Lord Ruin (9 page)

“I do not wish to embarrass him,” she said. “Will you at least help me to master the household?”

“Madam.” He bowed and when he straightened, his expression was once again impassive.

“Thank you.” She clenched her teeth and willed the nausea to vanish. If she did not succeed, there was always the washbasin. An entire room distant. “One more thing.”

“Madam.”

“Perhaps it would be wise to have several basins on hand. In different rooms.” She rose, her stomach now in full revolt. The washbasin would have to do.

“Basins, Madam?”

“I am not well. It is, I fear, unpredictable when I shall be ill.” She did not hear Merchant depart, nor see his pleased and knowing smile. Later, when there came a soft tapping on the door between her room and the duke’s, her heart beat just a little faster than it had been.

Ruan opened the door and found Anne standing midway between the door and her bed, a look of utter panic on her face. She wore another dreadful gown. Periwinkle muslin in a countrified style; no lace, only a wide gros-grain ribbon beneath her bosom and limp ruffles in two rows straining toward her chin. For all its lack of fashion, the color smoothed the pallor of her cheeks and lent her eyes a sultry lavender cast.

That her figure was an excellent one could not be entirely concealed. Could he think of nothing but taking her to bed? She’d removed her hat, he could see the bedraggled thing sitting on a side table, and run a comb through her hair. Her shoes lay sideways on the floor, near the fireplace. Though her bare feet sank into the carpet, he saw her stockings nowhere. From the rumpled state of the bed, she’d only recently been sleeping. Her disarray appealed to him enormously.

There was a knock on her door from the hallway side, and she jumped like a quail to wing after the hunter’s gunshot. “Our supper,” he said, walking in. He raised his voice so as to be heard from the hall. “Enter.”

The door opened, and they waited in silence while servants set linens, china and silverware on the table and placed trays of food on a side table. She watched, twisting her hands in the folds of her drab skirt. An intimate arrangement, true. The table was, after all, in full sight of her bed, but he was damned if he was going to cater to any niceness about such matters. One of the footmen opened a French Bordeaux smuggled in from Calais by way of Sweden and Cornwall during the height of the war.

“Thank you, we’ll serve ourselves,” he said when the plates and trays were arranged. The servants bowed or curtseyed as appropriate and vanished without a sound. He came around the table and pulled out a chair. Having helped her to sit, he found himself admiring the pale back of her neck while she did her best not to accidentally touch him. It was all he could do to stop himself from caressing that soft, white nape. He forced himself to release her chair and walk to the sideboard. “Shall I fetch you a plate?”

“Just bread, please.”

“You should eat more.” He uncovered a tureen, breathing in the scented steam. He felt unduly conscious of her sitting at the table, her back stiff, hands clenched on her lap. “Excellent. Jubert has sent up his lobster soup.”

“Please, I can’t.” He knew it was early to be certain of her condition, but Ruan had no doubt she was with child. He knew with an absolute, terrifying and joyful certainty that he had made a child in her.

He covered the tureen. “Jelly or marmalade with your bread?”

“Nothing, if you please. Thank you,” Anne said when Cynssyr returned with the bread. He was a young man to have accomplished so much, and young for the weariness she sensed in him. Urbane, self-assured, and so far never once condescending, beyond all her expectations of him.

Dressed informally in trousers, soft boots and a white shirt without waistcoat or cravat, he still commanded attention. His hair fell straight and thick to just above his collar, the color of aged wood, a rich earthy brown and slightly mussed, as if he’d recently run his fingers through it. Relaxed though he was, she felt the vigor of him. No wonder women fell so hard for him. The man’s ease with himself was just as attractive as his physical appearance.

After fetching his own plate and a bowl of steaming soup, he settled on a subject as bland as her meal. “There is the small matter of your wardrobe. Wine?”

She nodded. “My things arrived from Bartley Green last week.”

“So I am told.” He filled a crystal flute for her and another for himself. “Did not that damned papa of yours outfit you for London?”

“The expense wasn’t necessary.” She didn’t get her wine halfway to her mouth when the smell sent her stomach into rebellion. From the label, she knew the wine was French and probably a better vintage than she’d ever had in her life. If things went on this way, she’d find herself subsisting on bread and biscuits. He seemed to understand the problem, for he whisked it away without comment.

“Most of what you have is remade from several seasons past. Expert work, I grant you, but the fashion for lace fichus is long gone.” He grinned. “I expect you hoped to disguise your bosom with such a trick.” Her cheeks turned pink, and pinker yet when he let his gaze wander below her chin. She felt like a favorite pastry about to be devoured. “Can’t imagine how it could have worked, though it must have.”

She evened her expression to cover the uneasiness inside. “I’m sure I don’t know what you mean.”

“What I mean is you’d have been hounded if any red-blooded man had noticed.” He turned sideways on the chair. “One of them would have at least kissed you by reason of your magnificent bosom, alone. The best thing you’ve got,” he continued as if discussing her bosom were no more interesting than the weather, “is that green frock you were married in.”

“I wear that to church.”

“You haven’t even a ball gown.” He applied himself to the tender slices of beef on his plate. “That I saw, anyway.” His shoulders lifted, and Anne had the oddest sensation that she could actually feel muscle moving beneath the fine lawn of his shirt.

“To be sure, the list of my deficiencies is a long one,” she said, smiling just a little.

His eyebrows lifted. “Be that as it may,” he said with a slight smile, “the raw materials are there.”

