The Duke's Disaster (R) (13 page)

Grantley’s gelding slowed to the walk. “Not…respected?”

There truly was hope. Grantley yet reasoned, and he wasn’t indifferent to his sisters.

“I will spare you the details, Grantley, because I am the lady’s husband, and her protection falls to me now.”

What Noah left unsaid penetrated the fog of drink and youthful bluster that passed for Grantley’s awareness.

“Are you saying Hallowell did not respect my sister?”

Noah turned True toward the Anselm mews. “More to the point, he does not respect you. He’s a few years older, has had a few more years to acquire his town bronze, and you are a toy to him. He’s broken other toys, but they at least had family to repair them. My guess is he would rather have broken your sister. You’ll join me for lunch.”

“Couldn’t possibly,” Grantley said. “Not feeling quite in the pink. You said I had a choice.”

“Live or die,” Noah said simply. “Hallowell has your vowels. I will pay them off and deduct installments from your allowance to amortize the debt over, say, a year, without interest. If you incur more debt to Hallowell, I’ll collect the total you owe me in a lump sum. And Grantley, I will find out if you borrow from Hallowell. I will know before you’ve staggered home and fallen facedown, bare-arsed into your bed.”

Though Noah would not trouble Thea with such a disappointment if he could avoid it.

“Why bother me like this, Anselm?” The put-upon bonhomie of the young man about town humoring a brother-in-law’s queer starts was gone. In its place was pathetically genuine bewilderment. “I drink, I gamble, I chase skirts. My money is not yet my own, though my excesses are consistent with those of my peers. Why are you intent on scolding me like the schoolboy I no longer am?”

Noah brought True to a halt and struggled for what to say that Grantley could comprehend.

What would Thea want him to say?

In the gathering heat of the day, beneath the aromas of the stables and the garden, the reek of gin rolled off Grantley in subtle waves, and the sweat forming under his arms bore a sour stench. The earl wasn’t an evil man, not yet, but he was…going bad.

“Your sister would have me believe she went into service to give you the breathing room you needed to leave the schoolroom behind, Grantley. You might swallow that pap, but I cannot. Thea is pretty, she’s an earl’s daughter, and she had no one—not one damned soul—to look out for her interests. Can you imagine the unkindness of the gossip she bore?”

Noah had shied away from imagining it himself, but he’d seen how Polite Society treated a lady fallen on hard times. He had counted on Thea’s misfortunes to inspire her to accept his proposal, in fact.

“Thea’s stubborn,” Grantley protested as he half slid, half fell off his horse. “You can’t tell her a blessed thing, Anselm. I know her. You don’t. She gets the bit between her teeth, and she’s off. Will you, nil you. Even Nonie tried to talk sense into her, and Thea was simply…”

Grantley fell silent as the grooms approached to take the horses. He fiddled with the wilting rose in his lapel, perhaps having lost his train of thought.

“Come try to eat a little,” Noah said, because arguing Thea’s motivations would get them nowhere. “You at least need to drink something besides blue ruin, and in quantity, given the heat.”

Grantley fell in beside Noah as they crossed the shaded gardens behind Noah’s town house.

“Hallowell’s off to some boating party,” Grantley said. “I think that’s what he said. In any case, I won’t be seeing him for some time.”

God help the women trapped aboard the boat with Hallowell. Perhaps the Endmon heir couldn’t swim.

“Hallowell’s absence makes your decision easier,” Noah said, “or buys you time to gain perspective. You may nap after lunch, but then we’re for the City.”

“I’m not a little boy—”

Noah merely treated Grantley to a slow, head-to-toe perusal. A breeze scented with honeysuckle wafted past, and Noah’s longing for Wellspring, for the fresh air, for Thea’s grousing first thing in the day, cindered the last of his patience with this dreadful excuse for an earl.

“Perhaps a short lie down,” Grantley said. “Very short.”

Two hours later, he was snoring soundly when Noah went to rouse him.

* * *

“Noah is our cousin,” Evvie explained, sitting cross-legged beside Thea on the picnic blanket. “But he’s really like our papa.”

