“But one cannot rightfully discuss the history of the Jin Dynasty without bringing up the Mongols and Genghis Khan,” she’d wailed as Court turned up the skirt of her gown.
“A lady does not discuss hordes of any type at the dinner table, nor Genghis Khan. Ever,” Court had replied firmly as he meted out a spanking commensurate with the degree of her crime. Afterward she’d apologized very prettily and tearfully, and sworn up and down that she would never, ever utter the word “Mongol” again, and then she’d gone to the library and buried her nose in a book about the Mongol Empire like the stubborn, obsessive creature she was.
Mere months to the ball, and all he had to show by way of progress were a surfeit of spankings that accomplished nothing aside from inflaming him to greater and greater heights of lust. In the short, dark days of winter, Court called reinforcements to the house. Lady Renfrew-Burress, to improve Harmony’s deportment. Lady Archleigh, to teach Harmony how to properly converse in company of all kinds. A dance teacher, Mr. Lightmore, to develop her poor ballroom talent. The foppish young gentleman was a friend of his wife’s brother, but Court hired him anyway because he was reputed to be the best.
After these lessons Harmony would be cross and withdraw from him, and retreat to the library, losing herself in her books, shrugging off any sheen of cultured finesse her tutors had managed to impress upon her in their limited time. He was heading there to see her now, just after her lesson with Lady Archleigh. She had books in her rooms but she often used his library and he liked having her nearby. She was quiet when he needed quiet and sweet when he needed sweetness. And after her lessons, well…she was a bit of a shrew, but he still loved her more than any sane man ought to.
He arrived at the library, sailing through doors silently opened by liveried footmen. A glance around the room revealed a pair of shapely legs propped over the arm of a chair in the corner.
He cleared his throat as he approached, causing the legs to disappear. By the time he faced her, she sat as primly as any English rose.
“We have discussed that duchesses don’t sit with legs strewn over armchairs.”
She gave him a
who, me?
look that dissipated into a guilty grimace. “I’m sorry. It’s only that Lady Archleigh exhausts me so. After our time together I just want to—” Words escaped her. She drew up and shuddered her whole body in an adequate representation of what she was trying to express. She peered up at him with one eye closed. “Are you going to spank me?”
“No,” he said. “Well, not yet. But stop that please. You look like a pirate.”
“Arrgh.”
“You do not amuse me when you behave so.”
Even as he said it, the corners of his lips started to twitch. Damn her. “What are you reading?” he asked.
She flipped over the book in her lap and held it out to him. “
The Culture of Ancient Greece During the Bronze Age
, by Michael Thomas Burgermeister.”
“Oh? I do not remember having that in my library, nor buying it for you.”
“Mr. Lightmore brought it. He is an acquaintance of Mr. Burgermeister and thought I might like it. Honestly, it is terribly academic, but it was kind of him to think of me, wasn’t it?”
Court didn’t answer for a moment, shocked by the young man’s cheek. How dare he present his wife with a present of a history book? Court could tell from Harmony’s guileless expression that she hadn’t the slightest idea how inappropriate it was to have accepted it. If Lightmore were an old bewigged nodder with creaking corsets, maybe, but he was not. Decidedly not. He was of an age with her brother, with all the dandies of Barrett’s set.
“From now on, if Mr. Lightmore brings gifts to you, you are not to accept them.”
Her lips drew into a pout. “Did I flub up again? But what should I have done? Refused it?”
“Mr. Lightmore knew it was inappropriate to offer a gift to a married lady. When any gentleman offers you a present, you must tell him you cannot accept it, and let me know about it at once. Is that understood?”
“Yes, sir,” she said, not without frustration. “But I thought it was very nice of him. You will not tell him off on my account, and make me have some new teacher? Mr. Lightmore is patient, and he makes it easy for me to remember the steps.”
Jealousy flared at the way she defended her teacher. Yes, Court wanted to tell Lightmore off. Yes, he wanted to send him to hell with a boot to his arse. But he wouldn’t, not if the man could actually inspire Harmony to enjoy dancing. “I won’t confront your teacher this time. But remember what I said. No more gifts.”
“Yes, sir. May— May I keep the book?”
