“So much has been done in such a short time.” She gazed around, focusing on the new buildings, nothing more than thirty years old, and realized for the first time that she saw history in the making.
“Mr. Snow!” Maisie, the shapely barmaid from The Pig and Whistle, pulled to a breathless halt on the footpath in front of them, glancing at Wenna’s hat before turning to Mr. Snow. “I’m supposed to tell you the cook’s drunk and he’s throwing his knives all over the kitchen.”
With a quaint bow from the waist, Mr. Snow said, “Excuse me, Mrs. Courtney, but I must deal with the emergency. Maisie’ll come over later with them pickle jars.”
The couple hurried off to deal with the problem while Wenna strolled home. She sat the blooms in a basin until ten minutes later, when Maisie came to the door with two big jars. “I was noticing your hair before, Mrs. Courtney, and I was wondering where you had it done.”
“I do my hair myself, Maisie.”
“Fancy that.” Maisie’s blue eyes shaded with disappointment.
“I can do yours, too, if you like, when you have the time, and teach you how to do it yourself,” Wenna said, assessing the barmaid’s straight brown hair.
“Fancy that!” Maisie’s face lit up. “Soon as I finish serving the lunches, I’ll have time.”
“Well, I’ll see you in half an hour?”
An hour later, after her hair had been meticulously styled with braiding that started at the top of her head and ended at her nape where the plaits crossed and twisted into a bun, Maisie agreed to tell the hotel’s customers that she had her hair done by a Miss Chenoweth who had set up in Busby’s hat shop. Visible to at least twenty women per day, she would be a great advertisement for Wenna.
Wenna made the afternoon tea, sighing with unutterable boredom, and then settled into the study to sew the new bodice for her russet skirt.
* * * *
Dev pulled up the creaking hired wagon containing his second load of bricks. He’d delivered his first early this morning. This would be his last. As the least skilled of the builders, Dev had been the natural candidate for the job.
The mason, Jim, a short, sturdy, gray-haired man about fifty years old, came over and stood near the tray. “Just in time. The lads have finished the foundations.” He indicated his four grinning muscle-bound sons, dressed like him in dusty shirts and trousers, with brightly colored handkerchiefs tied around their necks to catch the sweat.
Four months ago, Dev had begun building in the foothills. He had a grand plan, but had started with a compact house in which he, or the next owner, could live while the later building took shape. He had named this “The Gatehouse” in his mind. During the first month, he’d had an underground tank excavated to make sure of the water supply. His laborers had dug the room-sized hole, lined the area with stone and mortar, and brick-vaulted the top. Gutters, yet to be bricked into the soil, would guide the run-off from the rains toward his tank.
Dev had planned this first design like most settlers’ cottages, a central passage with two rooms either side, and a kitchen, a laundry, and a bathroom built at the back. The days of having a separate building for these last rooms had passed, fire not being as prevalent in the stone-built houses as in the old wattle and daub.
He knew Wenna was curious about what he did all day, but since she thought land was bought to be sold, she would see him as a fool to be building a house. Perhaps he was a fool when he would be leaving within the year, but he had been assured the main construction could be completed by then—the walls, the floors, and the roof. Since he worked as his own laborer, too, the job should be done sooner, and he would see something of himself left behind.
“I’ll unload, and you’ll have your bricks in a trice.” He leaped down from the flatbed and began hefting his load into piles, helped by two of the so-called lads. His land had been cleared of the native scrub, but he’d kept a few tall she-oaks for the shading of his houses. As he worked up a sweat, he thought about living in this beautiful stark country and being his own man. A dream—no more. As the heir to his father’s title and estates, he was expected back in Cornwall to do his duty, some of which he had pre-empted by marrying. Producing an heir, well, that would happen soon enough.
During the heat of the day, the walls had arisen as he watched, and had heightened as he learned how to mix the lime mortar. He’d never been another man’s laborer, but he enjoyed being his own, seeing his sweat pour into a substantial building.
