The Duke and His Duchess

Two




“Why is it,” Percival asked his five-year-old son, “every woman I behold these days seems exhausted?”

Bart grinned up at his father and capered away. “Because they have to chase me!”

For a ducal heir, that answer would serve nicely for at least the next thirty years. Percival caught the nursery maid’s eye. “Go have a cup of tea, miss. I’ll tarry a moment here.”

She bobbed her thanks, paused in the next room to speak with the nurse supervising the babies, and closed the nursery-suite door with a soft click of the latch. Percival did likewise with the door dividing the playroom from the babies’ room, wanting privacy with his older sons and some defense against the olfactory assault of Valentine’s predictably dirty nappies.

“I swear that child should be turned loose on any colonial upstarts. He’d soon put them to rout.”

Gayle glanced up from the rug. “He’s a baby, Papa. Nobody is scared of him.”

“Such a literalist. Some day you’ll learn about infantile tyrants. What are you reading?”

Gayle, being a man of few words, held up a book. Bart, by contrast, was garrulous enough for two boys.

“Shall I read to you?”

Bart came thundering back. “Read to me too!”

Percival glanced out the window. The morning was yet another late reprise of the mildness of summer, but to the south, in the direction of the Channel, a bank of thick, gray clouds was piling up on the horizon.

“I have to ride into the village today and meet with the aldermen, then stop by the vicarage and be regaled about the sorry state of the roof over the choir. When that task is complete, I’m expected to call on Rothgreb and catch him up on the Town gossip, which will be interesting, because I haven’t any. My afternoon will commence with an inspection of—”

Two little faces regarded him with impatient consternation.

“Right.” Percival folded himself down onto the rug, crossed his legs, and tucked a child close on each side. “First things first.”

He embarked on a tale about a princess—didn’t all fairy tales involve princesses?—and the brave hero who had to do great deeds to win her hand.

“Except,” Percival summarized, “the blighted woman fell into an enchanted sleep.”

“Then what happened?” Bart asked, budging closer.

“He…” According to the story, the fellow swived her silly—“got her with child,” rather—which was what any brave hero would do after a rousing adventure. “He kissed her.”

“Mama fell asleep.”

That from Gayle, who wasn’t the budging sort. The little fellow’s brows were drawn down, the same sign his mother evidenced when she was anxious.

“Keeping up with you lot would have anybody stealing naps,” Percival said.

“Not a nap.” Gayle sprang to his feet and went to the middle of the carpet like an actor assuming center stage. “She faded.”

He collapsed to the rug with a dramatic thump, lying unmoving, with his eyes closed for a few instants before scrambling to his feet. “Old Thomas says the ladies do that when they’re breeding. Bart wondered if we should bury her at sea.”

“I did not. I said if she died, then we should bury her. She wasn’t dead. She woke right up.”

Gayle put his hands on his skinny hips. “You did too, and then she took a nap right there on the ship.”

The ship being the picnic blanket, Percival supposed. “You saw her fall like that, both of you?”

Two solemn nods, which suggested this development was of more import to them than their inchoate argument. Percival set the book aside and held out one arm to Gayle while wrapping the other around Bart.

“Old Thomas is right.” He tucked both boys close, as much for his own comfort as theirs. “Ladies sometimes fall asleep like that when they’re peckish or their stays are too snug or they’re breeding.” Though Esther wore jumps, not stays, and never laced them too tightly.

“Mama breeds a lot,” Bart observed.

“Your mother has fulfilled her obligation to the succession admirably.”

“That means she does,” Gayle translated. “She napped a lot too, when I wanted to fly my birds.”

“Your birds are stupid,” Bart observed.

Percival squeezed the ducal heir tightly and kissed the top of his head. “Rotten boy. Your little brothers will gang up on you if you keep that up. They’ll leave Valentine’s nappies under your bed.”

Gayle smiled a diabolically innocent smile at this suggestion.

“Your mother likely needed to catch up on her rest, and she knew you two could be counted on to protect her while she did. I’m sorry I wasn’t there to join you.”

And he was sorrier still that by this time next week, he’d likely be in London, miles and miles away from his children, unless…

“Percival?”

