Page 69 of A Scottish Bride for the Duke
Safe. She pulled away so she could see his face, and this time, she was the one to press her lips to his.
“Thank you,” she said; he was offering her true protection, the one thing he’d never had from his father. “Thank you.”
“If there’s anything else to threaten you,” he said, that hand running up and down her back again. “If anything else happens, you must tell me. You’re my wife now. It is my duty to protect you, but I can only do that if I know what you’re running from.”
She gave him a teary smile. “I promise.”
“Good.” He pressed a kiss to her cheek. “And you’ll eat dinner?”
She spluttered a laugh. “Yes, Adrian, I will eat dinner with you.”
Chapter Nineteen
“What are you doing?” she asked one afternoon.
Adrian hadn’t realized how easy it would be to slip into life with Isobel as his wife.
In some ways, very little changed. She still lived with him; she accompanied him to breakfast and ate dinner with him in the evening.
He still had his responsibilities, and spent hours in his study writing to his steward, assessing the reports that came in, assigning money to replacing fences on his property, to rethatching the roofs of the tenants’ homes.
But this time, however, when he worked, he found Isobel sitting with him, curled up in a chair with a novel as he made notes and wrote letters.
He laid down his pen with a half-smile. “I am calculating the cost of cheese-making.”
“Cheese-making?” Isobel echoed.
“I have several estates. One, with fertile land, which pays for itself easily. But I have another one, further north, where the land is not so fertile. We have been growing wheat, but the harvests have been poor, and the people are struggling to make do.” He looked at her. “What about the people on your father’s estate?”
“Sheep,” she answered promptly. “I don’t suppose I’ve seen half as many sheep in the whole of England as I did on my father’s estate.”
“We have plenty of sheep,” he said wryly.
“Why not sheep, then? Ye can have both woolandmilk. And cheese, if ye so desire.”
“But the cheese is not half as popular, and the price of wool has decreased in recent years. In Sunderland—my estate—there used to be a large cheese farm nearby, but it closed several years ago. Still, several of my tenant farmers used to work there and remember how to make it. The cheese they can access is terrible. Therearesheep in the area, but there are fewer cows, and thus I would be answering the call of supply and demand.”
She propped her cheek on her hand as she watched him, her eyes curious. She reminded him of a cat, curled up before the fire, although it was spring and would soon be summer.
“Do ye think through all yer decisions this carefully?”
“Of course. That is my role as a landowner. These people depend on me. The least I can do is ensure that their lives are as easy as possible. In exchange, their money keeps the estate afloat.”
“You depend that much on your people?”
“I do.”
“I respect the way ye think about their welfare,” she said quietly.
“What else do you expect me to do?” He pushed his chair back and held out his arms to her. “Come here, you little wretch. Must you always think the worst of me?”
“I don’t,” she protested, but she came, anyway.
They were still learning one another, how their bodies worked, and howtheycould work together. She slid onto his lap, placing her knees on either side of him as she straddled him.
His wife liked his control in the bedchamber—but she also liked to tease him elsewhere.
So far, in their three days of marriage, he’d made love to her seven times, and all had been within the confines of his bedchamber. Now, however, he had a different plan.
