The Dangerous Viscount (32 page)

“You were hungry this morning,” Sebastian finally remarked, after watching her put away a large plate of food with quiet efficiency.

“Famished.”

“And not sick?” He looked over at the fireplace where sulfurous Saxton coal emitted heat and fumes.

“I haven’t felt ill for several days, even in rooms where there’s a coal fire. Dr. Harrison says it’s normal for the nausea to end after about three months.”

“You don’t usually eat so much, do you?”

“Not in recent weeks. My appetite seems to have returned with a vengeance. Of course,” she continued with a smoldering glance that belied her dispassionate tone, “I’ve been getting a great deal of exercise lately.”

“Is that so?”

“Exercise is good for the health.”

“So I’ve always heard.”

“Even at night I maintain my exertions.”

He kept his expression grave. “That’s very commendable.”

“So it’s not surprising I should need added sustenance to keep up my strength.”

“I have no argument with your logic.” He leaned across the table with concern. “Now you’ve enjoyed a restorative breakfast, might I suggest a little rest.” He glanced over at George whose stolid demeanor gave no indication that he understood Sebastian’s present intentions.

Apparently neither did Diana, or so she pretended. “I only just got out of bed. I have all sorts of plans for today.”

“In your delicate condition you can’t be too careful. As your husband it’s my duty to make sure you spend enough time in bed.”

“I could do with a short nap,” she said after a moment of exaggerated consideration, “but I think I should take a little exercise first.”

Her smile went straight to his groin. Sebastian stood and offered her his arm. “Allow me to accompany you.”

“That was delicious,” she said half an hour later, collapsing with her head on his chest, her knees hugging his hips. They were still joined.

“Invigorating,” he said, reaching to draw the covers over them. “Now rest.”

The first time she’d climbed on top and indicated she wanted to make love that way, he’d been a little shocked. It seemed against the natural order of things. Once he discovered the benefits of the variant he became quickly reconciled to the supine position. And to a number of others, all highly enjoyable. But this might be his favorite, because he loved feeling her weight and her warmth envelope him as they rested afterward.

She raised her head and rubbed her nose against his. “Did you know you have beautiful eyes?” she asked.

“Me? You’re the one with the eyes. Southern noon sky blue. Mine are Northumberland morning gray.”

“That’s quite lyrical.”

He allowed himself a grunt. “Pray, don’t accuse me of committing poetry.”

“Your eyes aren’t gray but silver, like a full moon.
I’m glad you wear spectacles because the other ladies can’t tell how handsome you are.” “You’re teasing me.”

“Not at all. You’re quite enticing enough with them. Lady Georgina Harville is mad for you.”

He gave a snort of laughter. “If she is, which I doubt, it’s unreciprocated. I only ever said a word to her to make you jealous.”

“I don’t think you should bring that up,” she said huffily and rolled onto her back, leaving him chilled, despite a thick down-filled quilt.

He wanted to ask her if she regretted the eventual outcome of his deception. The fact he’d forced her into marriage was ever-present at the back of his mind. He was content, but was Diana? He wanted to ask her how she felt but couldn’t think how to frame his question in a way that didn’t sound weak and pleading.

He laid his palm over the slight but perceptible protrusion of her belly, proof of the accident that had brought them to this point. To this moment in a bed in huge, gray, frigid Saxton Iverley. An outcome he could never have predicted in a hundred years.

“Do you think I’m getting too fleshy?” She swallowed. “I’m afraid of what will happen now I’ve regained my appetite. Chantal has warned me that expectant ladies can end up very stout if they don’t take care.”

“I find your concern with your figure ridiculous. If there were to be a little more of you I could only rejoice.”

“Thank you, my lord. That’s very gallant. You are becoming quite a smooth-tongued flattering
scoundrel.” Her smaller hand covered his. “Do you feel it?” she asked. “I haven’t felt it move yet but I should soon.”

The thought of the child always disquieted him. Without being obvious about it, he turned onto his side so that he could remove his hand from the swelling lump. Thus far he’d managed to avoid much conversation about it. His wife’s health in pregnancy had his full attention; the perils of childbirth and the unexplored territory of fatherhood were too alarming to contemplate.

