The Duke and His Duchess

One

“You’re young and have all your teeth.” George, His Grace, the Duke of Moreland made this state of affairs sound as if Percival had committed a double hanging felony. “If you swive this wife to death, you can always get another.”

Lord Percival Windham’s brothers reacted to the duke’s observation predictably. Tony shot Percy a look of commiseration while Peter—more properly the Marquis of Pembroke—pushed back from the card table.

“I find myself ready to retire,” Peter announced. He rose and bowed to the duke. “Your Grace, pleasant dreams.”

Peter’s younger brothers merited a nod, one conveying more than a touch of sympathy. On this topic at least, the heir to a dukedom could delegate dealing with an irascible old peer to the spares.

“You two are sorry company for an old man,” His Grace spat. “Fetch me a footman that I might preserve myself from the tedium to be endured when you won’t allow me so much as a finger of decent libation.”

Tony and Percy each got a hand under one of His Grace’s elbows and boosted the duke to his feet. Tony pushed the chair away, and then—only then—His Grace shook off his sons’ hold. “Think of me as you’re getting drunk yet again.” He glowered at each son in turn. “And I meant what I said, Percival. Your lady wife has dropped four bull calves in little more than five years of marriage. In my day, a gentleman didn’t trouble his wife beyond the necessary, and certainly not when he could afford to take his rutting elsewhere. Her Grace would have agreed with me.”

Percival didn’t dignify that scold with a response, though Tony—brave man—murmured, “Good night, Papa,” as they handed the duke off to a stout, blank-faced footman.

When the door was closed and a thick silence had taken root, Percival went back to the table and started organizing the cards.

“He’s wrong, Perce.” Tony’s path took him to the decanter. “Her Grace would not agree. She’d say Esther’s duty was to provide as many sons as you and the good Lord saw fit to get on her. Her Grace was a terror when it came to the succession.”

In Percival’s hands, the queen of diamonds turned up first. “The old boy may have a point. Esther has done her duty to the succession.”

And at what cost? She fell into bed exhausted each evening, though never once had Percival heard her complain.

With decanter in hand, Tony took himself and a glass of brandy to the side of the game room where darts were played. A stout surface of Portuguese cork surrounded the scarred circular target, the pits and gashes growing fewer closer to the center.

“I would better prosecute a game of darts were I in my cups,” Tony muttered, taking aim. “You will not be the death of your wife, Perce. His Grace is mourning, is all, and not going about it very well.”

Percival kept his hands busy organizing the cards, all the pips going in the same direction, from highest to lowest, suit by suit. “He’s not only mourning, he’s dying. Can a man mourn his own incipient passing?”

Tony shot him a look. “You’re sounding ducal again. Incipient passing? I say it’s Peter we have to worry about most. His Grace has enough spleen left to live to be a hundred. He and Her Grace had a few cordial years there toward the end—largely as a function of your success populating the nursery, if you ask me.”

When Percival had the deck stacked in perfect order, he cut and shuffled, then shuffled again. The snap and riffle of the cards soothed him, putting him in mind of years spent soldiering—and shivering—in Canada. “How long has it been since Peter ventured outside?”

A dart went sailing toward the wall only to land several inches from the target. “Damn. He sits out on the terrace when the weather’s fair. Once a man turns forty, he’s entitled to a more sedentary schedule.”

Sedentary? In his youth, Peter had been a robust, blond giant. Heir to a dukedom, he’d been the biggest prize on the marriage mart in every sense. When he’d departed on his Grand Tour, half the ladies in London had gone into a decline. And now… Peter’s blond hair was going silver, his complexion suggested he abused arsenic when he never touched the stuff. Worst of all, Peter looked at his half-grown daughters like a man who’d reconciled himself to heartbreak.

Percival reorganized the cards, this time starting with hearts. “Maybe it’s Peter’s incipient death His Grace is mourning.”

“This is maudlin talk, Perce, and you’ve hardly touched a drop all night.” Tony fired a second dart toward the wall, only to have it bounce off the edge of the target. “Rotten, bloody luck.”

“Rotten, bloody aim. You need to focus, Anthony.”

And Percival might well need a mistress. The notion that his father could be right was loathsome.

“You need to get drunk and go swive your lady,” Anthony countered. “Moreland’s carping because Her Grace booted him out of her bedroom once I came along. He doesn’t want to see you and Esther come to the same sorry pass.”

