“Good,” she said. “It means she has a true understanding of your personality.”
Ouch. “I know,” he said, rising, “that I acted like the hind end of a—” He caught her ludicrous expression. “What?”
She regarded his raging manhood with something akin to annoyed amazement. This time it was him who blushed. “Sorry. I forgot.”
“You can forget something that big? You could trip on it, for pity’s sake.”
Ash stifled a chuckle. “I’m trying to get your attention here.”
“You have succeeded, believe me.” She sounded no less forgiving, despite the tease, while he did not understand for what he needed forgiving.
Too many silent minutes passed, the two of them facing each other, her thighs beneath that shirt looking perfect and welcoming, his body ready to have them around him.
“Why the bloody blazes do you want my attention?” she snapped.
Ash started at her tone and knew that a confession of love at this juncture would seem insincere, especially as his old uncertainty over the emotion had risen, like a demon from the sea, in the past few minutes. “To tell you that I … missed you when you left the nursery yesterday.”
Lark made a strangled sound deep in her throat, her cheeks strawberry-bright, her eyes filling again. “Will you please put on your clothes?” She grabbed them from the floor to toss his way.
“I’d rather you beat the devil out of me than cry,” Ash said, ignoring his clothes, going for his dressing gown. “You never cry.”
Lark sat on the bed, so forlorn, he sat beside her. “What is wrong, Larkin? You are not acting yourself.”
“It is just that….” She accepted his handkerchief and wiped her eyes. “It is … everything of a sudden. Look, I’ve torn the pretty new dress Olive made for me.” She pulled the dress off the floor and showed its torn overskirt.
“How can I teach Brian to act the lady if I act the ragamuffin? I cannot even read as well as she does, or do sums as well as Micah. Ash, my children have to help me learn my lessons. And you, you’ve ruined me by trying to make me into a lady. Now I do not even feel like beating you bloody, when you deserve a good throttling so very much.”
“Why do I deserve it?”
“Rat’s whiskers, Ash. If I knew, I might be able to work up the enthusiasm to do it.”
Ash received a letter from Reed Gilbride St. Yves, which he read to Lark at breakfast the following morning. “Dear Ash, You will forgive our tardy congratulations on your marriage. Our brood has kept us quite busy, and I now find myself pleased to inform you that we have increased our numbers by two. Yes two. Chastity, never happy with keeping things simple, gave birth to twins on the 18th of May.
Since I am also a twin, Chastity insists I accept at least half of the blame. Their names are Jillian and Meggie by the way; did I tell you they were both girls? Mark will never forgive us for giving him more sisters, though he agrees that they are the most beautiful babes imaginable.
Thank you again for your service on our wedding day. We think of you often.
Until the rogues gather once more, fare well. Your faithful friend, Reed Gilbride St. Yves.”
“They sound like a wonderful family,” Lark said, a bit envious, given her own lack of friends.
Ash nodded, accepted another cup of tea, and sipped it thoughtfully. “Any news of the rogues makes me miss the ruddy lot of them.”
“I’d love to meet them,” she said wistfully, then she regarded her tattered dress and sighed. “We have not been “at home” to visitors, I know, because I have not been willing to have the dressmaker in, but … perhaps we should.”
“I thought you hated the notion.”
Lark pushed a piece of egg around her plate. “Brian will need dresses, I think, judging by the way she fingered your mother’s broach the day I wore it, and once she asked about my petticoat, and I … would not want to shame you in front of your friends, Ash.”
“You never could,” he said standing and coming around the table to kiss her neck. “I will be happy to send for the dressmaker from St. Albans, if you wish, and as soon as your new clothes are ready, I shall invite Hawk and Alex to visit. They are our nearest neighbors among the rogues and you may practice your social skills on them before we are “at home” to the locals.”
“Where do the gossips come from, if the village is made of your tenants?”
“The gossips are the women of society who live in the larger houses between here and St Albans. They have nothing better to do, you see, but report, and embellish their neighbors’ actions to each other.”
