She’d retaliated with a limerick about old Friar Tuck that had astonished Gill with its vulgarity and left him wondering what other treasures his wife had kept hidden from him.
“Have we resolved where I’m to live?” Penelope said as they returned from a final afternoon spent on the beach.
“I thought you were taking Antrim Cottage? It’s unentailed, available now, and well maintained.”
Antrim Cottage was also just outside a pretty little village in Berkshire, not halfway to the benighted Highlands, which had been Penelope’s original choice of abode.
“Antrim Cottage is lovely,” she said, “but it’s the former gatehouse for Antrim House. You enjoy spending time at Antrim House in the autumn.”
He’d thought she enjoyed those weeks away from both Town and Hall in autumn. “Then I will promise to avoid Antrim House,” Gill said, “or I can break the entail on Antrim House—Tommie will have a price for that, but he’ll agree as my heir—and you can have Antrim House.”
Penelope preceded him into the cottage, something about her posture suggesting that, like many negotiations, this one was coming spectacularly unraveled just as the opposing parties ought to be shaking hands on an understanding that met all needs.
“If you think,” Gill said, stalking into the cottage behind her, “that some cow byre in the Hebrides will suffice for my viscountess’s abode, you are sadly in error.”
“Vergilius, hush.”
In ten years of marriage, Penelope had never once told him to hush. He kept his mouth shut out of sheer curiosity.
“I will no longer be your viscountess,” Penelope said gently. “You will remarry, and when you do, you might well be able to forget that your former wife is living in the gatehouse when you bide at Antrim House. Your next viscountess, however, will wonder about me and about why you offered me that property. For me to put her in that position would be unkind.”
Gill knew Penelope’s cool, self-possessed expression, but he’d also spent most of a week paying closer attention to what she did not say and what she did not allow to reflect in her eyes.
To expect Penelope to watch Gill and his new wife riding about the Antrim House park would upset Penelope, an odd vestige of the marital bond for a woman who’d longed for years to dissolve it.
And she worried for nothing. “I will never remarry, Penelope. You are leaving me because you must, but spare yourself any gracious gestures undertaken for the benefit of my next wife.”
She pokered up, blinked, and blinked again. “You must remarry, Vergilius. Tommie won’t make any sort of viscount, and Bella will squander the family fortune on outlandish hats if your mother doesn’t beat her past the post in a procession of new carriages. I knew they were spendthrifts, but the figures you’ve shown me this week… Tommie and Bella are appallingly irresponsible for a couple with seven children.”
“Tommie takes after Mama when it comes to finances,” Gill said. “If you don’t want Antrim Cottage, what about Patchwork Cottage? It’s not as grand, but those tenants are some of our finest farmers, and the house itself is lovely.” Then too, Patchwork Cottage was in Sussex, the next county over from the Hall.
“Patchwork Cottage is lovely,” Penelope said, worrying a nail. “I think Bella had her eye on it as a dower property for one of her girls.”
Gill took off his hat and shrugged out of his jacket. “She has a list? She’s seen me dead and buried, such that properties that are no concern of hers have already been parceled out to her nursery full of children?”
Penelope nodded. “Mama-in-Law is nothing if not concerned for her progeny. She and Bella frequently discuss what’s to be done for each of the children.”
“When Mama isn’t noticing how behind the current fashion the cabriolet I bought her last year is, and Bella isn’t sneaking her millinery onto your accounts.”
Penelope hung up her bonnet. “Bella knows not to abuse that privilege, and I haven’t wanted to antagonize her. I’ll put the kettle on and tell you what I know of their plans.”
End of day approached, the sun low on the water, and Gill really ought to be heading up to the inn to dress for dinner and pack his trunk. He would leave in the morning, and he needed solitude to come to terms with that awful reality.
He instead undid his sleeve buttons and rolled up his cuffs, prepared for more tallies and lists.
Penelope might never again share a cup of tea with him, much less at a humble kitchen table where nobody could hover or intrude. If sharing that final cup of tea meant Gill was treated to a litany of Bella’s and Mama’s ambitions, so be it.
The second pot was half empty by the time Penelope had finished summarizing Bella’s plans for the Hall and the further renovations to be made there. If Bella, Mama, and Tommie had their way, more than a half-dozen functional estates would end up in the hands of children raised by a pair of profligates, and some of the viscountcy’s most valuable acreage would be sold off.
For years, Penelope had been silently enduring speculation about how the family would go on after Gill’s death, and of all the trespasses Gill could lay at his mother’s feet, that one was near the top of the list. Bella was thoughtless and outspoken by nature. Mama was a widow herself and one who’d not coped well immediately following her spouse’s death.
“The dowager will take over Lychmont when I die?” Gill muttered. “Has it occurred to her I am barely thirty?”
“Her ladyship will live forever,” Penelope said. “Doesn’t seem fair when others…” She fell silent.
Gill covered her hand with his. “When others live for only a few days. You can say that to me, and I will agree with you. Don’t think to spare my blushes because these people are my family. They are also the source of some of my greatest frustrations.”
To what extent was Penelope demanding an annulment because Gill had failed to protect her from his family and had instead expected Penelope to guard him from Mama’s and Bella’s meddling?
Penelope hunched forward. “I have the sense there’s much I should have said to you in years gone by, Vergilius, but I can’t change the past. I want to say something to you now, if my courage does not desert me.”
Gill had thought himself fairly familiar with his wife, a sweet woman grown withdrawn and serious as a result of a tragic loss. Now, he wasn’t half so confident of his assessment, and he wished to his soul that he’d had an opportunity to truly learn to whom he was married.
Except he’d had that very opportunity and squandered it on committee meetings and suppers at the club.
“I’m listening,” Gill said, “and I want to hear whatever you need to say.”
Penelope set her tea cup back on the tray. “Promise me an honest answer, Vergilius.”
What on earth was she about? “I promise.”
Penelope left the table and went to the window. The moon had yet to rise, and she stared out at the vast undulating shadow that was the sea.
“I would like you to spend the night here at the cottage.”
A cool feeling shivered through him. “With you? In the same bed?”
“With me. In the same bed, as man and wife.”