The Duke's Disaster (R) (28 page)

“I’m veracious,” Noah said, blanketing Thea with his body. “My wife will have it so.”

“Say the words again, Noah. Please.”

He nuzzled her temple, filled his lungs with her scent and his heart with courage.

“Thea. Duchess of Anselm, dearest, bravest Wife,
I
love
you
. I love your courage, your humor, your patience, your body.” He kissed her soundly. “If you don’t let me make love to you right bloody now, I shall cry.”

Or issue an order, at which Thea would probably laugh.

“As if I could have that on my conscience.”

Epilogue

The house was finally emptying out two days after the ball, and Thea had begun to regain a sense of rhythm to her days and nights. The local magistrate had asked that they continue to confine Hallowell, while the authorities conferred regarding the charges to be laid.

“This is a gift,” Noah announced, setting a wrapped box on the ducal bed as he stole a sip of Thea’s tea. “Sort of.”

“You touch my toast, and I will thrash you,” Thea said. Threats were more fun than direct orders where Noah was concerned.

He took a bite of her toast. “I thought you said it was sharing.”

Thea set her plate back on the tray and picked up the package. “You might consider asking. What is the occasion for this gift?”

“I’m currying your favor.”

“You may curry my favor frequently.” Thea shook the box, which was heavy and solid, though smaller than a bread loaf. “Not very subtle, though, simply plying me with gifts.”

Noah had plied her with pleasure too, and that had been marvelous.

“Gifts are as subtle as I know how to be.” Another sip of tea disappeared into Noah’s maw. “You will be hard put not to scream when I tell you Grantley released Hallowell.”

“Noah, you cannot be serious.” Thea set the box down, while Noah blithely pilfered a crispy strip of bacon from her plate. “You are serious. This had better be a splendid gift.”

“I knew you’d blame me, but Grantley was stealthy about it, and only told me after the fact,” Noah said. “Shall I pour you another cup of tea?”

“Please.” Thea ate a piece of her bacon lest it all disappear. “What was my brother thinking?”

“He called Hallowell out, but not for his behavior toward you, which was none of Grantley’s business, because I am your husband.”

“No dispute there,” Thea said, eyeing her rapidly emptying plate. “So was Tims being foolish?”

“He was being gallant. He called Hallowell out for muddying the waters between Marliss and her former intended.”

“Former?”

“The solicitors sent word the betrothal negotiations are at an end,” Noah said around another mouthful of toast, “though Marliss seems to be bearing up wonderfully.”

Bearing up wonderfully was what ladies of substance
did
. “Tims will offer for her, won’t he?”

“If he survives the duel,” Noah said, passing Thea a fresh cup of tea. “This outcome is likely, you see, because Harlan made sure Hallowell had the use of a fast horse and sufficient funds to get to France.”

“At least your brother has sense. I warned you the callow swains were all a great lot of trouble.” Thea took a sip of tea which was, to be honest, prepared exactly as she liked it.

“While you have a present,” Noah reminded her, taking the teacup from her hand.

“Leave me at least two more sips. I adore how you fix it.”

Noah looked surprised but pleased as Thea began unwrapping her gift.

“My music box?” Glued and sanded back together, a little the worse for wear, but when Thea opened the lid, the mechanism was restored to its proper location.

“The girls tried to dissect it, then took it to Erikson to repair, hoping you wouldn’t notice. They are working on the precise wording of their apologies. Erikson would have forced them to admit their meddling before he’d finished restoring it, but he wanted to give them time to confess.”

“This was so…” Thea wrapped Noah in a hug. “You are the best husband, Noah Winters, and I do love you.”

“Have you started thinking up names yet?” He passed Thea back her teacup when she subsided, his blue eyes holding that special warmth Thea watched for.

“I beg your pardon?”

“You might consider this an early lying-in gift, though I suppose you’ll want that bullwhip by then.”

Noah was one of those damnably cheerful people of a morning. Thea would learn to appreciate him for it, though it might help if he made sense.

“Want a bullwhip? By when?” she asked.

“Wife?” Noah took her teacup, set it on the tea cart, and framed her face with his hands. “Correct my math if I’m in error, but we’ve been married almost ten weeks, and you’ve been indisposed only once.”

What?
“Noah?”

“I am fairly competent with a calendar,” he said, “and I keep rather close track of my duchess, especially recently. You’re late, Wife. My guess is you’re a little sensitive here.” He gently closed his hand over her breast. “And prone to sentiment, perhaps? Maybe a tad queasy, or heeding nature’s call more often?”

Thea settled her hand over his and closed her fingers, testing the truth of his words.

“Ye gods, Husband,” she said, lying back. “The first time, likely the very first time, and I’m already carrying.”

Perhaps Noah’s body had ordered hers to conceive?

Noah came down over her, resting his cheek against the slope of her breast. “You’re pleased?”

Thea didn’t need to look into his eyes to confirm the worry in his voice, the tiny doubt.

