Of all times for Magda to return! Justin’s recent tête-à-tête had given him a new appreciation of his bride. He regretted having left Elizabeth to her own devices on their first night in Bath.
He didn’t expect so well-bred a miss to stage a scene that shook the rafters. Still, she must feel some chagrin. How would she greet him? Justin was curious to find out.
The bedchamber was softly candlelit. A fragrant scent sweetened the air. Birdie dozed in her shawl-draped cage, head tucked under her wing, standing on one leg. With a certain anticipation, Justin looked around. Then he saw the little lump huddled in the middle of the bed.
Had his reassurances been for naught? Was she hiding from him, foolish child, with the covers pulled up over her head? Lord Charnwood had little previous experience with green misses, much preferring knowledgeable women of the world who could be trusted to enjoy his favors for as long as was agreeable to them both, and afterward bid him an unemotional farewell. Not that His Grace would be sufficiently lost to propriety or common sense as to marry a woman of that sort, and had very rightly left behind his mistress for the duration of his honeymoon.
A gentle snore issued from beneath the bedcovers. The duke moved closer, pulled back the counterpane. His wife looked even younger in her sleep, her features softer and more relaxed, her hair in charming disarray, her nightdress slipped open to reveal a tantalizing glimpse of one tender breast. Justin felt the stirring of desire.
He would be getting no future children on his bride if he didn’t first persuade her not to fear him. Or he could,
but that would be the act of a knave.
Justin glimpsed the laudanum bottle sitting on the table. Was the chit so frightened of him that she must drug herself?
If not his bride, he had woken up Birdie. The parrot sidled along her perch. “Biscuit?” she inquired.
Had
Elizabeth been given no choice but to marry him? Was her sense of duty so strong? Justin would not have his bride behave toward him merely from a sense of duty, which was odd in him, but there it was. With mingled annoyance and frustration, the duke retired to his dressing room.
Chapter 5
“A modest reserve is essential to the perfection of feminine attraction.”
—Lady Ratchett
Elizabeth awakened to a dreadful screeching, as if a monstrous hinge was in need of oil. Or could she still be dreaming? She opened one eye. Green puckered satin, a mountain of lace-trimmed pillows, a bright parrot in a huge cage—
Memory smote her. Elizabeth winced. “Yes and good morning to you, Birdie! Now will you please hush?”
“Biscuit. Biscuit, biscuit, biscuit!” the parrot demanded, and squawked as the duchess threw a pillow at the cage.
Elizabeth sat up and looked around. Had St. Claire joined her in the night? The other side of the bed appeared untouched.
She
appeared untouched. She didn’t know whether to be glad or sad. Certainly she hadn’t wanted her husband to touch her. But neither did she want him to be touching someone else. Was he with Magda still? Again? Was that where he’d spent the night?
A tap on the door interrupted these reflections. “Enter!” Elizabeth called. A freckled maidservant wearing a black gown and stiff white apron edged into the room. “Your chocolate, Your Grace.”
“And my biscuits. Set the tray over there, if you will. Katy, wasn’t it? Not too near the cage, or Birdie will have my chocolate too.”
Smiling, the maid set down the tray. “Ach, she’s a pretty thing, Your Grace!”
Perhaps the little housemaid would like to share
her
chamber with a parrot. “Pretty is as pretty does. Maybe if we feed her she won’t wake up the rest of the house.”
“Me mither has birds,” offered Katy, as she edged closer to the parrot. “Though none so grand as this. Look at the bonnie great beastie, pretending to be starved. Dinna fash yourself, acushla, we’ll soon have ye something to eat.” She broke off, and bobbed another curtsy. “It’s that sorry I am, Your Grace. ‘Tis such a pure marvel of a bird she is that I forgot meself.”
“Birdie
is
a great grand creature.” Elizabeth climbed out of bed and moved closer to the cage, where the parrot was now languishing pathetically. She recalled the tossed pillow. “Are you sure she isn’t ill or hurt?”
“Ach, she’s just malingering.” Katy crumbled a biscuit and opened the cage door.
“Be careful!” warned Elizabeth. But Katy had already thrust her hand into the cage.