Esther stood in the doorway, tall, slim, and elegant in a chemise gown of soft green and gold. The morning sun gave her a luminous quality, and with her standing above them, Percival was reminded that his wife was a beautiful woman.

Also quite pale.

“You’ve caught me out. I chased off the nursery maid to cadge a few moments with my first and second lieutenants. Won’t you join us?”

Bart scooted free, and Gayle followed suit. “Good morning, Mama!” They pelted up to her, each boy taking her by the hand, Gayle waiting silently while Bart chattered on. “Papa was reading us a story, but he didn’t finish. He said we can shoot down Gayle’s stupid birds on our next outing.”

When Percival expected Gayle to enter the verbal melee with a ferocious contradiction, Gayle’s gaze strayed to the door, behind which baby Valentine, King of the Dirty Nappies, held court.

Esther moved into the room, a boy on each side. “I’m sure your father said no such thing. I thought we might work on drawing tigers this morning though, and tigers might try to catch the birds as they flew away.”

“Tigers!”

Why did Bart shout everything, and why did nobody correct him for it?

Percival unfolded himself from the floor. “You’d make a very poor tiger indeed if you can’t be any quieter than that. Why don’t you creep down to the library and have a footman fetch you some paper?”

More paper in addition to whatever they’d wasted making Gayle’s birds. No wonder coin was in such short supply.

The boys crept away, growling and swiping their paws in the air, leaving Percival alone in daylight hours with his wife. His tired, lovely wife who had fainted the previous day and not told him about it. He slid his arms around her and drew her against his body.

He would not be a clodpate like he’d been the previous night.

He would ask her about her health. He would ask her how she felt about him going to London. He would compliment her on their children—a surefire strategy for happy marital relations.

The scent of roses came to him as she relaxed against him. “Madam, we can lock that door, you know.”

She pushed away, smiling. “Only to scandalize all and sundry when the boys start pounding on the other side.”

The interlude was unexpected, and Percival was glad for it. They so rarely had privacy when they weren’t both tired and full of the tensions and trials of the day. “Will you sit with me for a bit, Wife?”

She gave him a curious look and let him lead her to the table near the window.

Which would not do. He changed course and took a seat in the largest reading chair the nursery had to offer, which was quite large indeed.

He gave a tug on her wrist, and she tumbled into his lap. “Percival!”

“Hush, madam. You and I have cuddled up in this chair when you were magnificently gravid. We fit nicely now.”

She harrumphed and gracious God-ed once or twice under her breath, then settled easily enough.

“How are you, wife of mine? And I did not suggest Bart could stone Gayle’s paper birds.”

She relaxed against him. When had his wife gotten so lithe? So… skinny?

A practical, unappealing thought came to him: in London, a man did not have to pay for a mistress. Court was a very proper place, true, but outside of court, merry widows and straying wives were thick in the corridors. The idea of stepping into a dark alcove with some peer’s well-fed, deep-bosomed spouse—all painted and powdered the better to display her wares—was vaguely nauseating.

Though Esther had fainted. A considerate husband did not overly tax his wife.

Said wife snuggled closer on a soft rustle of fabric. “Boys are bloodthirsty, especially in company with one another. You were kind to offer to go to London. How long do you think you’ll be gone?”

Too long. Holding her like this, the quiet morning sunshine firing all the red and gold highlights in her hair, Percival felt two emotions well up and twine together.

He kissed her brow, yielding first to the tenderness assailing him so unexpectedly. “I don’t know how long I’ll be away. There’s always warfare in some corner of the realm. We leave the Americans to their wilderness only to find some raja has taken the Crown into dislike. Colonials don’t fight fair. Our boys line up in neat rows, muskets at the ready, while the natives fire at them from up in the trees or while dodging about in the underbrush. The wilderness ensures only the conniving and determined survive, and the colonials have been breeding those qualities for centuries.”

She tucked herself against his chest. “If I haven’t said it before, Percival, I’m saying it now: I am glad you resigned your commission. England expects much of her military, and I would not know how to go on were you lost to me.”

The tenderness expanded as she lay against him, soft, pretty, rose-scented, and dear. He posed the next question quietly. “Esther, are you carrying again?”

Because if she were, it might explain the despair trying to choke its way past the tenderness.

“Thomas tattled on me?”

