A Woman of True Honor: True Gentlemen Book Eight Page 14

  Jacaranda knelt beside the dog to groom its haunches, and what the hell was wrong with Worth, that after several years of marriage and all the delights attendant thereto, he was still stirred by the sight of his wife grooming a damned dog on a summer day?

  “You’ve spent most of the morning reading that manuscript, Worth, and I’ll wager there isn’t a single column of figures among its pages.”

  “There is, actually, in the appendices. Valerian lays out what a formal dinner for thirty ought to cost and how to economize without being obvious about it. He also has budgets for household wages, at homes, Venetian breakfasts, and even a typical Mayfair ball.”

  Jacaranda paused in her brushing to gently tug on Andromeda’s ears. “Are the budgets accurate?”

  “I don’t know. I’m too busy reading the parts about how to converse with a chance-met member of the opposite sex in the park. He has lists of questions, about magic wishes, favorite memories, worst fears, and so on that have nothing to do with the weather and everything to do with making a positive impression as a conversationalist. I can hardly believe these clever ideas spring from the mind of a male Dorning.”

  Jacaranda resumed her seat. “Sycamore is making a killing with his club. Willow turned training dogs into a profitable venture. Casriel has set Hawthorne, Ash, Oak, and Valerian to establishing the botanical venture, which is off to a roaring start. My brothers are shrewd men. Witness, they had me running their household without a farthing of remuneration.”

  “I would call them out for that, but their dunderheadedness resulted in my wedded bliss. Do we know any publishers?”

  “We might.” She pulled the dog hair from the brush and let it scatter away on the midday breeze, a country habit meant to give birds material for building nests. “Do you know who gave me the idea to go into service?”

  “Whoever she was, she was brilliant. From the day you arrived at Trysting, you’ve run the place like you were born to manage country manors, which, I suppose, you were.”

  “Valerian came in from a long day of some thankless task—laying hedges, sawing logs, I know not what—and I scolded him for tracking dirt onto my carpets. He apologized and looked around at the Dorning Hall accoutrements I spent much of my life dusting. Then he opined that his sister ought not to toil like the head maid all day without compensation. Casriel could impress his brothers into hard labor, because he was expected to send them to university and seen them settled, Valerian said, but if I didn’t demand better treatment, I’d grow old as an unpaid housekeeper in rural Dorset.”

  “Valerian said that?”

  “He apologized for rendering his opinion, but his words stuck with me. I’m an earl’s oldest daughter. I’d barely spent any time in London, I had nothing approximating a trousseau, no local swain had even ventured to walk me home from divine services. Valerian had spoken the plain truth, and I had simply been too tired for too long to see it for myself. Three months later, I was earning a fat salary keeping house for some gouty old cit who never visited his country seat.”

  “And I had hired a conscientious, venerable besom who wrote the most marvelously detailed monthly household reports.”

  He’d loved her monthly reports, loved especially when she’d deliberately mis-tallied by a penny or so leaving him a needle to find in an accounting haystack.

  “I do not know for a fact,” Jacaranda said, “but I suspect the reason my brothers didn’t immediately fetch me away from your employ like a clan of border reivers is that Valerian wouldn’t allow it. He has a way with a scold, though he rarely resorts to it.”

  “Much like his sister.”

  They shared a smile, until Meda stuck her cold nose against Worth’s hand. He petted the dog, though the manuscript tugged at his attention too. The scribblers undertook a dodgy business, but society wasn’t about to stop reading, were they?

  “This book is both informative and entertaining, though it would be expensive to print.”

  “Valerian is thorough by nature. Perhaps there are chapters he could cut?”

  “I’m no editor.”

  Jacaranda shifted to sit in Worth’s lap. She was a generously apportioned woman, and her weight was a marvelous pleasure.

  “Your nose has not left those pages for the past two hours, Worth, and more to the point, you’ve read the prose when the back of the book offered you numbers to study instead. Are you acquainted with Dougal MacHugh?”

