Page 64 of Ne'er Duke Well
She turned suspicious amber eyes from his face and opened the door with one slender-fingered hand.
“I sent my lady’s maid ahead this morning, along with several footmen and most of my garments,” she said. “I wonder where she’s put them.”
They didn’t have long to wonder. A small woman in cinnamon-colored muslin stepped around the corner. She seemed to have been waiting to pounce.
“My lady,” she said, ignoring Peter altogether. “That is, Your Grace. I am not sure we were… you were… entirely prepared. I’m not quite certain we’ve brought enough… er, anything.”
Peter winced and looked around the house, recalling how it had appeared to him the first time he’d entered after inheriting.
The front hall featured two soaring columns. A rose-print paper covered the walls, but it was faded, with large dark rectangles suggesting the shape of the art that had once hung there. To one side lay the sitting room, looking traitorously free of places to sit. On the other side, an archway framed the dining room, its black-and-white marble tiles seeming to stretch on and on. The impression was rather exaggerated by the fact that Peter and Humphrey had been dining together at a square oaken dining table surrounded by exactly two chairs.
In truth, it looked quite substantially better than it had when he’d moved in. He’d spent some time removing strips of peeling fabric from the walls of the sitting room. And the mice—he and Humphrey had removed all the nests of mice.
He was pretty sure. Mostly all of them.
He had meant to furnish the house before the children came, but to do so before the guardianship hearing had seemed like hubris. It felt impossible to believe they would ever really be a family.
Selina was taking in her surroundings with astounding equanimity. “Peter?”
“Yes?”
“Do we… have any staff?”
“We have a full complement of grooms in the mews. There’s a cook. And Humphrey.”
Her maid let out a loud snort.
Selina arched a brow. “Yes, Emmie?”
“Humphrey,” the woman said with a disdainful sniff. “Thinks he runs the house, does he? We’ll see how he feels when you’ve brought in a butler. And a housekeeper. And perhaps a valet.”
“Humphreyismy valet,” protested Peter.
Emmie snorted again.
“He’s very handy with an iron,” Peter told Selina.
“He told me there is no bedchamber prepared for Her Grace.” Emmie sounded appalled. “And no wardrobes for her clothing and no clothes-brush for me to use and no iron and no—”
If she continued to list things that the house didn’t possess, Peter feared they might be there all afternoon and well into the evening. “I’m sure that tomorrow we can set up—”
“We’ll share,” said Selina crisply.
He couldn’t have heard her correctly. Surely she would want her own bedchamber. Hell, he was not entirely certain she had wanted to marry in the first place—she had said no, after all, until the Eldons had discovered them together at Rowland House.
Emmie appeared to have the same reaction. “You’ll… share?”
“Indeed. We will share a bedchamber. Tonight. Every night.”
God above, his eyes nearly rolled back in his head at her words. The images they evoked contrasted with the business-like tone of her voice in a way that he found quite painfully arousing.
He was fairly certain that if a drop of water had landed on his skin at that exact moment, it would have sizzled.
“You may select a room near to our bedchamber to be my dressing room,” Selina was saying. “Can you begin a list of the furnishings we’ll need to acquire tomorrow?”
“Of course.”
She turned to Peter then. “Perhaps we should speak to your cook about tea?”
