She became better acquainted with her husband’s person part by part. Large feet, the arches somewhat high, the second toe longer than the first. Two toes on the left foot were crooked, which Sherbourne explained as the result of having been stepped on by a fractious horse in his youth.
One ankle was larger than the other—a broken ankle having occurred when he’d been tripped at supper his first term at public school.
Sherbourne had muscular calves and thighs, though Charlotte had known that. His hands were in proportion to the rest of him and not the hands of a gentleman for all their elegance. Calluses covered his palms, suggesting he often indulged in manual labor.
Long arms, one of which had been broken in a schoolyard melee, broad shoulders, hair a bit in need of a trim at the back. Charlotte rinsed the soap from that hair.
“Shall I shave you?” Not that she’d ever shaved a man before.
“Perhaps in the morning.”
She took the tray—not a crumb of food left—and set it outside the door. While she relocked the door, Sherbourne lounged in the tub, one foot propped on the rim, the tankard of ale in his hand.
“You’re not to fall asleep, Mr. Sherbourne.”
He saluted with his ale. “Yes, ma’am. Why is your hair still up?”
Charlotte put a hand to her head. “I became distracted.” By a tired, naked husband. “I’ll see to it.”
Sherbourne rose and set his ale on the mantel, water cascading off of him. “If you’d pass me the linen, I’ll take down your hair when I’m dried off.”
Triton in all his glory was not as magnificent a specimen as Lucas Sherbourne fresh from his bath. But for the bruise on his hip, he was male perfection, and though he was standing naked right before Charlotte, he was also still tromping around his bedamned, blasted, dratted colliery.
Charlotte passed him the linen…slowly.
“Thank you, madam wife. It occurs to me that a mudslide is not much of an introduction to married life.” He scrubbed his face first, then his chest and arms, then dragged the towel over his hair. “In spring, we’ll nip off to Paris or Lisbon if the colliery is coming along. I owe you a wedding journey.”
Doubtless the colliery would not be coming along for years, and then there would be a new colliery, or a shipping venture, a canal, something. This realization was daunting, but then, Charlotte didn’t want a husband who idled away the day, or worse, lay about underfoot, expecting her to entertain him.
“I’ve never seen the Lakes,” she said. “If we traveled there instead, you could also visit various mining operations in the north and show me your hotel.”
Sherbourne paused, the towel bunched to his chest, his hair in damp disarray. His expression was intrigued and then guilty. “I owe you a wedding journey, and coal mines are hardly scenic.”
Much less romantic. “Mr. Sherbourne, don’t you think you owe me a wedding night before you make too many plans involving a wedding journey?”
He lowered the towel, obscuring any evidence of his interest in said wedding night. “I do owe you a wedding night. Have you any particular night in mind?”
“Tonight will do splendidly.”
Chapter Thirteen
Sherbourne pitched the damp towel onto the hamper and reached for the dressing gown his wife had spread over the fire screen. A new husband needed a few fig leaves when discussing his wedding night.
“I thought you might want to recover from last night’s exertions.” He’d also thought of every undemanding way he could make love with his wife, until his inattention had landed him arse-first in the mud.
Charlotte took a seat at her vanity. “I’m recovered.”
Well, I’m not. “Delighted to hear it.” Also relieved.
She made a lovely picture at the vanity, candle light reflected in the glass, her hair shimmering with garnet highlights. Her dressing gown was…actually, she was wearing one of Sherbourne’s dressing gowns.
He took the place behind her, resting his hands on her shoulders. “Is tonight your preference, Charlotte, or are you being accommodating?”
“I am seldom accommodating, Mr. Sherbourne, but I am married. To you. We could put off the consummation yet again, though I suspect mudslides of one sort or another will be frequent in this marriage. Tomorrow night is a possibility, but then Friday we have company. The house must be put in readiness for guests the following week, even if Brantford stays at Haverford Castle. Other predictable inconveniences will intrude as well.”
Sherbourne studied her coiffure which appeared to affix itself to her head by magic. Tentative exploration revealed a few nacre-tipped hairpins.
He eased them free one by one. “Haverford is a predictable inconvenience. I suppose we’ll have to call upon him and upon Radnor.”
He found more pins, and put each one in the tray on the vanity, twelve in all. Charlotte’s braid came down, a thick skein of russet and gold in the firelight.
“We will pay calls. That is not the predictable inconvenience to which I refer.”
He had her braid half-undone before he realized why the nape of her neck had turned pink. Awkwardness and tenderness assailed him, just as they had when Charlotte had become so upset on the lane.
Sherbourne wrapped his arms around her shoulders. “Is it much of a bother? I haven’t any sisters, and one doesn’t ask one’s mother. What the university boys had to say on the subject was ridiculous.”
Charlotte’s cheek against his arm was hot. “Must we discuss this?”
He straightened and went back to undoing her hair. “You could leave me to guess. Does her back pain her? Does her womb trouble her at such a time? Should I sleep elsewhere? Should I order her a pot of some concoction from the herbal? Shall I bide in a tent at the works for the next week? Shall I rub her back?”
He demonstrated, pressing firmly low on Charlotte’s back, and she made a sound much like a tired hound settling to a cozy rug before a blazing hearth.
“I become easily annoyed,” she said. “Just before. Prone to displays of temper and sentiment. That feels good.”
Twenty-four hours ago, Sherbourne had been ready to make love with his new wife as enthusiastically as a considerate husband could. Then a hundred tons of mud had intruded into his plans, toppling his carefully balanced budget and putting an element of risk into his future that left him uneasy.
Marrying Charlotte Windham was to have been a prudent, even shrewd, business decision. Day by day, she was less a matter of business, and more a person who dragged, lectured, and surprised Sherbourne into emotions that hadn’t been part of his plans.
“If having your back rubbed feels good,” Sherbourne said, “then you ask it of me when I’m too dunderheaded to offer on my own initiative, agreed?”
Charlotte leaned forward, resting her head on her folded arms. “One doesn’t know when to presume, when to ask, when to wait patiently to be asked. I had not foreseen that marriage would be much like learning a foreign language without a dictionary.”
Apt analogy. So…“Shall I braid your hair?”
“Please. One braid will do.”
Tending to her hair soothed Sherbourne and gave him time to think. Perhaps they’d make it part of their nightly ritual, on those occasions when the colliery didn’t demand his presence even after dark.
“I didn’t want to rush you,” he said, drawing the brush down the length of her hair. “About the wedding night.” About anything, but he’d been uniformly precipitous where his wife was concerned. He’d rushed the proposal, whisked her from her family on the very day of the ceremony, and now she was to entertain guests not a week after arriving at their home.
Charlotte sighed sleepily as Sherbourne plied the brush. Her hair was thick and soft, a pleasure to touch. His braiding skills had been learned in the stables, though that seemed adequate for the occasion.
What had he been saying? “I wanted our wedding night to be memorable.” Perhaps this aspiration was a symptom of the first incidence of financial uncertainty Sherbourne had ever faced. He’d spend tomorrow with his ledgers, reassessing his situation, but a woman who enjoyed her husband’s attentions would be less likely to abandon him if finances became constrained.