The things Tony knew—and the things he let come flying out of his fool mouth. “Esther has given us an heir, a spare, and a pair of Tonys,” Percival observed. “Perhaps there’s been enough swiving in my marriage.”

A Tony. In Moreland family parlance, any son younger than the spare was a Tony, a hedge against bad luck, and a prudent course every titled family with sense followed. Some were blessed with an abundance of Tonys.

For the third dart, Tony set his drink aside, toed an invisible line on the oak parquet floor, and narrowed his gaze at the target. “You love your wife, Percival. You fell arse over teakettle for her the moment you laid eyes on her. You’d break Esther’s heart if you took your favors elsewhere, and I don’t give a hang what Polite Society, senile dukes, or their departed wives have to say on the matter.”

The dart flew true, hitting the bull’s-eye with a decisive thunk.

People tended to underestimate blond, amiable Tony, and Percival had a hunch Tony liked it that way. “Is Gladys carrying again?”

Tony pulled two darts from the cork and picked the third up from the floor. “One suspects she is.” His smile was bashful, pleased, and a trifle scared.

“Can’t one simply ask his wife? The girl is forthright to a fault, Anthony.” Something Percival adored about Gladys, especially when the rest of the family shied away from difficult truths like a royal court fleeing the plague.

“One cannot.” Tony put the darts on the mantel and set his half-full glass beside them. “One, as you well know, waits patiently for that happy day when one’s wife reposes her trust in one with news of an inchoate miracle, and then one prays incessantly for months, until said miracle is squalling in one’s nursery.”

In this, Tony was not the hail-fellow-well-met, he was wise.

The ace of hearts was missing, which wasn’t possible, because the damned thing had been present and accounted for moments ago. Percival began at the top of the deck, thumbing through card by card. “Canada was good training for marriage, wasn’t it? Hazards on every hand, hardship, boredom…”

God in heaven, was that what his marriage had become?

“I get a decent complement of howling at the moon, or at my lady wife, so I’m content,” Tony said. “Believe I’ll give the girl my regards while the night is yet young.”

With fatuous smile firmly in place, Tony saluted and took his leave.

While Percival hunted in vain for the damned ace of hearts.

***

“I love you,” Esther Windham whispered to the fellow in her arms. “I will always love you, and love you better than any other lady loves you. I love my husband too.” Also better than any other lady loved him, though lately, that love had taken on a heaviness.

Esther’s regard for Percival had acquired an element of forbearance that troubled her, because it went beyond the patience any couple married five years endured with each other from time to time. Percival was a doting father, a dutiful son, a loving husband, and yet…

“Is he asleep?” Little Bart had crept to his mother’s side on silent feet—a surprising accomplishment for a lad who could shriek down the rafters with his glee and his ire. “Can we go yet?”

“Hush.” Esther leaned over and kissed the top of Bart’s head. He already hated when she did that. “You’ll wake the baby.”

Impatience crossed Bart’s cherubic features but he knew better than to commit the nursery equivalent of high treason. He was solid, stubborn, charming, and in line to become the Duke of Moreland. The charm and stubbornness would serve him well, though Esther had learned to steel herself against both. She rose with the baby and put wee Valentine in his crib, gave the nursemaid a smile—for the next hour at least, there would be peace in the nursery, provided neither the baby nor two-year-old Victor woke up—and extended her other hand to Gayle.

Gayle was not charming in the same way his brother was. He was serious, curious, and sweet natured. He and Bart got on famously, thank a merciful God.

“Will we sail boats?” Bart asked, yanking on Esther’s hand as they headed for the stairs. “We can do Viking burials again, can’t we? Will Papa come, too?”

“Papa is busy today, but yes, we can do Viking burials. Gayle, what would you like to do?”

This was her one afternoon a week to spend with the children, the one she and Percival had vowed and declared would be inviolate. The one the children looked forward to.

The one she used to look forward to, too.

“Pet the kitties.”

“A lovely notion.” Though Bart would scare most of the kitties away, all except the shameless old mamas who seemed to know a kitten favored by a child might find an easy life as a pantry mouser rather than the rigorous existence awaiting the barn cats.