  “Big, growly Scot? We’ve been introduced. We have at least one club membership in common.”

  “His press handles a lot of domestic advice. You might ask him who’d be interested in such a book.” Jacaranda drew the pages from Worth’s grasp and set them aside. “I’m feeling rather domestic myself at the moment.”

  Thank the heavenly powers. “Grooming the dog puts you in a domestic frame of mind?”

  She drew off his wire-rimmed glasses. “Watching you read does that.”

  “Then I will make it a point to read more often.” He rose with his wife in his arms and marched for the door, Meda trotting at his heels, tail wagging happily.

  * * *

  Emily finally understood the fever that could grip her father when he was seized by a notion to buy up a lot of rare fabric or open a shop in a certain location. Papa had learned from long experience that commercial opportunities were fleeting. One ship docking a week before another could mean the difference between a fortune made and a fortune lost.

  When Papa became obsessed with a venture, he ate little, slept less, and tended to his other business with an air of impatient distraction. His focus remained on the pet project, even when he was entertaining business associates at supper or reading the endless reports penned by his subordinates.

  Valerian Dorning had become such a fever in Emily’s heart. She had been mentally comparing all other men to him, from the scurrilous Ogilvy, to high-handed Caleb, to proper Tobias, to the grinning local lads trying to sort out a quadrille with a lady they fancied.

  The lot of them came up short compared to Valerian. Tobias was mannerly, but he lacked warmth. The young men on the dance floor were abundantly charming, but a bit rag-mannered. Caleb dressed well, though not quite fashionably. Those outward trappings were not why Emily wanted to seize Valerian Dorning for her own.

  He was honorable and trustworthy, he listened to her—witness their conversation about the magistrate’s post—he saw her, he cared for her. Her money mattered to him only in that he was determined not to touch it.

  And oh, how that made her hungry to touch him, to consume him, to make certain that his offer of a courtship became a proposal of marriage.

  Emily went into his embrace on a tide of joy buoyed by determination. He would be hers. She would be his, and the present was a perfect time to impress that truth upon him. Nothing and no one would come between them.

  “I want a special license,” Emily said, between kisses. “Please, Valerian.”

  He took both of her hands and gently held them. “I haven’t spoken to your father, Emily. You are his only daughter, and I am not what he has in mind for you.”

  Emily twisted her fingers free of Valerian’s grasp, relieved him of his jacket, and began untying his cravat. “He wants me to marry gentry. You own this lovely estate, you’re the brother of an earl, your family has excellent connections, and I’ll be close enough to Pepper Ridge to keep an eye on Papa if we dwell here. Papa will see reason.”

  Emily drew off Valerian’s cravat and laid it on the clothes press. His shirt buttoned down to the middle of his chest, a dizzying realization. She undid the first three buttons and had to stop to catch her breath. All dressed up, Valerian Dorning was delicious, but half undone, he was… She slid her hand over warm male muscle and closed her eyes the better to savor the feel of him.

  “Emily, what are you about?”

  “I’m undressing you. You aren’t objecting.”

  “I am barely comprehending. Until your father has given his blessing to the match, we cannot
consider ourselves engaged. Even if he allows me to court you, there are settlements to be negotiated, arrangements to be made.”

  She wanted to rip the buttons free, but suspected Valerian wouldn’t understand wanton destruction of a beautiful piece of men’s attire. She settled for stroking her palm over the bare flesh of his sternum.

  “I am not a pair of oxen, Valerian, to be bargained away in the marketplace over the barrelhead. If Papa refuses to give his blessing, then we marry without it, though I would rather we had it. I am of age, as are you. You have the means to support a family, and what do settlements matter beyond that?”

  He took her hand in his and kissed her fingers. “Finances matter, Emily. I wish that weren’t so, but they do.”

