Page 58 of Tremaine's True Love
“I shall. You’ve worn me to flinders.” He kissed her temple and tucked her leg across his thighs. “I will need the assistance of at least two stout footmen to get down to breakfast, I’m sure.”
Nita’s damnably inquisitive fingers toyed with his nipple, and so thoroughly had Tremaine spent his passion that her touch was only eleven times more distracting than a tickle and only fourteen times harder to ignore than a stampeding herd of cattle.
“How does one manage that breakfast table encounter?” Nita asked. “I’m accustomed to dealing with patients in extremis—you’d be surprised the curses a Quaker lady knows when delivering her first child—but this is…”
Mercifully, her fingers went still.
“This is different,” Tremaine said, as close as he could come to describing an intimacy entirely without precedent in his experience.
What fool would hare off to Germany to buy sheep in the dead of winter when travel would mean leaving Nita Haddonfield’s side for weeks? Tremaine could take her with him, of course, but why spoil a wedding journey with commerce?
Commerce, his faithful mistress since he’d sold his first crop of wool nearly twenty years ago.
Nita patted his nipple. “We shall contrive. Nicholas and his countess manage, and they’re shamelessly besotted, not merely investigating possibilities with each other.”
If Nita had investigated Tremaine’s possibilities any more thoroughly, he’d be—
We shall contrive.Together, they would in the future,as a couple, contrive. The sense of her words penetrated the lingering haze of erotic pleasure.
“What conclusion have you come to after all this dedicated inquiry, Lady Nita?”
She snuggled closer. “About?”
“About marrying me. About becoming my wife, or my countess. The title hasn’t been an asset on the Continent, so I’ve not used it, but I’m a Frenchcomte, a circumstance my grandfather delights in. I have holdings in Provence, Portugal, Wales—sheep do quite well there—Scotland, Ireland, and I’m thinking of buying land in Germany. I have residences in Edinburgh, Aberdeenshire, Paris, London, Oxfordshire, Avignon, Florence, Venice—I like art; have I mentioned that?—and York.”
Tremaine likedher, liked her exceedingly, and she apparently liked him rather a lot too. The pleasure of that happy coincidence warmed him from the inside out.
“Some of my properties are modest,” he went on, “mere town houses, but my holdings in the Midlands are considerable, and I’m more than happy to purchase you a dower property in the vicinity of Haddondale.”
He probably didn’t need to remind her of that.
Tremaine paused to kiss Nita’s temple, wondering what else he had to offer his intended. Her hand on his chest was a slack weight over his heart, her breathing even.
“We’ll live wherever you please,” he said. “The Oxford estate is commodious, a good place to bring up children, and not that far from your family. Summers there are wonderful.” Tremaine fell asleep amid a vision of Nita organizing a family picnic for their brood of children. Sheep would dot the nearby meadow, the children would enjoy the chance to gambol out of doors.
Tremaine’s wife would love him and their family, and forget she’d ever been reduced to dealing with the unfortunate, the unwell, and the injured.
CHAPTERTEN
“Nita, wake up.” A determined hand shook Nita from dreams of minty kisses. “I’ll dash you with water if you don’t rouse yourself this instant.”
“Kirsten?”
“You were expecting somebody else?” Kirsten dove under the covers on the far side of Nita’s bed. “I hate winter. I hate being cold. I hate pretending frigid air is invigorating. Addy Chalmers’s daughter is in the kitchen asking for you. I had the child fed, but I fear she wants you to accompany her home.”
The last warm, dreamy cobwebs of memory were scoured away by a cold blast of dread. “Mary came for me?”
“She’s well enough. I didn’t inquire about the baby. If you want to send Horton to them, I’ll pay for it out of my pin money.” Kirsten drew the covers up to her chin, bouncing the bed all about.
“Horton won’t show up until the day’s half-gone,” Nita said, “if he bothers at all, and then he’ll merely look at the child, mutter about weak lungs, and suggest the surgeon should bleed her.”
“I thought you weren’t supposed to bleed the little ones.”
Nita swung the covers aside. “In more enlightened environs, the practice is held in low esteem. Thank you for fetching me.”
“You’re going, aren’t you?” Kirsten groused from the depths of the bed. “The sun isn’t even properly up, it’s cold as Lucifer’s backside out there, and away you must go. I’d admire you if you didn’t make me feel so guilty.”
Nita opened the wardrobe, where her much worn habit was always kept in readiness. Guilt was not in evidence this morning, not about resenting Mary’s summons, not about time shared with Mr. St.—with Tremaine.