That was not a no. Percival closed his eyes and prayed. Not a prayer for wisdom or for guidance or for strength to know how to stretch their coin yet further, not even a prayer for strength to endure.

He sent up a prayer for his wife.

***

How long had it been since Esther had enjoyed her husband’s embrace? Between the baby being not quite weaned, the older boys climbing all over her, and Victor grabbing at her hands and skirts, Esther often felt her only privacy was in the bath, and then only if her husband did not walk into the room and offer his dear and dubious brand of “assistance.”

Something he hadn’t done in… quite some time.

And yet, Percival still wore the sandalwood scent he’d used when they courted, and she still loved it. She still loved how his hands felt caressing her back in slow, smooth sweeps, still loved that he could tease about locked doors and broad daylight.

Loved him.

The realization brought relief, because it was also true she didn’t always like the man she’d married, and often didn’t agree with him.

“I don’t know if I’m carrying. My monthly is not regular.” Hadn’t been regular since she’d started keeping company with her husband. Percival shifted beneath her while Esther tried to recall if they’d even had relations since last she’d bled.

His hand on her back went still. “Ah.”

What did that mean? Ah?

“Do you want more children, Percival?” In the name of marital diplomacy and not shouting at Percival when anyone could hear, she refrained from bellowing: You can’t possibly want more children, can you, Percival? Not so soon…

He was silent for a moment while his fingers resumed tracing the bumps of her spine. Esther strongly suspected he wanted some daughters. Once upon a time, they had both foolishly admitted to wanting a large family, equal cohorts of sons and daughters.

“I want my wife to be healthy and happy more than I want anything in the world.”

He sounded like he meant it, also like he only realized he meant it as the words left his lips.

“I’m in good health. I’m just… tired.”

“Tired to the point of fainting, Esther?” He kissed her brow again, something he did with breathtaking tenderness.

“Thomas should be pensioned. I swore him to secrecy, and I was light-headed only because I stood up too fast.”

When she had been pregnant, she’d expected the occasional swoon, though none had befallen her. Ladies in the country, particularly women with a baby at the breast, wore front-lacing corsets without stiff reinforcement and were thus able to breathe easily.

Esther closed her eyes and let herself enjoy the languor her husband was weaving right there in the nursery.

“Come to London with me, Esther.”

In his way, that was a question, an invitation phrased as an order. Put like that, the idea of leaving Morelands, with its confused duke, its ailing heir, and its upset household staff held a wistful sort of appeal.

“I’m still nursing Valentine every evening. He won’t settle without it.” And sometimes, the little mite woke up fretful in the night, and Esther indulged him again because nothing else consoled him. The man who snored the night away beside her might have known this. He might also have known that most midwives swore breastfeeding made it harder to conceive babies in close succession.

Percival was quiet in the manner that told Esther he was strategizing, weighing alternatives, considering angles. The military had lost a great general-in-the-making when Percival had sold his commission. Esther felt not the least twinge of guilt over their loss.

“I would miss you, were you to remain here,” Percival said. This time he kissed her closed eyelids. “Keeping the army in decent boots and dry powder is important too. Lives depend on it.”

Despair tried to push aside the sense of sanctuary Esther felt in her husband’s arms. His Grace was failing, Peter’s health was precarious, and in London, Percival would be assailed by all those seeking to curry the favor of the Moreland heir, which he could well be in a very few years.

“I will miss you, but the children need me, Husband.” And her husband did not need her. Esther tucked closer rather than face the question of whether she needed him. “I never wanted to be a duchess.”

Bad enough she was Lady Esther.

“If God is merciful, we will dodge the title for many years, and Arabella is yet young enough she could have a son.”

Arabella hadn’t had intimate congress with Peter for years. To hear the lady tell it, her husband simply wasn’t up to the exertion. Despair tightened its hold when Esther recalled that London boasted women aplenty willing to grace her husband’s bed.

“I will miss you very much, Percival. Perhaps by the holidays I can wean Valentine, but to leave the children here, alone, in winter…”

“I know. A doughty old duke, a preoccupied, ineffectual heir, Arabella and Gladys absorbed with their daughters… I know.”

