A yellowed oak leaf went twirling by to land at Cupid’s feet. “Chastain would love for us to separate.”
“To blazes with Chastain. What do you want?”
Who asked her that, save Ash? “I want peace and safety. I want to have my bouts of hysteria where nobody will remark them.”
“That is easily arranged. You have the means to purchase your own property, though I’d ask that you not establish a household too far from Town. I would rather that I provided you such a home, and I will happily do so, but the dwelling will be more modest. I would like to visit you from time to time, when I’m well, but I will understand if you’d prefer less of my company.”
Della had heard Ash speak like this on other occasions. When explaining his illness to her, for example. All rational discourse and articulate speech. Not a sentiment in sight. He sat in his mental window, detached from the workings of the heart…
Except Ash wasn’t detached. He was caring, conscientious, honorable, and dear. “What do you want, Ash?”
He shook his head. “That doesn’t signify.”
She took his hand in both of hers. “It signifies to me.”
“Then I must admonish you to look to your own interests, Della. You need a husband who can make a safe place for you, who can help you weather the vagaries of a temperament prone to worry—a problem I had no idea you struggled with. Of all men, I am clearly not that useful fellow. Chastain accosted you in plain view, while I…” He looked up as if importuning the heavens for absolution. “While I calculated gaming odds and contemplated clouds.”
As a little girl left to watch the sunset on the church steps, Della had watched the clouds. Close on the heels of that memory came some combination of thought and instinct that settled the last of her nerves.
Ash might have occupied a reading chair by the window for much of the morning, but he, too, had been abandoned on the village green.
“I am afraid of Chastain, but I love you. The love is bigger than the fear, Ash. Much bigger. You took my part when my family would have made the situation worse with bloodshed. You tried to protect me from scandal when I had made a hash of my life. Of course I love you. Besides, Chastain is a bully, and he’s preying on others. You saw what he did to Lord Tavistock, and Tavistock is a boy who means nobody any harm.”
Ash looked at their joined hands. “You don’t need to say these things.”
“Actually, I do. I am a fretful hysteric who will doubtless make a spectacle of myself at somebody’s card party or at home, and I am also honest. I worry terribly in bad moments, but my heart is in working order, and that heart belongs to you.” She snuggled closer. “Always will too.”
He took out a handkerchief embroidered with a coat of arms on one corner. Della thought he’d pass it to her, though she was actually in quite good spirits considering the panic she’d been in a quarter hour ago.
“You love me.” His voice shook slightly. “You say that, knowing I am afflicted with the stupidest ailment ever to trouble the human mind and body.”
“You are afflicted, I am afflicted, but that’s not the entirety of who we are.” Della worked out that truth as she said it, and the words felt right. “I am also your wife, sibling to a horde of Vikings, a passable violinist, Tresham’s pesky half-sister, and maybe someday I will be somebody’s mother. You are more than a periodic case of melancholia, Ash Dorning.”
He pressed the handkerchief to his eyes for a long moment, while more leaves drifted down, and the lunch bell sounded in the distance.
“I have to…” He took a breath, then let it out. “I must hold you. Please, Della.”
She rose and plucked the handkerchief from him, then straddled his lap and wrapped him in her arms. Ash embraced her as well, the fit and snugness so purely perfect Della felt something inside shift and bloom.
She might have cried a little, perhaps Ash did too, but then somebody started kissing somebody else, and the mood became if not playful, then lighter.
“We can be seen from the windows,” Della said, wiggling, the better to enjoy Ash’s nascent arousal, “and we will be late for lunch.”
“You have a leaf…” He gently brushed a leaf from her bodice. “I am unwilling to provide an erotic spectacle for Lady Wentwhistle’s guests, but lunch fails to interest me at the moment. Tell me why you are afraid of Chastain.”
Della would have moved to sit beside him, but Ash held her fast. The tale came pouring out as she rested against his shoulder, from the moment Chastain had come upon her curled up and incoherent behind a bank of ferns, to the moment he’d tried to rape her.
“He’s seen me at my worst, Ash, and he will tell all of Society you married a madwoman. Bad blood, mental instability, and the irony is, I’m not even a true Haddonfield, but they would all bear the burden of gossip on my behalf. I cannot have that on my conscience.”
Ash stroked her back, and as far as Della was concerned, winter could come in all its fury, and she and Ash would remain cozy and content in the center of the maze, so light and warm was her heart.
“I’ve seen you at your best,” Ash said, “and if you are willing to take on the challenge, I believe we can cast William Chastain into permanent disgrace.”
“That sounds dire—also lovely.”
Ash kissed her nose. “Disgrace sufficient that he won’t bother either of us ever again. Do you know what I’d like at this moment?”
“To leave the house party?”
“No, actually. I would like to nap with my wife and have everybody at the luncheon table remark our absence and be jealous of us.”
“I’d like that too.” Della didn’t have a chance to get to her feet, because Ash shifted her so she was cradled in his arms.
He carried her out of the maze without a single wrong turn, past a dozen smiling guests, and straight up to their room, where they did indeed nap.
Eventually.
Ash regarded his recumbent wife and envied his brother Oak the ability to draw. Della lay curled on the mattress, the covers thrown back. She was clad in only her white crocheted shawl, the weave loose enough to hint at the pale glory of her haunch, the tassels lying against her thigh.
If Ash yielded to the temptation to brush aside those tassels, he’d be in this bed for another hour, and what a pleasant hour it would be. His arousal had been more of the slow-burn variety, gaining momentum gradually as he and Della had talked, cuddled, and talked some more. That stealthy approach to lovemaking was new for him and had yielded surprisingly intense pleasure.
Or perhaps, a man who could not rely on his body to rise to the occasion was more likely to savor the instances of pleasure that came his way.
Della had poured out the burden of managing an imagination given to wild flights. Her earliest memories were of adults telling her how sickly and fragile she was, even though she didn’t feel sickly or fragile. Then her mother had fallen ill, her oldest siblings had been abruptly sent off to school or worse, and—she recounted the stories so calmly—there was that business about her family occasionally losing her, followed by the revelation that her father was not her father.
Laid end to end, the litany was enough to make anybody distrustful of life.