When they reached the ground floor, Bart pelted off in the direction of the library, there to collect paper from the duke’s desk. Esther paused long enough to tell a footman—old Thomas—to have a brazier and some spills prepared for the services to be held at the stream.

Outside the library door, Gayle dropped her hand and peered up at her. He had beautiful green eyes, the same as Bart. Victor’s eyes were a slightly darker hue, and baby Valentine’s eyes had lost nearly all traces of their newborn blue.

“Mama?”

Esther dropped to her knees. Gayle did not shout his sentiments, even in his most sanguine moods. “My dear?”

She pushed soft auburn curls away from his face. He’d been born blond, but his hair was darkening as he matured. He tolerated her affection silently, a little man more preoccupied with his inner world than most his age.

“If you could do anything you wanted to do this afternoon,” Gayle asked, “what would you do?”

Esther turned, braced her back against the wall, and slid to a sitting position. “I’m not sure.” This question, and her reply to it, caused a lump in her throat. Many things brought a lump to her throat. “I might take a nice long nap.”

She was treated to a frown that put her much in mind of her husband. “A nap isn’t fun. We’re supposed to have fun for our outings. Petting the kitties is fun.”

“You don’t like the Viking burials, do you?”

The frown did not dissipate. “Was Grandmama a Viking?”

In the way of little minds, he’d skipped across several ideas to connect two disparate concepts. He did this a lot, which fascinated Esther as much as it worried her.

“Gayle, we did not put your grandmother’s body on a ship, light the ship on fire, and send the ship out to sea. That was for great Viking warriors, for kings long ago and far away. Nobody does that anymore.”

“Grandpapa won’t go away on a ship?”

Ah.

Esther pulled him into her lap, a warm, sturdy bundle of little boy full of questions and fears a mother could only guess at. He bore the scent of hay, suggesting some obliging footman had already stood guard over a sortie to the haymow, where the boys play Highwaymen and Pirates and Damned Upstart Colonials.

Why did little boys never play Dukes and Earls?

“His Grace will go to heaven when God sees fit to call him home. Grandpapa has lived a long, honorable life, and St. Peter will throw a great fete when His Grace strolls through the pearly gates.”

“Will Grandpapa need a footman to help him?”

Such worry in such a small body. “He will not. He will strut.”

This caused a smile. “Like Papa?”

“Like all of my menfolk.” Esther blew on the back of Gayle’s neck, making the sort of rude sound boys delighted in.

She thought he’d squirm away then, but he sighed, little shoulders heaving up with momentous thoughts, then down. “Will Uncle Peter strut when he goes to heaven?”

Gracious God.

“He will strut, and he will shout to everybody that he has come home.” Dear Peter probably hadn’t shouted or strutted since Esther had met him five years ago.

Now Gayle did scramble to his feet. “Will I shout and strut when I go to heaven? Will I be as big as Bart?”

Esther rose, though it was an effort that left her a trifle light-headed. “You will carry on as loudly as anybody, and my guess is you will become very proficient at strutting. You are a Windham, after all. As for being as big as Bart, you are as big now as Bart was when he was your age.”

This concept, that Bart was merely half a lap ahead in the race to adult height, always pleased Gayle. “I want to make birds with my paper, not ships that burn.”

“We can do both.” Though Bart would want to throw rocks at the birds when they became airborne, and Gayle—in a perfect imitation of His Grace—would point out that burning ships was a waste of paper.

Esther followed her son into the library, where Bart—appropriately enough—was already seated at the desk, sturdy legs kicking the air as he folded paper into some semblance of ships.

While the boys argued halfheartedly about which was more fun—birds or ships—Esther sank into a chair and tried not to think about whether she’d be capable of strutting into heaven when her turn came.

No, she would not, though in heaven, she would get a decent nap. She would get as long a nap as ever she wished for.

***

“Madam, you have a leaf in your hair.”

Esther glanced over at Percival, her expression confirming that she’d misinterpreted her husband’s attempt at friendly repartee as censorship. Percival reached forward to tease the little bit of brown from the curls at Esther’s nape. That she had time to picnic and lounge about should please him, but had she really sat through dinner with a leaf in her hair?

The instant Percival’s fingers were free of her hair, she moved away. “How was Squire Arbuthnot?”

A year ago, heavy with child, she would have moved into her husband’s touch.

