His Reluctant Lady

by Aydra Richards

  Through the connecting door he heard the muted murmur of her voice. “Thank you, Vivian. That will be all.”

  Exhilaration drummed through him, but he forced himself to wait a few moments, listening for the retreating steps from the hallway outside, the indication that Poppy’s lady’s maid had indeed retired for the night, and Poppy would be alone in her room once more.

  When at last he allowed himself to slip through the connecting door, her room was shrouded in darkness. Only the moonlight peeking through the drawn curtains provided any light, a thin sliver of it trickling across the floor.

  He’d tried to move silently, but in the absence of lamplight, he banged his shin on something—the leg of her vanity, probably—and let loose a string of curses.

  “David?” Poppy’s hesitant voice came from out of the darkness, and he canted himself toward the sound, struggling to orient himself.

  “I should hope you were not expecting anyone else, madam.” He had gone for an attempt at severity, but the effect was somewhat diminished by the shuffling sounds he made as he hobbled in her direction. The bed loomed before him, a large dark shape draped in shadow, and he only just avoided barking his uninjured shin against the frame. The bed hangings challenged him, and he grabbed fistfuls, struggling to find the place where they parted. “Damn,” he muttered. “I’ve half a mind just to pull these blasted drapes down.”

  A flutter of laughter escaped her. A moment later her hand thrust out from between the drapes, and her fingers touched his stomach. “Here,” she said. When he wrapped his fingers around hers, she gave a tug, pulling him through the part in the drapes, and he tumbled down beside her in the bed.

  “I wanted to tell you about parliament,” he said without preamble, settling in beside her, drawing their linked hands over his stomach.

  “Oh?” She twisted to face him, and he felt the soft rush of her breath over his shoulder, the sultry heat of her body so close to his. “Was it as bad as you thought it would be?”

  “Yes,” he said. “And no. In some ways it was worse. I’m certain many of the lords who were my father’s contemporaries think me a useless lackwit. I haven’t his gift of statesmanship, his commanding presence. I’m afraid I spent the vast majority of the day in silence.”

  “Hm,” she said, but it was just an idle sound, without judgment or censure. “I think I would have done the same,” she said at last. “In an unfamiliar situation, I tend toward observance rather than participation.”

  “Yes,” he said, and brought her hand to his mouth, pressing a kiss to her fingers. “I knew you would understand it.” And from there his lips meandered down her wrist, to the delicate skin of her inner arm. “I still don’t quite understand the dynamics at play in parliament,” he said, with a short laugh. “Perhaps no one does. But I stayed anyway, because it was interesting. For hours I didn’t say so much as a word, you understand. It was exhausting enough simply to observe. But then, Stanhope said—well, he said something quite appalling, to which I’m certain you would have taken exception—and I couldn’t seem to stop myself from rebuking him.”

  “Oh, is that why we’ll not receive invitations from them?” she inquired.

  “I’m afraid so.” He found himself easing closer, until he could slide one arm beneath her to splay his palm against her back.

  “What happened? Did he take it poorly?”

  “Quite poorly,” he confirmed. “But for a moment, it was like magic.”

  “Magic,” she echoed, and he heard the absorption in her voice.

  “The whole of the room stilled to silence, and Stanhope went quite red in the face and stormed out,” he said. “And at first I thought, well, this is it for me—I’m going to be ejected from parliament on my first day attending. One more thing I’d made a muck of. But then Lord Farley—the man seated beside me, one of my father’s contemporaries—he just threw back his head and laughed, and then it seemed like the whole room was laughing with him.”

  She made a soft, amused sound in her throat, and he thought that perhaps she, with her vivid imagination, could see the whole scene playing out in her mind as he had in person.

  “And then he clapped me on the back,” he continued. “And said, ‘Stanhope’s an ass. Your father didn’t care for him, either.’”

  “Oh, David,” she whispered, and her small hand came out to touch his chest, laying flat over his heart, and he knew—knew—that she understood just how much those simple words had meant to him. “Will you go back?”

  “I think I will,” he said slowly, and felt his conviction to do so rising with each beat of his heart. “Are you disappointed that I mortally offended someone on my first day in parliament?”

  “No,” she said. “I’m proud.”

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Poppy’s wardrobe began arriving the following week, and between that and Vivian’s efforts, she suddenly looked every inch the fashionable young countess. David found that he quite enjoyed watching her flit about the house, unhindered by the heavy, dowdy gowns she had once worn. In her new gowns she moved with an effortless grace that attracted the eye, her lissome figure a delight to his senses.

  Somehow she’d turned his head, and the lush, voluptuous ladies that had once appealed to him seemed now overblown, their charms too gaudy, too evocative. They simply could not compete with the graceful curves of Poppy’s lithe form, her natural elegance. He had always known those things were there, of course, but now everyone else knew it, too, and the likelihood that his wife would no doubt be on the receiving end of no small amount of attention brought with it a surprising shock of jealousy.

  It did not escape him that he would hardly have experienced such a thing if he had ended up married to Elaine. Ton affaires were commonplace, and he would not have begrudged Elaine a lover, provided that she had been discreet about it. But Poppy? The mere thought of someone else placing his hands on her evoked a nameless rage, an unnerving white-hot glow of fury in his chest.