His understanding was something new. Esther cared neither from whence it sprang nor whether it grasped the particulars of her concern. The idea of contending here without him, each meal a battleground, each day a trial…

She did need him, and perhaps in every way that counted, she was losing him. The thought made her want to cling and beg and weep, none of which would contribute meaningfully to the instant discussion.

And then her husband said something that put the urge to weep in a different light, a light of intense relief.

“Come to London with me, Esther. Pack up the children, the nursery maids, the whole kit, and come with me. In London, we’ll have command of the entire house staff, none of this squabbling over whose job it is to fetch the coal to the nursery. His Grace won’t bark at you one moment and forget who you are the next.”

Five years ago, all Esther could see was that Percival Windham had been far above her touch, gorgeous, and possessed of blue eyes that seemed to understand much and give away little. She had adored him for his gallantry, charm, and forthright manner.

Over time, the forthright manner was proving his best quality, and Esther rose to the challenge before common sense could lodge a protest.

“I’ll need some time to pack.”

His hold on her became fierce. “I can give you three days, and then, by God, the lot of us are getting free of this place.”

The way he kissed her suggested prisoners of war had never looked forward to escape with as much desperation as her husband felt about this trip to Town. Esther was just deciding she had the energy to kiss him back with equal fervor when the door burst open and Bart declared, “We found the paper, and we’re ready to make tigers now!”

***

“Why doesn’t Gladys use a wet nurse?”

If Tony thought Percival’s question absurd, too personal, or indicative of premature dementia, he didn’t show it.

“No coin,” Tony replied. “A wet nurse is something of a luxury, and I’m the impecunious youngest son. Then too, Gladys says children get attached to their wet nurses, and my lady wife is very particular about who gets attached to whom.”

No coin, perhaps this, rather than the parenting biases of the mercantile class from which both Esther and Gladys sprang, was why Esther had also eschewed a wet nurse.

The horses walked along for another furlong before Percival comprehended that Tony was referring to his wife’s opinion on mistresses. In Canada, he and his brother had spent hours on horseback like this, tramping through wilderness as yet ungraced with roads. The distances rather forced a man to parse his companion’s silences.

“She told you as much, did she? No other attachments for you?”

Tony stared at his horse’s mane, which lay on the left side of its neck—an oddity, that. “She said in so many words that he who goes a-Maying will come home to find his wife has gone a-straying.”

“My sister-in-law is a poetess. What happened to your gray gelding?”

“Sold him. A man can ride only one horse at time.”

The poetess was married to a philosopher, and this jaunt to London was looking to be a very long, cold trip indeed.

Percival stretched up in his stirrups then settled back into the saddle. “At least the roads are frozen. God help us if it warms up this afternoon.”

“More likely to snow or sleet,” Tony said, gaze on the sky. “Even so…” He swiveled a glance over his shoulder at the traveling coaches lumbering along behind them.

“Even so, God have mercy on anybody trapped in a coach with my children,” Percival finished the thought. And then, because he had no one else with whom to discuss the situation, and because, for all his impecunious-younger-son blather, Tony had always kept his confidences, Percival added, “There’s something amiss with my wife.”

Tony darted a glance at his brother then fiddled with his reins. “Esther Windham would no more go a-straying—”

Percival cut that nonsense off with a glower. “Your defense of the lady’s honor does you credit, of course, but not everybody is preoccupied with straying, Anthony.” Intriguing topic though it might be. “Did you notice, when the coaches were being loaded, that Gladys had to direct the footmen and nursery maids and so forth?”

“Gladys likes to direct. It’s one of her most endearing features, and has many interesting applications. She frequently directs me to disrobe in the middle of the day, for example, and ever her servant, I, with an alacrity that would astound—”

“Must you sound so besotted? Gladys is remaining at Morelands and had no cause to be involved in the packing. A woman normally likes to take charge of her own effects.”

This silenced the besotted philosopher for nearly a quarter mile. “The Windham ladies are friends, I think. Being daughters-in-law to a difficult duchess did that for them, and Peter and Arabella were lonely before we sold our commissions.”

“Arabella, certainly.”

With Peter, it was harder to say, since he was frequently to be found in the intellectual company of that pontifical nincompoop, Marcus Aurelius, or others of his antique and gloomy ilk.

