It wasn’t an answer, but he hadn’t wished to give her an answer.
He watched, in some admiration, as Jessica crawled onto the bed and pulled the covers over her. “I’m not that silly. You don’t take orders from anyone.” She turned her back to him and sighed. “Don’t think I haven’t noticed you didn’t answer my question about Valentine. But I’m too exhausted right now to care. Good night.”
So much for his supposed genius… .
Gideon stripped off his clothing and joined her, pressing himself up against her back, curving his body to mimic her bent-knee position. “You do realize you’re in my bed, madam?”
He felt her body stiffen slightly, imagined her eyes going wide as she belatedly took in her surroundings. “Oh, God, I am, aren’t I?”
“Yes,” he spoke against her hair. “And I promised you some detailed groveling, I believe.”
“Gideon, you could recite lines from this Fanny Hill Trixie spoke of while hanging from one of the bedposts with a rose clamped in your jaws, and I will still be asleep in the next two minutes.”
He slid his arm around her, to cup her breast, rub the pad of his thumb lightly across her nipple. “Are you quite certain?” he asked, smiling in the near dark.
She turned onto her back and looked up into his eyes. “Oh, good, you’re not being serious.” Then she turned onto her side once more. “Good night, Gideon.”
Gideon had never shared a bed with a woman unless he was, well, bedding her. Now here he was, in bed with his brand-new bride, and he hadn’t so much as been offered a kiss good night. He’d been rather cavalierly dismissed, actually.
He thought about this for a while and then realized he was listening to the sound of Jessica’s soft, even breathing. He liked the sound. He liked listening to it. He liked being where he was, with her, even if that only meant they were together. He didn’t need more than that. Even in the midst of all he supposed, all that may pose danger to them, to England itself if he was right, he was content. Just to be here. Just to listen to his wife breathe.
How strange…
“HE KNOWS WHAT HE’S ABOUT under the blankets, don’t he, my lady? And that’s fine, it is, for you. But he doesn’t know much about what it takes to press the wrinkles out of a fancy gown, oh, no, he doesn’t. Will you have a talk with his lordship about that, ma’am? Doreen fair to cried when she saw your gown this morning.”
Jessica was caught between pointing out to Mildred that she didn’t wish to discuss her husband’s prowess under the blankets and the fact that poor Doreen seemed to be paying the price for that prowess. “I’ll see what I can do,” she said as the maid ran the sea sponge over her shoulders. “And I apologize again that the two of you waited up until three for me last night. It was highly inconsiderate of me.”
“That’s all right, my lady. We’ve all of us got to learn our way here, and that’s what I tell Doreen. Now, if you were to stand up, I’ll fetch you that bath sheet I’ve got warming by the fire.”
A few minutes later, Jessica was sitting at her dressing table and Mildred was standing behind her, muttering over the tangled hair she was doing her best to tame and suggesting mayhap his lordship might wish to consider learning how to weave a fine braid if he wasn’t going to let her lady’s maids within ten feet of her at night.
“Mildred?” Jessica asked, watching the woman in the mirror. “Is this all real, do you suppose? I mean…that is to say…it all seems like a dream, doesn’t it? And…and perhaps too wonderful to last?”
“Ah, and now you’re staring into the mouth of a gift horse, is that what you’re doing? That’s dangerous, my lady, and courting trouble. His lordship is bosky over you, any fool can see that. And it’s not a bubble soon to burst, I don’t think.”
“But how would a person know that?” Jessica asked, taking the brush from the maid’s hand, needing to do something more than just sit there; she had a long way to go before she could simply be waited on, she’d lived too many years on her own. “I met a pair of ladies last evening at the ball. Married ladies. Neither seemed very happy. They hinted husbands become disenchanted sooner or later. And when all you have is…How do I say this?”
“When all you have is that hot burning to be in each other’s drawers and then mayhap just as sudden there you are, stuck looking at each other across the mutton and trying to remember what all the fuss was about?”
Jessica turned about to goggle at the maid. “Mildred. How did you know? that’s exactly it, exactly what I meant to say. I mean, perhaps not in that way… .”
“Make it as pretty as you want, my lady, but it comes down to the same in the end, that’s what I’ve learned. One minute it’s, oh, laws, come here and let me have that, and the next it’s for the love of all that’s decent, keep that nasty thing away from me.”
“Mildred!” Jessica felt her cheeks go hot. It hadn’t been like that. She’d simply been tired. Exhausted. She hadn’t actually told him to go away. “I don’t think we should—”
The maid went about folding up the bathing sheet and continued as if Jessica hadn’t spoken. “It’s the same for the men, you know, but even worse. They want you till they get you, and use you every which way while they have you, but then it’s not a game anymore, you see. They won, and now it’s time to move on to the next one. That’s what they want most, the winning.”
Jessica didn’t protest this time. “I see.”
“I suppose so! And then there’s the worst of all of them. The lying buggers who swear they love you. Ha! We all know what it is they love, and it’s not our pretty smiles or pleasant ways.”
The maid’s voice had taken on a fierceness now, and Jessica bit her lips together and simply listened, turning about to see pain on the woman’s face.
“I love you, Millie, is what he told me,” she said, her eyes squeezed shut. “I surely do love you, so why don’t you lie down right here and let me do what I want. Nothing splits wide a girl’s knees like hearing some handsome liar swearing he loves her. Oh, they’re the worst, ma’am, those what swear they love you. Then they run off like their breeches is on fire when you say, oh, yes, Johnny Hopkins, and I love you straight back, I love you quite truly. Run like the wind, they do, when they hear that, and the next thing you know your sister Bettyann tells your Da what you’ve been doing at the spinney and he tosses you out, and now you’re doing what you have to do to feed your belly, and figuring out what you should have figured out long ago, and that’s that love has nothing to do with lying down and letting them do what they want, even when you like what they’re doing.”
And then Mildred stopped, clapped her hands to her cheeks as if finally realizing what she’d been saying. “Oh, but not his lordship, ma’am! I wasn’t meaning him, no, I was not. Like I said, he’s bosky for you, we all say so. Chased you till he caught you, didn’t he, and here we are, and here we’re going to stay. We’ve a fine life now, all of us. Those society ladies you talked to, well I’ll wager they’re just jealous of that handsome man you’ve got trailing along at your shoestrings. Yes, I do! Would you want me to lay out your clothes for you now, my lady? Doreen’s still off muttering over the pressing iron.”
“Yes, thank you, Mildred. I’d appreciate that.”
“The blue sprigged muslin, my lady?”
Jessica nodded her agreement, her mind traveling back to a morning that seemed so long ago now and yet far from in the past.
She’d thanked him for not sending her away, she remembered that. But mostly she remembered what he’d said in return: I’m not ready to let you go.
God,