“Sounds frightening.”
“Alex will be an enormous help to you in preparing for their invasion, though Sabrina would be better since she did not begin as a Lady, herself, though we aren’t like to see her and Gideon unless we go to London for the Season.
Lark squeaked in pure terror. “Please do not say we will. I had hoped we’d missed the Regent’s Ball.”
Oh we did, since you maimed your dancing master, but you will not escape society that easily, my dear. I hope to take you to an assembly in St. Albans at some point in the future.
“Damn,” Lark said beneath her breath.
The dressmaker arrived in the middle of July, a tall, robust woman, mammoth of bosom, but tiny of waist and hips, which made Lark wonder why she did not fall on her face from the weight she carried up front.
Lark fidgeted as she stood on the dressmaker’s platform while the woman pinned and prodded, pricked and poked. “I am not certain that this is necessary,” Lark said.
“Well, my Lady, his lordship has hired me to do a job, and that means you must stand still and I must measure and pin, if you don’t mind me saying so. Many’s the lady who’d be delirious getting fitted for so many beautiful new clothes. His Lordship says you must have everything—corsets, petticoats, nightshifts, ball gowns, morning dresses, carriage dresses, riding habits, skirts and bodices, gloves, redingotes, bonnets—”
“What do you find so amusing my dear?” Ash asked, coming in with Micah beside him and Brian trailing stubbornly behind.
“I have never worn a corset or bonnet in my life.”
Lark ignored the dressmaker’s gasp to regard the three people she most cared about. Ash, his brow raised, Micah and Brian, eyes twinkling with amusement. A family. She had a family.
“Make double the amount of dresses she orders,” he told the dressmaker. “My wife is too thrifty by half.”
“Morning, afternoon and evening dresses, Ash? Carriage dresses? Rat’s whiskers, was a time I wore the same clothes all day, and all night too … all week, come to that.”
“I remember it well,” Ash said, but Brian took to regarding Lark with a more interested gaze.
“I’ll grant that I prefer bathing and changing clothes daily,” she said for the girl’s benefit, “but changing every hour seems to border on the ridiculous.”
The fact remained, Lark knew, that if she refused the clothes Ash felt she needed, she would never become the “Lady” wife he needed. She owed him that much at least and more for her trickery in bringing their marriage about.
The children depended upon her as well to make something of a life for them all. Besides, if she fussed, fidgeted and complained too much, Brian would surely change her mind and refuse to be fitted for dresses of her own, and Lark would feel guiltier than ever.
“Bother,” she said beneath her breath, a mild oath, considering how she felt about this fittings business. She had a good argument prepared too, one that involved the funds necessary to this extravagant endeavor, but with Brian awaiting her turn, as if prepared for her own hanging, there was nothing more to be said, and Ash knew it.
Ash sent the letter inviting Alex and Hawk to visit that very day, and within minutes of telling Lark so, he was pleased to find that she became aggressively interested in learning her lessons, all of them, but especially in ladylike deportment, and in becoming a gracious hostess.
It did
help that Brian took “lady” lessons along with Lark and that the girl often remembered, from her earlier years, how things should go on “in society.” It also helped that Brian broke as many china teacups as Lark did, and that Brian’s guttersnipe vocabulary emerged a bit more often than Lark’s, when things went wrong.
Ash made Micah his unofficial assistant estate manager, since the boy’s proud head for sums became a helpful asset, and Lark named Brian her unofficial assistant hostess, for strictly speaking, Brian had more experience than Lark.
Both children flourished under Lark’s motherly care and Ash could not help note that she showed no preference to her nephew. She scolded both children as needed, coddled both as needed, and loved both with a capacity for that emotion Ash envied.
He craved the ability to love as she did, as he craved her unconditional love for himself, and was shocked out of mind to discover it.
“I am proud of you,” he told her one night after they’d made love.
