“You are looking at me,” she said, rolling over to her back. “I love waking up next to you, and I love the look in your eyes right now.”
Love. She had seized on that word and fired it at him now with the accuracy of a sharpshooter. Well, nothing for it, then. Such courage merited a reciprocal display of valor.
“I love you. I love that you entrust your worries to me. I dearly love that you are my wife.”
He also loved how the tassels draped themselves over the thatch of curls between her legs. The image was all Della and arousing as hell. Why did his damned mind focus on clouds instead of memories of Della and her tassels? When next he was compelled to stare out of windows, he’d put that question to himself.
“I am not very steady, Ash,” Della said. “Chastain could make little trouble for you if I were less prone to the collywobbles in my mental pandenoodles.”
Ash could not reassure Della out of a lifetime’s habit of worrying any more than she could tease him out of chronic and profound blue devils. But he could and did love her, and maybe over time, that might make her worrying—and his blue devils—less devilish.
“Chastain has threatened you, Della, but unless I miss my guess, he will soon threaten the Coventry as well. He will intimate that our tables are crooked, our wine drugged, our staff little better than pickpockets. He will offer to shut his mouth in exchange for an endless procession of cash and bother, and I am not inclined to accommodate him.”
Ash reclined against the bed’s headboard. Della snuggled up to his thigh and rested her knee against his leg.
“Chastain did threaten the club,” she said. “My choices were to partner him at cards for the rest of the week, or leave you here among these Philistines with only Sycamore to take up for you.”
Ash brushed Della’s braid back over her shoulder. “Chastain did not offer you the option of a turn in the gazebo?”
Della drew her shawl up over her face and bundled closer. “I hate him, Ash. I hate him so much it frightens me. He’s everybody who ever mocked me for being upset and unequal to life. He’s a canker on the arse of society, the well-born dandy who refuses to toss the starving crossing sweeper a coin and thinks that’s hilarious. I know why Sycamore is sometimes reckless, for if I were a man, I might be reckless as well.”
Sycamore. Ye gods, Cam would have to be managed, but then, managing Sycamore had been Ash’s life’s work—and that needed to change too.
“What you do have,” Ash said, “is a fat bank draft from your doting brother and a devoted husband who knows his way around a deck of cards. If you’re sure, Della, then I will deploy those resources to rout our enemy.”
She emerged from her shawl to work enough mischief on Ash’s privy parts that desire stirred, and the topic under discussion fled Ash’s mind.
“We’ve already missed lunch,” Della said, giving him a slow, wet lick, “and yet, we are having a feast. I am making a point.”
“If your point is that I am the most blessed of all husbands, your argument has won the day.”
“Earlier, when we tried to make love and you lost your starch,”—another lick—“we didn’t talk about it. We did not trust each other enough to muddle through. I could have done this.” She did all manner of things, and lost starch became an incomprehensible impossibility. “But you didn’t ask, I didn’t offer, and the moment set us apart from each other.”
“Della, sometimes your best efforts won’t stir me to this state.”
She shifted up to straddle his lap, her shawl forgotten among the blankets. As if they’d been married years instead of days, she took him in her hand and positioned him for a sweet, lazy joining.
“Your state, or lack thereof, is not the point,” she said, moving on him languidly. “The point is that we must have the courage to trust each other. You will find me someday, cowering in my wardrobe, convinced Hessian mercenaries are about to invade Hyde Park.”
A naked Della was an irresistible Della, but then, so was a clothed Della. Ash palmed her breasts, thinking them the most perfect breasts ever created by God. Size, weight, shape, the delicious pucker of her nipples at the slightest touch. Perfection twice over.
“You will find me,” Ash said, “staring off at nothing, unable to gather the will to shave.”
“I will shave you, if you like, and you will lift me from the wardrobe and help me tidy my hair. But, Ash?”
He was losing the ability to follow her logic. “My love?”
“I liked how your beard…”
He rubbed his bristly cheek lightly across her breast. “That?”
“There and elsewhere. I adore being married to you.”
As pleasure welled, adoration did too. Adoration for Della, for physical joys that could be snatched from even a bad day. With Ash’s happiness, hope also welled. The lows would come again, but if he could appreciate his joys fiercely enough and hold the lows loosely enough, a good life was possible.
A life for which he would be profoundly grateful.
He put all of that—the adoration, hope, and gratitude—into his loving and felt the same miraculous benedictions from Della. They did not simply steal pleasure from a trying day, or enjoy marital privileges with one another.
They made love, created it with their bodies and hearts, and gave it into each other’s keeping to treasure for all time, come what may.
A slightly disreputable-looking Ash Dorning approached William on the back terrace. Dorning had carried Lady Della from the maze, and then neither party had shown up for lunch. The ladies speculated that Lady Della might be in the family way, as many new brides were, while Chastain had suggested Lady Della’s delicate nerves were not up to the challenges of marriage to the Doleful Dorning.
Portly had not yet taken up the refrain on cue—Doleful Dorning was quite clever—but then, Portly was growing a bit doleful himself.
“Chastain.” Dorning came to a halt several feet away. He did not smell inebriated, but he’d neglected to shave, and his cravat hadn’t been properly starched since dawn’s early light.
“Dorning. One is moved to inquire regarding her ladyship’s health after that curious display before lunch. Will she be quitting the house party? Perhaps seeking the consolation of the Haddonfield family seat?”
William hoped not. He’d like a turn under her skirts—was practically owed that much—and he’d also love to watch her husband stand helplessly by while William sank Dorning’s wife into a disgraceful degree of debt. Dorning would pay off the debts for all concerned rather than be publicly labeled a cuckold.
A lovely plan. One of William’s better ones, because it left for another day the delightful business of ruining the Coventry with gossip and rumor.
“My lady wife enjoys quite good health,” Dorning replied. “She did point out to me that with Tavistock gone, you are lacking a partner for the remainder of the week’s tournament.”
William could put the puzzle pieces together easily enough. Dorning had either seen or been told that Della and William had been in close conversation before lunch. Della had had no choice but to divulge a version of the conversation to her spouse and perhaps throw in a little histrionic swoon, as high-strung females were wont to do.