  How she loved the warmth of his grip, the seriousness in his eyes. “When Papa was so ill, all his wealth meant nothing. He weakened by the day, and his warehouses and shops and ships only burdened him further. I know what I want, Valerian, and I know that if I had to dwell with you here at Abbotsford, a farmer’s wife, economizing as best I could, I’d be happier than if you had buckets and pots of filthy lucre and ten country estates to go with them.”

  She wanted to beg him to join her in the bed that sat so invitingly three feet away, to make love with her beneath the soft quilt amid the peace and quiet of a home he owned.

  “You mean that,” he said, sounding puzzled. “You would marry me without your father’s blessing?”

  To the world, and to Valerian, Emily doubtless appeared to be a doting and devoted daughter, and she did love her father. Ever since Papa had chosen to doubt his own son, her devotion had been tempered by bitter truth. Papa would set her aside if she threatened his standing in the mercantile community, just as he’d tossed Adam aside.

  “My father has no regard for my blessing,” she said. “He makes a good show of holding me in affection, and he would say he loves me. His love comes at a price. I choose instead the regard you show me, in all its honesty and sincerity.”

  “You shouldn’t have to choose,” Valerian said, sliding his arms around her waist. “I promise you, Emily, that if we become man and wife, my every waking thought will be for your happiness, and my last breath will be spent safeguarding your well-being. We will work hard and know some want, but you will never have cause to doubt my devotion.”

  She snuggled into his embrace, a great weight lifting from her heart. “I want a special license, Valerian. I want to evict your tenant tomorrow and put my own dishes in the sideboard.”

  He held her, and the fit of his embrace was perfect. Secure, warm, comfortable, nothing careful or tentative about the intimacy.

  “Rearranging our affairs will take some doing,” he said. “Many couples speak their vows some time before they go to housekeeping.”

  Emily had no intention of rattling around Pepper Ridge as a married woman who saw her husband at services for the duration of the summer, but she’d make that clear later.

  “There’s something else I want even more than a special license, Valerian.”

  He stroked her back slowly, easing away all tension and worry. She was where she was born to be, with the man she was born to love.

  “If it’s within my power to grant it, Emily, you have only to tell me what you desire.”

  “I desire you,” Emily said. “I desire you, as a wife desires her husband, and if you make me wait for a lot of vows and negotiations and whatnot, I will lose my reason.”

  She pressed closer lest he mistake her meaning. Valerian was no creature of impulse, and she felt him thinking through the ramifications of her demand. Just this once, she needed him to set aside propriety, family duties, gentlemanly hesitation, and whatever else kept his hands above her waist.

  “You are certain, Emily? If we take this step, we are all but married in truth. I will consider myself bound to you and expect you to regard me in a similar light.”

  That chivalrous admonition was belied by the bulge Emily felt behind his falls. “That is precisely the light in which I already regard you.”

  “Then the matter is settled,” he murmured, kissing her with exquisite gentleness. “I am yours to command.”

  * * *

  A thousand doubts plagued Valerian as he kissed his intended.

  Why hadn’t he anticipated that Emily might want a very short courtship? Osgood Pepper would be displeased with this union, and Casriel would be less than enthusiastic. Hurrying the nuptials meant less time to bring either of those two worthies around.

  The Cummings family would remain at Abbotsford for several more months—months Valerian had planned to spend courting Emily—and a trip up to London to call on various publishers figured on his schedule too.

  “Come to bed with me,” Emily whispered, twining her arms around his neck. “Who knows when we’ll have this opportunity again?”

  She kissed him on the mouth, as if to silence any further words of caution, and with the few wits remaining to him, Valerian realized he faced a choice. The lovely bed, with its soft quilt and abundant pillows, sat three feet to his right, a reminder that this bed in this house on this estate was one of very few he owned personally. If he wanted to consummate his engagement to Emily Pepper, this was the place to do that.

  And he did want to—very much.

  The other option, to demure, to leave the lady frustrated, to claim that some gentlemanly scruple prevented him from indulging their passions was so much cowardice.

  “Emily, your father won’t stop this wedding.”