“Because I have surpassed your expectations in baby-making?” she asked. “Not that we’ve succeeded in making a babe, I mean, but that I’ve excelled in learning the rudiments necessary to the attempt.”
Ash grinned. “Because you have surpassed my expectations in your “lady lessons,” as you irreverently call them.
Lark kissed his chin, the closest spot she could reach with her head on his shoulder. “No darling, if I were being irreverent, I would speak aloud the name I have given my lessons in my head.”
“Which is?”
“You will never know, because I am too much the Lady to say it.”
Ash barked a laugh, brought her over him, and worked very hard to turn his Lady into a quivering mass of begging pleasure.
Lark vomited, she was so nervous, on the morning the Duke of Hawksworth and his wife Alexandra were due to arrive for a visit.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Lark was appalled that Ash held her hair back as she heaved into the chamber pot, then he insisted on seeing her climb back into bed for a longer sleep.
“I am going to have Mim come to clear this away and cook come to see if there is something she can fix that might settle your stomach,” he said, “and if you are not better by tea time, when my friends are due to arrive, you will receive Alexandra here. She will understand.”
Lark moaned and needed the chamber pot again, and Ash became the more upset. “Have you eaten something that disagreed with you?” he asked sitting on the bed and taking her hand.
“I am about to receive my first visitors as Lady Blackburne, Ash. Do you not understand how frightened I am that I will make a horrible blunder or prove an abominable hostess and give your friends, and you, a disgust of me?”
“I had no idea you were this nervous about receiving them.”
“It does not help that my new clothes did not arrive in time and that this must be the hottest summer in history. The heat alone is enough to sour one’s stomach. Whatever will I wear?”
“The day is not that warm and you will wear the cream and burgundy day dress, which is my favorite.”
“The morning feels excessively warm to me, and that dress will simply make me warmer.”
Ash tested her brow. “Do you have fever? Because if you do, I will send a messenger with a note for them not to come. Alex is in no condition—”
“I do not have fever.” Lark knocked her husband’s annoying hand away. “I am nervous, and hot, and you are making me feel more of both. Leave me in peace and I shall be ready to receive them in due course.”
“As you wish,” Ash said, but Lark thought he was upset when he left her, and though that bothered her a great deal, she was surprised to awaken some three hours later feeling refreshed, astonishingly wonderful, and looking forward to her first visitors.
“The Duke and Duchess of Hawksworth, dear God,” Lark said as the crested ebony coach stopped at the entrance of The Chase at two that afternoon. “I think I may need to vomit again.”
Ash started and Lark chuckled. “A figure of speech, my dear,” she assured him, amused by the look of horror on his face.
Hawksworth appeared aptly named, for he bore the look of a Hawk, Lark thought, enhanced as it was by the scars on his face. Yet she saw a magnificent beauty in his visage as well, especially when he looked upon his Duchess as he helped her emerge from the carriage.
Lark gasped, for the Duchess was so huge with child as to waddle a bit like a duck. “Oh my.”
Lark accompanied her husband down the front steps to greet them, feeling every muscle in her belly tighten in apprehension. But she needn’t have worried about formality because the Duchess opened her arms and embraced her, and the child within the woman kicked so hard, Lark laughed, and relaxed and embraced the Duchess in return. “Your Grace,” Lark said, with what she feared was a belated curtsy.
The Duchess shook her head, raised Lark to her feet, and placed an arm about her waist. “Alexandra is my name and Alex you will call me. None of this toadying to titles business between friends. Have you met the rest of the rogues?”
“I have met none of the rogues,” Lark said, dreading her imminent introduction to the man her husband called “Hawk.”
The Duchess—Alexandra—Alex—whirled them about as one, their arms still around each other. “Bryce, you will kiss Ash’s frightened bride, if you please, and place her at her ease. You have frightened her witless, you see.”
