27
JAMES’S SMILE DIDN’T slip, something he considered quite an accomplishment. “Hello, Glenda. You’re looking lovely as usual. I’m now your brother-in-law. And you are my new sister.”
Glenda looked from James to Jessie, groaned, and said through tight lips, her voice quavering with pain, “I’m betrayed. I’m ground into the dirt. It’s all your fault, Jessie, and yours too, James, for not paying heed to the one woman—me—who would have given you grace, beauty, and wit. Now look at what you’ve got and she will just breed more of what she is.”
“What do you mean, Glenda, that I’ll breed just more of what I am? Surely that doesn’t make sense.”
“You stole James from me, you miserable traitor! You were ugly, a pathetic girl who looked like a boy, and I never worried about you for an instant except to laugh at you because you looked and acted so stupidly. But just look at you. You’ve changed. You’ve become different, and it isn’t right. I hate you, Jessie. You will breed just more of what you were, not what you’ve become. You’ll change back, James will see that and hate you as much as I do.”
No one had a thing to say to that. Glenda tottered out of the room. She stopped just outside the doorway, whirled around, her face mottled, and shouted in raw fury, “I’ll kill you for this, Jessie! You ruined yourself and forced James to marry you. You even seduced him. Well, it won’t last. You’ll see. You’ll bore him by the end of next week, if not by the end of today. You interest a man? It doesn’t matter that you look different. You’ll never interest any man. Ha! You don’t know how to. Ha, again.”
Oliver Warfield cleared his throat. “My dear,” he said to his wife, “I ask that you speak to our daughter. Her behavior is tedious, if the truth be told. James never gave her a moment’s encouragement.”
“He didn’t give any encouragement to Jessie, either, but she’s pregnant.”
“That’s different,” Oliver said comfortably as he rose. “Come, Jessie, let’s go to the stable. The horses have missed you. You too, James.”
“Oh yes, Papa, I’d like that very much. James?”
While Jessie greeted all the stable lads and patted all the horses and gave them carrots and sugar, Oliver Warfield pulled James into his office. He sat down behind his battered desk, pulled a bottle of port from one of the drawers, and poured two glasses. “Here you are, son. Ah, that sounds nice. Here’s to your marriage to my best daughter.”
“I’ll drink to that,” James said, and clicked his glass to his father-in-law’s. The two men drank slowly without speaking.
Oliver leaned back in the rickety old chair that was the most comfortable one he’d ever sat in, and said, “ Remember when Jessie ate an entire watermelon to keep you from having a piece?”
“Good Lord, that must have been at least five years ago. I don’t think she’d even look at a watermelon now. There must be a point somewhere in this, Oliver.”
“Only that you will make her content, James. Why won’t she eat watermelon now? I have no idea, James.”
James smiled into his port at the suddenly stern father’s voice. “I will try. There are a lot of changes coming. Do you know that the English Wyndhams, their two sons, and their four servants traveled here with me?”
Oliver Warfield looked horrified. “They’re all staying at Marathon? They’re all in that house?”
“Unfortunately so. The Duchess—she’s the Countess of Chase, you know—she assures me that I’m not to worry, that all of them understand perfectly and indeed applaud how I spent my money.”
“I thought you did too much, but that’s neither here nor there. Those slaves now live better than many citizens.”
James felt the familiar curl of anger in his gut, but he held his tongue. He sipped more of his port and waited.
“Speaking of money, James, we need to speak about Jessie’s dowry.”
James shifted in his chair. In his new role as husband to Jessie Warfield, he was frankly uncomfortable with Oliver, the man whose horses he’d tried to beat for years at the races, talking about giving money to him.
“You want more port?”
“I think I’d better have some,” James said, and held out his glass.
An hour later James and Jessie finally left the Warfield Farm to return to Marathon. Jessie was talking like her old self, as chirpy as a magpie and excited about her father’s horses. “Rialto will take on Tinpin with no trouble in the race on Saturday. Oh goodness, whom am I to cheer for? This is a problem I hadn’t considered.”
