who was folding up the sack, with the wooden expression of a servant who was listening to a conversation not meant for his ears.
‘In fact, I think I shall go and write immediately. Gilbey, instead of hanging around in the kitchen, you can make yourself useful by riding down to the post with it as soon as I’ve written it.’
‘Yes, m’lord.’
* * *
Mary sat blinking at the swirl of dust that eddied across the kitchen floor after he’d slammed the door on his way out.
He’d been a bit like a whirlwind himself. Breezing in, delivering his mound of booty, then dashing off to his next task. She couldn’t stop smiling as she pottered about the kitchen. The more she learned about her husband, the better she liked him.
* * *
She liked him even more when he turned up for supper on time, praised her cooking to the skies and then tried to prevent her from doing the dishes.
‘I thought I’d made my views on that sort of thing plain,’ he growled when she started to carry a stack of plates to the scullery.
‘Yes, you did,’ she said. ‘But if the Brownlows aren’t going to return until the twenty-eighth, every useful surface will be covered with dirty dishes by then. It wouldn’t be fair to them to have to come back to that sort of mess.’
‘It would serve ’em right for sloping off just when I particularly wanted ’em here.’ He scowled. ‘And if you don’t want the working surfaces cluttered, why don’t you stack the dishes on the floor?’
‘I could do that, I suppose,’ she said with a shudder. ‘If you want the house invaded by rats.’
‘Point taken,’ he said. ‘Dishes need to be done. But I won’t have you doing them. I made you a vow.’
For one moment she thought he was going to order Gilbey to do the dishes for her. But then, to her amazement, he stood up, removed his jacket and rolled up his shirtsleeves.
‘I shall need instruction,’ he said, as he strode into the scullery.
He meant to do the dishes himself?
Well—she’d always thought that it was a man’s actions that revealed his true nature. And after seeing him literally roll up his sleeves to perform such a lowly task, she would never make the mistake of suspecting he was anything like her father, ever again.
‘Not that it can possibly be all that hard,’ he said airily. ‘I’ve never met a scullery maid yet with anything approaching half a brain.’
‘Have you met many scullery maids?’ she heard herself say, inanely, as she tipped a bucket of hot water into one of the sinks. Still, it was better than blurting out any of the other thoughts swarming round her head. Or simply gazing at him, wide-eyed and slack-jawed in wholly feminine appreciation.
For heaven’s sakes! All he’d done was roll up his sleeves and she was practically dribbling at the sight of his forearms.
‘I’m sure I must have done,’ he said, as she handed him a scrubbing brush. And only just managed to stop herself from running her hand up that enticing expanse of sinewy, hair-roughened flesh.
‘On their days off. At fairs and such,’ he added, seizing the nearest plate and manfully dunking it into the soapy water. ‘And there was definitely one who used to prowl around the stables after the head groom at...well, never mind where. She couldn’t have had much in her cockloft to throw herself at him the way she did. Without the slightest sign of encouragement, I might add. Remember her, Gilbey? I can see you loitering in the doorway, so don’t bother trying to pretend you aren’t listening to every word. Don’t you have work to do?’
‘Yes, m’lord,’ said the groom, before disappearing out into the night to do whatever it was he did for the horses.
Thank heaven she hadn’t started stroking her husband’s arms. She hadn’t been aware the groom was there, so rapt had she been by the sight of a man, her man, cheerfully engaging in what her father would have scathingly described as woman’s work.
‘The tale of me up to my elbows in soapsuds will spread like wildfire through the taverns,’ Lord Havelock grumbled, holding out the plate he’d scrubbed for her inspection.
‘Perfect,’ she said with a sigh. Then blushed. ‘The plate, I mean,’ she added hastily. ‘At least it will be once you rinse it. Or perhaps I should rinse it.’ She went to take it from him.
‘Oh, no, you don’t,’ he said, dunking the plate into the clean water in the next sink over and clasping her about the waist. ‘I am quite capable of doing this, you know.’
‘Yes, but if you don’t want people to talk—’
‘I don’t care what people might say about me,’ he declared, before dipping his head to kiss her. ‘They can go hang for all I care.’
She totally lost the thread of what they’d been discussing as he kissed her over and over again, walking her backwards across the room until she fetched up against a wall. The slide of his wet hands up her legs as he impatiently thrust her skirts out of the way, and the thrill of complying as he murmured heated, explicit instructions into her ear.
The joy of having this man want her so much that he couldn’t even wait to find a horizontal surface to lay her down on thrilled her.
And the gratitude that came from discovering that for all his impatience to have her, he possessed the self-control to wait until he’d satisfied her, before taking his own pleasure.
* * *
It got better every time, with Mary. He’d thought nothing could surpass their wedding night, yet sharing that mattress in front of the fire, the next night, had somehow been even better.
And as for last night...even when they’d eventually finished ‘doing the dishes’, the fire between them hadn’t gone out. They’d raced up the stairs to the room she’d prepared and torn each other’s clothes off with such haste they hadn’t bothered using the warming pan she’d insisted on filling with embers from the kitchen fire.
He raised himself on one elbow to look at her. Just look at her. How had he ever thought her plain? Not that she had one of those faces that attracted notice at first glance. No, what she had was an attraction that shone from the intelligence in her eyes, or the warmth of her smile.
He couldn’t help just sifting her soft, silken hair through his fingers, then fanning it out across his pillow. He liked the fact she didn’t wear it in bunches of fussy ringlets. In fact, he wouldn’t be surprised if she found it hard to make it take a curl. It was so straight—like her.
He wasn’t a fanciful sort of man, not normally, but when it came to her hair, he’d surprised himself by comparing it to all sorts of things that another man, the kind of man who was bookish, might work up into a poem. It put him in mind of hot summer nights when, as a boy, he’d stolen away from this house to go swimming in the lake. Naked, he would float on his back in water that had felt like silk against his skin and gaze up at the stars. Stars whose reflection shimmered in the water that bore him up. There seemed hardly any distance between water and sky. He’d got the notion that if he stretched his hands up, he could have touched
