1896
Fitz had not been in the mistress’s rooms since he walked through the town house upon inheriting it. A great many renovations had taken place since then, to turn the house from a near hovel to an airy, comfortable home. Their marriage, in fact, could be traced plank by plank, brick by brick.
Even now the enhancements continued: The draining of the lavender fields had been improved in the spring; a second beehive had been commissioned for the kitchen garden—it was to be a scale replica of the manor at Henley Park; and, the servants’ quarters, which had been overhauled once four years ago, were being worked on again.
Her room was light and pretty, with wallpaper the summery, crisp green of a sliced cucumber. Potted topiaries stood guard at either side of the fireplace. Above the fireplace hung a painted landscape that looked rather familiar—not the painting, but the landscape.
She stood in the center of the room, still in her full evening regalia, her fan held before her like a plumed breastplate. She glanced at him, but did not otherwise acknowledge his presence.
He did not want to make her more nervous than she must be. Instead of approaching her, he crossed the room to take a better look at the painting. “Is this Lake Como?”
“Yes.”
His gaze dipped to the mantel. Upon it were a row of framed photographs that had been taken in summers past, at their country house parties. Each photograph contained the two of them, though never alone; sometimes they were in a large group, sometimes with only her mother or his sisters.
At the edge of the mantel, another familiar object. “Is this the music box I gave you for your seventeenth birthday? Looks much better than I remember.”
He lifted the lid of the music box. It emitted the same thin, slightly discordant notes. Still worked. Who would have thought?
She watched him. But when he looked at her, she glanced away immediately.
“Where is your maid?”
“I told her not to wait up for me.”
She dropped her fan onto the seat of a nearby chair. The gesture was determinedly casual. Yet as she stood next to the padded armrest, her throat wobbled with a swallow. The sight of it—the implication of it—made his blood hot.
“It won’t be disagreeable,” he said. “It can be made quite enjoyable.”
“Oh, it had better be,” she said tartly. “I’ve heard plenty over the years on your amatory prowess. If I’m not on the roof crowing, I will consider myself disappointed.”
He smiled and put the music box back on the mantel. “Into the bedchamber with you then, lady.”
For a few seconds she stared at her dropped fan without moving. Then she went for the switch and turned off the electric sconce on the wall. The lamp in the bedroom had been left on, illuminating the path. She walked past him and disappeared inside.
So, we come to it at last.
A mundane marital task, was this not? An obligation he’d put off for too long. Why then, as he advanced toward the bedroom, did he feel as if he were being swept out to sea? That the tides and currents would be unlike anything he’d ever known in the calm estuary that had been his marriage?
She turned off the light the moment he’d closed the door behind him. He supposed he shouldn’t be too surprised—he was dealing with a virgin after all. But they knew each other so well it seemed she shouldn’t be shy at all.
“Wouldn’t you want me to see what I’m doing?”
“No.”
He smiled. “Not even when I have to wrestle with tricky bits of your gown?”
“There is nothing here you haven’t encountered enough times elsewhere.”
The darkness was impenetrable: Her windows had been shut and shuttered, the double curtains tightly drawn.
“This will be a first for me,” he murmured. “Fumbling about in the dark. I ought to have you sing a hymn so I can find you.”
She snorted. “A hymn?”
“The heavenly host rejoice tonight: At last I am doing something ordained by God and immortalized by Christ’s love for his Church—et cetera, et cetera.”
“What should I sing? ‘Hosanna in the highest’? Or maybe we ought to really make our rector proud and recite the Lord’s Prayer, too.”
He knew where she was now: by her vanity table. She jumped as his hand settled on her shoulder. Had she not heard his approach in the dark?
“All right, so you found me. Your turn to hide now and mine to seek,” she said, her voice just a bit squeaky.
“Some other day. We’ve business to attend to, Lady Fitzhugh.”
She wore long kidskin gloves that extended well past her elbows. They were fastened at the top with three ivory buttons each. He popped the buttons—one, two, three—pushed one glove down and pulled it off.
“I forgot to say so earlier, but you looked quite lovely tonight,” he said. He slid his palm along her now-exposed arm. So much of her was a mystery to him.