  She smoothed Valerian’s hair back, her gaze puzzled. “I beg your pardon?”

  “Osgood. He won’t scare me off with miserly settlements, bluster, or insults. You have agreed to become my wife, and I would be the greatest fool in all of England not to marry you at the first opportunity. I would rather face every difficulty in life with you at my side in humble circumstances than spend my remaining years in luxury without you.”

  She rested her forehead on Valerian’s shoulder, and the relief conveyed in that gesture spoke volumes. Osgood Pepper was apparently in the habit of buying off any hopeful swain he deemed unsuitable. Valerian didn’t fault a papa for keeping his daughter safe, but neither did he think Emily’s judgment so lacking that such meddling was warranted.

  She knew her own mind, and her own heart.

  “That’s what I love about you,” Emily said, resuming her efforts to unbutton his shirt. “You see clearly. You aren’t confused by dross and noise and lies. These buttonholes ought to be larger.”

  “So my clothing falls off in public?”

  “So I needn’t damage your shirt in my haste to see you without it.”

  She’d do it, too—tear the shirt from his body—bless her unrelenting determination. “Do you know what I love about you?”

  Emily shook her head. Valerian’s shirt buttons were all undone, and rather than look him in the eye, she stared at his throat.

  “Everything,” he said, kissing her cheek. “I love everything about you. Your honesty, your fierceness, your humor, your nose.” He kissed that too. “Your hands and your laugh. I especially love your laugh and your curiosity. I expect once I am better acquainted with them, I will love your breasts too. Might you favor me with an introduction?”

  Emily seized him in a tight hug, then stepped back, smiling. “Introduce yourself, Mr. Dorning.”

  Riding habits were slightly more complicated than other types of women’s attire, but between kisses, smiles, and a monumental display of patience, Valerian soon had Emily standing in her shift beside the bed. He was down to his breeches and ready to be free of them.

  “Last chance to change your mind,” he said, shaping her hips through the fine linen shift. “I can have a special license within a fortnight, assuming my brothers cooperate.”

  “You are tormenting me,” Emily said, starting on the buttons of his falls. “I will have my revenge.”

  “Is that a promise?”

  “A sworn oath.” A moment later, she’d
finished with the buttons and taken him in her hand. “Perhaps you’d like to wait two weeks,” she said, gently stroking her thumb over a very sensitive part of his anatomy, “depending on the uncertain cooperation of a couple of London swells. If we wait three weeks, we can have the banns cried.”

  The pleasant hum of anticipation low in Valerian’s belly became the sharp burn of desire before the third stroke of her thumb.

  “Under the covers, Emily. Now.” Another stroke, this time accompanied by the most exquisite tug. “Please.”

  She played with him a moment longer, during which eternity Valerian kept himself from begging only by virtue of sheer masculine pride. When Emily had thoroughly scrambled his wits, she climbed under the covers and lay back against the pillows.

  Valerian etched the picture of her—rosy, smiling, and wearing only her shift—into his memory, for it was a lovely image. He peeled out of his breeches, draped them across the bottom of the bed, and affected a yawn, the better to let the lady have a good gawk at her lover.

  “Valerian?”

  All manner of questions lay in that slightly raspy utterance of his name. He answered Emily’s questions by joining her on the bed and settling himself over her.

  “We’ll go slowly,” he said, kissing her eyebrows. “We’ll take our time and meander along the path. Our first time should be without haste, without—”

  Emily lashed her legs around his flanks. “Valerian, I treasure your every syllable and sigh, but fewer proclamations, please, and more passion.”

  She arched up against him, brushing her sex over his arousal. The physical result was a gut-punch to his grand plans for a leisurely joining and a roweled spur to his desire. Clearly, Emily had no anxiety about what was to come.

  And neither did Valerian. She was the woman he loved, his prospective wife. He indulged in a nuzzling acquaintance with her breasts, promised himself he’d get back to that conversation, and eased into her heat with a sense of homecoming and joy.