James cleared his throat. “You’re feeling well?”
“Marvelous. What will I do, James? And there’s Friar Tuck and Miss Louise. I trained her myself. She’s nearly three now and ready to race. She—”
“Jessie, when your father dies, you and I will own the Warfield Farm.”
She stared at him. “He’s giving us everything? But he didn’t tell me that.”
“No, not everything. He told me he’s been very lucky the past few years. I suppose I didn’t want to know how he recouped his fortunes. There is a dowry for Glenda, a sizable one, he said, since he’s not all that certain she can catch a husband without one.”
“But Glenda’s very pretty. She’s not at all like me, she—”
“Are you fishing for a compliment, Jessie?”
She gave him a long, thoughtful look. “I know what I am, James.”
“Good. I want my wife to know that what she is first, is mine.”
Jessie wasn’t sure that she knew that at all, but she preferred James’s line of thinking. “What about the house? What about Mother?”
“She is to live in the house until she dies. Then the house belongs to us as well. Which is a problem. Our properties don’t join, so we can’t just pull down fences and combine them.”
“We’ll figure out something,” Jessie said. “Don’t worry, James.”
He knew that look in her eye—all sparkling energy and intelligence—and was pleased. Now if only their babe would stop sending her to her knees in front of the chamber pot.
She said now as she frowned down at her gloved hands, “Will we have money to work on Marathon?”
“Yes. A lot.”
She gave him a fat smile. “Good,” she said, and tucked her arm through his. “Papa asked me what I wanted, and I told him that the Duchess and I were going to fix up the inside of the house and we needed money to do it right. Odd that he didn’t tell me about giving us the farm as well.”
“That’s properly a man’s subject of discussion, Jessie. Your father was right not to mention that to you before he’d discussed it with me. I’m surprised that he even asked you about the money.”
“He told me that I’d earned all of it, since I’d been his best jockey for the past six years. I told him he was right. He kissed me then and hugged me. I love my father very much, James. I don’t ever want him to die. At least for a very long time.”
“How can you be so nice and your mother so tedious?”
She laughed and laughed.
There was no particular pandemonium at Marathon when they returned, which was a relief. There was, however, James’s mother, resplendent in purple silk, and she was seated in the parlor with the earl. The Duchess must have escaped, Jessie thought as she squared her shoulders and walked into the parlor beside James.
“My son,” Wilhelmina Wyndham said, encouraging him to walk across the room to kiss her outstretched hand before she’d held it out for long enough to get a cramp.
“Mother.” He kissed her veined hand. “I’m surprised you’re here. I was coming to see you. Don’t you remember? I told you I would visit you today.”
“I couldn’t wait. It’s been too long since I’ve seen you. I told Ursula that she could wait, that I would come to dine with you this evening. She and Gifford can see you tomorrow.”
Wonderful, just wonderful, Jessie thought, wondering if she would make it through an evening with her mother-in-law without having to leave the room to retch.
>
When the Duchess came into the parlor, looking like the regal countess she was, slender and elegant and beautifully gowned in a pale yellow jonquil day dress, Wilhelmina Wyndham swelled with indignation. “You’re still here? I had prayed you would decamp. I don’t mind that your lovely husband is here, for his only fault is that he had no choice but to marry you. He is an excellent man still despite the fact that you and he took everything that should have belonged to me. But you here as well? I won’t have it. I wish you would die in your sleep.”
Jessie gasped. “What did you say, ma’am?”
“Oh, I just said that I wished the Duchess won’t ever sigh or weep. Life is so uncertain, you know.”
“Exactly so, ma’am,” the Duchess said, and gave her quite a beautiful, serene smile. “Badger wished me to tell you he prayed the food he prepared would give you bile.”
“How dare he! He said what?”
“Why, ma’am, Badger said it was his pleasure to serve you food that would make you smile.”