  As a result, he’d had Vivian communicate to him her social calendar, and he’d made certain to attend each and every evening event to which she shepherded the twins, sticking close to Poppy’s side throughout. If Poppy had judged it strange, she had said nothing of it, but just occasionally she slanted him tiny, baffled glances, as if his behavior had flummoxed her.

  During most days she was occupied with the twins, or with writing, or holed up in the library with Jilly, going over arrangements for the ball that was slated for the following week. He, in turn, spent the vast majority of his days at Parliament, where he had managed, to his own surprise, to carve out something of a niche for himself. He would never have expected it of himself, but Poppy’s unwavering support had kept him stable when he might have struggled, and on the nights where they were not engaged with a ball or a musicale or a dinner party, they spent long hours debating social issues and political ones. Quite by accident she had taught him a great deal about arguing one’s case, about how to make one’s point in a straightforward, unflinching manner.

  He was rather ashamed to admit that he had once thought of a wife as an accessory, a convenience to be brought out for show and then tucked away again when he had tired of her. Poppy could never have been that—would never have allowed herself to be that. It wasn’t that he enjoyed her presence at his breakfast table in the way he might have enjoyed a piece of fine art; it was that he enjoyed going over the paper together, casting out their opinions and debating with one another over scones and jam and rashers of bacon. She was the difference. Not a woman’s general presence, but Poppy’s in particular.

  She had a way of listening intently to him, as if she valued his opinions—not because he was her husband, and she felt she owed him her attention, but with genuine interest. Even when she picked apart his carefully-constructed arguments over their latest debate, she did it with precision and care, and he had never felt forced to defend himself against her. Rather it felt as if they were comrades in arms, attacking a problem from all sides
. Most gentlemen of his status would likely not have humored such a thing from their own wives, but David much preferred Poppy’s gentle handling to the brash and blustering attacks from his colleagues in parliament. From her he had learned to keep a cool head, and perhaps he had even assimilated a touch of her particular brand of eloquence. Though he would likely never quite attain his father’s heights, he’d gained more than a little respect amongst his colleagues.

  His reputation as an idle, indolent nobleman was slowly becoming obsolete. He never would have thought he’d had it in him.

  But Poppy had.

  He’d disappointed so many people in his lifetime. He’d been a failure of a son, a brother, an earl. He didn’t intend to add husband to that list.

  ∞∞∞

  “That’s new.”

  “What’s new?” David inquired, kissing his way along the smooth slope of Poppy’s back. She reclined on her stomach, stretched horizontally across his bed, the sheet that draped haphazardly over her bottom the only concession toward modesty.

  “That clock,” she said, shuffling one arm out from beneath her to gesture to the clock resting on the fireplace mantel. “It wasn’t there before. It’s new.”

  “Ah,” he said. “I bought it.” He trailed his fingertips along her spine, and she shivered in response. “I saw it in a shop window as I was coming home from Parliament the other day, and I liked it…so I bought it.”

  He knew what she was thinking. It was the first real change the room had seen since his father had passed away, excepting the addition of a new earl and his countess. The first concession he’d made toward separating himself from his father’s shadow, the first mark he’d left in this room that now belonged to him.

  “What did you like about it?” she asked idly, scraping her fingernails across the sheets, and the sound stirred his senses, because he knew that soon she’d be scraping those nails across his back.

  “I don’t know,” he said, in all honesty. “Clean lines, I suppose. It just…felt right.” And it had. It had felt fresh and sincere and real. It hadn’t represented a memory of days that had long since passed, or the echo of a time that would never return. It should have been just a clock—just a small, silvered face set in a sleek rosewood surface—but it was also more than that. It was a wish. A hope. A decisive step toward the future.

  “I think I like it,” she said. And then, tentatively, she added, “I was going to go over the account books later this evening, after the girls have gone to bed. Would you care to join me?”

  He could refuse. It was a request, not a demand. “I don’t know that I’d be of much help,” he said, flattening his palm across the small of her back. “I’ve never taken so much as a glance at them before.” There had never been a need, not really—he had employees to take care of such things. But of course Poppy would want to go over them from time to time, to ensure that the tallies were correct, because a responsible household would do so to ensure that their finances were in order.

  She laughed. “I don’t need your help,” she said. “I can manage it just fine on my own. I kept Papa’s accounts for years. In fact, I handled most of the management of his estate, since he so rarely devoted any time to it.” She shrugged, just a suggestion of movement. “You needn’t bother with it, either. I can manage it well enough, if you’d prefer.”

  But it wasn’t her responsibility. It was his.

  “David?” she asked. “Really. It’s no trouble.” She shifted a little, a tad uncomfortably, as if she feared she’d overstepped. “I just thought…even if you don’t want to manage it yourself, you might like to learn anyway.”

  It wasn’t a noose around his neck, a weight upon his shoulders. She wasn’t shoving another duty at him; she was offering to share the wisdom of her experience with him. Something he could use or not at his pleasure, but nonetheless a spare bit of knowledge that would be tucked away in his head if a situation ever arose in which he chose to use it.

