And here, he’d thought sending his regular compliments to the kitchen was simply good manners.
As the groom led the carriage horses away, the front door of the house swung open, revealing the butler, standing militarily straight in the foyer. Sherbourne considered carrying Charlotte over the threshold, then discarded that daft notion, but did set about removing her bonnet and cloak once he’d escorted her inside.
A husband performed those courtesies, and now Sherbourne understood why: They were an excuse to stand close to his wife and to touch her.
“I like hot food to come to the table hot,” Sherbourne said, untying Charlotte’s bonnet ribbons, “and Cook excels at that miracle. I like meat well cooked, but not burned, which she also invariably manages. I like good wine, which Crandall here has a knack for choosing.”
Crandall gave Charlotte’s bonnet a shake, sending water droplets all over the carpet. “My thanks, sir.”
Sherbourne passed the butler Charlotte’s cloak, and Charlotte began unbuttoning her husband’s greatcoat.
“I like some flowers on the table,” she said. “Nothing elaborate. One shouldn’t have to peer around a centerpiece as if one were wildlife in the hedge.”
She gave Sherbourne a shove. He turned and she slid the garment from his shoulders. Turnbull had done likewise numerous times—minus the shove—but the gesture had felt entirely different.
Charlotte handed the coat to Crandall, then took Sherbourne’s top hat.
“Rotten weather.” Sherbourne eyed himself in the mirror, and swiped at his hair to erase the creases left by his hat.
“Let me.” Charlotte ran her fingers through his hair, as Crandall took an inordinately long time to hang their outer apparel on the hooks opposite the porter’s nook.
Amusement and frustrated desire were an interesting combination. Sherbourne clasped his wife’s wrists. “That will be quite enough, madam.”
She merely wrapped herself about his arm again. “Did you know that the Windhams are great believers in naps in the middle of the day?”
“If you bestow any more such helpful insights regarding your family’s domestic habits, I will not survive until sundown.”
“Yes, you will.” Charlotte went up on her toes to kiss his cheek. “It’s tonight for which you must fortify yourself.”
And for the next forty-seven years. Sherbourne had always enjoyed a challenge. “Will you rest after lunch? I promised Jones I’d go back to the works. The old boy frets if I don’t spend at least half my day arguing with him.”
“Does he have an assistant?”
“He has boys to order about. They are less expensive than an assistant engineer.”
Why were there no fresh flowers at Sherbourne Hall? Autumn was advancing, but surely the conservatory had a few blooms yet.
“If Mr. Jones should go visit family,” Charlotte said, “or if he falls prey to another ague, who can find anything amid all the maps, papers, bills, and estimates littering that tent?”
An extraordinary thought assailed Sherbourne as he seated his wife at the table in the breakfast parlor: Charlotte would make an excellent assistant to Hannibal Jones. Her air of feminine authority would accomplish more than Sherbourne’s orders ever had.
But then, if Charlotte were on site at the works, Sherbourne would be distracted by his wife bustling about and smelling of flowers the livelong day.
“Prior to my London trip, I had a fair sense of where Jones had stacked which documents.” Sherbourne took his own seat and sent the footman at the sideboard a glance. “In my absence, Jones has become disorganized.” Or possibly a tornado had touched down inside the engineer’s tent.
The footman remained at his post, gloved hands folded, gaze straight ahead.
“We’ll start with the soup,” Charlotte said, offering the servant a smile. “A small portion for me, though I suspect Mr. Sherbourne is in good appetite.”
That salvo could not go unanswered. Sherbourne lifted his wife’s hand to his lips. “I’m famished.”
“Of course, ma’am.” The footman, Ninian Morgan by name, refused to meet Sherbourne’s gaze while the soup was served, but Sherbourne’s loyal servant was clearly amused.
Charlotte used their first proper meal as husband and wife to interrogate Sherbourne about the mine. When would it be operational? How much ore would it ship? What quality? How many men would be employed? Her appetite for information matched Sherbourne’s appreciation for the food on the table. She consumed facts and figures at a great rate, all the while asking how Sherbourne liked this dish or that cut of meat.
And to think he’d worried that they’d have nothing to talk about.
“Will you rest this afternoon?” he asked, as the plates were cleared. As soon as the question was out of his mouth, he realized he’d put it to her once before.
“Rest? From what?”
“From running all over the works with me this morning. Hiking to the summit, braving the elements.” Kissing me witless.
“This morning’s outing, while interesting and enjoyable, was hardly taxing. I have lists to make, and I might pay a call on my sister.”
Sherbourne rose to hold Charlotte’s chair, and debated whether to steal a kiss now that the room was free of servants. “Am I to accompany you on this call?”
“Asked the condemned man of his jailer? Do you truly dislike Haverford that much?”
“I resent him,” Sherbourne said. “He was born into wealth and consequence he did nothing to earn.”
Charlotte patted Sherbourne’s cheek. “So were you, so was I, which is why we must use our resources responsibly and not squander them on fleeting indulgences.”
Sherbourne stopped with her at the door to the corridor. “I’m not a damned duke, and if I have nineteen generations of sons, none of them will be dukes, either.”
“But the twenty-first might, Mr. Sherbourne, while if I have a thousand generations of daughters, none of them will ever be a duke. Women are half the population, but once we marry, we legally cease to exist, simply because we had the great misfortune to be born female. The highest ambition my daughters might have is to marry a duke and bear his children. Perhaps you’d like to trade places with me? I’m told childbirth is the most painful privilege known to…well, not man, because men never have to endure it.”
She blinked up at him, as if this were a serious debate.
“I will concede that I was born to significant privilege,” he said. “I also work my arse off.”
Charlotte withdrew the pin from Sherbourne’s cravat, rearranged the linen folds, and fastened them again. “Haverford spends his days lounging about on velvet pillows, then? I must take Elizabeth to task for allowing such sloth.”
Good God, she was dauntless. “Maybe that’s why I resent Haverford—because he’s so blasted saintly. Farmers name their children after him, old women gossip with him in the churchyard, and he actually listens to them.”
“Dastardly of him. What’s the real reason you and he don’t get on well?”
The morning spent hiking around the work site had left Sherbourne hungry. This exchange with Charlotte taxed him in a different sense. His wife made him think, and not about the expenses involved in establishing a working colliery.
“Haverford owed me a substantial sum.”
Charlotte made a “yes, yes, and?” motion with her hand. “Now he owes you much less.”
“Now he owes me nothing, because I forgave him the balance of the loan as a wedding present. Tore up the promissory notes and sent them to him with a signed release. For years, though, he took it upon himself to improve this tenant farm, or import that new strain of sheep. He employed half the valley in his great, crumbling castle, and he kept the shops in the village in custom feeding and clothing his army of servants.”