“Do you think it will be a boy or a girl?”

This was a subject he’d definitely rather not discuss.

“Chantal thinks it’s a girl because my left nipple is redder.”

“Really?” he asked, perking up. He was ever happy for an excuse to examine his wife’s breasts. “I can’t see any difference but I’m sure I could make it so.” He lowered his mouth to the jaunty pink point, then stopped. “Maybe I should encourage the right side if that will make it a boy.”

“Do you hope for a boy then? I suppose all men wish for an heir.”

“The viscountcy, the estate, and so forth,” he said, though he didn’t mean a word of it. His preference would be for a male child only because the notion was marginally less terrifying. A small boy was familiar; he’d been one himself. But a girl?

When he thought of girl children he heard giggles, specifically the giggles of Amanda Vanderlin and her sisters.

Sebastian had taken to lovemaking like a duck to water.

Diana could only hope that when the time came he would apply the same enthusiasm to the outcome of the activity. In contemplating her impending motherhood she thought of her own happy childhood and her parents, always loving and indulgent despite their respective eccentricities. Sebastian as far as she could tell had enjoyed nothing of the kind, either before or after the disappearance of his mother. Any attempt to discuss the future addition to the Iverley family aroused his best avoidance tactics and more often than not led to his departure from the room.

In fact the same applied to most conversation that bordered on the personal. Intimacy, he made it plain, was a physical not a mental state.

With some difficulty, she held to her resolution not to press him and was rewarded over the course of several weeks. He smiled frequently, laughed on occasion, and even made jokes, usually in bed in the relaxed aftermath of mutual satisfaction. When, she wondered, would it occur to her clever husband that he was happy, even in the gloomy house where he’d passed his unsatisfactory youth?

The physical gloom at least she could dispel. To her fascination, it emerged that the trove in the attics contained much that was needed to furnish the house according to the original plans discovered in the estate muniments room. The materials imported from the east which she’d first stumbled upon were a mere fraction of the riches, and intended mostly for the bedrooms. Crate after crate was unpacked to
reveal wall-coverings of silk, leather, and tapestry; giant carpets from the Wilton and Aubusson factories which fit the massive rooms so well they must have been woven specially; bales and bales of costly cloth for curtains and upholstery; chairs and sofas, and tables of every kind and size.

It was going to take her weeks to sort it all out and months to find craftsmen to install what she found and to execute the elaborate gilt and plasterwork the original architect had designed.

She worked without the participation of her husband, who spent his days outside the house or buried in the estate office with his steward, not always even home in time to dine with her. Bedtime, however, he never missed, and most of their conversations were conducted in the old-fashioned bed which now boasted a new, softer mattress.

“I’ve decided the crimson silk must have been meant for the large dining room,” she told him one night. “It complements the chair coverings in there. I wonder why that was the one fully furnished room.”

“I suppose the table was too big to get upstairs to the attic,” Sebastian said idly. He was fussing with the blankets to make sure she was warm enough, then dropped a light kiss, first on her nose then her lips. She relished such casual gestures of affection, separated from passion. She couldn’t tell if he was aware of making them.

“It’s a wonderful room,” she said, nuzzling his arm. “When it’s finished we must give a dinner to celebrate.”

His response was predictably skeptical. “Whom would we invite?”

“The local gentry, of course. I haven’t met anyone yet, but I imagine once the weather improves some of them will call.”

“They never have before. My uncle didn’t hold much with company.”

“But you must be acquainted with the principal families in the neighborhood. You must have known the young men, at least, as you grew up.”

“No.”

She shouldn’t have been surprised. When he wasn’t away at school, Sebastian’s life at Saxton seemed to have been almost totally isolated from the kind of country sociability she knew in Shropshire. Not that he’d ever told her directly; almost everything she knew about his youth had been deduced from the meager morsels of information he dropped from time to time.

