forced my poor Esmee to eat some of the barley mixture you made for the Duchess and she died. Is that true?”
She laughed, a weak laugh, but still a laugh.
“That damned selfish cat wouldn’t offer herself up to try my barley soup,” Badger said. “Miserable beast, that Esmee. I thought I’d caught her, but she twitched her tail right out from between my fingers. Mr. Spears said she sleeps with you, when you’re in your own bed, that is.”
“It’s been known to happen. Esmee is fickle, just as is the Duchess.”
“Esmee slept with me last night,” she said. “Right in the bend behind my knees.”
“She prefers my chest when she deigns to visit me,” Marcus said. “She likes to knead the hair, damned creature. As for her volunteering for that barley mixture, she wouldn’t ever offer herself up.”
He slept with her that night, stretching out naked beside her, completely at his ease, as if he’d slept there for the past twenty years. Esmee had come briefly into the bedchamber, stared silently at them, then, twitching her tail, she went through the open adjoining door into Marcus’s bedchamber.
He reached out and took her hand in his. She could feel the heat from his body. She felt safer than she ever had in her life.
“All this excitement left me with a gray hair, Duchess. I ask you to keep to your bed after this and not go searching out clues in the middle of the night.”
“I don’t believe you, Marcus. Let me see this gray hair.”
“No, I shan’t light a candle and have you poking about my scalp. You can find it in the morning.”
“Did you discover anything?”
“No. Everyone claims to have been soundly in the arms of Morpheus. Also, I might add, the Wyndhams have excelled at the art of falsehood for centuries. None of us ever flinch or even blink an eyelid when spilling out a lie. Even you, Duchess.”
Her fingers tightened over his. “You must be exaggerating, Marcus.”
“Nary a bit. Now, I find this a mite interesting. Here we are side by side in bed like a good married couple should be, and I will admit that I’m harder than the bricks on the fireplace, but I won’t attack you, not even when I know you like it so much.”
Before she would have been silent as a tombstone. But now she giggled and bent back his thumb until he yelped.
“You become physical again. But my thumb, Duchess? Would you like me to give you pleasure?”
“No. Be quiet, Marcus. My head hurts.”
He laughed. “Ah, the excuse of wives for centuries, or so my father told me. However, in your case, it just might be the truth. As I recall, my mother hit his arm when he said it. Good night, my dear.”
“Did you go to the abbey ruins?”
“Yes. Trevor and James were there poking around, the damned sods. Even Ursula arrived shortly to do her own poking. It was a merry family, all wanting to find anything at all and keep it from the others. I don’t like any of this, Duchess.”
“Except for Ursula. She would run to you with anything she found. She idolizes you, both she and Fanny. You’ll grow abominably conceited with all this guileless female attention.”
“No, I won’t accept that. Believe me, Fanny’s infatuation is quite enough. One young girl fluttering her eyelashes at my poor self is unnerving enough. And here my wife is lying in her bed unable to protect me. And now you would protect me, wouldn’t you? Or would you perceive that I was a bounder despite my innocence, and come after me with another weapon?”
“I would try to be fair. Now, you can rest easy. Ursula is very fond of me, so she wouldn’t dream of trying to take you away from me.”
“A relief. A right bloody relief.”
The relief lasted for a full day and a half. She rested and mended and the lump behind her left ear disappeared. Maggie even washed her hair, removing all the oily salve Badger had made for the lump and Spears had remorselessly rubbed in three times that first day. On the second night, Marcus came into her bedchamber wearing only his dressing gown and she knew he was naked beneath it, but then again, why shouldn’t he be?
She remembered how she’d left her bedchamber because she’d not wanted to face him. Well, she wouldn’t ever leave again. Let him do his worst. She grinned at that. Just let him try to treat her like a vessel again, a vessel that he scorned.
“Hello, Marcus,” she called out to him. “I am quite well tonight. Do you intend to exercise your marital rights? Will you heave over me? When you’ve had enough of me will you leave again and spill yourself on my belly?” She saw him clearly in her mind’s eye, lifting himself over her, saw the intense determination on his face, saw him spilling his seed on her belly, not inside her, no, never there because he hated his uncle so much for his betrayal.
He paused, staring at her. She’d startled him yet again. He shook his head. He doubted he would ever get used to this new side of her.
She changed then before his eyes, now she was serious, dead serious, saying as he came to stand beside her bed, “You must have an heir, Marcus. Your pride mustn’t get in the way of providing a male child for the next generation of Wyndhams. Why don’t you just forget my father and what he did. It isn’t important. It doesn’t touch us.”