“Rather the worse for drink, as usual, but the man can ride better drunk than I can sober. And he understands drainage, whether we’re talking about the contents of the wine cellar or boggy terrain.” Boggy, stinky, insect-laden, unplowable, useless land, such as graced too many acres of Moreland property. “I was damned lucky Comet didn’t come a cropper.”

His lady wife was already in a nightgown and robe, depriving him of the pleasure of undressing her. Something about her posture suggested that Percival—a man with five years of marital reconnaissance under his belt—had best wrestle off his own boots.

Esther sat at her vanity and pulled pins from the coronet of braids encircling her head. “Did you come to any conclusions in your time with Arbuthnot?”

“I concluded His Grace has spent many years establishing a presence at court, and more years railing against the buffoonery of the Whigs, but he has neglected his acres.” Which surely counted as a greater offense than being comely and having all one’s teeth. “Putting things to rights here will take years.”

Esther rose from her vanity and approached him. He could see she was tired, see it in the shadows beneath her green eyes, in the tightness around her mouth. Even so, his body warmed and his heart sped up in anticipation of her touch. Was not the uxoral embrace a married man’s greatest comfort at the end of a wearying day?

Her fingers went to his cravat. “Have we coin to put things to rights?”

Percival lifted his chin, while in his breeches, something else did not lift at all. “Coin is not a cheering topic, Esther. After dinner, I tried to bring up the need for improvements on the home farm and the tenant farms. Peter stared at his cards as if whist were some arcane Eastern invention. Tony took up a post by the sideboard, and His Grace started lecturing me on my shortcomings.”

Though that lecture hadn’t been half so objectionable as a single remark earlier in the week regarding a dead wife.

“Shall I approach His Grace?” Esther asked. She drew Percival’s cravat from around his neck, draped it over his shoulder, and started on his shirt buttons.

She sounded quite serious. “You?”

“We are operating on the same allowance you were allotted upon our marriage, Husband, and yet we are also now blessed with four children.”

Children did not eat much. Their clothes were small and passed down from one to another, and the boys were too young to need tutors. Still, there were aspects of raising a family that loomed as terra incognita to Percival, and his wife was tired. He took Esther’s hands in his, finding her fingers cool. “Esther, have you need of more coin?”

As he asked the question, he realized she was wearing a robe she’d had when they’d wed, more than five years previously. Then it had been a rich emerald velvet, now the elbows had gone shiny with wear.

“I have no need of coin beyond the pin money established in my settlements, but two nursery maids for four little boys is rather a strain.”

A strain. He dimly perceived she might be telling him that strain devolved to her, and his father’s crude barb came back to him. Because the topic was difficult, Percival took his wife in his arms, the better to read her reactions.

“What sort of strain?” Esther bore the scent of roses—she’d always borne the scent of roses—and that alone made some of his fatigue fall away.

“Valentine does not yet sleep through the night. Victor is also prone to wakefulness. Somebody is always cutting a new tooth or scraping an elbow. Winter is coming, and with it, illness is a given. Boys destroy clothes hourly—this is their God-given right, of course—and the house staff cannot be bothered sewing clothes for the children of a younger son. Boys also need toys, books, games, things to edify and distract. They need linens—Victor abhors sleeping in a crib when Bart and Gayle have their own beds, but I haven’t the nerve to ask for another bedroom for Bart and Gayle. Bart wants a pony, but you well know what it will mean if you procure one for him.”

She paused. He kissed her cheek. Perhaps her monthly approached, though it had been a rare visitor in their marriage. “Bart will share with his brothers?”

“He will not share, meaning Gayle must have a pony too, and somebody must teach the children to ride. Each boy must have proper attire, we must have pony saddles made or purchased, a groom must be detailed to care for their mounts and ride out with them, and there is no money for any of it.”

Must, must, must. He knew better. He knew better than to launch into an explanation of how to solve those petty annoyances that loomed so large in her weary mind, and yet, he spoke anyway.

“I spent several years in His Majesty’s cavalry. I can teach the boys to ride, I can instruct them on grooming, saddling up, and so forth. I’ll speak to the housekeeper about making a room available for Bart and Gayle. We’ve space enough.” Endless leaking corridors of space, in fact.