Nini nodded emphatically on Thea’s other side. “He really is. Harlan says so too, and so does everybody, but Harlan is only our cousin.”

Harlan was “only” their cousin, but Noah was their cousin, and “really like” their papa. The distinction did not bother the children, so Thea refused to let it bother her.

“Cousin Noah is the head of your family, in any case,” Thea said, turning the pages of the storybook that seemed to feature dragons on every third page. “The head of our family.”

“That’s why he’s never here,” Evvie said, as if repeating a frequently cited conclusion. “Cousin Noah must do things, and see people, and talk to Prinny about his roads, and ride in the park, and deal with the Furies.”

A bee made a lazy inspection of Nini’s discarded boots, then buzzed on its way.

“Who are the Furies, dear?” Thea asked as she came upon a story about a troll and a witch. What a delightful variation.

“Our aunts,” Nini chimed in. “Cousin Noah says they’re better now that they’ve found husbands to occupy them, but they were fear…”

“Ferocious,” Evvie supplied. “I shall be ferocious too when I grow up.”

“Me too.”

While Thea was simply married. Noah, however, could lay claim to a deal of ferocity. His note from yesterday crackled softly in her pocket when she put the book aside.

“We’d better tend to this ferocious business inside,” Thea said, rising from their blanket and gathering up the detritus of their morning’s outing. “Firstly, I am growing peckish, and secondly, rain could soon be upon us.”

Thirdly, Thea was lonely for her husband, and a moment resting on his side of the bed seemed like a fine idea.

“I’m growing peckish too,” Evvie said.

“
J’ai
famished,” Nini added, grinning.

Thea gently corrected the toddling French, and arranged their books, hairbrushes, and sketching implements in the hamper.

“When will Cousin Noah be home?” The lament, for Thea heard it often enough, came from Nini as she tugged on her boots. Evvie, older and more inured to disappointment, never asked, just as Thea at a young age had understood never to ask for new dresses.

“I haven’t had a note from him since Tuesday,” Thea said, shaking out the blanket and folding it over. “It’s midday, so perhaps he’ll be home later today, or perhaps not for some time. I simply don’t know.”

Not that these mornings with the children were unpleasant.

“You have to break him to bridle,” Evvie said, finding a stray pencil in the grass. “I heard Aunt Patience explain this to Uncle James. She said men take longer than horses to civilize, because men have fewer brains.”

“You shouldn’t be eavesdropping, Evelyn Winters.” Thea tried to sound stern, but Noah would have made a much more impressive job of it.

“I wasn’t eavesdropping,” Evvie said, tossing the pencil into the hamper. “They knew I was there, and Uncle James winked at me.” She gave an exaggerated demonstration, which had Nini giggling and doing likewise.

“What is all this mirth at such an early hour?”

“Cousin!” the girls shrieked in unison as they pelted across the grass into Noah’s waiting arms. He rose with one girl on each hip, bussing first one then the other on their cheeks.

Would a mere cousin offer the little girls such an enthusiastic greeting? Thea’s own father had never shown her that warm a welcome.

“What a pleasure to know I was missed, at least a little. Hullo, Wife.” Noah leaned around Nini and kissed Thea’s cheek too. “You look in great good health.”

While Noah looked tired and road weary.

“I’ve been taking the air with the girls,” Thea said. Had the duke’s observation been a question? And if so, how personal a question?

“Why don’t I let these beauties walk about on their own”—he set them down—“while I relieve you of that bundle?” Noah reached for the blanket, and Thea gave it up rather than deny him this exhibition of manners before the children.

He slipped his free arm around Thea’s waist. “What have you young ladies been doing in my absence, and tell me the truth, because Lady Thea will peach on you in a heartbeat should you dissemble.”

Two pairs of guileless blue eyes turned to Thea. “Will you, Lady Thea?”

“In a heartbeat,” she said solemnly, but she winked too, and the girls were off again, laughing, winking, and giggling in their boundless pleasure at Noah’s return.

Thirteen

The rain did start after luncheon, denying the girls the chance to picnic with Noah, but he promised them a picnic later in the week, a story at bedtime, and a visit to the stables the next morning.

“You think I’m spoiling them,” Noah said as he handed Thea a finger of brandy in the library that night.

