He knocked and entered his wife’s dressing room. Redcliff blushed as she curtsied and greeted him with a mild “Your Grace.”
Harmony did not stand on such formalities. “Oh,” she exclaimed, clapping her hands. “You are too dashing.” She flew to his side with a gratifying squeal. He was in his most formal wear of tightly fitted breeches, coat, sash and glittering medals. He allowed her to coo and flutter over his decorations while he stole a look down the bodice of her gown.
“As for your finery,” he said, nudging her away so he could drink in the full effect, “your gown is far too beguiling. I must insist you take it off.”
She giggled at his lurid stare as Redcliff clucked and quit the room with mutters of “husbandly rogues.” Court watched her go with a smile. He would charm the old biddy yet and win her over. But apparently not tonight.
He turned back to his wife, making her turn and pose for him. The dress was a silken sky blue chosen for the way it flattered her eyes. Pearls, lace, and bows framed the stylishly low neckline and the cut of the dress accentuated her petite stature and curves. The tips of shimmering blue slippers peeked from beneath the gown’s embroidered hem. To complete the effect, Redcliff had woven matching blue ribbons into his wife’s hair, along with artfully placed miniature white flowers. Beneath her halo of soft curls her face shone with delight. “Is it not a magnificent ensemble, Benny? What do you think of it now that you see it on?”
He shook his head as he drew her into his arms. “It is much worse than I imagined. Really
de trop
. The other ladies will wilt into vapors with jealousy, and the gentlemen run riot with lust. You will ruin the ball and I’ll hear no end of it from my mother.”
She waved her fan at him, her giggles rising to shrieks as he buried his face in the pillows of her breasts. “Stop it, you barbarian,” she cried, rapping him on the head. “That is undignified.”
“Your dress is undignified,” he moaned against her cleavage, but he released her. He made a great show of rearranging his cravat, but it was the engorged cock in his form-fitting breeches that really needed adjustment. “I shall have to punish you for torturing me with this dress.”
She plucked her matching gloves from a table. “You may punish me for it next week. I cannot withstand any more today.” He stared at her as she smoothed the pretty things up her arms, adjusting the fingers with care. He made some audible lusty noise even though he meant not to. She looked up at him. “Or any more of that either,” she said in a husky undertone. “Please, love, have mercy.”
He took her proffered hand. “Yes, I will have mercy, only because we are unforgivably late. Mother will want your head.”
She blew out a breath, her pretty blonde curls dancing against her cheeks. “More punishments! If I manage to please her tonight, perhaps you will establish a period of clemency in reward for my efforts.”
He believed she only teased him, but he took her in his arms with all seriousness and held her close. “Do not worry about pleasing me or her,” he said feelingly. “That silly competition with my mother is a thing of the past. You never believed I cared about it, did you?”
She glared into his eyes. “Yes, I believed you did, or why would I have tried so hard to put up with that provoking Lady Archleigh and that blasted deportment tutor? What was her name?”
“Lady Renfrew-Burress,” provided Court, blithely recording Harmony’s heated trespasses to use against her later…for both their pleasures, of course. “Your conversation still tends to the rough side. Perhaps I should re-engage the ladies’ services.”
She poked him and palmed her fan. “Do not torment me. This ball shall be trying enough, although this gown is truly beautiful. I feel like a princess.”
“Or a duchess?”
“Especially a duchess,” she said, grinning at him. “Thank you for giving it to me.”
“It is my pleasure to give beautiful things to my beautiful wife. Now…” He reached beside him to the table where he’d laid a weathered mahogany box. He opened it to reveal a velvet-lined interior and the richest and most famous of the Courtland jewels. “The matrimonial set,” he said, tilting the box so the polished sapphires sparkled in the light. “As reprehensible as it is, they were never given to any Courtland duchess until she showed a talent to breed.” Harmony made a face at that. “Yes, it was positively medieval. Nonetheless, we will cleave to tradition since you are so conveniently in the family way.”
Her mouth made a round, admiring “o” as he drew the pieces from their velvet pillows. “My goodness,” she breathed. “Are they horridly valuable and expensive?”
“You are very gauche to ask it, my darling. But yes. Endeavor not to lose them in one of your quintessential scrapes.”