“That is a ridiculous question,” she said, though her hands were tender as they traced the lines of his face and jaw. She’d like sons with such features, tall, strong, laughing young men who teased and sneaked treats and made the ladies blush with their foolishness. She’d like daughters too—tall, strong, laughing young ladies who teased and sneaked treats and made the gentlemen smile with their foolishness.

“So you are pleased,” Noah said.

“I am very, very pleased, Husband.” Thea’s tone was quite stern. “Though I warn you, a duchess dotes on her duke, a wife dotes shamelessly on her husband, and a mother dotes without ceasing on the father of her children. I hope you are prepared for this ordeal.”

“All that doting,” Noah said, kissing her cheek, her forehead, and her nose. “Sounds quite lovely. Sounds
nice
, in fact.”

“Nice.” Thea’s tummy bounced, for Noah had made her laugh.

Mirth became a frequent morning delicacy for the Duchess of Anselm and her duke. His Grace’s prognostication proved true too, for while the Duke of Anselm never quite got the knack of being nice, he did learn to dote shamelessly on his duchess, to treasure his darling children, to heed his duchess’s every order—while stealing from her breakfast tray, of course—and for Thea, life became very, very nice indeed.

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Tremaine’s True Love
, the first book in Grace Burrowes’s brand-new Regency series featuring the Haddonfield ladies

“The greatest plague ever to bedevil mortal man, the greatest threat to his peace, the most fiendish source of undeserved humility is his sister, and spinster sisters are the worst of a bad lot.” In the corridor outside the formal parlor, Nicholas, Earl of Bellefonte, sounded very certain of his point.

“Of course, my lord,” somebody replied softly, “but, my lord—”

“I tell you, Hanford,” the earl went on, “if it wouldn’t imperil certain personal masculine attributes which my countess holds dear, I’d turn Lady Nita right over my—”

“My lord, you have a visitor.”

Hanford’s pronouncement came off a little desperately, but silenced his lordship’s lament. Beyond the door, Tremaine St. Michael stepped away from the parlor’s cozy fireplace, where he’d been shamelessly warming a personal attribute of his own formerly frozen to the saddle.

Bellefonte’s greeting as he strode into the parlor a moment later was as enthusiastic as his ranting had been.

“Our very own Mr. St. Michael! You are early. This is not fashionable. In fact, were I not the soul of congeniality, I’d call it unsporting in the extreme.”

“Bellefonte.” Tremaine St. Michael bowed.

“Don’t suppose you have any sisters?” Bellefonte asked with a rueful smile. “I have four. They’re what my grandmother calls lively.”

So lively, Bellefonte had bellowed at one of these sisters for the entire ten minutes Tremaine had waited in Belle Maison’s formal parlor. The sister’s responses had been inaudible, until an upstairs door had slammed.

“Liveliness is a fine quality in a young lady,” Tremaine said, because he was a guest in this house and sociability was called for if he was to relieve Bellefonte of substantial assets.

“Fat lot you know,” Bellefonte retorted, taking a position with his back to the fire. “If every man in the House of Lords had rounded up his lively sisters and sent them to France, the Corsican would have been on bended knee, seeking asylum of old George in a week flat. How was your journey?”

Bellefonte had the blond hair and blue eyes of many an English aristocrat. The corners of those eyes crinkled agreeably, and he’d followed up Tremaine’s bow with a hearty handshake.

Bellefonte would never be a friend, but he was friendly.

“My journey was uneventful, if cold,” Tremaine said. “I apologize for making good time down from Town.”

“I apologize for complaining. I am blessed in my family, truly, but Lady Nita, my oldest sister, is particularly strong willed.”

Bellefonte’s hearty bonhomie faded to a soft smile as feminine laughter rang out in the corridor.

“You were saying?” Tremaine prompted. When would his lordship offer a guest a damned drink?

“Nothing of any moment, St. Michael. My countess and my sister Della have taken note of your arrival. Shall we to the library, where the best libation and coziest hearth await? Beckman gave me to understand you’re not the tea and crumpets sort.”

When and why had his lordship’s brother conveyed that sentiment? Another thought intruded on Tremaine’s irritation: Bellefonte knew his womenfolk by their laughter. How odd was that?

“I’m the whiskey sort,” Tremaine said. “Winter ale wouldn’t go amiss either.”

“Whiskey, then. Hanford!”

A little old fellow in formal livery stepped into the library. “My lord?”

Bellefonte directed the butler to send ’round some decent sandwiches to the library and to fetch the countess to her husband’s side when the fiend in the nursery had turned loose of her.

His lordship set a smart pace down carpeted hallways, past bouquets of white hothouse roses, and across gleaming parquet floors, to a high-ceilinged, oak-paneled treasury of books.

The library was blessed with tall windows at regular intervals, and the red velvet draperies were caught back, despite the cold. Winter sunshine bounced cheerily off mirrors, brass, and silver, and here too, the hearth was blazing extravagantly.