“I think you love them,” she said. “You aren’t having anything to drink?”

“I would not make you drink alone.” Noah wrapped his hand around Thea’s and took a sip of her drink. “When I’ve been gone, the girls need reassurances on my return. Their earliest years were not settled, and that still shows. The story tonight was because of the storm. They will be inordinately interested in my schedule for the next few days, and they will probably break a few rules to ensure I’m still on duty. I’ve been absent a great deal in recent months, and I’ve brought them an additional adult to figure into the household.”

Thea’s own mother had read to her on stormy nights.

“You know a great deal about raising children,” Thea said. Did Noah recall the first thing about
being
a child himself?

He ambled over to the sofa before the hearth, sat down, and tugged off his boots. Next, he loosened his cravat, slipped his sleeve buttons free, and rolled up his cuffs.

How many people saw the Duke of Anselm in his stocking feet? Saw the dark hair dusting his forearms? Did his two-dozen mistresses watch this same process when he called upon them?

“What mischief have you got up to in my absence, Thea?” Noah patted the place beside him, and Thea sat.

The moment should have been pleasant, the fire crackling in the hearth, the children tucked up in their beds, the rain pattering softly against the windows.

“My menses haven’t started, but they’re not quite due.”

Noah crossed his feet at the ankles. “That wasn’t what I asked.”

“That was what you wanted to know.”

“It was what you wanted to tell me. Did you miss me?” He kissed her cheek again, which made Thea want to bolt from his embrace. She could not read his mood, had no idea what he’d been about, leaving her side for nearly a week, and had not the first clue what manner of discussion they were to embark upon.

“The girls and I managed,” she said. “I told you we would.”

Noah sighed as if the fate of the kingdom weighted his spirit, then shifted so he half reclined right next to Thea. He gave off heat and weariness, and Thea let herself rest against him.

“I saw Grantley, at some length and on several occasions,” he said.

The pair of them had probably gone out on the town of an evening or two or three. Disappointment joined the fatigue and weepiness plaguing Thea. “I suppose Tim enjoyed that.”

Noah nipped another tot of Thea’s brandy. “Grantley will hate me before it’s all over. The man needs to stop drinking and grow up.”

The very same conclusion Thea had come to several years ago, but it applied equally to most young men of title and wealth.

“Why should Tims hate you?”

Noah was positively bundled against Thea—or she against him—and the warmth and bulk of him felt…wonderful. They shared a concern for Tim, and they shared the weariness common to day’s end.

Tonight, they also shared a roof.

“I’ve put the fear of God into his solicitors,” Noah said. “I wasn’t sure you’d approve, but they need to know somebody will look over their shoulders if they abuse the trust placed in them.”

“They’re the same firm Papa used,” Thea said, giving in to the need to close her eyes. “They also have a small trust for Nonie.” Smaller, after Lady Patience had taken Nonie’s wardrobe in hand.

“What about for you, Thea?”

“I haven’t a trust.”

Noah grasped her neck from behind, between his fingers and thumb, and exerted the slightest warm pressure.

“That feels divine, Husband.”

He shifted his grip and repeated the pressure higher up her neck. “The girls adore you, Wife. I leave them in your hands for less than a week, and they’ve forgotten their old cousin entirely.”

Their cousin who was “really like their papa.” Thea batted that thought aside.

“You don’t always have to change the subject when I offer you a compliment,” she said, stifling a yawn. “The girls won’t adore me so much when I hire them a governess, a drawing master, a piano teacher, and so on.”

Thea should thank Noah for intimidating the solicitors, for that task had been beyond her.

The hand on her neck went still. “You’d involve the girls in all that folderol so soon?”

A young lady’s life included nothing more than folderol, if she were fortunate.

“I told you I would see to them, Husband. You were gone for days, and—”

A finger on her lips silenced her.

“You are testy tonight, Duchess. One might think you missed me. What I meant was so soon, because they are so young yet.”

Sitting beside Noah in the dim, cozy library, Thea’s heart suffered a small fissure. Noah would be a loving and conscientious papa to their children. He’d be—contrary to how he was likely raised—a noticing and attentive parent.

