Margaret Moore (11 page)

He lifted the chest, staggering a bit, and she hurried to help him, but his expression warned her off. “I can manage, my lady,” he declared.

“Thank you for your help, Mr. Mollipont.”

The older man nodded and departed, leaving Elissa alone to put on her cloak and hood.

Well, she mused, as she looked out the small window, I will be very glad to be out of London and on my way home, at least.

Home. William Longbourne’s home. Her home. Will’s home. Before that, Richard Blythe’s home.

She recalled the day she had noticed the initials carved into the facade of the ornate fireplace in the large hall. It had been done very crudely, as if by a child, and the letters were
R
and
?
—for Richard Blythe, perhaps?

She vividly remembered her husband’s cold response to her observation: “If you will find fault with my house, you are welcome to leave it—just as soon as you give me a son.”

With pursed lips, Elissa tied the cloak strings about her neck and reminded herself that she had endured many things over the course of the last seven years. If she had survived marriage to William Longbourne and widowhood, surely she could tolerate marriage to Richard Blythe, too.

She went downstairs to join her party in the
withdrawing room, only to find that chamber empty. Reasoning that they must have gone to the mews in preparation for departing, she went out the back entrance and through the gate.

Immediately she spotted Richard standing near a coach, with his arm around Will’s shoulder as if they were the best of friends. He was audibly describing the attributes of a very fine, very new, very shiny black vehicle. Nearby, an old man with the gnarled fingers of a driver, clad in a long coat of Lincoln green and muddy boots, leaned against a wall, his arms crossed.

She had not thought about a driver for the king’s wedding gift. Now she would have another servant to house, feed, and clothe.

Far more disturbing was the realization that it looked as if her son were now Richard’s possession.

Regardless of the dung and muck on the cobblestones beneath her booted feet, she strode toward both them and the magnificent coach. “I trust we are prepared to depart?”

Richard’s arm slipped from Will’s shoulder as he turned toward her. “If that was the last of the baggage, we are.”

“Good.”

The coachman pushed himself off the wall while she took hold of Will’s hand and helped him inside the coach. She was about to follow him when she felt a hand on her arm.

She immediately recognized the sensation of the length and strength of those specific masculine fingers.

“Are you not going to scrape your feet first? Otherwise, I fear the journey will be most unpleasant.”

“Oh.”

She did as Richard suggested, dragging the sole of her boots against the stones with more energy than strictly necessary. She would not allow him to befuddle her, she silently vowed.

In another moment she was in the coach, seated beside Will and opposite Richard, who rapped smartly on the roof. The driver called to the horses and with a lurch, the coach began to move. Because of the closeness of the mews, and then the crowded streets, they went at a walk.

Elissa looked out the windows, whose leather coverings were rolled up and tied, and saw Mr. Mollipont waving a farewell. With a forced smile, she also waved good-bye.

“I am hopeful we can make thirty miles today,” Richard remarked, crossing his arms leisurely.

“But it is nearly noon,” Elissa replied. “Surely that is too far to cover in less than a full day.”

“The horses are good, they are fresh, and the day fair. We shall try for thirty, and if we are unsuccessful…” He shrugged.

Elissa decided she would not argue the
point, or think about his lackadaisical manner. Obviously he was used to considering only himself. However, traveling with a child allowed no such luxurious selfishness. A hungry, thirsty child was a cranky child.

Elissa turned her attention to her son, whose rapt gaze seemed to find everything outside the coach fascinating. Richard leaned toward the same side of the coach and pointed out the window.

“Do you see that man with the bald head driving the other coach?” he asked. “Dukes have their drivers go without hats, so everybody knows a person of great importance sits inside.”

“But what if it starts to rain?”

“What is that to the duke or duchess, as long as everybody knows they are Important Personages?” Richard replied evenly.

“That doesn’t seem right.”

“I applaud your benevolence, young Master Longbourne. I hardly think it practical, either. The poor man is likely to take a chill or worse, and good drivers in London are hard to find. Why, even the king’s coach has had mishaps.”

