“Have you a fascination with my feet, Mrs. Sherbourne?”
Yes. “You might offer to rub my feet at some point if I bring you pleasure often enough by rubbing yours.” Or you might not be upset with me, when I find a moment to tell you about Fern’s son. And the Mrs. Wesleys. All of the Mrs. Wesleys, including the ones I haven’t met yet.
Now that Brantford’s visit was behind them, Charlotte meant to find that moment soon. Sherbourne was a reasonable fellow, and he was her fellow, and Charlotte detested keeping secrets from him.
Sherbourne scrubbed a hand over his face. “Brantford signed a contract with me, agreeing that repayment of his investment would be on commercially reasonable terms, determined within my discretion as the owner, major investor, and director of the works, but in no event to involve a period of more than ten years, or less than five percent per annum simple interest.”
“If he invested ten thousand pounds, then five percent interest per annum on the entire principle over ten years would be another five thousand pounds. Many people go their whole lives without earning five hundred pounds.”
Sherbourne leaned his head back against the cushions as Charlotte pressed her thumbs against his left heel. Achilles had lost his life as a result of an arrow to the left heel, though why that snippet of mythology should occur to her, she did not know.
“Some people go their whole lives without entangling a titled snob in their business,” Sherbourne said. “I should not have taken what Brantford was offering. That feels good.”
Charlotte pressed harder against his callused sole. “Can you untangle yourself from Brantford?”
“Not soon enough. He’s in the wrong. He signed a contract that many others have signed regarding similar projects. The agreement is legally sound, but if his lordship takes me to court, alleging a defect because the language was too vague, then he can destroy the colliery before we’ve brought out our first ton of ore. He’ll demand all of his money back, plus damages and costs, and make me look like a presuming incompetent.”
“Give him his money back now and tear up the contract. He’s not honorable.”
Sherbourne remained quiet, while Charlotte worked her thumbs all over the bottom of his foot. If anybody had told her a month ago that she’d enjoy massaging her husband’s feet, she’d have pronounced that person unhinged.
The moment was intimate, and she liked being intimate with her spouse.
“Do you suppose Haverford’s watchdog was spying on me,” he asked, “or keeping Brantford from stepping out of line?”
“Radnor might have been acting on his own initiative. He is one of your directors. Give me your other foot.”
“Radnor made it plain he would drop by Haverford Castle to report on the day’s doings before returning home. I know the aristocracy is insular and inbred, but if Radnor sought—ouch.”
Charlotte eased the pressure. “Radnor and Haverford do not know Brantford any better than you do. I have the sense I might have stood up with him, though I cannot place him. A blond, blue-eyed earl is hardly a rarity. His looks are unremarkable and his conversation uninspired, and yet I do wonder if I met him somewhere previously.”
“He bored you at dinner?”
“He bored me within five minutes of the introductions because he can converse regarding only one topic—himself. I like your crooked toes.”
“You like my crooked toes, while a peer of the realm bores you. You are an eccentric female, and eccentric females have ever been my favorite exponents of the gender.”
Sherbourne was…he was flirting with her. Charlotte was almost sure of it. “Fatigue has made you daft.”
“Marriage has made me happy, Charlotte.” He sounded perplexed, and his gaze was on the fire, and yet he sounded pleased, too.
Charlotte set his feet on the floor and appropriated a corner of his seat cushion. “Might you undo my hooks and stays?” she asked, sweeping her hair off her nape.
Sherbourne unfastened her clothing, and Charlotte arranged herself in his lap, rather than hurry away to the privacy screen. He wrapped his arms about her, and she cuddled with him before the fire in a state of half-dressed, cozy fatigue. Charlotte drifted off to sleep wondering where she might have seen Brantford before, and hoping she might never see him again.
*
“Your taste in business partners is disgraceful.” Haverford passed Sherbourne a glass of brandy. “If ever I owed you more than coin of the realm, my debt to you has been settled in perpetuity.”
“Likewise,” Radnor said, lifting his glass so it caught the afternoon sun beaming through the windows of Haverford Castle’s library. “Here’s to an earl seen safely on his way.”
Sherbourne took a sip of exquisite brandy—the very vintage he’d sent Haverford as a wedding present, actually.
“Charlotte pronounced Brantford boring,” Sherbourne said. “My wife is blessed with keen discernment.”
“Though she married you anyway,” Radnor murmured.
Charlotte had married him, made passionate love with him, rubbed his feet, entertained his guests, and paraded around the churchyard with him as if she’d happened upon the greatest marital prize of the season.
All quite…different from Sherbourne’s expectations.
“And my sister,” Haverford said, “for reasons which defy mortal comprehension, is now the Marchioness of Radnor. Here’s to our ladies.”
Sherbourne drank to that, and to the peculiar pleasure of being thanked by the vicar, in public, and within earshot of most of the congregation, for “seeing to our long overdue steeple repairs, and with such unstinting generosity.”
With Charlotte preening at Sherbourne’s side, he’d been given odd looks, tentative smiles, and maybe even a few envious glances from the local squires. Then, in full view of the shire’s biggest busybodies, Haverford had offered an impromptu invitation to Sunday dinner at the castle.
“How is Her Grace?” Sherbourne asked, as Haverford rolled a ladder along a two-story expanse of bookshelves. “She seemed in good spirits at services.”
“She is relieved to be shut of Brantford,” Haverford said, climbing the ladder. “What a tedious excuse for a houseguest. He discovered where the maids’ stairs were and frequented them at every opportunity, such that Her Grace decreed the maids and footmen were to switch staircases for the duration of Brantford’s visit.”
“What’s different about this room?” Radnor asked, steadying the ladder at the bottom. “Something has changed.”
Sherbourne took his drink up the spiral steps with him, to the section of the shelves reserved for cookery and herbals, for surely Haverford had a volume of recipes Charlotte would enjoy.
“What’s different,” he said, “is that I have paid to ship half the books that used to collect dust on yonder shelves into the hinterlands of Wales. Somewhere, some tavern maid is struggling through Candide, while her younger brother fancies himself a Lilliputian or a Yahoo.”
Which was progress of a sort Haverford would never have stumbled on without the aid of his duchess and his neighbor.
As a result, the library was lighter, airier, less of a cave, more of a gracious retreat. The scent was the same, though—the vanilla fragrance of old books, a tang of peat, and a mellow undertone of beeswax and lemon.
“I can count on my thumb the number of hours Brantford spent in here,” Haverford said, taking out a book, pushing it back among its confreres, then taking down another. “We still have one of the finest collections of reading material in the realm, and his lordship was more interested in bothering the help or talking me into taking him to a local hunt meet.”
“He wanted to be seen with you.” Sherbourne selected a volume on French desserts. “He did not want to be seen with me.”
“While you add coin to his coffers,” Radnor muttered. “Not well done of him.”