He fastened the heavy rope of sapphires about her neck and fixed a pair of matching teardrops on her ears. A glittering sapphire bracelet completed the set, slipped over her glove to nestle perfectly about her wrist. Knowing Harmony, he’d had the clasps specially reinforced just in case. He regarded his adorned wife, feeling a primal surge of ownership, of provision for this otherworldly creature of beauty.
“They are captivating with the blue of your eyes, dear. And the dress.” His voice choked off, with emotion and pride and who knew what else. Ridiculous things that he now accepted as his bride price. He kissed her forehead, then cupped her chin to brush tender embraces across her lips. “The entire
ton
can see you wear them tonight and make of it what they will. I love you and claim you, rapscallion or no.”
She touched his cheek and he thought he would lose his manners altogether if they did not leave the room. “Come,” he said gruffly. “Our guests await.”
The ballroom was awash in a sea of gaily attired ladies and proper gentlemen, even though the night was young and the dancing not yet started. His mother the dowager stood near the east entrance, beaming in her specially commissioned gown. The confection of deep green and tea-brown lace was complimented by matching gloves, another set of Courtland jewels—emeralds—and, oh, a truly unfortunate hat. The “barnswallow” turban, as his saucy-mouthed wife had christened it, but his mother loved it and felt pretty in it, so it made her look beautiful. Lord Morrow much admired it, whether from true regard or self-preservation, it was difficult to say. He was as much a rapscallion as his daughter, Court was coming to learn. Perhaps more.
Even though his mother had chosen to retain her title rather than take Morrow’s, the love between her and Harmony’s father was evident. Court would never have imagined it, their quiet wedding in a glade at Courtland Manor. Thus were Court and Harmony made into step-siblings, an unfortunate outcome they both chose to ignore.
“Lord and Lady Wembley are here,” Harmony pointed out. “How kind of them to attend.”
“You mean, after you caused them to be doused in soup and dog fur?” His jest was met with silence. He looked down to find his wife regarding Gwen with such an air of vulnerability, it was all he could do not to gather her in his arms.
“If you are wondering whether I still have feelings for her,” he murmured, “I do. But only as a dear old friend. Come, we will make our addresses.”
They crossed to welcome the couple, who greeted them effusively.
“I can barely believe it,” said Gwen. “Another Courtland ball already. Hasn’t the year flown by?”
Court looked sideways at his wife. “It has been a particularly eventful year for us. For you too,” he said, congratulating them on the upcoming anniversary of their marriage. They talked briefly of local Hertfordshire matters and other niceties, and then Gwen touched Harmony on the arm.
“Your Grace, how beautiful the Courtland jewels look on you.” Her eyes shone in earnest admiration. “Truly, they are a perfect fit.” Then Gwen looked to him, and some silent understanding passed between them, an acceptance of their past and an avowal of continuing friendship.
“I think so too,” said Court, as Harmony blushed and stammered out thanks. A short time later they took leave of the Wembleys, exchanging promises to pay calls.
“Oh, Courtland,” Harmony said. She used his formal name in public, even though she’d trained him to answer to Benny now. “Look who’s just arrived.”
“I know. I was looking for a place to hide.”
Harmony forced him over to greet her brother Stephen and his wife, the Lady Meredith. After smiling embraces, Meredith and Harmony put their heads together and Court could guess of what they spoke. Meredith’s eyes went wide. “Oh, that’s marvelous news. Now our child shall have a cousin close in age.”
“A cousin?” Stephen overheard this and exclaimed without couth, “You are having a baby too?”
Harmony shushed her brother. “Must you blurt it out like that, here in the middle of a crowded ballroom?”
“I suppose not,” he said good-naturedly. “But congratulations.” And to Court, “Good work, old chap.”
Court managed, despite his pained sensibilities, to manage an answering smile. “I suppose everyone will know shortly,” he said to Harmony as the Barretts moved away. “Oh, my dear. There is someone you must meet this very minute.” He led her over to an older gentleman who had just arrived.
“Your Grace,” said the man with a bow. “I am so grateful for the invitation. And this must be”—he swept into a deeper bow, nearly to the floor—“your wife Her Grace, the Duchess of Courtland.”