“We sometimes went to meetings of the Literary and Philosophical Society,” he said, a rare instance of volunteering information. “I remember going to see the wombat and the platypus.”

“What are they?”

“Strange creatures from the Antipodes. John Hunter sent specimens to Newcastle when he was Governor of New South Wales.”

“What else?” She was hungry for further confidences.

“I bought books.”

“When did you start collecting?”

“I started by reading, history mostly, and travelers’ tales. Uncle Iverley’s father had bought some rarities. My uncle was happy to provide me with the funds to expand the collection and by the time I was
thirteen there was scarcely a bookseller in England with whom I didn’t correspond.”

“The library here is disordered.”

“I removed the valuable books to London. My uncle didn’t care about them and his experiments might have damaged them.”

“I have noticed some strange black residues on the walls in the library.”

“Explosions.”

“Just you wait till I finish in there. You won’t believe how magnificent it will be. You can buy lots of new books.”

And she resolved to present him with the royal bindings for his birthday in May. Sebastian had never once mentioned them, since the day she’d threatened to give them to Blakeney. Needless to say she’d done no such thing.

“It must have taken weeks of work planning the decoration of the house and assembling the orders to the merchants. Do you suppose your uncle did it himself?”

A valiant attempt, but as usual Sebastian refused to be drawn into any speculation on the subject. He didn’t march out of the room, having learned diversionary tactics more satisfactory to both of them. Instead he dived under the covers.

Her annoyance gave way to contented resignation at the tickle of his hair against her inner thigh, his hot breath on her sex. Large capable hands grasped her hips and dragged her down to her pleasure and his.

He must be made, she decided, to take at least a modicum of interest in the improvements to his
barracks of a house. Not so much because she cared about his opinion of the arrangements. She’d rather make decisions unsullied by dubious masculine taste for walls festooned with animal heads and weaponry.

It was one thing to spend most of the winter months in bed. Once the weather improved she expected to lead a more normal life and would need habitable rooms to do so. This assumed they would be staying at Saxton, or spending much time there in the future. She had no idea how long his affairs would keep him in Northumberland or when he planned for them to travel south. She’d assumed they’d return to London for the season, and perhaps for her confinement in the summer, but when she raised the subject he made infuriating noncommittal noises.

“You sent for me?” He didn’t sound delighted but he was there, in the south-facing room overlooking a snow-powdered formal garden.

“I think this room would make an agreeable drawing room for family use. Not too big and with a lovely view.”

“It’s almost dark outside.”

“The view was lovely half an hour ago and will be even more so in summer. I’ll draw the curtains.”

“Let me do that.” He came up behind her at the window and surrounded her with his arms as he helped close the heavy blue velvet drapes.

She pivoted and found him regarding her with kindling heat. “Thank you,” she said, ducking smoothly under his elbow. “When you’ve finished, I’d like your opinion on the position of the furniture. Do you like the armchairs on either side of the fireplace?”

“They’re fine,” he said.

“I like the way they look, but when we have guests more people would be able to enjoy the fire if we put the pair of settees there. And perhaps that chaise longue opposite.” She pointed at the large and exceptionally wide chaise on the other side of the room. “It’s very comfortable.”

He stuck his hands in his pockets and gave it a cursory glance.

“Fine,” he repeated.

“I don’t like the old-fashioned mode of lining all the seating along the wall. The chaise was over there between the windows but because the upholstery matched the curtains it didn’t stand out well. Since I moved it you can see what a handsome piece it is.”

“What!” He finally showed signs of animation. “When you say
you
moved it I trust you mean one of the servants.”

“Oh no! I’m quite alone here. I pushed it over myself.”

“That’s a heavy piece of furniture,” he growled. “You could have injured yourself.”

“Nonsense!” She waved her arms in the air and spun around. “Look! I’m well, I’m fit, I’m in excellent condition.”

“You shouldn’t have done that. You disobeyed my express command not to overexert yourself.”

That seemed rather excessive, not to say heavy-handed. Diana was about to give him a sharp set-down when she noticed the hint of anxiety in his eyes had transformed to a predatory gleam.