“What do you think is wrong with Esther, Perce? She seems hale enough to me, if a bit harried.”

That was some encouragement. Tony noticed more than most gave him credit for—or he had prior to his marriage.

“She fainted on her last outing with the boys, before the weather changed.”

“She’s breeding?”

Percival wanted to shout at his brother for leaping to the obvious conclusion. Wanted to knock him off his damned horse and pound him flat. “Possibly.”

“For God’s sake, Perce, use a damned sheath. Better some sheep give up its life than you overtax your wife. The succession is assured four times over, and Gladys and I may yet bring up the rear with a few sons of our own.”

“Sheaths can break.” Did break, with alarming frequency.

“Bloody bad luck. Condolences then, or congratulations. Both I suppose.” Tony was studying the road ahead with diplomatic intensity. “Maybe you’ll get a girl this time. Girls are”—his expression turned besotted, again—“they’re magical. I can’t describe what it’s like when a daughter smiles up at her papa or takes his hand to drag him across the nursery.”

Sweet suffering Christ.

“Esther claims she just stood up too quickly, but I asked Thomas about it. Damned old blighter had to think first—said he was sworn to secrecy and would not betray her ladyship’s confidences.”

Comet made a casual attempt to nip Tony’s gelding, proof positive nobody was enjoying this journey.

Tony nudged his horse up onto the verge beside the wagon rut. “Good man, Thomas. When nobody else can reason with His Grace, Thomas can talk sense to him. Calls him Georgie, like they were mates.”

Anthony seemed intent on providing one irritating rejoinder after another. Percival forged onward despite his brother’s unhelpfulness.

“I told Thomas I knew Esther had fainted, and wanted him to confirm particulars only. It was a protracted exercise in yes-or-no questions. I swear I’m going to pension him come summer.”

“You’re not going to pension anybody, and neither is Peter. His Grace has the staff’s complete loyalty, and well you know it.”

“Anthony Tertullian Morehouse Windham, I am well aware of the strictures upon our household.” The plaguey bastard smiled, and as much to knock him figuratively off his horse as anything else, Percival got to the heart of the matter. “My wife lied to me.”

Tony grimaced. “Not good when the ladies dissemble, though in a small matter one can overlook it.”

He was asking, delicately, if the matter had been small.

“She said she’d fainted because she stood up too quickly. Thomas had it that she’d stumbled twice on the way to the stream and had been waiting for the footmen to spread the blanket—just standing there—when she collapsed.”

“That, Percy, is not good. Not the lying, not the collapsing, none of it. What did you do to provoke her into keeping such a thing from you? Are you having a spat, because if so, the best way to get past it is behind a closed door, fresh linens on the bed, and not a stitch of clothing between you.”

Just as Percival would have spurred his horse to the canter in lieu of backhanding his brother, a coaching inn came into view.

Of course, they would have to stop. The coachy would want to water the horses and give them a chance to blow, the footmen would cadge a pint, the nursery maids would need the foot-bricks reheated, and the older children would need a trip to the jakes.

And Esther… Esther who’d been trapped in the coach all morning with their children? Percival turned his horse for the coaching yard and wished to Almighty God he knew what his wife needed.

***

“Look! Look right there!”

Maggie’s head was forcibly shifted between her mother’s hands, so she had to stare out the window of the coach.

“That’s him! I knew it! That’s your father, Magdalene! He’s very handsome, isn’t he?”

“Yes, Mama.” Even at five years old, Maggie knew not to disagree with Mama. This so-called papa was all wrong though. He looked more serious than handsome. His horse was brown, not white. And he wasn’t wearing a handsome wig like Mama’s gentlemen friends did. Most telling of all, this papa fellow completely ignored his daughter when she was sitting in a closed carriage not ten yards away.

Her papa, her real papa, would never ignore her like this. He’d smile at her and have treats in his pocket for her and buy her a pony. He’d read stories to her and tell her she was pretty. He would not let Mama slap her so much—Mama was a great one for slapping. Mama slapped the maids, the potboy, her little dog.

Slapping wasn’t so bad, not as bad as the yelling and breaking things, and the weeping that happened when Mama had a row with a gentleman friend.

