Page 33 of My Own True Duchess
“Very good, Mr. Tresham.”
Mrs. Haviland passed before him into the corridor, and Jonathan caught her by the wrist.
“A moment.” He drew her back into the parlor and closed the door. “You will think I have taken leave of my senses.” He wrapped his arms around her, carefully, gently.
An invitation. Take this, have this from me. Little enough to give when she was upending her schedule for weeks to see him comfortably settled.
She was unbending at first, but she didn’t pull away either. Jonathan waited, feeling both surprise and indecision in her posture.
“No toss of the dice required,” he said. “You don’t even need to shuffle the deck.”
Her arms stole around him. She laid her cheek against his chest, he gathered her closer. The embrace was sweet, not nearly as awkward as it should have been, and comforting.
“I miss my father,” Jonathan said, though he hadn’t intended to follow ridiculousness with true folly. “I miss having him to fight with. I hated him, detested everything he stood for, but I miss him.” He hadn’t connected the feeling with the words until that moment, and where discontent and annoyance had been, sadness settled.
A fair trade, and the realization shifted the tenor of the embrace, from Jonathan holding a woman to indulge an impulse, to two people sheltering in each other’s arms. The experience was so unexpected that Jonathan forgot to bow on his way to the door.
But then, Mrs. Haviland forgot to curtsey too.
* * *
“I must be missing someone,” Theo said, ignoring the lemon cake Bea had sliced for her guest. When Theo paid a call, the kitchen knew to cut the cake generously, for Theo would only ever permit herself a single slice, and she invariably chose the thinnest of the lot.
Today, she hadn’t had even that one slice, though she’d been stewing and fretting over her little matchmaking project for more than half an hour.
“Mr. Tresham is a wealthy, attractive ducal heir,” Bea said, toeing off her slippers and curling a foot onto the sofa cushions. “He can afford to be selective about his duchess.”
“I’m the one striking possible duchesses from his list, Bea. This lady has an aunt who tipples. That one has a brother who gambles.”
Bea chose the smallest slice of cake and bit off a corner. “My Aunt Dot can drain a flask as fast as any coachman ever did, and my brother Bert can’t pass a card table without placing a bet. You’ll have to raid a convent if your standards are that high.”
Theo, the soul of serenity, got up to pace. “Mr. Tresham is not happy, Bea. He needs a lady who will bring him some joy. He all but admitted that to me, which had to have been difficult for him. A touch of lightheartedness, he said. His father ignored him terribly, and Mr. Tresham’s response was to become top wrangler in his class at Cambridge.”
To a widow, a life consigned to mathematics was a dire fate. “Only a passionate scholar achieves that honor.” One with time to indulge his intellect and all the native talent to do so.
Theo straightened a hunt scene over the mantel that had been hanging perfectly plumb. “I need to find a woman who can hold the interest of a brilliant man while bringing him some joy.”
That Theo needed anything where Mr. Tresham was concerned was puzzling. Bea took another nibble of her lemon cake. “If a healthy young man can’t find joy in sharing his bed with a willing bride, then he’s undeserving of happiness. This lemon cake is fresh, and I can’t eat it all myself. It will go stale once sliced, so you’d best have some.”
Theo’s concern for poor, dear, unhappy Mr. Fabulously Wealthy Gorgeously Handsome Ducal Heir had apparently obliterated even her delight in lemon cake, her favorite treat.
She picked up a slice without even troubling over her choice. “We’ve both shared that bed with a willing man, Bea. That’s not happiness.”
“Then Archimedes was even more hopeless than I thought.” Bea’s foul mood was Casriel’s fault. Why had he been such a dratted gentleman? Such an honest, likable gentleman?
“Marital affection was enough for a time.” Theo tore off a bottom corner of her cake, for she always ate the icing last. “I wouldn’t trade Diana for anything, but when Archimedes made an issue of having more children, even the sanctuary of conjugal intimacies was tainted by his impecunious habits.”
Bea wanted to shake the late, perhaps-not-lamented Archimedes and the mama who’d allowed Theo to yoke herself to him. “He was worse than you let on, in other words. I’m sorry, Theo.”
They ate cake in a silence more sad than companionable. Bea missed her husband terribly, but he’d been equal parts friend, lover, and rascal. Bea could be fond of the rascal now that he was gone and genuinely grieve for the friend and the lover.
Theo’s mourning was for more than a departed husband.
“Who’s on your list?” Bea asked, debating a second slice of cake.
Theo rattled off six names, all lovely women, all appropriate brides for a ducal heir, and not a single one of them lighthearted.
“What about you?” Bea asked. “You’re eligible, pretty, you can bear children, and you seem to regard Mr. Tresham highly.”
