Page 45 of Lady Beast's Bridegroom
He did not demand to be moved to another bedroom. He did not want to upset his housekeeper, understanding her need to make a grand gesture after her earlier vacillating. She had drawnhim aside to assure him of her loyalty. His stepmother had warned her and Edwards the butler that she would still be here and still in charge after Peter had returned to the army, and they had believed her. “But now you are married, my lord, and she will never be mistress here again,” the housekeeper proclaimed, with great delight.
Perhaps that was why a number of servants had followed the dowager to London. It left the house short-staffed, but Arial would soon put that right, and meanwhile, they would not be entertaining.
Peter gave orders for one of the bedrooms on the schoolroom floor to be prepared for him so he could be close to his sisters, and thereby avoided suffering Lady Ransome’s décor while not hurting the housekeeper’s feelings.
He settled in to help. Miss Pettigrew and one of the maids managed their intimate care, but Peter could lift them so their sheets could be changed. He could read to them and tell them stories. He could hold their hands when the urge to scratch became overwhelming and the soothing ointments that Cook made were no longer sufficient to stop the itch.
He could sit up with them through the night. It was not as if he could sleep when Arial was so far away. He missed her during the day, storing up thoughts to share with her, imagining her going through her routine and wishing he was there. At night, he yearned for her. Not just for her lovemaking, though he longed for that with a deep ache.
Rather, every one of his senses reached out to find her in the dark and woke him in protest at the vacancy in her place. The touch of her, within reach of his hand through the night. The sound of the little noises she made in her sleep. The smell of her—her soap, her perfume, the musk from their lovemaking, all mingled into something uniquely Arial. The taste of her, lingering in his mouth after he had kissed her and pleasured her.The sight of her in the early dawn or when the moon was full, all relaxed in sleep, her shape under the mask and her night rail even more familiar to him than his own.
Even after months of marriage, he had still not seen her unclothed. He had still not persuaded her to sleep, or even to share marital intimacies, without the mask or in the light. He understood her reasons. It didn’t stop her rejection from hurting. For if she truly loved him, surely, she would trust him?
Love.He grimaced in the dark. He could not blame her for not loving him when love had never been part of the bargain—when it was not something he had even wanted. He wanted it now. He loved his wife. He was not always comfortable with her. Little things irritated: her refusal to leave London and its insults, her insistence that the money she had brought into the marriage was his to do with as he liked, her self-possession when he wanted her to need him as much as he needed her.
He loved her anyway and wanted her with every particle of his being.
At least, if he sat with his sisters, he had something useful to do to distract him from daydreaming about his wife, naked and spread before him.
Three Oaks itself also kept him awake. He slept poorly, waking at the least sound, convincing himself with difficulty that he was alone, and no longer at war. One night, he was so certain there was an intruder in his room he got up and searched everywhere, even opening the door and looking down the empty passage. He had trouble going back to sleep, so certain he was that someone had left the room when he sat up in bed and called out.
Peter preferred being on the schoolroom floor with his sisters where his memories were mostly pleasant. His nanny, and later his tutor, before he went away to school. His mother, andoccasionally his father. And sometimes the child Arial and Miss Tulloch—Clara, as she was to him now.
In more recent memory, before he left for the army, it had been a place of refuge—for the new Lady Ransome had little interest in the daughter she gave his father and even less in the daughter he had demanded house room for. Only Pauline occasionally ventured up to the nursery. Otherwise, Peter was free of them all up here.
His father’s study was tolerable. Peter had made it his own when he came back here to live. The desk was not new, but nor was it the one that his father’s new wife had installed to go with the new fashionable decor. He had recovered this one from the attics, along with several other pieces of furniture he remembered from his childhood, and a couple of rugs that help to change the appearance of the room.
Even so, the memory of his father lived in this room—his father as he was after the fire. Harried, drunk, and grumpy. That mood got worse when his father married the former Mrs. Turner, and brought her home as his viscountess, together with her two daughters. After that, the viscount was seldom home, and when he was, he and Peter clashed on every topic.
The rest of the house was full of ghosts. Many of the rooms echoed with Peter’s old arguments with his father. Others with the carping and snide remarks of the Turner sisters, and the new viscountess’s constant criticisms and demands.
Even without them, the disapproving presence of Edwards continued to invoke their memories. As soon as the crisis with the girls ended, Edwards had to go. He was surly. He obeyed orders as slowly as possible. His petty rebellions infected the rest of his staff, so that the footmen’s work was slovenly and often only half done.
Peter had slipped on a soapy mess at the top of the stairs early one morning as he made his way from the girls’ room tohis own. It must have been there since his bathwater had been removed the night before, but no one had cleaned it up until after Peter had nearly fallen down the stairs.
Things had to change, and he would begin by dismissing Edwards. Once he could bring Arial home, he would beg her to redecorate throughout. Perhaps she could turn this old pile back into the family home he remembered from when his mother was alive.
How he missed her!
Chapter Twenty
June, 1817
In the earlyhours of one morning, Arial sat looking out into the garden, a tapestry of shadowy shapes in the light of the half moon. She was sipping a glass of cordial and thinking about Peter’s latest letter.
He had been gone five days and had written to her twice. A brief note when he first arrived to tell her that Viv seemed to be weathering the illness well, but that he was worried about Rose. Today’s letter reported no change. Viv continued to be a little under the weather, and grumpy because she was not permitted to visit her pony. Rose was still running a high fever, was racked with coughs, and seem to be having trouble breathing.
Arial wished she could fly the miles to be with them all. If she did, she would only be adding to Peter’s worries. All she could do was send up some fervent prayers.
It was too dark to reread the words at the bottom of the letter. Nor did she need to. They were engraved on her heart, and she only wished she knew exactly what they meant.
I miss you.Missed her as in her skills would be useful to him? Surely, he could not possibly mean that he felt incomplete without her, as she did without him.
Perhaps he just meant that his body craved hers. Hers certainly craved his. It was odd to realize they had only beenmarried for a little over four months. In that time, they had enjoyed marital intimacy almost every night, frequently several times a night. Idly, she set her mind to calculating how many nights they had been married, and how many of those they had shared a bed.
They were married early in February, and it was now June. One hundred and twenty-two nights, then. This was the fifth night of the current separation. Two nights from the other two trips. And she had had her courses twice since their wedding.
Wait a minute. That cannot be right.She thought back over what they had been doing, the engagements she had cancelled on her worst days, what was happening in London at the time of each brief withdrawal.Only twice.The first time had been at the beginning of March. The second was the day after Palm Sunday. She had had her first cramps at Evensong the night before.