A little part of Maggie wished the fellow on the wrong-colored horse was her papa—provided he didn’t like slapping. Miss Anglethorpe said there were men who didn’t.

Maggie knew there were also men who did.

This man must have caught sight of Maggie gaping at him from the carriage window, because he paused in the middle of his conversation with some other gentleman on horseback, raised his hat to Maggie, and winked at her.

At her.

Maggie’s knuckles went to her mouth in astonishment. She’d raised her hand to wave at him, when her mother yanked her away from the window.

“He mustn’t see you—yet. Not until the moment is right. The situation requires delicate handling if Lord Percival is to do his duty by you.”

As the carriage rolled away, Maggie sat on her hand rather than reach out the window and wave to the man. When she got home, though, when Miss Anglethorpe had taken her medicine and gone to sleep, and Mama was off with the gentlemen, Maggie would creep from her bed to the mirror in the hall.

She was going to learn to wink. She would practice until she got it right.

Just like her… like that man.

***

“Please, let this child fall into a peaceful slumber and wake up healthy and happy in the morning.”

Esther murmured her prayer quietly, because Valentine was not yet truly fussing. He was whimpering and fretting, sufficiently displeased with the remove to Town to be waking several times a night. The ties on Esther’s nightgown gave easily, and she put the child to her breast without having to think about it.

He latched on with the desperate purpose of a hungry infant, while Esther closed her eyes and wondered why even this—a mother’s most fundamental nurturing of her baby—should provoke a sensation of despair so intense as to be physical.

While Valentine slurped and nursed, Esther examined the feeling suffusing her body. Despair was the prominent note, followed up by… desolation. A sense of being utterly isolated, though she was intimately connected to another human being.

“Esther?”

How long had Percival been standing in the shadows just inside the playroom door?

“You’re home early.”

She wasn’t accusing him of anything—though it might have sounded like it.

“Wales overimbibed, and the footmen took him to his chambers, so the rest of us were free to leave.” Percival crossed the room and threw himself into the other chair. He drew off his wig in a gesture redolent of weariness, and hung the thing over the top of the hearth stand like a dead pelt. “Have I mentioned lately that I hate court?”

He hated the pomp and powder, which was not the same thing.

“You enjoy the politics.”

He also enjoyed watching Esther nurse their children. She’d thought that endearing, once upon a time.

Valentine having finished with the first breast, Esther put him to the second. Before she could tend to her clothes, Percival leaned over and twitched her shawl higher on her shoulders, covering up her damp nipple. He excelled at such casual intimacies, thought nothing of them, in fact. He touched her as if she thought nothing of them either.

Esther allowed it, though all that despair and desolation had been crowded back by a healthy tot of resentment borne on a rising tide of fatigue and a strong undercurrent of anger.

“I do enjoy politics,” he said, sitting back and stretching out his legs toward the fire. “I’ve been approached about running for a seat in the Commons.”

“I suppose that makes sense.” Belatedly, Esther realized Percival was asking her opinion. She mustered her focus to consider the matter, despite her bad mood, because he was her husband, and he was a good husband. “We would have to be in Town more, and the stewards and tenants are looking to you for direction at Morelands.”

“Yes.”

He stared at the fire, which meant Esther had time to study him.

He looked… not old exactly, but mature. The last vestiges of the handsome young officer had been displaced by a gravity that wasn’t at all unattractive. He was barely thirty, though she’d found a gray hair on him their first morning in Town.

She had said nothing about that.

“What are you thinking, Percival? Valentine and I will keep your confidences.”

His smile was a mere sketch of what he was capable of when intent upon charming, but it had been real. “We would have to entertain. You would have to go out and about. Tony can take on the duties at Morelands—he’s better suited to cajolery and flattery than I’ll ever be—and it isn’t as if the succession has been neglected.”

At that last observation, Percival ran a finger over Valentine’s cheek. The child released the breast on a sigh of great proportions for such a small fellow.

“He’s done carousing,” Percival said, reaching for the baby. “Ready to sleep off a surfeit of motherly love.”

Esther let him have the baby and was grateful for the assistance. Percival—veteran of many postprandial interludes with his sons—put a handkerchief on his shoulder, tucked Valentine against his chest, and patted the small back gently.

“You’re not enjoying this remove to Town, are you, Esther?”