To Nini and Evvie, he was a noticing, attentive, even doting parent.

Why hadn’t Thea confided in him before she’d spoken her vows? Why hadn’t he shown the least hint of approachability, of sentiment, when proposing?

Pointless questions. Nonie’s future was assured, and that was what mattered. “Girls younger than Evvie start as apprentices, Anselm. Both children can already read, and they both have an ear for languages. It’s time.”

Noah gently brought Thea’s head to his shoulder, whether for his own comfort or Thea’s, she did not know.

Noah likely hadn’t gone carousing with Tim, not if he was bent on setting a sober example for her brother. Taking Tim in hand was beyond decent of him.

“The girls were very glad to see you.” As much as Thea could admit. Beside her, Noah seemed to relax a little.

A log settled on the andirons, the ducal budget allowing for wood fires in the library and the bedrooms.

“I’m always glad to see them, to be home,” he said, stroking Thea’s shoulder. “You’re yawning, and the bath I ordered for you is no doubt ready. Let me light you up.”

Noah drew Thea to her feet, but rather than slip her arm through his, he stood before her, his expression serious.

“What, Husband?”

“You’re tired.” He led her by the hand from the library, taking a carrying candle from the sideboard. “You have my thanks for your efforts with the girls, Thea.”

Noah’s thanks satisfied some need in Thea his apologies hadn’t touched. He cared for those girls, and Thea could look after them in ways even a duke could not.

Graciousness was in order. Thea was Noah’s duchess, after all.

“You have my thanks too, Noah, for the time you spent with Tim. He’s stubborn, but not without sense. Even if he doesn’t manage much of a change in the near term, you’ve planted seeds and warned him he’s being watched.”

“He is,” Noah said as they gained the stairs. “My sisters and their husbands have been recruited to this task. Every few days, he’ll be invited to ride out with one of them, or needed to escort Lady Nonie somewhere. My spies will report if his evening activities get out of hand.”

He pushed open the door to Thea’s rooms, and lit a few candles in her sitting room. The bedroom candles were already lit, the tub steaming before the fire.

“I’ll leave you in peace, Wife.”

“Will you join me later?”

To ask that had cost Thea, cost her a great deal. She might as well have admitted she’d missed him.

“I wouldn’t be very good company. Town was late nights and early mornings, and you steal covers.”

Disappointment, keen and vexing, replaced the lassitude Thea had found in the library.

“Suit yourself, Anselm.” He looked so forlorn, and tired himself, that Thea went up on her toes and kissed him. “I’m glad you’re home.” She settled back and gave him a little shove toward their connected dressing rooms. “Into bed with you. You’ve a date with Evvie and Nini in the stables tomorrow morning, and you’d best not oversleep.”

He gave a tired, and possibly relieved, smile. “I won’t face the Vandal horde alone.”

“No, you will not.” Thea patted his backside and started laying out the things she’d need for her bath. The door to their connected dressing rooms quietly opened and closed, and then she was alone.

* * *

Like the Duke of Wellington, Noah had never seen the point in having a man’s man about, a fawning toady to dress him and undress him, to brush his hair, tie his cravats, and otherwise reduce him to the level of an incompetent six-year-old.

He’d very nearly let Thea undress him, let her lure him under the covers with her warmth, her quiet, her soft, generous curves. In his present mood, he couldn’t trust himself to behave, and truly, she’d had that fidgety, blighted look of a woman anticipating her courses.

Another few days, he admonished his lustier inclinations, and he could exercise marital rights free from doubt regarding the patrimony of his firstborn.

In truth, the doubts had died somewhere between Wellspring and London. Thea wasn’t a virgin, but Noah’s gut told him she wasn’t given to duplicity or false promises generally. She might have a flaming affair in a fit of temper, but she’d do her duty to the title first, and she’d have a damned good motivation for her tantrum.

As he undressed and washed, Noah’s hand lingered over his breeding organs.

“What the hell.”

He brought himself to a quick, mindless release that did little to resolve the unrest inside him. He’d spent more time pleasuring himself since his marriage than any new husband in the history of new husbands.