“Do you
want
to keep the book?”
“It does contain a wealth of information.”
He shrugged. “Very well. But will you put it away and accompany me on a walk? I’m restless indoors and it’s not too cold a day. The rain has gone off and I should like to see my flower in the sunshine.”
That brought a smile to her face. “Shall I be your flower? Opening my showy petals?”
No! Well, yes, but only for me.
What were these feelings of anxiety, of jealousy? For five seasons, no gentleman would go near Miss Harmony Barrett, not to dance or even converse with her. Now Court felt she might be snatched away at any moment by an interloper. But she was different now, more fetching somehow, and not just because he knew her in a carnal sense. Her face was brighter and she was more aware of her feminine power. She used these wiles on him regularly and he knew it.
What if she decided to use them on someone else?
From now on, he thought as he drew on his walking coat, he would be there while she and Lightmore were together at dancing lessons. Then there would be no question that proprieties were being observed. That decided, he gave himself up to the fresh English weather, to a walk with his wife in the bracing and only slightly chilly air of a winter’s day. The sun kept the temperatures from offending; in fact, as they sauntered about the impeccably landscaped garden behind the house, Court grew warm and Harmony developed a comely blush in her cheeks. He wanted to kiss those cheeks, and her lips too, but it was not polite to go about making love in broad daylight, even in a private garden.
He talked about the weather instead, pointed out the robins in the trees, anything to stop himself dragging her to some sheltered place and mauling her for the next three hours. “How different the garden looks in winter than in spring,” he extemporized at one point.
“Why, yes,” Harmony answered. “I imagine it does look different. But why are you conversing like such a stick?”
He raised an eyebrow at her. “It is rude to accuse one’s companion of being a stick.”
“Arrgh,” she said, winking.
“Harmony.” His voice held a warning note.
“Well, you looked like a pirate just then, with your eyebrow all scrunched up above your eye. Tell me, did you only ask me for a walk so you might test my conversational prowess? Gauge my progress with Lady Archleigh?”
“If I were, you would be failing miserably. You mustn’t be confrontational.”
“You told me once I must stick up for myself. You remember, in the Darlingtons’ garden?”
“I remember, but that was a different case.”
“You also called me stupid.”
“I never did such a thing.” He took her hand, squeezing it, bringing her palm to his mouth for a kiss. “If you do not learn to converse with more subtlety, the lessons with Lady Archleigh shall continue.”
His wife pulled her hand from his. “I don’t know why people can’t talk to one another normally. Why they must mull over and weigh every word before they utter it. It seems false.”
“Most people don’t need to weigh their words. But you do, because you have an unusually busy and complicated mind.” He put an arm around her and squeezed her for a moment in the waning afternoon light. “It is one of the things I like most about you.”
“Then why do you try so hard to change me? If you like me as I am?”
Court frowned. “I am not trying to change you, only improve you. The world is not only me,” he said in his defense. “It’s not only me you must please.”
She looked up at him with the full force of her dissecting blue eyes. “Why not? Why can I not just please you and myself? And our children, if we have them someday?”
She always asked the most difficult questions, and Court disliked being argued with.
“It will please me for you to become more socially adept,” he said with an air of finality. “For you to be accepted by our contemporaries. I would like the satiric drawings and gossip of our marriage to cease, and so would the dowager.” He took her hand, disturbed by her troubled expression. He wished sometimes the world
was
only her and him. “Tell me what happened at Almack’s. Why you were forbidden to waltz.”
She shook her head. “I cannot. I cannot even bear to think about it.”
“Tell me, or I shall force you to waltz with me right now.”
“Please don’t. I’m hopeless!”
“Mr. Lightmore has not instructed you in it?”
When she answered that he hadn’t, Court felt the gentleman redeemed a shade in his eyes.
“Good. You are not to dance the waltz with anyone other than me. Ever.” As he said it, he began to move with her, a slow rehearsal of the steps.
“You are always saying things like that,” she said, gripping his shoulder. “How possessive you are.”
“Perhaps, but I will not apologize for it. I know some couples of the
ton
think nothing of stepping out on one another, but you’ll never do that with me.”
“Or you with me,” she said, narrowing her eyes. “You must honor our vows too.”
