“I did float away for a moment. I was thinking of how to make us a little cove right inside here. Plants to hide us from view, the moonlight all over and around us, perhaps even a view of the stars, the scent of plants and the earth, and, of course, something soft to lie upon. It would be magic.”
“It would,” he agreed, already eager for the night she described, “but, for now, let me show you the rest of the place.” He took her back to the front door as if they had just entered and began the tour room by room, in order. “The parlor for guests. I had my mother do only what was absolutely necessary. She is the one with the best idea of what would be expected by society yet not be too intimidating to those we know who are not of that ilk.”
“It looks very welcoming. Why only the necessary?”
“Because I knew it should be left to the woman I brought to live here.”
“I am pleased but also rather intimidated. Is that the way you have done it in every room?”
“Nay, the master’s chamber needed very little and what I had done was for comfort. I did choose how to finish the library and my office. A few other rooms were simply too confusing for me. I am hoping you know what to do with them. Then there are some that make no sense at all, as if the one who worked on them had half a plan and forgot the other half before he was actually done.”
Primrose laughed and, tugging her hand free, looped her arm through his and pressed her cheek against his arm. “We will sort it all out. Even if half the rooms here were unusable we would still have more than enough room to live in great comfort.”
“True enough,” he said, and grinned. “It is a great deal of home for some man who just kept some idiot from getting a hole shot into his empty head. Leaves me thinking that the way the earl’s family got their hands on it was very illegal, and somewhat embarrasses them.”
“And so he assuages the shame of that by returning the property to the Vaughns for services rendered above and beyond and all that, by returning it to you.”
“I begin to think so.”
Primrose had a head crowded with plans by the time he had shown her the whole manor. She was not surprised by the rooms he had worked on quickly to make them more livable. The parlor, the master suite, the kitchen, and the dining room. They could live quite contentedly with just those comforts for a long while.
She smiled when they entered the bedchamber. A lovely little table was set out in front of the fireplace and it held covered plates of something that smelled delicious plus wine and cider.
“Thank you for doing this, Bened,” she said as she moved to sit. “This is wonderful.”
“I but ordered the meal served here in the bedchamber,” he said as he sat across from her. “Thanks for all else must go to the servants. Of which, I must say, we have many.”
Savoring a bite of the rosemary-seasoned chicken, Primrose then carefully cut some pieces and put them on a plate for Boudicca. She urged the puppy back to its bed by the fireplace, set the plate in front of it, and returned to her seat. It was not until she was eating her vegetables that she became aware of how intently Bened was staring at her. He had a faint smile on his face that eased his usual serious expression, softening the harsher lines until he was so handsome he made her breath catch in her throat.
“That is going to be a very spoiled dog,” Bened said.
She grinned. “I know but I hope to make her a very well-trained dog, too.”
“I think she is very well behaved now. She has been calmly toted about for days and miles on end, in a basket, tied to a saddle. She also stays close to you, no running off when she is out of that basket. But then she would never do that.”
“Why do you say she would never do that?”
“That dog will be your shadow, Rose, for the rest of her sadly short life. She will be, and stay, wherever you are.” Seeing her frown and the hint of confusion in her expressive eyes, he patted her hand. “Boudicca is your dog until old age takes her away. Yours was the hand that pulled her out of the water.”
Primrose looked at the little dog and smiled. “I did intend to keep her even then so ’tis a good thing.”
They idly discussed ideas for what they needed to get done in the manor while Bened had the maids return to clean away the last of the meal. The moment the maids left, Primrose became nervous, no matter how foolish she told herself it was. They had been lovers before they were married so she certainly knew what was about to happen. Neither had they been celibate in the days since they married and then traveled to the manor. When he took her hand in his and tugged her to her feet, she decided she was wrong. It was different. It was their first night together, as husband and wife, in the home they would share from this day onward.
“It was a lovely meal,” she said, and stretched up to brush her mouth over his.
“I wished to make our first night here, in this room, in this house, as special as I could.”
“And you succeeded.”