Page 89 of His Mistress, His Muse, and Other Madness
“Too far away and up too many flights of stairs.”
“Damn.” But he laid her down on the thick rug before the fire and locked the door and returned to her.
She expected him to throw her skirts up.
She expected him to slide into her without hesitation.
She expected him to make her come, wild and furious and screaming.
He laid himself down beside her, gently, and pulled her to him, nestled her head against his shoulder. “Have you slept? It’s a new house, and—”
And she loved him, the stony man with a soft heart.
“A bit.” She found his heartbeat and placed a kiss just over it, then settled in to listen to it. “I’ve been so busy. That helps. And knowing… knowing I can control my own fate. That helps, too.”
He ran a hand over her head. “Sleep now, then. I’ll be here when you wake. Right here.”
“I’d rather”—she yawned, sleep a deluge that washed over her quickly—“do other things with you, Theo.” But she would sleep, for now, in the arms of the man she loved, confident in the slow beating of their hearts together that for once beauty and truth were one and the same.
Epilogue
October 1822
The Fairworth Inn and Pub had never, in Theo’s experience, been louder or more crowded. The village, it seemed, had decided to make Theo’s wedding a holiday. Every table was full, and every tankard on its way to being empty.
Theo sat at the long table in the middle of the room, surrounded by family and friends. He should have been grumbling and miserable. A year ago, he would have been, preferring solitude to company and wishing everyone about him to perdition. Now… he hated to admit it… but he glowed.
Bah. Likely the second pint of ale’s fault, that. Pentshire, sitting to his right, his wife nestled close beside him, kept asking if he needed more and waving a serving girl over. Theo should never have published that print for him. It had helped smooth the countess’s way into the fringes of society, revealing the love match as well as the bride’s father’s callousness. But it had also gained Theo a stout friend who sparred with him at Jacksons and visited totalkin the evenings. Theo let him. And listened. And didn’t hate it too terribly much.
His art had made two people happy. Who knew such a possibility existed.
Cordelia had.
He searched the crowd for her. She’d left his side not long ago with a kiss to his cheek and nothing more by way of explanation.
“Where’s Cordelia?” he demanded.
“Check the moat,” Lord Armquist shouted, and the entire table burst into laughter.
Theo never should have let the man tell that story. It had become something of joke, and—
“Raph,” his mother said, “we need a moat. At Briarcliff. Don’t you think?”
And that. His mother had stopped with her requests to host another house party and taken up pleas to have a moat dug around the house.
Raph groaned. “Mother. No.”
“But think of how safe it will keep Matilda,” his mother said.
“Do not, Franny, offer me up as a point in a moat’s favor.” Matilda, Raph’s wife, rubbed her rounded belly.
His mother turned back to Raph. “And the baby’s safety, when she comes.”
Raph downed half a tankard of ale. “We do not need a moat to keep them safe. We need a roof that doesn’t leak.”
“You’ve no imagination, Raph.”
“Imagination, he’s got,” Drew said from the other end of the table, “it’s talent he’s lacking.” He looked over his shoulder at the wall behind him. Several very poor paintings hung there, all with Raph’s scrawled signature.