“I am an excellent seamstress. I’m sure I could have a ball gown made up before too long.” They looked at one another, and quite suddenly Anne was out-of-breath.

He picked up fork and knife. “You’re a pretty woman, Anne. You must know that. You’ve good bones. The spectacles disguise it, but you won’t wear them in public. You’ve a figure, too.”

“A figure.”

“Yes.” His eyes, partially hidden by the downsweep of his lashes gleamed in the light. “Indeed, yes. A figure that makes a man insane.”

Anne stared, unaccustomed to finding herself so completely out of her depth. Control of the conversation seemed to have been wrested from her if, indeed, she’d ever had it. “What perfect rot. I am too tall by far.”

“Not for me.” He ate the last of his haricot verts.

She crumbled a bit of bread. “I’m not dainty like Emily, or elegant like Mary nor have I the drama of Lucy’s coloring. I’m not anything men much admire.”

“Your father tell you that?” He leaned toward her. “The truth, my dear,” he said in a voice pitched deliberately low, “is that put you in a proper gown, something bright and low cut, and your sister Emily would have a few admirers the less.”

She laughed because she didn’t know what else to do. “You’re mad, your grace. Quite mad, if you believe that.” But she was surprised to feel pleased he’d even thought to flatter her.

Ruan dismissed her laughter with a wave. She’d eaten an entire slice of bread. The restorative effect on her cheered him as much, if not more, than it did her. “There.” He pointed at her with his fork.

“What?”

“You’re pretty when you smile. That dimple in your left cheek is most charming, I assure you.”

Another bit of bread found its way into her hands and it, too, was shredded.

“I have made arrangements for a modiste to visit you tomorrow at three, if that does not discommode your schedule. My apologies. I ought to have seen to it while you were at Satterfield. But, what with one thing and another I never did.”

“I do not as yet have a schedule.”

“You soon will. I have mentioned your condition to the modiste in confidence. She will see to clothes to fit you later on.” He leaned against his chair. Odd that he should feel so at ease with her when in fact he barely knew her. “Do you drink coffee? Jubert’s coffee is unparalleled anywhere in England. I am happy to pour you some if you indulge.”

“No, sir.” The very thought made her stomach object.

“We’ll get on well together, you and I.” He took up his wine, inordinately pleased by her lack of pretension. He’d never given much thought to the sort of wife he ought to have. Anne, though not the woman he’d chosen, had qualities that suited him better than most women of his acquaintance, and that included her sister, Emily.

“I’m sure we shall.”

“Oh, I am absolutely convinced it’s true.” He successfully resisted the impulse to reach across the table and take her chin in his hand, but the urge to know everything about her overcame him. “You are twenty-five, yes?”

“Twenty-six on the ides of May, sir.”

“Women of more tender years are rather a trial. Silly creatures. Spoiled and self-absorbed.” Why, he wondered, had he never considered an older bride? First saluting her with the glass, he drank. “Which you are not, thank the Lord.”

“I do not think I am.”

The more Ruan talked to her, the more he saw how incomplete was his picture of her. There was depth to her. Unexpected depth, for she’d certainly met his rather terrifying household with equanimity. Strength, too. Character. Complexity. She was, in many ways, more than a match for him. She would not bore him anytime soon. In fact, he couldn’t imagine ever being bored by her. Not sexually or any other way. “The modiste will see you have a proper wardrobe. I will see you have the proper background before we begin entertaining.” He put aside his wine. “I suspect you already know a good deal that will prove useful to me.”

“Such as the price of beeswax or tallow candles?” She held back a smile, but he heard it in her voice. “Or how to make fine soap?”

“Don’t be impertinent. No.” His forthright gaze challenged her. Would she rise to his bait or shrink away? “I mean you know who votes the Opposition. Or who heads the Privy Council Judicial Committee.”

“You, sir.”

“Am I Tory or Whig?”

“Tory, sir.”

“What of lord Thrale?”

“The Opposition.”

“Aldreth?”

“A Whig, sir, but he’s voted with you on occasion. As has Devon, but him less often than Aldreth.”

“You,” he said, “are a bluestocking.”

“Sir, I am not.”

“Anne, it’s not an insult. I cannot long endure the company of a stupid woman.”

“Have you often found yourself on the horns of such a dilemma?”

“Oh, ho!” With a laugh of approval, he slapped the tabletop. “That’s bold of you to prove my point with such wit.” He leaned against his chair, stretching out his long legs. “Dr. Carstairs will attend you tomorrow at one. Does your maid, what is her name? Tilly? Yes. Does Tilly know what we suspect?” She nodded. “She will attend while Dr. Carstairs examines you.”

“Sir.”

“There’s to be a ball in your honor. In two weeks.”

Instead of looking delighted, she became thoughtful. “Two weeks is hardly sufficient time to plan a ball.” She shook her head. “No. That’s too soon.”

“But necessary. Mama and your sister, Mary, have done their part. Now we must play ours. Besides, if it’s true you’re in an interesting condition, we oughtn’t wait too long.”

“But, two weeks!”

“Merchant will assist you. Invitations should go out tomorrow, although the day after will probably suffice. Consult with my secretary, Hickenson, regarding my schedule before you fix a date, but not beyond the end of next week. Mama can help you draw up the guest list. I will, naturally, provide you with several dozen names. Let’s say, no more than a hundred or so to supper, three hundred for dancing? You will find Jubert’s advice on the menu invaluable. We’ll need to use the Confectioner’s for so many guests.”