Page 104 of Wild Lily
Chapter 14
Dodging the heavy rainfall, Julian climbed up into his carriage and sat beside his pretty wife. In her fetching spring green traveling suit, he would admire her and forbid himself to touch the perfection. In the past week since their return to Willowreach from Burnett House, he’d paid inordinate attention to her. Claiming they were still in their honeymoon period, he had romanced her and she’d returned to his bed with her old enthusiasm for sensual play. Keeping her busy making love, he’d discovered how unrestrained she was in how she loved, how she laughed, how she gave of herself. And not just to him.
Each day for the past four, she’d gone to the village to check on the tenants’ health. Especially for the children, she was concerned. Julian had gone with her yesterday. In fact, from Ashford, he’d ordered a few supplies she requested. Powders and cough syrups, a catarrh she favored. When she noted that one of the tenant’s wives was very great with child, she’d said how she’d like to purchase a stethoscope.
“I had a collection of instruments in Corpus Christi but I left them in America. I want to purchase a new set. They’d come in handy here.”
He’d agreed to buy a complete array of whatever she wanted. “I’ll send to London. You shall have them very soon.”
She’d hugged him tightly and exclaimed over and over again how pleased she was he’d let her nurse his people.
Why wouldn’t he? It brought her joy. It brought his people health. It inspired pride in her.
And she came to him again that night and this morning exuberant and loving. Though he hadn’t thought to buy her her instruments to lure her into bed, he relished his reward.
And he took delight in sending away her maid, even before dinner last night, and removing slowly, deliberately, every item of clothing she wore. She hadn’t objected. And it hadn’t decreased his appetite for her. Hours later, here he sat, eager as a boy to sample every tasty bit of her body.
And they were to spend hours in this damn coach. He snorted.
She was the beauty. And he was certainly an unruly beast.
His cock lengthened in awareness of her charms. Her lustrous black hair swept high into a soft coiffure, she wore a bonnet with an ostrich plume to match her outfit. Her eyes twinkled at him and he arched a brow at her, expecting a warning that he keep his hands to himself on this journey. He grinned at her and and shifted painfully against the squabs. He wasn’t used to denying himself the pleasure of her delectable body.
But he perked to the sound of a man yelling at his coachman.
“Wait, milord, wait!”
“Someone calls for you, Julian.” Lily had parted the curtain on the window. “An older man. Running in the rain.”
He glanced out his own window but in the deluge could make out no one. It had been raining ever since they’d arrived home, the thunder rampant. But in his bedroom, he and Lily had not minded so much. Out in the village, his servants told him the crops were submerged in puddles that threatened the saplings.
“Milord?” The coachman jerked open the carriage door, sheets of water dripping from his hat. “Tom Henry from Willow Bend’s here. Quick, he says. Must see you.”
“Bring him inside.”
“Sir?”
“I’ll talk to him. He can’t stand in the rain, man.”
Henry didn’t come to him for any but serious matters. One of the Bend’s village elders, he took his rank with prudence. Sixty years old, if not more, he tended the south fields of Willowreach as had his father and that man’s before him. He was bent, grizzled but with a kind demeanor that the village children loved. They called him Saint Nicholas at Christmas time.
“Milord,” Henry appealed to him, hustled inside by his coachman. He gave a small bow, pulling his forelock and shuffling his wool cap in two hands. “Milady. Fergive me, sir.”
“Yes, Tom. What is it?”
“I didn’t wish to bother ye, sir, but I thought ye should know. We’ve had two more go poorly with coughs last night.”
“Did you get Doctor Winslow up from Ashford?” Julian noted the man’s bleary eyes and slack demeanor.
“Aye, this morn, me wife did.”
“And has he arrived?”
“He did, milord. He’s says four lads ‘ave bronchitis and maybe more to come because two ‘ave fierce coughs.”
“Does Winslow suggest a cure?”
“He made us build tents from our blankets, milord, and pipe in steam.”
