He turned away a little, so he couldn’t look down the front of her dressing gown and see the curve of her breasts. How terrifying to imagine her bearing his children. If anything happened to her in childbirth, Warren would kill him. Were they still friends? He ought to write back to Warren but he didn’t know what to say. The man’s letter had been to the point, almost brusque. Of course, that’s how they’d always written notes to each other, in plain, concise language. What could he say in a letter? Your sister and I are well. That would be a lie. I don’t really want her here. I don’t know how to deal with her. I still can’t believe I had to marry her. All of those were true, but probably the wrong things to say.
He certainly couldn’t write that he dreamed with plaguing regularity of the night he’d lain with her, or that he’d gotten an aching erection the last time he’d paddled her heart-shaped bottom.
“August? Did you hear my question?”
She gazed at him, sweet, chattering Minette, and he felt like the world’s greatest pervert for the lurid direction of his thoughts. “I... Forgive me. What did you say?”
“I asked if you knew the age at which children begin to walk. Because then, of course, they would need proper shoes. I’m sure Aurelia and Josephine will figure it out long before the shoes are actually needed. I’m ever so glad they’re having children first so they can teach me everything they learn.”
August watched her, uncertain if he was still expected to respond.
“So you don’t know when they begin to walk?” she asked after a moment.
“I’m afraid I don’t know much about children. I was the youngest growing up.”
“But your sisters have children now, don’t they? You’re an uncle, and my goodness, I suppose I’m an aunt now. You must tell me all my nieces’ and nephews’ names and ages, and what they look like, and what manner of children they are, whether they are timid or bold, or silly or serious, or bookish or adventurous, oh, and we must know their favorite foods for when they come to visit.”
August twined his fingers together in his lap. “I can’t remember all of that off hand. My sisters never trusted me to be around them much.”
“Whyever not?”
He turned to her, this cheerful, winsome wife who must delight all children without so much as lifting a finger. “I’m not the type of man who knows what to do with children.”
“Don’t you like them?” Her face clouded at his tone. “Don’t you want to have children of your own?”
“Of course I do, eventually.” But having children would mean bedding Minette again, repeatedly, in fact, until she fell pregnant. And when he thought about bedding Minette, a great conflict of feelings roiled in his brain until he couldn’t think about anything at all. “I only wonder if now is a bad time for it,” he said in a hedging way. “Perhaps we ought to practice being an auntie and uncle first, until things settle down. You’re very young. We’ve plenty of years yet to start a family.”
“I’m not so young. Not very young.”
“You seem very young to me.” And he felt old, so old and corrupt compared to her. He played a couple of grimly dissonant chords. Minette sat up straighter and seemed to shake herself from the pall of his pensive mood.
“Well, thank you for letting me stay here at Barrymore House even though you didn’t want me here with your father’s illness and whatever else has got you down. I’ll try not to be a nuisance, although I would love some piano lessons, so I might be a nuisance about that. Which is a shame, because I know you’re very busy, and I’ve already inconvenienced you just by being here, which I am so sorry for, even though you’ve punished me already and therefore gotten us back on an even keel—”
“How about now?” he asked, interrupting her. He leafed through some music on the sideboard until he found the piece he sought. He put it on the stand and slid to the left so Minette would have better access to the keyboard. “Play this piece for me as well as you’re able, so I can see where you are in your training. It’s a simple piece, a minuet. It’s good for learning notes and keeping a steady tempo.”
“What did you call it again? A Minette?”
“A min-u-et,” he corrected, before he realized she was making a joke. An impish smile broke across her face, bright humor in this dim sepulcher of a room. He didn’t intend to smile back, but he did. She had a devilish ability to make people grin even when they didn’t want to. With effort, he composed his features and pointed to the keys.
“Come, we must be serious if you want to learn.”
“I will try my best to play it,” she said with a nod. She began to plink at the notes, a laborious process, since she looked up at the notation and then down at the keyboard nearly every measure. He let it go on a while, and then he tapped the page.
“No, look up here. This is where the notes are. An accomplished pianist never looks down at his or her fingers.”
She paused on a ragged chord. “But how can I play the right note if I don’t look at the keyboard?”
“You must come to know the keys by touch. You must learn to see them with your fingers.” When he was a child, too young to light the lamps, he’d played the piano in the dark with his eyes closed. He couldn’t tell her about that, about those frightening, dark nights. He thought instead of the dark night when he’d touched her and explored her, and taken her virginity. He’d done all of that by touch alone. “It’s something that comes with practice,” he said in a tight voice. “Try to feel the keys without looking at your hands. You know middle C. The others follow in a very predictable fashion.”
She tried to do it, but quickly grew flustered. When she fumbled and looked at her hands, he tsked and made her raise her chin again.
“I can’t,” she said. “I suppose I’m a failure before I’ve even begun.”
“Do you want to give up?”
She blinked at him through tears. “Would you have left Lady Priscilla in Oxfordshire if you had married her?”
r /> Her question, so abrupt, so heartfelt, made him wish he had a pistol at hand to take his own life, or at least injure himself badly enough that he needn’t answer. He thought for a long moment, then told her the truth. “I wouldn’t have married her until after my father died.”
“He’s going to die for sure?” she asked in a trembling voice.
“Yes, he’s very ill. He rants and raves and goes into convulsions. He must be constantly minded, lest he wander about and come to danger.”
“Like my sleepwalking?”
“It’s nothing at all like your sleepwalking.” Minette shied back at his sharp tone. He brushed away her tears, despising himself a little more again. He knew she didn’t mean to be a ninny. She understood so little, and she was so innocent that August loathed to explain. “My father’s heart and mind have been ravaged by this...disease.”
“What disease?”
Did Minette know about the French pox and how one acquired it? Did he wish her to? “It’s a disease gentlemen get if they consort with the wrong sort of women,” he explained. “That’s really all I’d like to say. It’s nothing to concern you, and nothing you can catch by being around him. They’ve tried to treat it with various remedies but it’s only gotten worse.”
“Oh.”
“For my mother’s and father’s privacy, I don’t want anyone to know. Although I suppose your aunt will spread the tale now, or at least awaken speculation.”
“I’m sorry,” Minette said, wringing her hands. “I’m so sorry about all of this, about angering you and bringing my aunt here, and disturbing your peace. I suppose I deserved that paddling today, although I wish you hadn’t brought that horrid block of wood to London. If I had my wish, you’d fling it into a fire, a very hot, very consuming fire so it would be instantly incinerated, but I imagine that’s not going to happen.”
“No.” He gave her a warning look. “No one is going to fling it into a fire.”
She held his gaze longer than he expected, before she blushed and looked away. “I don’t want to give up.”