  And he found himself saying, “Do you know, I think I will join you.”

  ∞∞∞

  Poppy had chosen a dark blue gown for the evening, in deference to the possibility of ink splatters that would certainly be impossible to remove from any of the lighter-colored gowns she now possessed. Going over the accounts would no doubt necessitate doing a number of sums, and that would require ink and paper, and she simply had never been particularly adept at avoiding the consequences of writing.

  She arrived in the dining room at half eight, pleased to find David already waiting. He rose from his chair as she entered the room.

  “Poppy,” he said. “You look lovely this evening.”

  Caught off-guard, she gave an awkward laugh. “That’s kind of you to say.”

  Something odd flickered across his face. “It wasn’t kind,” he said carefully. “It was honest.”

  Her smile froze on her face, brittle as glass. “It’s really not necessary,” she said. “I don’t expect such platitudes.” She didn’t even want them. They felt like mockery, like sharp, stinging barbs that slipped beneath her skin and poured their insidious poison into her veins.

  “Poppy—”

  “Please,” she interrupted, rather fiercely. “Let’s not be dishonest with one another.” She settled into her chair, smoothing her napkin over her lap. “We needn’t have the sort of relationship that relies upon empty flattery,” she said. “I’d prefer it if we did not, truly.” She risked a glance at his face, and experienced a frisson of alarm at the way his eyes blazed at her, the muscle that ticked in his jaw.

  Frozen in her seat, she could only watch as he struggled to compose himself enough to manage a response. But his mouth snapped shut as Victoria sailed into the room, gowned in a charming dress of pale lavender silk, her perfect curls elegantly pinned.

  Whatever David had been about to say was left unsaid. Instead he heaved a sigh and said, “Ah, Victoria. You’re looking well. Does Isobel intend to join us?”

  “Of course,” Victoria replied, settling into her seat near the center of the long table. “She was having trouble selecting a gown.” She tittered, muffling the sound with one hand. “I swear, she must’ve gone through three different gowns already. Our poor lady’s maid is quite put out with her.”

  David chuckled, shaking his head in consternation, and Poppy watched the interplay between them with a sense of shock.

  “You recognized Victoria,” she said abruptly, causing both of them to swivel toward her.

  “Of course,” he said, his brows drawing together in confusion.

  “No, I—I mean you recognized Victoria,” she said, though she realized that such an obtuse statement surely hadn’t clarified matters. “I mean to say, that Victoria is Victoria and not Isobel. You haven’t confused them for one another.”

  “No, I don’t suppose I did,” he said slowly, as if this fact had just occurred to him, as well. “I don’t think I have for some time.” He looked to Victoria for confirmation, and she gave a Gallic shrug, as if it wouldn’t have bothered her either way. But then, the girls were accustomed to such things—it was the nature of being an identical twin, learning to live with the state of being confused for your identical counterpart.

  “No one can tell them apart,” Poppy heard herself saying. “No one but me. Even Papa confused them for one another. How did you know?”

  “I’m not certain,” he said. “Victoria is Victoria, and Isobel is Isobel.” He cast a smile at Victoria, who responded in kind, clearly pleased. “They look identical, but their mannerisms are different. Victoria is more impulsive, while Isobel must consider every option put before her.”

  Victoria giggled. “It’s just that she can never make up her mind about what it is she wants to wear.”

  “Ah,” said David, gesturing with his hand. “You see? Victoria plays the piano, while Isobel hums to herself. Victoria is always running about as if she’s late to something, while Isobel is always late to something.”

  Poppy felt a smile tug at h
er lips, and it only grew as Isobel skittered into the room at last, her green skirts belling around her ankles.

  “I’m here,” she sang out, patting at her hair.

  “Isobel,” David said, though he directed his gaze at Poppy. “You’re late.”

  Victoria laughed, while Isobel pouted prettily, sinking into her chair. “Fashionably late, I should think,” she said, turning up her nose in offended dignity.

  “It’s only fashionable if it’s to someone else’s event,” David corrected. “At home, it’s merely late.” But he softened the words with a grin, and gave a gesture to a footman lingering near the wall, who promptly retreated to begin bringing forth dishes.

  Dinner passed pleasantly enough, with idle conversation flowing across the table. The girls chattered merrily about their upcoming events, and inquired of the preparations for their ball, tossing out suggestions and requests that made Poppy wish she had brought a notebook with her to the table.

  “Oh, but roses are so passé,” Isobel complained with a grimace. “Couldn’t we have blue hyacinths instead?”

  Poppy heaved a sigh. “Roses are readily available,” she said, unable to prevent herself from the long-ingrained habit of counting the cost of everything. She had been attempting to keep a tight rein on the expenses, to prevent the costs associated with hosting a ball of this magnitude from reaching unmanageable heights, but it seemed that every day there was a new change requiring a new expenditure. “Hyacinths are so dear at this time of year.”

  David slanted her a searching glance. “If the girls would prefer hyacinths, then they shall have hyacinths,” he said. “I’m certain Jilly will know from which shop they can be acquired.”