Satisfyingly worn out after helping build another outside wall, he drove the flatbed wagon back to Adelaide, a little more than two miles away. The horses plodded, swishing away the flies and the dust, while he resigned himself to another night of frustration.
Wenna—lovely, maddening, obstinate Wenna—wasn’t ready to welcome him between her legs yet. Perhaps she looked like Jenny, but the beautiful, willing dairymaid hadn’t needed to be readied. The first time she’d passed him a cup of fresh sweet milk and offered her wholesome smile, he’d wanted her. The second time, he’d realized he could have her, but he resisted temptation.
Although she was older than he, in her twenties, she was a maid, and gentlemen didn’t dally with maids. Instead, dry-mouthed, he noted how brightly the sun shone on her red hair and how patiently she listened to his gauche ramblings. Somehow, talking to her while she squirted the milk into the buckets absorbed his emptiness, left him feeling at peace, less frustrated with his disciplined life.
He’d shamefacedly told Jenny’s back that his brothers said he looked exactly like a past tutor of theirs, blonde and lanky, and she understood the implication. She scraped out her milking stool, arose, and walked into his arms, her fingers pushing his hair out of his eyes.
“You’re beautiful,” she said. “You look like a picture in a storybook, like a prince. Your brothers—they’re jealous.” She raised her soft mouth to his.
“I love you,” he whispered.
In silence, she stroked his hair, passing her fingers through, sifting. Unmanly tears filled his eyes. His mother had used the same soothing touch when he’d gone to her with a problem.
“Shh,” Jenny said as she rocked him. “I feel love for you, too, and I can see that you do need it.”
She unlaced her bodice. When she put his hand on her soft breast, he forgot about his gentle, golden-haired mother who had died ten years before. The fresh scent of Jenny’s skin, the freckled white of her breast and the aching hardness between his legs took over from memories of the distant past. With heat spreading throughout his body, he kissed her.
Her fingers tangled in his hair. “I am yours for the asking.”
“I can’t marry until I’m twenty-one. We’ll have to wait.”
Jenny ran a thumb across his cheek. “We can never marry, but I do so want you.” She drew him farther into the milking shed and, frantic with lust and longing, he took her the first time in the hayloft. Later, he held her in his arms, worrying that he might have given her a baby.
“Hush,” she said. “We will make sure you don’t.” And she taught him how to protect her.
Over the following months, he knew he wanted to love and protect her for the rest of his life. He needed only two years to turn twenty-one, and then he could marry without his father’s sanction.
However, his father heard about Jenny and, without consulting his powerless youngest son, found a husband for her, a local farmer. He dealt with Dev by enrolling him at Cambridge. Two years wasted studying law and he was pushed off to France to learn self-sufficiency, or so his father said. The banished cuckoo in the nest, Dev learned as much about viticulture as he could. When stories of the new land Terra Australis began to filter through to him, he snatched up the position of the secretary to the next governor of South Australia, likely offered because of his mother’s connection to the governor’s wife. A title would never be his, and a new start would suit him. He held this position until the governor finished his term.
In the meant
ime, his unhappily married older brother, William, Viscount Dellacourt, died. John, the second in line for the title, was recalled from his base in India, but as a colonel in the British army, he had responsibilities. Word arrived that he’d been killed in a skirmish, and Dev succeeded to the unwanted third-hand title of Viscount Dellacourt, heir to the twelfth Earl of Marchester and all his properties. His laugh when he read the notification sounded bitter even to him.
The wagon turned onto King William Street, and Dev dropped off his rig at the Saddler’s Arms, where he’d hired the horses. He walked back to his lodging, hot, sweaty, and dirty, but elated. As he opened the door into the foyer, the office door squeaked open.
“I picked up your mail with Mr. Finn’s when I went to the post office,” young Ernie said, grinning and waving a bundle of papers.
“Good lad.” Dev accepted his mail and glanced through. The Earl of Marchester, his father, dutifully enclosed a report of estate matters three monthly. Not, however, this month.
* * * *
Wenna heard feet pounding on the treads.
