I love nothing in the world so well as you: is not that strange?
—SHAKESPEARE
Hawk stared at his wife over a spoon filled with soupe à la Reine. She looked beautiful, her glorious hair piled atop her head with thick long curls caressing her white shoulder. Her equally white breasts waited firm and soft for his touch beneath the pale pink satin of her gown.
He realized he’d given up his struggles with scarce a whimper, surrendered unconditionally, and he continued to study her with fascinated new eyes. He’d realized it was all over for him when he’d stood beside her tub staring down at her sleeping face. The longer he studied her, the more he’d wanted to haul her over his shoulder, throw her onto his bed, and love her until he was insensate and she as well. Hell, he’d even decided that he’d take her sisters under his wing, if necessary, and to London.
The bachelor was a vague shadowy gentleman who had expired, and in his place was a married man who delighted in his state.
He hurriedly finished his soup. He was still caught in his own startlingly new discoveries when Edmund’s voice pulled him back to the dinner table. “I say, Hawk, you look as worried as a man who has just wagered his fortune on the turn of a card.”
Hawk smiled a bit painfully. “Not at all. Frances, my dear, cease fiddling with your bread. Have some of these delicious pork cutlets.”
Frances dutifully nodded to the footman, James, to serve her a cutlet.
“Your cook sets an adequate table,” Beatrice remarked to her brother.
You expected perhaps raw turnips and cold potatoes? Frances wanted to ask her sister-in-law. She said nothing, of course, and scarce attended the conversation about her. She still felt a shudder when she remembered Mrs. Jerkins’ appalling upset.
“She questioned me as to the cleanliness of the sheets!”
Frances thought that Mrs. Jerkins’ bosom would heave out of her black bombazine gown.
“And that maid of hers, that insufferable Gertrude, had the effrontery to claim that there was dust on the dressing table!”
Agnes didn’t help matters. She gasped in outrage, stoking Mrs. Jerkins’ already blazing fire.
“Giving orders to our staff as if she were mistress here! Carrying on that her portrait was in awful condition and needed cleaning. Restoration is more like it ... and to her, not the painting!”
“I expect,” Frances said calmly, after she finally managed to break into Mrs. Jerkins’ diatribe, “that Lady Beatrice will leave soon enough. I don’t believe that she cares much for the country. We will survive it, Mrs. Jerkins, and I”—she drew a deep breath “and I shall speak to her.”
Mrs. Jerkins gave her a look that spoke volumes—Lady Beatrice would likely chew her up and spit her out with the leftovers.
“I should dress for dinner now,” Frances had said, wishing she were back in Scotland, enjoying one of her father’s fine rages.
Oh dear, Frances thought now, wondering if the inhabitants of the nether regions of Desborough Hall were arming themselves for insurrection. She heard Beatrice demand another serving of sweetbreads in ringing tones, and winced. She smiled toward James, and nodded. He looked impassive, but Frances suspected his ears were a bit red. She appreciated their loyalty, their protectiveness, and imagined that even if Lady Beatrice were of a saintly disposition, they would still refer every request to her.
“I say, Frances,” Beatrice said after enjoying several bites of the sweetbreads, “I imagine you must feel dreadfully uncomfortable here—English gentlemen and ladies must be so vastly different from what you are used to in Scotland.”
“Not at all,” Frances said mildly.
“Not that there is much elevated company here in the wilds of Yorkshire, but stilt—”
“Lord and Lady Bourchier are most charming,” said Frances..
“And most elevated,” said Hawk.
“Ah, poor Alicia,” Beatrice said, giving her brother a drawing look before continuing. “She had so hoped to ensnare Philip, you know, but he would have none of her. She is, of course, only a baronet’s daughter.”
“The Melchers are quite good-hearted.”
“A vicar and his wife,” Beatrice said, and shuddered delicately.
“You have become a snob, daughter,” the marquess said.
“One must simply maintain one’s standards, Father. It is such a pity that poor Philip had to travel to Scotland, for his—”
“I believe,” Edmund Lacy interrupted his betrothed’s overflowing spate of bad manners, “that you have sufficiently abused the topic, my dear.”