The question was unexpected, awkward, and brave. “The children are not settling in well. Babies like their routine, and Bart and Gayle were used to rambling in any direction at Morelands. Here, we must arrange outings to the park. Then too, the servants haven’t sorted themselves out yet.”

Percival sighed, sounding much like his young son, but nowhere near as content. “I suppose it’s human nature for them to feud. I wasn’t asking about the children or the servants, though. I was asking you, Esther. You’re not happy here.”

With the part of her that loved him, Esther knew he wasn’t accusing her of anything. “I wasn’t happy at Morelands.”

For a long moment, the only sound was the hissing and popping of the fire. Percival had ordered that wood be burned in the nursery, claiming it was healthier for small lungs than the constant stink of coal smoke.

Valentine burped. A single, stentorian eruction followed by another contented-baby sigh.

“Your son enjoys healthy digestion, madam.” She expected Percival to hand the baby back to her, but he kept the child tucked against his shoulder. “And as to that, I don’t see how you could have been happy at Morelands. I doubt if anybody is happy at Morelands, save the livestock and the pantry mouser.”

Percival had not been happy at Morelands. The realization struck Esther along with a pang of guilt. She was tired, lonely, and out of sorts, and her husband—in the same sorry condition himself—was offering her understanding. When he could have fallen exhausted into bed, he’d sought her out and extended this marital olive branch.

Another silence ensued, this one more thoughtful.

“We should go to bed, Percival. You don’t often get in at a decent hour, and you need your rest too.”

She was dodging behind the mundane realities, but her husband did not accommodate her.

“Esther, I am worried about you. Organizing this trip seems to have overtaxed you, and you fainted again yesterday morning. A moment earlier, and you would have fallen to this very carpet here with Valentine in your arms.”

Esther closed her eyes against this unforeseen assault. She knew how to handle blustering and shouting. Percival’s rages against this or that governmental excess or insult to the Crown were mere display, and his frustrations at Morelands resolved themselves with regular applications of hard work.

But this… concern devastated her. “You must not trifle over female vapors. I will recover my strength directly. If you want to stand for a seat, we can entertain, attend all the necessary functions, and flit about Town from now until Michaelmas.”

Percival rose and crossed into the next room, Valentine in his arms. When he returned to the playroom, having cleared the field of noncombatants, he resumed his seat and advanced his forces again.

“I think you should consult a midwife, Esther, if not a physician.”

She did not want a doctor or a midwife. She did not even want a nap. What Esther wanted, just then, was her husband’s embrace. The impulse was surprising, but it did not fade as it ought. “I am not sickening, Percival, and as far as I know, I am not carrying.”

He should know that too. They slept together and shared a bedroom. Some husbands might not notice a wife’s bodily cycles, but Percival was in nowise some husbands. Reconnaissance came to him as easily as command.

“You’ll think about it? A little bleeding can rebalance the humors.”

He wasn’t wrong, and yet Esther had parted with enough blood in her various lying-ins to feel rather possessive about the quantity yet flowing in her veins. “I’ll think about it.”

“That’s all I ask.”

And then, just when she thought the skirmish had played itself out, he took her prisoner. Scooped her up against his chest and carried her from the room, the spoils of an altercation Esther hadn’t seen coming and certainly hadn’t won.

***

An officer could raise his voice when the situation warranted, could swear a bloody streak, drink himself into oblivion, and order some miscreant flogged for serious transgressions.

A husband and father had no such outlets, not with children sleeping in the next room and a wife who looked so lovely and sad nursing her infant that Percival wanted to tear his hair in panic.

In his arms, Esther felt light as a wraith, and her very docility scared him worse than the French, the Indians, or the wild creatures of the Canadian forest ever had. She offered not even a “Percival Windham, put me down,” across the length of the entire house—and with such a precious burden, he did not hurry.

He deposited her beside their bed then divested her of her robe. “To bed, madam, and you will sleep in tomorrow. If you are fatigued, and you refuse to consult medical authority, then you will submit to my authority when I tell you to rest.”

His authority was nonexistent with her. He’d known that before they married and had delighted in her independence. A man in love was a fool.