“You haven’t changed,” Wilhelmina said, lips tight, her powerful bosom heaving beneath the deep purple silk. “You shouldn’t ape your betters, young lady. It doesn’t matter that you’re a countess. You don’t deserve to be. You’re a fortune-hunting adventuress. Everyone knows it, even your poor husband, but he still married you seven years ago.”
“Exactly what I was thinking,” Marcus said. “Well put, ma’am. However, since I am married to the wench, since I can’t very well boot her into a well, I suppose I must defend her to the best of my meager ability. Thus, ma’am, I would be pleased were you to drop yourself off a cliff.”
“Oh no, surely, no! What did you say, my lord?”
“Me? Oh, I just said I would be pleased if you were to drop yourself off a cliff.”
Mrs. Wyndham stared at him in consternation. There was complete silence in the parlor, with everyone staring at Marcus, who looked as bland as Old Bess’s tapioca pudding. “You didn’t pretend,” she said finally. “That’s not how it’s done. You must pretend and find suitably matching words to cloak your meaning in banality.”
“How inept of me,” Marcus said, and twitched a small piece of lint off his sleeve.
“Yes,” Wilhelmina Wyndham said, leaning toward the earl, “you could have said, for example, that you would be pleased if I were to take a good whiff of this excellent tea.”
Marcus frowned. “No, that’s not quite right yet, ma’am. Ah, I will have to think about it. When I decide, I will tell you and you can give me a critique.”
“I would be delighted to,” Wilhelmina Wyndham said, and patted the earl’s arm. “Such a lovely material this is,” she said, her voice all coy and flirting. “Such a lovely color, that deep blue.”
The Duchess rolled her eyes. Could her wretch of a husband get away with any sin?
James, much enjoying himself, remained silent—at least he had planned to until his dear mother turned her guns on Jessie. She said now, “I am at a loss to determine why your beautiful husband doesn’t leave you. You’re not fit to live.”
“What, ma’am?” Jessie felt her eyes begin to cross. The earl laughed deeply. “Well done, ma’am. Finish it.”
“Certainly, my dear boy. Why, Jessie, I only told the Duchess that she had such wit to give.”
James finally cleared his throat, drawing all attention. “Mother, let me give your thoughts another direction, perhaps a more pleasant one. You are going to be a grandmother come next April.”
Jessie felt the force of her mother-in-law’s shock, then her fury radiating now toward her. “So,” Wilhelmina Wyndham said, pointing her finger at Jessie, “you did seduce my poor son. When he got to England you told him and he had to marry you. I wouldn’t have minded if he had wed Glenda because she’s an ignorant twit and I can control her quite well, both her and her ridiculously inept mother, who was my best friend when we were girls. How Portia birthed an oddity like you I will never know. It must be her husband’s fault. Oliver has always been too sporting by half. Poor Portia writhes with the knowledge that you took poor Glenda’s husband, but she doesn’t have the skill to do anything about it save moan and whine.”
“What would you do, ma’am?” Marcus asked, giving her a look that would vanquish any woman’s defenses.
“Why, I would see that she’s made so miserable that she traveled to Italy and lived the rest of her miserable life in a fishing village.”
“But, ma’am,” Jessie said, rising now, wringing her hands, wondering if she would vomit on her mother-in-law’s shoes, “I don’t speak any Italian.”
“That, miss, is none of my fault. Speak to your mother. She gave you no suitable education. My James speaks fluent French. He even reads their outlandish literature.”
Before murder could be committed or laughter break through, James rose and held out his hand. “Mother, I believe you should be on your way now. You will come to us for dinner another evening. Bid your farewells to Marcus.”
“You continue to improve,” Wilhelmina Wyndham said to the earl. “You may kiss my hand.”
The earl complied.
“As for you,” she said to the Duchess, “I shan’t forget you.”
“Thank you, ma’am.”
“Ah, Thomas, please have my mother’s carriage fetched. Thank you. I will escort you, Mother.”