“Oh, oh no,” Lark said, “you have not.” She wanted to scold Alex for saying so, but she saw that in the teasing, something intimate passed between husband and wife, and the harsh planes about the Duke’s face relaxed. He smiled as he bent to kiss Lark’s cheek. “How are you managing this old reprobate? I heard he won you in a card game, is that true?”
“Bryce!” Alex scolded.
“Yes,” Ash replied.
“No,” Lark countered.
They entered the drawing room amused over the confusion of answers. Lark called for tea right away, because she was so nervous she would make an error as hostess, she wanted to get the formalities done with.
“Well,” Hawk said to Ash as they sat. “Which is it? You won her or you did not?”
“He lost the card game,” Lark said, wanting more than ever to confess her part in the deceit, “and I was his consolation.”
Ash gave her a look of censure and Lark felt as if he were chiding her for telling the truth, which was so unlike her forthright husband she must ask what he meant by it later. But Alex and Hawk had fallen into peels of laughter and her husband relaxed.
“I should have known Myles and Hunter were too drunk to get your wedding story straight,” Hawk said.
“Where is little Beatrix?” Ash asked. “I hoped you might bring her for Brian and Micah to play with.”
“We would have,” Alex said, “but she is spending the day with Claudia and the new baby. She will not be dragged from little Judson’s side for long.”
“I had heard that Chesterfield has an heir,” Ash said. “He must be pleased.”
“He is disgustingly pleased,” Hawk said, with little trace of the feud Ash said had once raged between the two men. Lark was not surprised, however, for Ash had also confided that Chesterfield married Hawk’s niece.
When the tea tray had been removed, Ash stood. “Ladies, you will excuse us. Hawk has experienced distinguished success with the Huntington Lodge estate and he has promised to ride the Chase property and offer some industrious suggestions, including the possible construction of a lavender distillery.”
Lark watched Hawk limp from the room. “Ash told me your husband was badly injured in the war.”
“And left for dead,” Alex said. “We received the miracle of his return to us and now we have another, for we are finally expecting our first child, though we have been reunited for more than two years.”
“Two years?” Lark cried with some distress. “Can it take that long to get with child?”
“It did for us, though not for want of trying, I
can tell you. Do not be distressed. It will happen in time.”
“We do not have time. According to Ash’s grandfather, I must be with child before Christmas, or Ash will not inherit, which will cause him to lose the estate.”
Alex’s eyes twinkled. “Then you must be trying very hard to meet those requirements, which is no surprise, given the fact that Ashford is a rogue of the highest order.”
“Very hard,” Lark said pointedly.
“Congratulations.”
They giggled like schoolgirls, a new and heartwarming experience for Lark.
“It is wondrous to be in love and trying for a babe, is it not?” Alex said.
“Oh, we do not love each other,” Lark said, aware she feared believing different, wishing she could ask Alex to explain love’s meaning.
“I am sorry to hear it.”
“But I like the marriage bed very much, and I like Ash, which does make it pleasant to keep to our bargain to get Ash into his grandfather’s will.”
“You might be fooling yourself my girl,” Alex said.
“About liking Ash? Yes, well, there are times that I do not like him so much.”
Alex chuckled. “About him loving you, I mean. Men rarely confess such things, you know.”
Lark tilted her head, considering. “Perhaps, but I do not think he does.” She smiled, wishing Alex might be correct. “Have you met all the rogues?” Lark asked, changing the subject, for she was uncomfortable with the subject of her marriage and love.
“I have met every one, and you have now met three of them, did you not realize? Myles Quartermaine, Earl of Northclyffe, and Hunter Elijah Wylder, Marquess of Wyldborne, were both at your wedding.”
Lark made a face. “I did not like those two and thought them scoundrels, not aristocrats.”
“They are none of the rogues endearing when they have been drinking, especially when they are together, for then they go beyond what is prudent.”
“One wonders how they won the war.”
“True enough.”
“What are their wives like? How many children do they have? Oh I want to meet them all,” Lark said.
Untamable Rogue (Formerly: A Christmas Baby) Page 17