Esther dropped her forehead to his shoulder. This was not a gesture of relief or thanks. In fact, it dawned on Percival that she was standing in his embrace, meek and obliging, but her arms were not around her husband. They remained at her sides.

“You can speak to the housekeeper all you like, Percival. Nothing will change.”

A frisson of alarm snaked down from Percival’s throat to his vitals. The resignation in his wife’s tone was complete. She’d given up on this issue, and Esther Himmelfarb Windham was not a woman to give up, ever.

“Why does nothing change? Does she expect the boys to be crammed four to a room until they’re off to university?”

He hadn’t meant to speak sharply, God help him. He’d meant to tease.

Esther moved off, toward the enormous bed in which they’d made four noisy, boisterous children. Well, three—Bart’s conception had been a rustic antenuptial interlude that would forever give Percival pleasant associations with alfresco meals.

“The housekeeper took orders only from Her Grace. For the past year, Mrs. Helstead has maintained that she’ll answer only to His Grace or Almighty God. Lady Arabella is the logical intercessor, but Peter’s wife is too preoccupied with her own concerns to intervene, and I haven’t wanted to trouble His Grace without your permission.”

Percival shrugged out of his shirt and shucked his breeches. On the bed, his darling wife wasn’t even watching, which was fortunate, because nothing noteworthy had been revealed.

Surely, her monthly was looming. Had to be, though he would not dare ask her.

“Speak to His Grace, Wife. He dotes on the boys.” And who wouldn’t? A more charming, dear band of rapscallions had never graced any man’s nursery.

On the bed, Esther heaved up a sigh like a dying queen reclining on her funeral barge. He hated this, hated decoding every nod and nuance. “What?”

“I will speak to His Grace, but he will forget, Percival. He will agree to see to the matter, and then lose sight of it all together.” The bed creaked on its ropes as she sat up and punched the pillows into her preferred contour. “He’s failing. His energy, his memory, his will. When Her Grace died, she took a part of him with her, maybe the best part.”

And what was that supposed to mean?

Percival tended to his ablutions, torn between the impulse to state his own list of woes and worries, and the desire to kiss his wife’s miseries into oblivion.

Though where would that lead? They’d never resumed relations after a birth without Esther finding herself again in an interesting condition within a few months. At least one thing was clear: if he wanted to keep a mistress—and he was not at all sure that course held appeal—he’d have to find a way to scare up more coin first.

From the bed, Esther’s voice was a sleepy murmur. “The boys said to tell you they missed you.”

Why would his sons miss him? He stopped by the nursery every morning before he rode out. There, he listened to Bart and Gayle’s mighty plans for the day, dandled Victor for long enough to make the boy giggle and laugh, and cuddled Valentine for at least a moment—providing the dear little fellow was not in need of a change of nappies.

Sometimes, Percival even stayed for a few moments because… just because.

“Do you know whom I missed today, madam?” He tossed the flannel in the general direction of the privacy screen and climbed onto the bed naked. “I missed my wife.”

She was on her side, facing away, so he couldn’t measure her reaction to this announcement.

“I missed the mother of my children, and I missed the boys too. What say we plan a picnic before the weather turns up nasty again? This mild spell cannot last. We’ll bury a few Vikings at sea—”

He stopped mid-crawl toward his wife and subsided against the mattress.

Bloody, bedamned hell. Today was Thursday. Thursday was their day to spend time with the children en famille, though lately Percival had been absent at those gatherings more than he’d attended them. The dead leaf in Esther’s hair took on particular significance.

“Esther? I’m sorry. I hadn’t meant to dine with Arbuthnot, but the man is a font of information, and if I can get the high meadow drained, it’s excellent pasture. We need more pasture… I am sorry, though. I’ll tell the boys tomorrow morning.”

He rolled over and slipped an arm around her waist. Was she losing flesh, or had he just forgotten what she felt like when she wasn’t carrying?

“Esther?”

She twitched. In sleep, his composed, poised wife twitched a fair amount. She also sometimes talked in her sleep, little nonsense phrases that always made him smile. He kissed her cheek and rolled onto his back.

“I miss my wife.” Lying naked in the same bed with her, Percival missed his wife with an ache that was only partly sexual.

He considered pleasuring himself and discarded the notion. The flesh was willing—the flesh was perpetually willing—but the spirit was weary and bewildered. He’d blundered today, as a husband and a father. He’d blundered as a son, too, in his father’s estimation, and very likely he was blundering as a brother in some manner he’d yet to perceive.