Court turned to Harmony and nodded at the guest. “Madam, it pleases me to introduce you to Mr. Michael Thomas Burgermeister.”
“Oh!” Harmony’s initial flush of embarrassment soon receded into comfortable conversation. After all, the studious scholar and his well-read patroness had much to discuss. From Hertfordshire, two month ago, Court had decided to support the gentleman’s expedition, only for the pleasure his published research might bring to his wife.
“My dear,” he said when the old man began to sag under her volley of questions, “perhaps you should allow Mr. Burgermeister to mingle with some of the other guests.”
“Oh, of course,” she said, blushing beneath her curls.
Court squeezed her hand once the gentleman left. “You must share a dance with Mr. Burgermeister later. He is one of the few men in town who will not take offense at your talk of Mongol hordes.”
Harmony laughed behind her fan. “Thank you for inviting him, my love. And for being…understanding. Patient. Wonderful.”
“Reasonable?” he suggested lightly. “I thought you should meet him face to face before he sets off on these adventures you have financed.”
“You financed them, not I.”
“Because I had a debt to pay.” He touched her waist, deeply aware that she carried their future nestled within her. “Perhaps we can accompany him on some other expedition, next time when you are not…in the family way.”
She put a hand over his. “Everyone will know our secret if you stand and gaze at me so, with your hand over my waist.”
“Everyone will know because you told your brother and his wife,” he teased. “And my mother already knows. See how she beams at you the entire length of the ballroom.”
“She beams more often at my father. Look at how she hangs on his arm and sets everyone whispering.”
He chuckled at the scandalized look on his wife’s face. “Let them be the object of gossip for a while,” he said. “I have tired of it. We have become a very conventional couple, don’t you think? I daresay we will retire to Hertfordshire all too soon to raise the Courtland heirs on a steady diet of rapscallionism and history texts.”
Harmony laughed out loud. “There is no such thing as ‘rapscallionism.’”
“Isn’t there?” he said, eyeing her. “I disagree.”
She looked away from him, her mouth turning down at the corners. Oh, no. The little thinking lines. “What if I have a girl?” she asked.
Court leaned closer to her. “I wish on every eyelash for it to be so. The world needs more ladies in your mold. Wild, stimulating ladies to draw the stuffy peers of the realm out of their misery. And if it is a girl, we shall have no choice but to keep trying for a brother.” He gave her an edifying look. “It will not be so bad.”
She gazed into his eyes, with that liquid, emotional expression she sometimes had, and he readied his handkerchief in his pocket. But she managed to govern herself, smiling instead with the bright intensity that lit up all his days.
“I love you so dearly,” she whispered, only for his ears. “I know it is not fashionable, but I do love you so.”
Court brushed a secret kiss against her cheek. “Let us not be fashionable, then,” he whispered back. “Because, God help me, the depth of my love for you is not to be believed.”
Five years later
Newcastle in late summer was the most beautiful place on earth.
Court lounged on a blanket across from his wife near the old Roman wall, enjoying the bright day. Now and again Harmony leaned back to peer at the sky.
“Lie down,” he finally said to save her neck. “No one will have anything to say about it. We are quite alone.”
She scanned the immediate environs. They were not actually alone. Three shouting little boys grappled and tumbled on a nearby carpet of grass while two nursemaids warned them to be careful of their clothes. Court chuckled as the Marquess of Raymore, his first born, scattered handfuls of grass over his younger brothers’ heads and then led them both on a merry chase beside the ancient, crumbling wall.
“Wherever do they find the energy?” Harmony mused, following their darting movements. “I am exhausted.”
He ruffled fingers through her hair. “You are not expecting again? We’ve been taking precautions.”
“I don’t believe so.” She took his hand and pressed a kiss to the center of it. “I am merely tired of travel. It will be pleasant to go home again.”
“I agree.” He leaned back on an elbow, watching his rambunctious sons with equal parts pride and amusement. “Next time I take it in consideration to visit Greece with three young boys in hand, followed by a side trip to the north of England, you will kindly dissuade me.”
“Or?” she asked.
“Or you shall pay the price,” he warned, nudging her over and landing a furtive smack on her backside.