Page 24 of Counting on a Countess
As the words left his mouth, she tilted the glass back and downed the contents in one swallow. Then she held out her goblet for more. The footman refilled it immediately.
Well.Every day with Kit’s new bride would be a surprise.
A peculiar expression crossed her face, as if, in the most unlikely place, she recognized someone after they had been absent for a number of years.
“Where did this come from?” she asked the duke.
“It’s perfectly legal,” Greyland assured her. “I’d never serve Blakemere anything that wasn’t strictly aboveboard.”
“Why is that?” Tamsyn wondered.
“For all his wild reputation,” Langdon drawled, “Blakemere doesn’t look kindly on criminals.”
“I didn’t see good men die to protect their country,” Kit said grimly, “only to have the rule of law in England sneered at. Felons and offenders deserve whatever punishment is meted out.” His jaw hardened as he felt anger rise.
Color drained from Tamsyn’s face.
“You seem distressed.”
“Not a bit,” she said at once, but the merriment in her eyes had faded.
“I’m about to stun myself by cautioning that we shouldn’t overindulge tonight. Tomorrow afternoon, we go to the solicitor’s office and finalize the transfer of Lord Somerby’s fortune. You’re the Countess of Blakemere now, but in less than twenty-four hours, neither of us will be poor as church mice.” And he’d be so much closer to building the pleasure garden. So close to fulfilling his dream and finding peace.
Tamsyn’s expression turned thoughtful. Kit tried to decipher her countenance—was she forming plans for his money, or did the thought of possessinganyfortune bewilder her?
“To the bride and groom,” Langdon said, lifting his glass. His look was practically devilish. “May the marriage be as fruitful as it is prosperous.”
Greyland and his wife lifted their own glasses and said, “To the bride and groom.”
Everyone merrily drank. Then Greyland pulled the duchess into his arms and waltzed her around the room, as Langdon tapped his foot and Tamsyn clapped her hands in time with the music.
Kit couldn’t tear his gaze from her. Despite the stressors of the day, she glowed with a radiance he’d seldom seen before, and it drew him like a wolf edging closer and closer to a welcome fire.
She was his wife now, and whatever the future held, tonight belonged to them.
The clock chimed midnight.
Chapter 7
“Good night! Good night! Try not to make the morning newspapers!”
With these questionable words, Lord Langdon, Lord Greyland, and Lady Greyland waved Tamsyn and Lord Blakemere—Kit, she reminded herself—off as their carriage pulled away.
She’d married a man who hated lawbreakers.Good God.
Not only that, soon, she and Kit would spend their first night together. By morning, she’d no longer be a virgin.
Tamsyn tried to grasp the fact that she was now a married woman, with a wife’s duty to her husband in the home, and in bed. Everything in her life had changed. She was no longer Tamsyn Pearce, but Tamsyn Ellingsworth, the Countess of Blakemere, and inside half a day, she would be wealthy—well, herhusbandwould be wealthy, but she’d likely be given a substantial allowance.
She had plans for that money and knew precisely what to do with it. But when it came to the mysteries of the nuptial bed, she had little experience. Men wanted to marry virgins but they preferred a courtesan in the bedchamber—or so she’d been told. Almost everything she knew about sex was relayed to her by the women of Newcombe. Fortunately, the village women were outspoken and opinionated.
Through her lowered lashes, she studied Kit. They had never been truly alone until this moment. He wasn’t an especially big man, but he was strapping and hale and irrefutably masculine. Nothing buffered the small space between them, and each breath felt shallow due to his nearness.
He filled the silence and darkness of the carriage with easy conversation.
“Greyland’s cook turned out a repast that would put Prinny’s banquets to shame,” he said idly. “I think my brother Franklin ate a dozen seed cakes. He never had to be coaxed into cleaning his plate. I wouldn’t have been surprised if his wife filled her reticule with sugared fruit. Pamela is parsimonious to the point of agony. You wouldn’t believe she stood to become a viscountess upon the passing of my father. Given the long lives enjoyed by Ellingsworth men, I can see the point of her concern.”
“They must have been proud of you today,” she replied.
