The Duke and His Duchess - By Grace Burrowes Page 0,8
a footman fetch you some paper?”
More paper in addition to whatever they’d wasted making Gayle’s birds. No wonder coin was in such short supply.
The boys crept away, growling and swiping their paws in the air, leaving Percival alone in daylight hours with his wife. His tired, lovely wife who had fainted the previous day and not told him about it. He slid his arms around her and drew her against his body.
He would not be a clodpate like he’d been the previous night.
He would ask her about her health. He would ask her how she felt about him going to London. He would compliment her on their children—a surefire strategy for happy marital relations.
The scent of roses came to him as she relaxed against him. “Madam, we can lock that door, you know.”
She pushed away, smiling. “Only to scandalize all and sundry when the boys start pounding on the other side.”
The interlude was unexpected, and Percival was glad for it. They so rarely had privacy when they weren’t both tired and full of the tensions and trials of the day. “Will you sit with me for a bit, Wife?”
She gave him a curious look and let him lead her to the table near the window.
Which would not do. He changed course and took a seat in the largest reading chair the nursery had to offer, which was quite large indeed.
He gave a tug on her wrist, and she tumbled into his lap. “Percival!”
“Hush, madam. You and I have cuddled up in this chair when you were magnificently gravid. We fit nicely now.”
She harrumphed and gracious God-ed once or twice under her breath, then settled easily enough.
“How are you, wife of mine? And I did not suggest Bart could stone Gayle’s paper birds.”
She relaxed against him. When had his wife gotten so lithe? So… skinny?
A practical, unappealing thought came to him: in London, a man did not have to pay for a mistress. Court was a very proper place, true, but outside of court, merry widows and straying wives were thick in the corridors. The idea of stepping into a dark alcove with some peer’s well-fed, deep-bosomed spouse—all painted and powdered the better to display her wares—was vaguely nauseating.
Though Esther had fainted. A considerate husband did not overly tax his wife.
Said wife snuggled closer on a soft rustle of fabric. “Boys are bloodthirsty, especially in company with one another. You were kind to offer to go to London. How long do you think you’ll be gone?”
Too long. Holding her like this, the quiet morning sunshine firing all the red and gold highlights in her hair, Percival felt two emotions well up and twine together.
He kissed her brow, yielding first to the tenderness assailing him so unexpectedly. “I don’t know how long I’ll be away. There’s always warfare in some corner of the realm. We leave the Americans to their wilderness only to find some raja has taken the Crown into dislike. Colonials don’t fight fair. Our boys line up in neat rows, muskets at the ready, while the natives fire at them from up in the trees or while dodging about in the underbrush. The wilderness ensures only the conniving and determined survive, and the colonials have been breeding those qualities for centuries.”
She tucked herself against his chest. “If I haven’t said it before, Percival, I’m saying it now: I am glad you resigned your commission. England expects much of her military, and I would not know how to go on were you lost to me.”
The tenderness expanded as she lay against him, soft, pretty, rose-scented, and dear. He posed the next question quietly. “Esther, are you carrying again?”
Because if she were, it might explain the despair trying to choke its way past the tenderness.
“Thomas tattled on me?”
That was not a no. Percival closed his eyes and prayed. Not a prayer for wisdom or for guidance or for strength to know how to stretch their coin yet further, not even a prayer for strength to endure.
He sent up a prayer for his wife.
***
How long had it been since Esther had enjoyed her husband’s embrace? Between the baby being not quite weaned, the older boys climbing all over her, and Victor grabbing at her hands and skirts, Esther often felt her only privacy was in the bath, and then only if her husband did not walk into the room and offer his dear and dubious brand of “assistance.”
Something he hadn’t done in… quite some time.
And yet, Percival still wore the sandalwood scent