“It has?”

“Yes, and the driver was most fortunate that the king is a forgiving man.”

Richard took note of his wife’s disgruntled expression at his mention of the king and chose to ignore it. He was trying to keep his mind on a subject other than his spouse while
her son was with them. Unfortunately, the jostling of the coach brought his knees in contact with her, or at least her skirts and petticoats. It was a strange sort of half-intimate sensation, and he had to struggle not to imagine how he might proceed if Will were not there.

“Now, do you see that gentleman hurrying inside that shop?” Richard asked. “He is going for a drink of chocolate, which comes from the New World.”

“Have you had chocolate?” Will asked eagerly.

“I have, and a more disgusting, bitter drink I have never had the misfortune to taste. They should have left it in the New World, as far as I’m concerned.”

With that, and several other observations, Richard amused his wife’s son as they left the great city. Finally, however, Will leaned his head against his mother’s shoulder and nodded off to sleep.

When Richard was quite sure the boy was sound asleep, he quietly said, “I must commend your lawyer.”

Elissa turned a wary eye his way.

“That is an incredible marriage settlement. Tell me, was it his idea or yours to present it under those particular circumstances so that I could not read it beforehand?”

She bristled, yet he didn’t care. “For the suddenness of its presentation, you may blame the king,” she replied tartly, “since he chose the
date and time of our nuptials, not I.”

“You might have sent it to my lodgings before I left for Whitehall.”

“I did not know where your lodgings were, nor did Mr. Harding,” she replied pertly, again turning to look out the window, as if that dismissed the matter.

He leaned forward. “I am sure you could have found out, or come earlier to Whitehall, or sent the document to the theater.”

“Mr. Harding had barely finished writing it when it was time to go to Whitehall ourselves.”

“He wrote it? Not his clerk?”

“Yes.”

“He seems to take a rather personal interest in your affairs.”

She regarded him scornfully. “It is clear to me that you cannot comprehend that a man could treat a woman as a respectable client and nothing more. He wrote it himself to save time, if you must know. Mr. Mollipont writes slowly.”

“Then the wonderful Heartless Harding should find another clerk.”

“Will you stop talking about Mr. Harding in this insolent manner? He has no special interest in me, I assure you, nor I in him. He was a friend of my father’s, and if he had not written my other marriage agreement, who can say what might have happened to me when…”

Her face flushed as she paused and looked away, her breasts rising and falling with passionate indignation.

He kept his gaze on her irate features. “It doesn’t matter what you feel for him, my sweet, or what he feels for you,” he lied as he tried to ignore a sudden vision of her in that other man’s arms. “What is important is that you understand that I know full well I have been duped, and that I intend to ensure that it never happens again.”

He leaned across the coach to put his knuckle beneath her chin, making her look up at him. “That agreement virtually emasculates me.

“I don’t think anything could emasculate you.”

His lips twisted into a wry, sardonic grin. “I daresay I should be flattered. However, to find one is reduced to a role something less than a steward when one has just been made an earl is another situation entirely.”

“I understood all that was required is that you live on your family estate, and so you shall.”

“What I wanted was to be master of my family’s estate, as I should be. That has been denied me. I shall be nothing more than—”

His wife’s eyes suddenly gleamed with what looked suspiciously like mockery. “Chattel?” she suggested.

“You are
my
chattel, my lady,” he growled,
“even if I am not to command the estate.”

As annoyed as he was, he realized he would have done better not to show it, for the hint of amused mockery disappeared, replaced by cold sternness. “I know what the law says about a wife’s place, and how keen men are to keep us there.”

“I am not William Longbourne.”

“I also know that,” she snapped. “But except for your reputation, I know almost nothing else about you, save what I learned…” Her voice trailed off to an embarrassed silence.

“Save what you learned last night?” he asked softly, pressing his knee closer to her leg.

“Yes.”

All thoughts of her marriage settlement fled Elissa’s mind as his expression changed and a slow smile lifted the corners of his lips. “Elissa, have you ever had chocolate?”

