will meet you back in the sitting room. They’ll be setting out breakfast in there, so you might want to, um...’ He indicated the neckline of the robe, which was revealing rather more of her than she’d like.
She gripped the edges close over her throat, leaving the room to the sound of her husband’s throaty chuckle.
It didn’t take her long to wash and dress.
* * *
‘You’d better make the most of this,’ he said, indicating the array of dishes set out on the table when she joined him. ‘I won’t be making long stops on the way, if I can avoid it. Besides, none of the inns I’ve ever tried on the way to Mayfield can offer anything half so good.’
Mary dipped her head as she sat down. How could he be talking in such a matter-of-fact way when she was feeling so...so awkward? So vulnerable? Didn’t he care?
Or hadn’t he noticed how hard this was for her?
Though perhaps that was for the best. After all, she’d vowed he would never have cause to think of her as a mouse.
And anyway, he was at least explaining his reasons for making the travelling arrangements the way he had. Which sounded as though he was looking out for her, in his own way.
She sat up a little straighter and began to nibble at a slice of toast while he demolished a vast quantity of steak and eggs, and ale and coffee. Lord, but he had a healthy appetite.
In more ways than one. She flushed as her mind flew back to the boundless energy he’d displayed the night before. The inventiveness, and the patience, and the amazing stamina...
He looked up and caught her looking at him in a sort of sexual haze. His fork faltered halfway to his mouth.
‘Eat up,’ he said gruffly. ‘You need to keep your strength up. It will be a long and arduous day, and after such a long and...energetic night...’
She lowered her head and slid a mound of fluffy scrambled egg on to her fork. It wasn’t easy to sit at table with a man who’d had his hands and mouth all over her. She knew this was what married people did—and quite a few people who weren’t married, too—but how did they hold conversations, as though they hadn’t done the most shocking things to each other under cover of darkness?
She raised the fork to her mouth. As she parted her lips, her husband gave a strange, choking sort of sigh. When she raised her eyes to his in enquiry, she saw him looking at her lips. His fingers were clenched tightly round his own fork, which hadn’t travelled any nearer to his own mouth.
So he wasn’t as unaffected by their night of intimacy as she’d at first thought. With a little inward smile, she reached for her cup and took a delicate sip of tea, shooting him what she hoped was a saucy look over the rim as she drank. The look he sent her back was heated enough to make her toes curl.
* * *
It kept her warm for the rest of the morning. As did his constant care for her comfort. Though he’d warned her that the journey was likely to be arduous, she found it the least unpleasant she’d ever undertaken. For one thing, she was sitting in a comfortable post-chaise, swathed in travelling furs with a hot brick at her feet, next to a man she...really liked. A man who kept her entertained with a fund of anecdotes about adventures he’d had whilst travelling this route before. It was a far cry from being cooped up inside the common stage with a bunch of malodorous strangers. Then again, wherever they stopped, the landlords gave him swift and respectful service. No waiting around in draughty public rooms, suffering rude stares and coarse remarks. They made good speed and dusk was only just descending into true night by the time their carriage swept through the gates of what he told her was to be her new home.
‘I am sorry you cannot see very much of it,’ he said as they bounced up a lengthy drive. ‘I will show you around tomorrow. The horses should have settled in by then. I had them sent on ahead, by easy stages, the minute I knew we’d be coming down.’
She turned, slowly, and looked at him. He’d sent his horses by easy stages, but pushed her to make the journey in one day?
Just when she’d made allowances for him writing that dreadful list, he...he...
She drew in a deep breath, grappling with the wave of hurt that had almost made her lash out at him. She would not take his casual remark about his horses as a sign he didn’t care about her. Hadn’t he proved that, in his own way, he did? As he’d related all those tales about adventures he’d had in the posting inns on the way here, she’d seen exactly why he hadn’t wanted her staying at any of them.
She’d got to stop looking for signs that he was going to turn out to be just like her father.
‘There are some decent rides on the estate itself, but we can hack across country if you like, see a bit of the surrounding area, too. You’ll want to know where the nearest town is, get the lie of the land, and so forth....’
‘Oh, no,’ she said, lifting her chin. ‘I cannot ride.’
‘You cannot ride?’ He looked thunderstruck. And then crestfallen. And then resigned.
Funny, but she’d never noticed what an expressive face he had before. He’d warned her he was blunt, but not that he was incapable of hiding his feelings.
Which gave her food for thought. He might be thoughtless, even inconsiderate, but she would always know exactly where she was with him. And he would never be able to lie to her.
And though she hadn’t known she’d been carrying it, she certainly felt it when a layer of tension slithered off her shoulders. She hadn’t been able to help worrying about what kind of husband he was going to be.
But so far he’d shown her more courtesy than any other man ever had.
Eventually they drew up in front of a large, and completely dark, bulk of masonry. He muttered an oath and sprang from the carriage with a ferocious scowl. ‘Where is everyone?’ He strode away and pounded on the front door with one fist while she clambered out of the vehicle unaided.
It was so very like the way her father would have behaved, after a long and tiring journey, that it resurrected a few bad memories that made her feel, just for a moment, the way she had as a girl. That there was always something more important, more interesting, for a man to do than care for his wife and child.
‘I wrote to the Brownlows, the couple who act as caretakers, warning them I would be coming down and bringing my bride with me.’
With a determined effort, she shook off the shadow of past experience as Lord Havelock took a step back, craning his neck up to the upper storeys of his house. ‘I can’t see any lights anywhere,’ he said. ‘Did you see any lights, perchance, as we were driving up?’
‘No.’
‘What the devil,’ he said, planting his fists on his hips and glaring at her, ‘is going on, that’s what I want to know?’
‘I have no idea.’ He wasn’t like her father. He wasn’t yelling at her because he blamed her for whatever was going wrong. He was just...baffled, and frustrated, that was all. For all she knew, he might really be asking her what she thought was going on.
Well, there was only one way to find out.