Devon called out, “Good evening,” as he passed the sitting room. “The bedroom looks different,” he said, returning to the doorway after he had washed and changed.
“A small amount of cleaning and a slight rearrangement of furniture does wonders for the look of a room. You live your life in a shambles.”
She glanced up at him. He wore a dark suit, and he’d brushed his hair into gleaming corn-silk softness.
“I’m a rag of a man who lives his life in a shambles, am I?” A slight smile softened his face. “You must have seen something in me, or you wouldn’t have married me.” His expression one of challenge, he took her sewing from her lap, placed the fabric on the side table, and drew her to her feet. Staring straight into her eyes, he slid his hands onto her hips and set his body right up against hers.
Her wretched heart gave an excited leap. “I married you because I want to go to Cornwall,” she said, her tone regrettably uncertain.
“And in return, what did you promise? If you can’t remember, I’ll give you a small hint.” His hands spanned her waist, and he gave her a brief kiss. His gaze met hers, and his eyebrows lifted to a query.
She put one hand behind his neck and, unable to suppress a smile, drew his mouth down to hers. Darned man. His soft lips fastened on hers with just the hint of his tongue teasing across. She wouldn’t open to him because she disliked that disgusting probing, but at the light touch of his tongue on hers, she stood on tiptoes, digging her fingers hard into his shoulders. His arms tightened around her. The kiss deepened, and her whole body heated.
Last night she had been unable to stop caressing his hard, silky-smooth part, and she’d wallowed in the wickedness of his encouragement. The lewd bed, no doubt, influenced his ideas. When this man, her husband, touched her, she wanted to be whatever he wanted her to be: his wife, his lover, respectable, wanton, smart, or silly. When he smiled, she was his to be molded. When he gave her space, she turned back into the disciplined person she’d always been, one who never forgot her goal.
He walked her backward to his desk, lifting her skirts as he sat her atop. Her crinoline hoop subsided after first aiming for her nose. One tilt of his hips pushed the hoop out of the way, and he stood between her thighs. Like a wanton, she undulated against his ready hard part, making a soft noise of surrender. His hands cupped her buttocks, drawing her even closer, and his mouth swallowed her sounds of eagerness. Her fingers dug into his back. She could think of nothing but the sensation between her legs. His unwilling wife had turned into a molten heap after the barest touch. The creak of the floorboards beneath his feet brought back her sanity.
She pushed at his shoulders. “You’ll have to stop,” she said in a soft, indecisive tone she could scarcely recognize. “We’re both neat and tidy and ready to go over the road for a meal.”
He laughed. “And you think everyone will know what we’ve been doing?”
“I’ll know.”
“Indeed. But this is what happens to women who tell their husbands they are useless. The husband tends to think he should prove he’s a man, at least.”
“I suspect most people you meet know you’re a man.” She covered his seeking mouth with her hand.
“And tonight you look all woman.” He angled his head so that her hand covered his cheek almost like a caress. “There’s nothing more tempting than a tidy woman waiting to be mussed.”
She wriggled back a little, sliding her center of pleasure away from all temptation. “You’re quite impossible.”
“True,” he said pleasantly. “Let that be a lesson to you.” With an inscrutable smile, he rearranged the shape in his trousers.
She slid from the table to the floor, using one hand to check her hair, not certain of the lesson she should have learned, but knowing the one she had learned. Lust for him could control her too easily.
However, she had discovered he liked her gown and her hair. With two choices of bodice and gown—four combinations as well as her best blue gown—her outfits wouldn’t look new forever. Her plan to incorporate her black gowns into her wardrobe culminated today when she’d put a waistband on the black skirt of the newest, wearing that with the cream bodice she had trimmed with black braid. The new cream-and-black hat completed her outfit.
If she could do nothing more, she could merge her body with his and bear his child. When she did, she would own a part of him forever. Her attraction to him melted her bones. Perhaps she didn’t understand him. Perhaps she could never empathize with those not born to work. Perhaps she could never match him or be good enough, but she could appreciate the perfection she had married.