Birdie opened one eye. “Biscuit!” she moaned feebly. Katy dropped the crumbled biscuit in the parrot’s food dish, and withdrew her hand unscathed. Birdie hopped up on her perch, picked up a chunk of biscuit in one claw, and began to dine. “Charlatan,” Elizabeth remarked.
Katy grinned. The duchess was a right one, despite all that was being said belowstairs about how she’d bloodied the master’s poor nose. ‘Twas even being whispered that his lordship had kept to his own bed last night, for fear his bride would again pop his cork. “I’ll warrant,” she suggested, “that Her Highness would like a bath.”
Thus it came about that Lord Charnwood was awakened from his restless slumbers by loud squawking and splashing and what sounded like a not entirely successful attempt at song. He threw back the covers. What the deuce was going on in the duchess’s bedroom? Where he would have much preferred to sleep and wasn’t sure why he had not? Justin reached for his robe, entered his dressing room, and opened the adjoining door.
A startling scene greeted him. His duchess and one of the housemaids hovered on either side of the parrot cage, in which a large bowl of water had been placed. As he watched, Birdie perched on the edge of the bowl and then hopped into it, with a great splash and a flapping of wings and a burst of dissonant whistling.
The housemaid was whistling along with the parrot. Elizabeth was laughing. They were all three quite damp. “I know that tune, I swear I do,” the duchess said. “But I can’t recall its name.”
Justin strolled into the room. “I believe it is ‘Jack’s Maggot.’ A country dance. One envisions Nigel gamboling around his drawing room in an effort to keep the bird amused. Katy, you may leave us now.”
The maidservant curtsied. The duchess flushed guiltily. Yes, and well she deserved to feel guilty, decided Justin, because it was her fault that he’d passed a restless night. “You do dance, Elizabeth?”
Elizabeth stared at the expanse of chest revealed by the duke’s nightshirt. She recognized that it was a fine specimen of a chest, despite her lack of experience with such things. His Grace didn’t resemble the slavering beast of Maman’s cautions. Although he
was
a little wolfish with his hair uncombed and that strange expression on his face.
She swallowed. Her mouth had gone dry. What had St. Clair asked her? “Maman does not approve of dancing. She says it is vulgar and causes one to grow overheated.”
Justin doubted Lady Ratchett would approve of her daughter’s wet and revealing nightgown. His duchess, if tall and slender, was excellently formed. “Your mama does not approve of perspiration? A pity. There are any number of pleasant things that might raise one’s temperature. Perhaps Lady Ratchett simply does not approve of pleasant things.”
Elizabeth was definitely perspiring, which was not surprising, since she had never before seen a gentleman clad in his nightshirt and robe. Nervously, she chuckled. “It is certain Maman would not approve of your saying so, Your Grace.”
Her hair was lovely, loose like that, tumbling down her back. Justin’s fingers itched to smooth away the tangles. “I believe this is the first time I have ever heard you laugh.”
Elizabeth’s brief good humor faded. Was her husband telling her that laughter was now on the list of things she was not to do? “We have not had much time together, Your Grace,” she said awkwardly. “Either you and Maman were negotiating, or I was being ill.”
Did she dare reproach him? “Or you were sleeping,” Justin responded coolly. “You must have been exhausted, wife.”
He had come to her bedroom last eve? Had not the fair Magda slaked his husbandly appetites? Maybe Daphne had been mistaken in believing Magda the duke’s mistress. Even Charnwood’s oldest friend had called him a curst cold fish. Mr. Slyte might take back his words if ever he saw the duke tousled and unshaved and wearing little more than his dressing gown.
What was she thinking? Elizabeth wrenched her attention away from the duke’s mesmerizing chest and stared instead at the birdcage. Birdie edged along the perch toward her. “Biscuit?” the parrot inquired.
“You have had quite enough biscuit, you greedy creature.” Elizabeth crumbled another, nonetheless. Did St. Clair intend to claim the privileges of marriage to which he was entitled
now,
in the bright light of day? Privileges which according to Maman were at best repulsive and at worst rather painful, but had to be endured, because the satisfaction of base urges was imperative for a gentleman’s good health? At the same time gentlemen were by nature perverted, or so Maman said; given half a chance, would engage in a variety of the most revolting practices, and Elizabeth must therefore beware. Since Maman hadn’t gone into detail about what constituted either a base urge or a revolting practice, Elizabeth wasn’t sure what she was expected to endure
.
