous kitchen. I have a marvelous exchequer, and a healthy appreciation for happy domestics. We’re on our way to the library.”
Did Anselm see himself only in terms of his healthy exchequer?
They traversed another winding staircase, made three turns, and went up a few steps to reach their destination—and Wellspring was one of Anselm’s smaller holdings.
“I don’t go in for formal tea very much,” Anselm said as he led Thea to a brocade sofa before which a tea service sat on a low table. “We’re in the country, after all. You toured the public rooms, and you discovered my eccentric botanist in the attics. What else did you do today?”
They were to be very civil.
“I visited Della.” Thea lifted toweling off a porcelain teapot painted all over with blue flowers. Antique Sevres, from the looks of it. “I reviewed menus and discussed the kitchen gardens with Cook, and went in search of this library for a book, but got lost twice instead.”
Anselm came down beside her with a sigh that might have been tired. “I’ll show you a map of the place. I loved getting lost here as a small boy.”
The duke had once, long ago, been a small boy. Intriguing notion. “Where did you get off to this afternoon?” Thea asked.
“Nipped into Town.” Anselm’s gaze was on Thea’s hands as she poured their tea. “Dropped in on James and Patience, but the ladies were out doing their part on Bond Street.”
“You rode two hours each way to drop in on people we saw at the wedding breakfast?” As soon as the question was out of her mouth, Thea wished it back. “I’m sorry.” She set her teacup down and rose. “I have no right to ask you that.”
“You don’t,” Anselm agreed, getting to his feet as well, “but when I’m in the saddle, I find it easier to think things through. Come have something to eat. Dinner won’t be for another two hours at least.”
So what was the duke thinking through, and had he also met with his solicitors?
“I’ve asked that after tonight we move dinner up,” Thea said. “I hope you don’t mind?”
“Of course not.” Anselm extended a hand to Thea, but when she thought he’d merely seat her again, he slipped his arm around her waist and drew her closer. “How is it you’ve been racketing around here all day, and you still smell so sweet?”
A husbandly question that went well beyond civilities.
“It’s the soap I use,” Thea said, her arms vining around his waist. “It lingers.”
“Wonderfully.” He bussed her cheek. “I am keeping you from your sustenance, and me from mine.”
“You’re hungry?” Thea slid away, and to her relief, Anselm let her go. What was he about, kissing her that way?
“Peckish. You?”
“The same.” She sat to assemble meat, cheese, and buttered bread on a plate, casting around desperately for a conversational gambit. “When did you acquire the idea of botany as a profitable venture?”
For every appearance said the Anselm finances prospered handily.
“My grandmother loved her gardens, and my grandfather kept a botanist on his staff for her. The plants became a hobby for them, though Grandfather also sold his excess inventory, and I developed it from there.”
Thea passed the duke a plate and started fixing her own. “Did your father share the same interest?”
“He was more of a Town man. Move over, Thea, and we’ll share a plate.”
She obliged, because to refuse her husband would seem standoffish, if not…cowardly.
They ate, but the silence grew and grew and grew some more.
Anselm set the empty plate aside, his long legs ranged beside hers, and sat back to regard her.
“Is something on your mind, Your Grace?” Thea asked, for her mind had become a hash of anxieties, fears, and the odd, stray hope.
Also a few regrets.
In response, Anselm gathered Thea’s hand in his and brought her fingers to his lips.
“I cannot sustain enough anger at you to make it convincing.” He sounded puzzled or perhaps relieved.
“A very small display will usually convince me,” Thea said. “You are entitled to your temper, in any case.”
His grip was warm, almost comforting.
“But if we’re both angry”—Anselm gave her back her hand—“can you imagine the eventual intimacies? I’ve thought about this for much of the day.”
Thea did not ask: Why would I be angry? Because in a small, defiant corner of her soul, she was angry, and at him, among others, not only at herself.
Though she had materially misrepresented herself to Anselm. There was that.
“Other couples struggle
through significant differences,” she said.
“We’re not other couples.” Anselm rose and stood frowning down at her. He was an accomplished frowner, though he had cause to be. “We’ll have to make a go of this, or at least give it a good try.”
There he went, being not nice again, though he probably didn’t even realize it.
“I’m not sure what to say.” Thea got to her feet, but the duke moved to assist her, and so she was right next to him without planning to be there. “One expects to try to make a go of one’s marriage, I hope.”
He searched her eyes for heaven knew what and touched one of the pearl earrings Thea had inherited from her mama.
“We’ll have to try particularly hard,” he said. “I’ll have to.”
“I don’t want that.” Thea moved away, unable to tolerate the resignation in his gaze. “I don’t want to be a chore for you, an obligation, a matter of self-discipline and soldiering on with your burdensome duty.”
“Perhaps you should have thought of that before your ill-timed announcement, Thea.”
For which she would never cease being tormented, apparently. “You would have had me lie to you?”
“You did lie to me, or you certainly allowed me to muddle along on the basis of a misrepresentation,” he shot back. “You simply confessed the lie at the most inopportune moment.”
“Right.” Thea’s lips compressed, and she knew, knew, she should keep her mouth shut. “And we will not speak of my past unless you’re bringing it up to toss at me like a dead cat when you’re feeling uncertain of your way in this marriage. I will take to wearing a scarlet sign around my neck: I am sorry. I am sorry, I am sorry, but apologizing is all I can do, Your Grace. I can’t change my past. I can’t unsay the things I’ve said. You set before me an impossible task, because your trust has been destroyed, and I don’t know how to win it back, or why I should take on such a labor of Sisyphus.”
The silence from before had nothing on this ringing, bitter gap in their civilities now. Tension snapped and crackled around them, rife with all sorts of bad feeling and misery.
Then Anselm was beside her.
“Don’t cry.” He moved in, handkerchief at the ready. “Please, Thea…”
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