Beside him, Esther’s feet twitched. She’d told him once she often dreamed of their courtship, a brief, passionate, fraught undertaking that now seemed as distant as Canada.

Percival rolled away from his wife and let her dream in peace.

***

Esther felt a wall rising in the middle of the Windham family, for all they appeared to be placidly consuming a hearty English breakfast.

His Grace commandeered the head of the table, of course. Esther tried to picture quiet, soft-spoken Peter in that location and couldn’t. Opposite His Grace, at the foot, the chair remained empty, though as the senior lady of rank and next duchess, the position belonged to Peter’s wife, Lady Arabella.

Peter sat at his father’s right hand, Arabella next to her husband, and Esther below Arabella. Across the table, Percival hid behind a newspaper on the duke’s left, Tony inhaled beefsteak and kippers next to his brother, and across from Esther, Tony’s wife, Gladys, took dainty nibbles of her eggs.

Had Esther wanted to, there was no way she could have nudged her husband’s foot under the table, casually touched his hand, or murmured an aside to him. When had they decided to sit as far apart from each other as possible? When had she decided to sit on the side of the invalided heir?

“You’ll be going up to London, Pembroke.” His Grace glowered at a buttered toast point while the rest of the table exchanged glances at this news. “I’ve been asked to sit on a commission to study the provisioning of the army overseas. Damned lot of nonsense, but one doesn’t refuse such a request.”

He bit off a corner of the toast while a pained silence spread. Peter hadn’t been off the property even to go to services for at least two years. A trip to the stables left him exhausted, and if he missed an afternoon nap, he had to absent himself from dinner.

Esther lifted the teapot. “More tea, Your Grace?”

“I don’t want any damned tea. If you bothered to familiarize yourself with the indignities of old age, you’d never offer such a thing.”

Gladys shot Esther a sympathetic look. Percival slowly, deliberately, folded his newspaper down and stared at his father.

Please, Percival, I beg you do not—

“I’ll thank you not to rebuke my lady wife for a proper display of table manners, sir.”

Lady Arabella laid her hand on Peter’s sleeve; Tony paused in the demolition of his breakfast.

“Perhaps I might serve on this committee?” Tony suggested. “Been to Canada, after all, and it’s not as if I’m needed here.”

“You?” Tony might have been old Thomas the footman for all the incredulity in the Duke’s tone. “It’s time you took a damned wife and stopped frolicking about under every skirt to catch your eye.”

This time the sympathetic look went from Esther to Gladys.

“Tony and I will both go,” Percival said, passing his newspaper to Peter and rising. “Scout the terrain, get a sense of what’s afoot. Pembroke can come up to Town when the decisions are to be made, and of course, we’ll keep you informed, Your Grace. Ladies, I bid you good day. I’m off to wish my offspring a pleasant morning.”

For just a moment, bewilderment clouded the duke’s faded blue eyes. Before anyone else could speak, though, he rallied. “Daily reports, if you please, and don’t stint on the details. I know not which is worse: the Whigs, the colonials, Wales’s ridiculous flights, or the dear king’s poor health. Madam”—he turned his glower on Esther—“you will stop hoarding that teapot. A man needs to wash down his breakfast, such as it is.”

Esther passed the teapot to Arabella, and nobody looked at anybody. The king had recovered from his difficult spell more than a year ago, while Esther feared the duke’s was only beginning.

Percival squeezed his father’s shoulder. “We’ll keep you informed regarding all of it.” He bowed and withdrew, while Esther tried to puzzle out what expression had been on her husband’s face during that last exchange.

Compassion for the old duke, whose confusion was becoming daily more evident, had been the predominant sentiment. Percival was pragmatic, also capable of clear-eyed understanding. That he neither judged his father nor ridiculed him warmed Esther’s heart.

Good sons turned into good fathers.

Another emotion had lurked behind the compassion, though. Esther pushed her eggs around rather than watch as Tony tucked into yet another portion of rare steak.

Percival had been relieved at the prospect of leaving Kent and biding in London with his brother over the coming winter. Esther was not relieved, not relieved at all to think of her husband decamping for the vice and venery of the capital, while she remained behind to deal with teething babies and ailing lords.