Huffing out a sigh, she followed him down the stairs and into the street. The churned dust had settled and the place had quieted, though the shops wouldn’t close until dark, a little more than an hour away. He held open the door to The Pig and Whistle for her, and she led the way to his usual spot when Maisie appeared.
“We have a window table free,” the waitress said, a firm smile on her face.
Devon looked surprised but pleased as he sat at a table with a view of the outside street. “What do you suppose prompted an offer of a window table?”
Wenna watched a rather-satisfied Maisie walk away. “We’re a couple. They need the tables closer to the bar for the men. I’ve been thinking. A bath in the morning would suit me better than a bath in the evening. Do you mind changing?”
“Not at all,” he said in his cultured voice. “I don’t have a bathing preference. I heated the stove in the evenings because I don’t spend the day at home.” His thick lashes shaded the expression in his eyes.
Tonight would be the night; she knew that. She knew Devon wouldn’t wait forever for the tupping he’d wanted to do from the start. If she hadn’t decided to clean his bed, she wouldn’t be so nervous. When she had finished polishing, she’d understood that he wouldn’t be content to have her lying beneath him staring impatiently at the ceiling.
She gave Maisie a seedy smile as her meal was deposited on the table.
Maisie waited, staring down at Devon. “Notice anything different about me?”
He leaned back and gave her the once-over. “You look very smart, Maisie. Far too smart to be working in this establishment.”
“I got me hair done.” After a significant glance at Wenna, she swished off, the elaborate styling of her hair making much of her back view.
“That’s a compliment to you,” Devon said as he cut his beefsteak. “She’s copying your hairstyles. You might change the fashions around here.”
“I might,” Wenna said, paying attention to the peas on her plate rather than the man who would service her, one way or another, tonight. Her confidence had vanished after seeing the couples, and even triples, carved on his bed. Should Devon be interested in that sort of thing, she didn’t know how she would react. Protectively, she pulled the high-buttoned neck of her bodice tighte
r.
“Are you chilly?”
“I’m not very hungry.”
He shrugged. “I hope you will excuse my appetite, in that case.”
She reared her head, staring at him, hoping he didn’t mean his appetites in bed. Last night he’d been so nice, and last night she’d thought she would let him do anything to her as long as the whole act could be over and done with quickly. Instead, he’d shown her men liked to be touched and he’d shown her where. She now knew how immediately he reacted when she touched him there, and last night that reaction possibly thrilled her more than him. Tonight he would want more.
He finished his meal and ordered coffee. She examined his face, and saw beyond his beauty. He had an aura of strength and quiet power. She would never have this man groveling at her feet, despite his desire for her. Her only influence on him would be what he chose.
“What do you do when you’re out all day?”
He stared straight into her eyes. “Today I was looking at a house in the foothills, built on a rich clay loam. The view from there is extensive, all the way from the port to the city.” And he rose to his feet.
Clearly, tonight would be the night.
Chapter 8
Although her bargain with Mrs. Busby had energized her, Wenna’s cleaning frenzy during the day had somewhat eroded her confidence in further experimentation with Devon tonight. Given the choice, she would certainly vote for a good sleep. However, she could see by the unholy expression on Devon’s face that abstinence didn’t feature in his thoughts. With a decided lack of enthusiasm, she trod up the stairs.
Trying to concentrate, she sat with her everlasting sewing in an armchair while Devon flicked the pages of magazines and checked various articles with his handwritten notes.
After about an hour, he turned to her with his eyebrows raised. “Bed? Or do you intend to sew all night?”
She folded the bodice, and, without a word, she left for the small bedroom to disrobe. After firmly closing the door, she stepped out of her skirt, unhooked her bodice, and put her underwear into the wash bag. Almost nervously, she donned her cotton nightgown. That done, she inserted her vinegar-soaked sponge and began to prepare herself to be a wife again, first taking her pins out of her hair. With her brush in her hands, she left for Devon’s mirror. Though he still occupied his study, a lamp burned in his bedroom.
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