When a Duchess Says I Do - Grace Burrowes Page 0,65
too much.”
She tucked in close, quieting a panic inside Duncan. “I have seen too much. You drew that picture.”
He would never, ever stop loving her. “I have others, from my travels. Stephen claims they have a unique charm. When Stephen is attempting to be kind, one worries.”
“I want to see them, Duncan. I want to see every single one, and Stephen is jealous. He can make mechanical drawings and accurate elevations, but art has been denied him. That is a sore affliction in anybody’s life.”
Duncan considered the idea that he might be an artist rather than a teacher, or possibly both. He couldn’t hold the thought because Matilda was in his arms.
“I’ll show you every sketch I’ve ever done, but right now, I’d like to show you my bedroom.”
Matilda sighed, a happy sound accompanied by the fragrance of roses and the sensation of her relaxing in his embrace. Truly relaxing, giving him her weight, her trust, her everything. He knew, then, who and what he was: He was the man born to love and cherish Matilda Wakefield, for however long she allowed him those privileges.
* * *
“One must allow that the hostelry qualifies as lowly,” John Coachman said.
“Humble,” Parker replied, peering into the teapot. “Clean and respectable, but humble. Affordable to a woman with limited means, unremarkable to somebody trying to remain hidden.”
No matter how long he let the leaves steep, the tea would never be strong—if it was even tea. At such an establishment, all manner of hedge sweepings ended up in the teapot, with nary a leaf of the real article to be found. John Coachman had ordered ale, though that option presented even more potential hazards.
This inn was quiet as more successful inns were not. Nobody made an entrance here, nobody shouted greetings to a jovial innkeeper or flirted with the pretty maids. The maids were too tired and skinny to be pretty; the innkeeper mumbled and shuffled in response to his wife’s shouted commands.
To think of Matilda in such environs curdled Parker’s belly, but better here than in prison. He had a plan for preventing that—a good plan—but that plan turned on finding Matilda and convincing her of a slight variation on the truth.
A variation she’d be eager to believe.
The inn stank of wet wool and damp leather, with the kitchen adding the aromas of cooked meat and leeks. Half of Wellington’s campaign across Spain into France had borne these scents, and Parker would ever associate them with suffering and death.
He poured himself a cup from the teapot. The liquid was hot, and sugar and milk were on hand to disguise its true nature.
“Do we keep pushing westward?” the coachman asked. “The grooms expect to remove with the marquess to the ancestral seat at Yuletide. Most of them hail from Sussex and have family there.”
The need to explore increasingly unprepossessing inns meant Parker had meandered for days in the wilds of Berkshire. To request more than a few weeks’ leave for hunting would attract the notice of Parker’s fellow officers, and that he was not permitted to do.
“We’ll turn north soon,” Parker said. “Matilda likes art and architecture. Oxford would appeal to her.” As would the concentration of strutting lordlings who fancied a game of chess between their wenching and wagering. Matilda wouldn’t play in public, of course, but she was incapable of walking past a game in progress, and the coffeehouses and taverns in Oxford had chess tables.
The idea comforted him—it was a good idea—and it annoyed: Why hadn’t he thought of Matilda’s little hobby sooner?
The door opened and two men entered, stomping snow from their boots and letting in a bitter draft.
The innkeeper’s wife rose from her desk. “G’day, gents. Are you here for a meal?”
“A meal, your best spirits, and a room with a roaring fire,” the smaller man said. He was slender, and his clothing had once been fine, probably several owners ago. His companion was taller and stockier, his fleshy jowls turned ruddy by the cold.
“We don’t light the fires in the guest rooms until after supper,” the woman replied. “And you have your choice of gin, whiskey, or brandy, all of it legal. Where you coming from?”
The brandy would be smuggled, watered down, and expensive, in other words. John Coachman took another sip of his ale, and Parker was abruptly glad to have a companion at his table. The two new arrivals were ruffians, probably members of the poaching gangs that plagued the English countryside in bold numbers.