“I am not the one between us known for making irresponsible and reckless choices.”
“And I am not the one between us known for depravity and vice. I have no intention of stepping out on you, as you say,” she said, stumbling over one of his feet. “I’m rather insulted to be lectured about it.”
“Not a lecture.” He arrested her when she would have swayed in the wrong direction. “A warning. Don’t, or I will make you very miserable in consequence.”
“Warnings and threats don’t become you,” she said, stiffening in the midst of a 1-2-3 beat. “Haven’t I been a good wife to you? I am trying.” She raised her voice slightly and took two steps back from him. “Do you know what happened at Almack’s? I popped out.”
“You what?”
“I was waltzing with the Earl of Havershaw and I tripped and he tried to catch me. I grasped at him and fell and at some point my…my bountitude escaped the bodice of my dress.”
He gaped. “Both…bountitudes?” He could picture it far too easily. “Oh, no.”
“Oh, yes,” she said, her voice gaining outrage by the word. “And Havershaw stood there like a ninny, staring, and numerous other people saw too. I pulled up my bodice but it was too late, and I also scuffed my knee and ripped my favorite stockings, all because I cannot waltz for a prayer. They were right to forbid me, you know.”
It explained Lord Havershaw’s inability to hold Court’s regard ever since the betrothal. He put a hand to his mouth to hide his smile. “Oh, my dear,” he said. “A debacle indeed.”
She glared at him. “If you snicker, I may do something very unseemly that you will not like at all, and then you will probably punish me for it afterward and it will be a thoroughgoing mess.”
“I don’t wish to laugh,” he said, “but I may not be able to help myself. The Earl of Havershaw, of all people. He wouldn’t know what to do with your ‘bountitudes’ if they landed in his outstretched hands.” He gave her a look. “They didn’t, did they?”
“No. Although I believe he fainted afterward, which was probably what I should have done. Perhaps then I wouldn’t have had my waltzing privileges revoked.”
“No,” said Court, struggling to hold back the mirth that choked him. “I’m quite certain it was over for you the moment your bodice failed you.”
“You see, it wasn’t my fault, it was the way I fell!” She began making vague gestures of illustration that finally defeated him. He burst into laughter as she stood with her arms crossed over her chest.
“You’re a fine example of a husband,” she snapped. “Laughing so hard at my misfortune you can barely catch your breath.”
“It is not misfortune,” he said, wiping his eyes. “If not for this episode, perhaps Havershaw would have fallen in love with you. Courted you, married you. What a shame that would have been.”
“For him,” Harmony groused. “Not for you.”
He sobered, took her arm and pulled her close. “Despite what you believe, I am glad we ended up married. Even though I try to improve you, Duchess Bountiful, you must remember that I love you just as you are.”
She stiffened and pulled away from him. “Oh, Court!”
He spun at her shrill cry, prepared to guard against the attack of some beast, but Harmony was only bounding over to a spindly rose bush. “Do you see?” She pointed as he came to her side.
“It is a rose.”
“It is a winter rose. The only flower in the whole garden. How do you suppose it came to be here?”
“Er…it grew on that bush?”
She tore her attention from the downy white flower to scowl at him. “You have no sense of romance. You do not find it spectacular, that this one lone flower thrives here in this icy garden? And so beautifully too.”
He gazed back at her for a long moment. “I do find it spectacular.” He crouched down beside her to look more closely at the rose, only because he knew she would be upset if he didn’t. He studied the bloom as she traced its contours with a gentle caress. The flower was fully opened, its surfaces smooth and pearlescent. “Such showy petals,” he said quietly. “What now? Must I make a wish on this spectacular and unexpected flower?”
She shrugged, a little shadow falling across her face. “You might, if you believed in them.”
“Will you make a wish then?” he asked.
“I already have,” she said. She of the showy petals, and he, dry and thorny and not given to wishes at all.
*** *** ***
Harmony came to love the gardens at the St. James house nearly as much as Court’s comfortable library. When she had to get away, escape the smothering walls and gloomy portraits and constant watchful eyes of servants, she stole to this manicured expanse and breathed the chill air. It was the one place the dowager never came.