As he finished his ablutions, Noah thought back over his parents’ marriage, a long procession of tantrums, fits, pouts, sulks, scenes, and general misery. Matters hadn’t gone any more smoothly with his sisters’ mother, or Harlan’s. Petty drama on every hand.

“I refuse that legacy.”

He said it quietly, though Bathsheba, who’d been contemplating profundities at the foot of the bed, opened her eyes.

“You are my witness, cat. This will remain a civilized house, no thanks to your refusal to pursue the vermin, and I will have an orderly, civilized marriage.”

Sheba squinted at him serenely, and then rose and hopped off the bed.

“You are not to ignore me,” Noah muttered, shrugging into a dressing gown. “I am lord and master of all I survey, including your great worthless self. Where are you off to?”

She went exactly where she’d gone the last time she’d graced his bedroom, and pawed once—no claws—on the door to his dressing room.

“Fraternizing with my wife?” Noah opened the door to the dressing room, knowing the cat would only scratch and yowl and wake the dead did he deny her. “She can likely use some company. See that you recall your whereabouts, and respect my carpets.”

Noah opened the door to Thea’s dressing room, Sheba strutting regally before him, then he opened the final door, to Thea’s bedroom. The cat slipped through into a chamber plunged into near darkness. Thea had finished with her bath, and banked the coals in the hearth. Her scent lingered in the air—fresh, meadowy, and clean—and Noah could see her shape under the bedcovers.

Thea must have already been asleep, for she gave no indication she sensed Noah’s presence. Just as well, now that the cat—

A hiccup came from the vicinity of Thea’s pillow. Not a hiccup, more of a catch in the throat, as if she’d been—

“Thea?” Noah took a step into the room. “Wife? Are you in difficulties?”

“Go away.”

Her tone was miserable, reminiscent of Noah’s sisters suffering one of their countless adolescent heartbreaks. He shed his dressing gown, and climbed under the covers.

“You’re peevish,” he said, shifting across the bed to lie beside her.

“I asked you to leave.”

Her back was rigid, her tone brittle.

“I’ll leave soon,” he assured her, because no sane man lingered in the vicinity of a peevish woman. “Is it a megrim?”

“What manner of question is that?”

Noah stroked her nape, which had worked well enough in the library. “Take a breath, Thea. I’ve touched you more intimately than this.”

“What are you trying to prove?”

“Perhaps that my wife’s suffering matters to me?” Noah pulled Thea onto her back, and in the dying firelight, silvery tear tracks glinted on her cheeks. “Perhaps I’m suggesting—no orders, you will notice—that when my wife cries, I’m concerned?”

Resentment tried to wedge itself into Noah’s heart—and failed. Thea had not conjured tears to manipulate him.

“You are better company when you’re silent.” She tried to roll away again, so Noah caught her by the shoulder.

“Why the tears, Wife? Have you been so miserable here, trapped on my peasant estate, having to deal with my brats and my brother?”

“I cannot tell if you offer genuine understanding, Noah, or if you’re preparing me for a vicious set down. Your family is lovely, and well you know it. My tears are merely a passing sentiment, such as women are prone to.”

Like a fire blazing up in a sudden gust, inspiration struck.

“My notes,” Noah said. “They were not husbandly.”

She brushed his hair back from his forehead. If Noah had been a cat, that caress would have provoked him to purring.

“Your notes, Anselm?”

“Informing you, most courteously I thought, that I was detained in Town. Hold still.”

Noah threaded his arm under Thea’s neck, to prevent her from squirming away. This put her head resting on his shoulder, and gave him time to mentally arrange words of contrition.

“You speak in the plural,” Thea said. “I received one note.”

She apparently hadn’t been very impressed with it, either.

“I sent one to you, one to Harlan,” Noah said. “I should have sent two to you, at least. I am sorry. I will be more attentive in future.”

Apologies still weren’t easy, but Noah was getting the knack of them.

“It isn’t the notes.” Thea sighed, though Noah heard relenting in her sigh.

“So tell me what troubles you.” He planted an encouraging kiss on her temple. “I’m new to this marriage, in case that escaped your notice, and I would not distress you avoidably. If it wasn’t the notes, then what?”