“It’s your fault,” Wilhelmina Wyndham said to both the Duchess and Jessie, and swept from the room on her son’s arm. Jessie didn’t imagine she’d ever totter, like Glenda. She heard her say to James in the small entranceway, “The earl is such a lovely man. It was she—that girl whose name is ridiculous! Duchess—of all things—it was she who kept the earl from giving us our due. Bring him with you to visit me, dear James. Leave both females here. They’re better off here. Trust me.”
The Duchess, who was studying the fabric on the settee, said, “You know, Jessie, I think we should visit Baltimore tomorrow and see what furnishings are available. But to be fair about it, I suppose we should consult James.”
“Yes,” Jessie said, looking thoughtful. “Knowing James, he’ll have an opinion about everything.” Jessie sighed. “I can’t believe how you treated her, Marcus, yet she lapped it up.”
“I’m irresistible,” Marcus said.
His wife looked at him, a smile playing about her mouth. “I’m sorry, Jessie, but Wilhelmina is a harridan and the most vicious woman I’ve ever met. I appreciate how you, Marcus, protect me from the worst she dishes out. As for James, I noticed he kept his verbal distance until she set her sights on you, Jessie.”
“He does well,” Marcus said. “What else can he do? Toss her out of the window? Drop her off a cliff?” He laughed, rose, and stretched lazily. “I’m off to exercise one of James’s horses.” He kissed his wife and patted Jessie’s cheek. “Relatives are the very devil,” he said, and strolled out of the parlor.
“His mother,” the Duchess said, “dotes on him as well. She adores him. She’s always talking about his innocence, his purity. She’s also decided that we suit each other, which is a vast relief. She spoils the boys shamelessly.”
Jessie sighed deeply. “Can you see Mrs. Wyndham spoiling any offspring of mine shamelessly?”
“Well, perhaps not.”
“What are we to do, Duchess? After all, she is his mother.”
“Poor James.”
28
JAMES WAS SO surprised, he stumbled over the three-legged stool that stood in front of the winged chair and nearly went crashing to the floor.
He flailed his arms to regain his balance, then stood there rubbing his shin, cursing the stool, and staring at his wife, who sat cross-legged in the middle of their bed, brushing her hair over her shoulder, sending a cascade of red curls nearly to her belly.
She was stark naked.
Not that he could see much of anything. Her thick hair cloaked her white flesh as well as a shawl might. When she raised her arm he could see through the hair to a lovely expanse of white flesh just
over her left breast.
James began to shake. Those glimpses of white skin, visible only now and again, would madden a man, any man, particularly a man who was a husband of only three months who hadn’t touched his wife in two days for fear of inciting another nightmare involving that blasted Mr. Tom. James wanted to jump on her right then, at that very instant. “My God,” he said, taking one step forward.
“Hello, James,” Jessie said with a fat smile. “A lovely warm night, isn’t it?”
“Yes, and for that I’m grateful.” He took another step toward the bed.
She pulled a thick mass of hair away from her body, lifting it to studiously brush the curling ends over her fingers. As she brushed, she said, “James, will you make love to me if I promise you that I won’t dream about Mr. Tom?”
“Well,” he said slowly, “I’m not sure I can risk giving you any pleasure. I think it’s connected—the pleasure and your nightmares. Although you didn’t have any bad dreams the first two times we made love. But no, I can’t take the chance. And how can you promise me you’ll not have that hideous nightmare again?”
Jessie didn’t answer. James took another step, then another. He couldn’t take his eyes off her. “Can I brush your hair?”
“If you like,” she said, and handed him the brush, handle first, as if she were handing him a foil. “I have a strong will, James. I won’t dream about him. I also demand my share of pleasure.”
He sat down beside her. Her white thigh was pressed against his. She was still seated cross-legged. He could slide his hands up her thighs and cup them over her. There was nothing to prevent him from doing that, from touching her intimately. She tilted her head toward him. He stared at all that shiny hair and said, “I think I want you to wear a bun right now.”
She laughed, turning about to face him, her fingers on his face. “I’ve been sitting here for a good fifteen minutes brushing my hair. My hands are tired from wielding the bloody thing. You truly want it in a bun, James?”