While he tried to glower at her—please God, let his glowers be more effective with the children than they were with his wife—she met his gaze. He knew that look, knew that obdurate, mulish expression, and felt a predictable response to the challenge it portended. His blood quickened in anticipation of a great row—maybe their most rousing argument so far—when Esther slowly, deliberately, crossed her arms and inched her nightgown up over her head.

Sweet suffering Christ. Like a damned upstart colonial, she was launching a sneak attack.

“I’ve missed you, Percival. Perhaps you’d like to get into this bed with me.”

She flung the words at him like a gauntlet, an accusation of intentional neglect that was not at all fair. Then the infernal woman plastered herself—her entire naked, warm, lithe self—against him and took his mouth in a kiss.

“Esther…”

Holy God, she felt wonderful. His hand, sliding down the elegant turn of her flank, gloried in the absence of flannel and propriety. Could a man’s hands be hungry? For his surely were—for the feel of her, for the exact contours and shifts of her muscle and bone beneath his palms. Her nudity, so rare in recent months, topped any argument his reason might have put forth about their mutual need for rest, or a man not pestering his wife beyond the necessary.

This was necessary. It was necessary that Percival fling his clothes away between kisses; it was necessary that he heave his wife onto the bed like he hadn’t since the early weeks of their marriage. It was as necessary as his next breath that he climb over her and trap her body beneath his, the better to plunder her mouth with his own.

And then—because he was not just a husband and father, but also a man still in love, it was necessary that he try to exercise some damned restraint.

“I should find a sheath, Esther.” Though the sheaths were clear across the room, secreted somewhere in the wardrobe—halfway to Canada, according to the compass needle pointing directly at Percival’s wife.

She got her mouth on him again, sank her teeth into his jawbone, not enough to hurt, but enough to distract. “Sheaths break. Love me.” To emphasize her words, she traced his lower lip with her tongue, dipping inside his mouth then feinting back.

“Esther, I am concerned for—” Worried sick, he was. Somewhere beneath the tempest of passion she was evoking, he was worried for her, for their marriage, for his family. Nigh distraught with it.

His cock, however, was distraught in an entirely different and—just at that moment—more convincing manner.

“Love me.”

“I do. I do love you, dammit, but for the love of God, if you don’t stop—” He went on the offensive, covering her mouth with his own, trapping her hands beneath his against the pillow.

She went still, breasts heaving beneath him, a tease and retreat of puckered nipples against his chest. By the narrowing of her eyes, he realized she understood what even her breathing did to him.

“I love you,” he said again, more softly. A plea this time. “Let me love you.”

She closed her eyes, as much surrender as he would get from her in a duel he neither understood nor welcomed. When he kissed her cheek, the grip of her fingers in his shifted, became a joining of hands rather than a prelude to whatever sexual hostilities she had in mind when she’d challenged him with her nudity.

“I love you, Esther. I will always love you.”

How to love her was becoming both increasingly obscure and increasingly more important.

Joining with her, though, remained within his gift, thank God. For a small eternity, he kissed her. He reacquainted himself with the texture of each of her features, used his lips and his nose—Esther had once admitted to an affection for his nose—to map her face. He used the tip of his tongue to trace her lips, then paused to rest his chin, then his cheek, against her hair.

He loved her hair, loved the golden abundance of it spilling over her shoulders before she trussed it up in thick, shiny braids.

When she began small, restless movements of her hips, he settled between her legs and by lazy, comforting increments, threaded himself into her body.

How had he forgotten this? How had he lost the memory of that first, beautiful, soft sigh near his ear when he pushed himself inside her?

Before they’d found a rhythm, before he’d given her a hint of satisfaction, he damned near spent, so startling was the depth of pleasure he found in his wife’s body. She flung herself against his thrusts, strained against him, and made a solid bid to wrestle Percival’s control from his grasp. While Percival held the balance between a ferocious determination to please his wife and the equally ferocious effects of sexual deprivation, he dimly perceived that something besides desire had Esther in its grip.

The first shudder went through her; then she bucked against him, signaling that he could follow her into pleasure. He thrust hard, then harder as she clung and moaned, then harder still.

His last thought—a desperate flight of imagination surely—was that Esther’s passion was real, but as she shook and keened and beneath him, she was wrestling not only with desire but also with despair.