She suspected that her husband could explain it all to her, dared she ask.
Justin was growing cross. He had received a warmer response from Birdie, who was currently making a great mess with biscuit crumbs, than from his bride. Indeed, Elizabeth appeared considerably more interested in that wretched parrot than himself. He gave in to impulse and smoothed her golden curls. “Do you make a habit of taking laudanum, wife?”
Elizabeth dared not move. One of the duke’s hands was on her shoulder, and the other was tangled in her hair. Where would he place his hands next? She managed to mutter, “I had a headache, Your Grace.”
Justin had two headaches. He doubted an opiate would make either go away. “You will not take laudanum again,” he said sternly. “It is not good for you. You must come to me the next time you are in pain.”
Elizabeth lowered her lashes and wished that she might swallow an entire bottle of laudanum all at once, just because the duke said she should not. The warmth of his hand burned through her nightdress. Her flimsy, sodden nightdress. Was his lust being excited? Was hers? Did females even experience lust?
Elizabeth was experiencing something. She felt goose bumps all the way down to her toes. If only the dratted man would let go of her so that she could think. “As you like, Your Grace.”
As he liked, was it? Nothing had been as Justin liked for several days. Definitely he had not liked to pass the night in his own bedchamber, there to toss and turn and dream at last of his wife’s shapely ankles, not to mention other things.
He had been too long without a woman. Elizabeth was not the type of female who ordinarily inspired him with such fancies. Perhaps this particular fancy had something to do with the fact that she was his wife. Who stood stiff as a statue beneath his hands. Stiff, and at the same time soft and warm. His fingers tightened. Her cheeks turned pink.
He raised his hand from her shoulder to lightly stroke his knuckles along her jaw. She gasped and flinched away. Justin remembered Magda’s hint that his courtship had been perfunctory. “Do you ride, my dear?”
What had riding to do with his hands upon her body? Elizabeth was afraid she knew. “Horses are so large, Your Grace. Maman was afraid I would fall off.”
Maman was probably afraid she would take to her heels,
thought Justin; and no blame to the child if she had
.
“Since we are up so early, due to that accursed bird, we might as well take advantage of the morning. Get dressed and I will have the phaeton brought round.”
He released her at last and walked toward his dressing room. The door closed behind him. Elizabeth let out a great pent-up breath, and sank down in a chair.
Chapter 6
“Let your countenance be pleasant but in serious matters somewhat grave.”
—Lady Ratchett
Daphne threw up her hands at sight of the water and feathers and biscuit crumbs strewn about the bedchamber, and rang for a bevy of housemaids to clean up the mess. Birdie’s cage was borne off to the kitchen, where the parrot might enjoy the sunlight and discover new people to terrorize. Her mistress, she tucked into a figured muslin gown, cherry spencer, boots of embroidered silver cloth; drew her golden behind her head and fastened it securely with pins. Yorkshire tan gloves for her hands, a cloth of cherry-striped pink around her neck, a chip hat ornamented with flowers tied under her chin— “There!” said Daphne with satisfaction. “You’ll do, my lady, indeed you will.”
Do for what? Elizabeth gazed into the mirror. All her finery aside, she remained a mere dab of a girl. Or if not a dab because she was so tall, but still not qualified to compete with a woman of the world. She didn’t
wish
to compete with Magda, of course, or anyone else. But when had her opinion ever mattered? She screwed up her courage, lifted her hand, and knocked at the dressing room door. There came no answer. She grasped the knob.
The chamber was empty. Thornaby had outdistanced Daphne in the race to see whether the master or mistress would be most quickly turned out. Odds belowstairs had been even. Whereas the duchess’s long hair had to be dressed, the duke had to be shaved.
Slowly, Elizabeth descended the winding stair. She had never been taken up in a phaeton before. Already she felt queasy. Probably the duke’s phaeton would ride miles above the ground.
St. Clair was waiting in the hallway. He was dressed for the occasion in doeskin breeches, striped waistcoat, and claret-colored coat. In one hand he held his leather gloves and a tall-crowned hat.
The duke had not yet glimpsed her. Elizabeth paused to study him. His nose was less swollen today, if considerably more bruised. She hadn’t noticed his nose earlier. She’d been too distracted by the glimpse of his bare chest.