The entire impression—genial Lord Bellefonte; his dear, plaguey sisters; roaring fires even in empty rooms; the casual wealth lined up on the library’s endless sunny shelves—left Tremaine feeling out of place.

Tremaine had been in countless aristocratic family seats and more than a few castles and palaces. The out-of-place feeling he experienced at Belle Maison was the fault of the sisters, whom Bellefonte clearly loved and worried over.

Commerce, Tremaine comprehended and even gloried in.

Sisters had no part of commerce, but the lively variety could apparently transform an imposing family seat into a home.

“I know you only intended to stay for the weekend,” Bellefonte said, gesturing to a pair of chairs beneath a tall window, “but my countess declares that will not do. You are to visit for at least two weeks, so the neighbors may come by and inspect you.”

“A weekend might be all the time I can spare, my lord,” Tremaine said, seating himself in cushioned luxury. “The press of business waits for no man, and wasted time is often wasted money.”

“Protest is futile, no matter how sensible your arguments,” Bellefonte countered, folding his length into the second chair. “You are an eligible bachelor and therefore, a doomed man.”

The earl crossed long legs at the ankle, a fellow to whom doom was a merry concept.

“Her ladyship will ply you with delicacies at every meal,” he went on. “Kirsten will interrogate you about your business ventures, Susannah will discuss that Scottish poet fellow with you, and Della will catch you up on all the Town gossip. The Haddonfield womenfolk are like faeries. A man falls into their clutches and time ceases to have meaning.”

Avoid faeries as if your life depends on it. Tremaine’s Scottish grandfather had smacked that lesson into his hard little head before he’d been breeched.

“What about your sister Lady Nita?” Tremaine asked. The sister putting the worry and exasperation in her brother’s eyes and inspiring the earl to raise his voice.

Tremaine would never approach an objective without reconnoitering first. Knowing who got on with whom often made the difference between closing a deal or watching the profits waltz into some other fellow’s pocket.

“Oh, her.” Bellefonte’s gaze went to the window, which looked out over terraced gardens in all their winter solemnity.

A tall blond woman marched off toward the stables along a walk of crushed white shells. She wore a riding habit of dark blue—no clever hat or pheasant feather cocked over her ear—and her briskly swishing hems were muddy.

Bellefonte’s gaze followed the woman, his expression forlorn. “Lady Nita is very dear to me. She will be the death of us all.”

* * *

The baby was small and vigorously alive, two points in her favor—possibly the only two.

“Your mother is resting,” Nita said to the infant’s oldest sibling, “and this is your new sister. Does she have a name?”

Eleven-year-old Mary took the bundle from Nita’s arms. “Ma said a girl would be Annie Elizabeth. She wanted a boy though. Boys can do more work.”

“Boys also eat more, make more noise, and run off to become soldiers or worse,” Nita said. Boys became young wastrels who disported with the local soiled dove, heedless of the innocent life resulting from their pleasures, heedless that the soiled dove was a baronet’s granddaughter and a squire’s daughter. “Have you had anything to eat today, Mary?”

“Bread.”

Thin and freckled and wearing a dress that likely hadn’t been washed in weeks, Mary looked younger than her eleven years—also much, much older.

“Your mother will need more than bread to recover from this birth,” Nita said. “I’ve brought butter, sausage, jam, sugar, boiled eggs, and tea in the sack on the table.”

Nita would have milk sent over too. She’d been distracted by her altercation with Nicholas, and in her haste to reach Addy Chalmers’s side, she’d neglected the most obvious need.

Mary pressed a kiss to Annie’s brow. “She’s ever so dear.”

Would that the child’s mother viewed the baby similarly.

Nita went down to her haunches, the better to impress on young Mary what must be said.

“When Annie fusses, you bring her to your mother to nurse. When Annie’s had her fill, you burp her and take her back to her blankets. She’ll sleep a lot at first, but she needs to sleep where it’s quiet, warm, and safe.”

Though the little cottage wouldn’t be warm again until summer.

Mary cradled the newborn closer. “I’ll watch out for her, Lady Nita. Ma won’t have any custom for weeks, and that means no gin. Wee Annie will grow up strong.”

Mary was an astute child, of necessity.

Nita rose, feeling the cold and the lateness of the hour in every joint and muscle.

“I’ll send the vicar’s wife around next week, and she’ll have more food for you and your brothers, and maybe even some coal.” The vicar’s maid of all work would, in any case. “You store the food where nobody can steal it, and here.” Nita withdrew five shillings from a pocket. “Don’t tell anybody you have this. Not your mother, not your brothers, not even wee Annie. This is for bread and butter, not for gin.”

“Thank you, Lady Nita.”

“I’ll come back next week to check on your mother,” Nita said, shrugging into one of George’s cast-off coats. “If she runs a fever or if the baby is doing poorly, come for me or send one of your brothers.”

Mary bobbed an awkward curtsy, the baby in her arms. “Yes, Lady Nita.”

Then Nita had nothing more to do, except climb onto Atlas’s broad back and let the horse find his way home through the frigid darkness.