Puzzled, she cast a glance at him, then away. “No,” she whispered as he took her free hand in his.

He toyed with her gloved fingers, then stroked her palm when she didn’t protest. Her chest rose and fell so rapidly that it looked as if her son were nodding in his sleep. “The taste takes some getting used to, but it has other properties that more than make up for its flavor.” He placed her hand on his thigh, and his right hand moved slowly up her arm. “It is said to be an aphrodisiac.”

Elissa gulped. She could scarcely move, what with Will leaning against her. And she should be angry. Or at least on her guard. She would be, except for Richard’s disarming actions.

She could feel the muscle of his thigh straining against the fabric of his breeches. The sensation of his hand on her arm was nearly as overwhelming.

As if these things were not confusing in themselves, she had no idea why he had suddenly decided to talk about chocolate. “A… a what?”

“An aphrodisiac. It is believed to enflame desire.”

At that moment, Elissa knew she didn’t need any assistance to have her desire en-flamed. Why, if Will were not there, who could say what this man might not be able to do? Or compel her to do.

Suddenly, the coach went over a bump.

“Are we there yet?” Will asked sleepily.

“No, dear, it was just a bump,” Elissa said, telling herself she was glad of the distraction.

“We should be at Hatfield soon,” Richard noted calmly, “where we shall spend the night.”

A
s the moonlight shone through the small upper windows of the room at the inn in Hatfield, Elissa tried not to move. The straw in the mattress poked through in several places and if she so much as inched her foot forward, it felt as if tiny daggers were being shoved into her naked skin.

As she lay on her side, staring at the bare, whitewashed wattle-and-daub wall beside her, Will slumbered peacefully in a trundle bed, his mattress having no similar holes. She knew because she had checked the bedding herself for fleas.

She had seen the holes in the large mattress and had thought them insignificant. Perhaps they might be, if she could only fall asleep. Unfortunately, every unfamiliar sound, of which there were many, kept her in a state of constant anxiety.

That, and waiting for her husband.

After they had eaten their meal in the Goose and Gander, he had gone to see that the coachman and horses were bedded down properly, while she took Will to their room.

It had not taken long to get her tired son out of his clothes and into the bed, nor for her to do the same.

She sighed and, forgetting the mattress, rolled onto her back, only to grit her teeth and curse the thinness of the fabric of her chemise.

At least Richard had had no more to say on the subject of the marriage agreement, and for that, she was grateful.

She was also very glad that he treated her son as he did. She had known situations where a stepfather and stepson hated each other on sight and squabbled constantly. This did not look likely; indeed, Will seemed to hold Richard in outright awe.

Still, there was a danger in Will’s idolizing Sir Richard Blythe, who obviously represented romance in all its glory to her son. If even a portion of what she had heard regarding Richard were true, the man might lead Will down the same disgusting path William Longbourne had trod.

Elissa closed her eyes and rubbed them hard, trying to rid her mind of those immoral images from the large book she had burned after she had found it in her husband’s study—lewd, disgusting images of naked men and women engaging in explicit couplings.

They came to her now like a bad dream remembered, except that the faces of the men shifted and changed, becoming that of Sir Richard Blythe, with his dark, intense eyes and sensual lips.

“Asleep, my sweet?”

Her eyes flew open to see a man hovering above her. “Richard?” she demanded in a whisper.

“Were you expecting someone else?” he replied softly, his tone wry as he peeled off his jacket. He sat on the bed, unknowingly sending more daggers of straw into her.

He pulled off his boots, his shoulders hunched and the fabric tight across his muscular shoulders. Then he rose and took off his shirt.

Closing her eyes tight, she heard him moving about in the room, putting his clothes on the chest in the corner and … and taking off his breeches?

The covers lifted and the mattress moved with his weight.

“What instrument of torture is this?” he cried.

She thought of the sensation of those straw spears on his naked flesh and didn’t know whether to laugh or offer him her sympathies. “Shh! You’ll wake Will.”