Duke and His Duchess (2 page)

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.